by Nancy Adams
“It’s me, you and Mummy,” the little girl informed her father as she watched him looking at her work of art.
Sam knelt down in front of her. Taking her little freckled hand in his own, he looked up to her and gazed into her eyes. The little girl’s sweet expression dropped into one of sadness and it broke Sam’s heart to see such forlornness in her tiny eyes. The perceptive little girl knew from her fathers face what was coming.
“Jess,” Sam began, “you know how Mummy’s been sick?”
“Yes,” the little girl squeaked, her face breaking into tears, her hand beginning to tremble within his grasp.
“Well, she’s gone to heaven now.”
At that, Jess threw herself into her father’s arms and began weeping. Sam took ahold of her and enveloped his distraught little girl in a melancholy hug, lifting her up and holding her tightly to him as she sobbed into his shoulder.
Maud stood to the side watching them with a sad expression.
“I’m so sorry, Sam,” was all the au pair could think of saying as he held his weeping daughter.
After that, Sam took Jess to bed and stayed with her until she fell to sleep. He then went downstairs where Maud was sitting in the kitchen. The moment he entered, she stood up from her seat, as if caught in some kind of illicit act.
“It’s okay, Maud,” Sam said as he entered, “you don't have to stand.”
“Sorry,” she said in embarrassment as she sat back down, before asking him if he’d like her to leave.
“No, you stay,” Sam replied. “I just came to get a glass of water and then I think I’ll go for a walk.”
“Okay,” Maud said in turn, and she went back to the book that she’d been reading when he’d walked in.
Sam drank the glass of water and then left the house, walking himself through the woods with no direction in mind, just a need to keep moving forward, the sun going down over his head. He felt so torn in that moment, his mind revolving around thoughts of his lost love and thoughts of Claire. He’d been so loyal to Marya their whole relationship. Before Claire, she had been the only one that he had ever slept with. How, he asked himself, could I completely lose who I was and start an affair with a nineteen-year-old girl before my wife was even dead? Did I really see such light in Claire that I could break Marya’s heart into a thousand pieces? And why tell her at the end? To absolve my rotten soul? How can I dare to even look at my own daughter from now on? And Claire? After the poor girl opened up to me and told me about the awful things that her father had done, after she’d dropped her guard to a man for the first time in her life, exposed herself to me, how could I then take that girl’s virginity and lay waste to it? I’m no better than her father. I have broken everything that I’ve ever loved.
The further he walked, the more tortured his self recriminations became, until he felt as if a swarm of flies was feeding on the inside of his head. He took a seat on a rock that sat a little way up from the riverbank, giving him a good view of the roaring ravine as it cascaded between rocks and tumbled on down the valley. He watched the water’s flow and wished that he could join it and drift away somewhere, always on the move, never noticed and able to go from place to place, fading into the background. He envied tramps their skill of invisibility. They were always ignored, ushered on, never wanted, never needed, nothing expected of them. He wished for that type of anonymity.
Before he’d taken the fateful call from Dr. Jones, Sam had been contacted by the company’s acting CEO, Stan Bormann. Stan needed Sam to present himself to the board as soon as possible so that an action plan for the continuation of the company could be achieved so that it was ready for presentation at a meeting with the shareholders in two days’ time. The meeting was primarily to vote for the new CEO, but Bormann wanted to shore up the share price. “I’m sorry, Sam,” Stan had said over the phone, “but the way the share price is dropping, we gotta set the ship running straight as soon as possible, showing the world that with Marya passing, we’ve made plans for the continuation of the company with the same standards that we always have.”
“She’s still alive,” Sam had reminded Stan.
“I’m sorry,” the latter had apologized.
Bormann was looking for Sam’s backing in the vote for CEO, and for that Sam couldn't have cared less, even though it was the company that he had started with Marya over ten years ago. He felt that with her death came the death of his love of the company. He simply wanted the board to direct the company and leave him to his research. He even hated the idea of having to meet the board and then the shareholders. Sam had never liked that side of the business, he was always the genius inventor. It was Marya who had the fight and know-how to be a lioness in the boardroom. She was so much more people-savvy than Sam. He hadn't a clue about them, and since the age of fourteen, Marya had always looked out for him. Without her, he was lost, and he was fully willing to accept the loss of his company so long as there was enough cash to maintain a comfortable life for Jess. “She deserves that,” Sam said aloud to himself as he sat thinking it all over on the rock, the sound of the rumbling river doing little to drown out the buzzing in his head.
He’d walked with Claire along this same riverbank only two nights before, when he’d whisked her away from her life and brought her out here. As they’d walked a route that Sam had walked many times before with Marya, he’d felt Claire begin to slowly transform into his wife, as if the two were spiritually merging into the same essence, and Sam found himself feeling an identical sense of comfort in the girl’s presence as he did with his wife.
There, miles from the cameras, from his sick wife, from his shame, and from the world itself, Sam had allowed himself to act with no restrictions. And in this world of no consequence, he had abandoned his decency and become a beast; devouring the poor girl in his wife’s bed.
With this thought, Sam brought his clenched fist crashing down on his leg with such force that he was awoken from his desolate reverie. Looking about himself as the sound of the cacophonous crickets surrounded him, Sam felt a sudden hollowness and sensed that he was cast adrift of the world upon that rock, all alone and abandoned. A fire was building inside of him and he felt an instant need to flee, to get away from there.
So, he stood up like a bolt and began walking with an angered stride back toward the house.
CHAPTER TEN
When Sam reached the house, he immediately went to his garage, which was dug into the caverns of the cliff top, an excavation that cost millions and gave him a huge underground space to put his collection of sports cars, a pneumatic door and ramp fitted at its front that opened out onto a private road that led out of the estate. Sam had never been one for driving for any other reason than pleasure, so his own cars—the limousine being the company’s—were all high-performance vehicles.
Once he was inside, Sam looked along the line of sports cars. The Corvette, he mused, could go American. No, too much tail slide on the mountain roads. The Porsche 911? Not enough torque. The Lamborghini Countach? No, too 80s. McLaren F1? Now we’re getting into it! Ah! Yes!
Sam walked forward to the fifth car along; his all-black Lamborghini Diablo GT, one of the highest performers of all performance sports cars circa the year 2000. The elite of all production cars allowed on the road. Top speed of 215 mph—the fastest road-legal car in the world—16-cylinder engine with two narrow-angle V8 engines strapped to each other, the whole thing turbo charged.
Sam got into the car and pressed the ignition button. The engine roared like a tiger waking from the dead. Sam pressed the button on the dash to open the ramp up. The mechanism began unfolding and, as it did, Sam sat in the car revving the vicious engine, tapping the wheel nervously with his fingers in anticipation of his escape. Where are you going? a voice asked him in his head. He had no answer for the question and all he could think of was getting away. He would hit the roads and from there just keep heading into the night, hope to lose the reporters camped outside the gate of the private road, all of them l
ined along the mountain highway in anticipation that he may emerge and they’d get their long-awaited photograph of the recluse billionaire. “Well, today’s gonna be their lucky one,” Sam said to himself, tapping his foot impatiently on the accelerator pedal as the ramp eventually unfolded.
BOOM! The moment it was, he slammed the Diablo into gear and felt the tug of the seat pull him into it as he went from first to third before he’d even reached the top of the ramp. As he emerged out onto the road, the Lamborghini was going so fast that it leapt about two feet in the air and came down with a crash of sparks. The traction from the back wheels was so strong when they touched back down on the ground that the tail end slid out slightly and Sam had to quickly adjust his steering so that he didn’t lose control of the beast before he’d even had a chance to test its strength on the mountain roads.
Soon, he was smashing down the serpentine road as it twisted its way through the forest. The sun was gone now, so Sam drove through the pitch black, his headlights guiding him, the car clinging to the snaking road as it bounded forward at well over a hundred miles per hour, the forest sprinting past the windows on either side of him, his body fixed into the bucket seat as the firing dragon of an engine forged him on with indescribable fury.
Where are you going? the voice asked him again. I don’t know, was Sam’s swift answer. But where was he going? Was he simply going to push the car as hard as he could until he went smashing through one of the roadside barriers and plummeting down the mountainside in a ball of flames?
Suddenly a singular thought emerged through the fog of his mind and he said out loud, “Georgette?”
“Yes, Sam?” the car’s onboard OS answered.
“Georgette, call Claire Prior.”
“Okay, Sam.”
With that, the sound of a dialing tone filled the car. With each ring, Sam’s heart sank even further. He’d tried to call her earlier that day, but she had merely let it ring out and he didn’t have the heart, or the gall, to try again. But now he was desperate to speak to her. He needed someone, and in his fit of desperation, Claire had been the only person he could think of. He had to explain things to her, explain that he didn’t just see her as some sordid tryst, that she meant more to him than that. That he had loved his wife and always would. But that he loved her too. If she didn’t want to see him ever again, he would accept it completely and leave her alone for the remainder of his life. He would respect dearly any wish that the girl made to him. Any. He just needed to speak to her, even if just for a brief moment, and couldn’t face leaving it as it was, knowing how much she hated him, how much his own actions had directly hurt her.
The call rang out and Sam had it dialed again.
But the same: no answer.
On the third call, the phone was hung up and Sam realized that no amount of calling would induce Claire to answer. So he gave up. Oh, how alone he felt in that moment; Marya far away in some unreachable place and Claire so full of vitriol for him that she would never allow him to look into her eyes ever again.
He was completely alone.
But what about Jess? the voice asked.
With that, Sam began to cry and banged his fist on the wheel as he bolted through the woods toward the exit point. How selfish he felt for wanting to run. That poor little lamb had no one in the world but him and here he was about to drive himself straight up to the gates of Hell.
Out on the highway at the edge of the estate, the press were waiting like a baying mob. News of Marya’s death had just been released by the hospital, and the wolves were waiting in anticipation for a flash of flesh to appease their bloodlust. As they stood around chatting, they were all caught by surprise as the huge electronic gates of the Burgess estate creaked open. Everyone began darting about, grabbing cameras and equipment, readying themselves for some action.
And action was exactly what they got.
Instead of the slow-moving limousine that they’d expected to emerge, out sprang a speeding sports car, almost knocking into several photographers and cameramen, one man diving to the deck and bringing his expensive camera crashing down onto the ground, smashing the lens. The Diablo hit the highway, did a skid as it adjusted itself to the road and then sprinted off into the night with an ear-splitting roar. It took a second or two for the general shock amongst the reporters to abate, but once it did, everyone began clambering into their news vans, grabbing their mobile telephones and screaming into them that Sam Burgess had just come tearing out of his estate moments after his wife’s death. Of course, it was futile for them to chase him, they’d never catch up. But they still went in search, many secretly hoping that he would crash and that they would be first on the scene to get all the best pictures.
Meanwhile, Sam pushed the car on as he meandered along the tight-winding mountain roads, a sheer drop to the right of the car, using the whole road as he tore around it, the Lamborghini clawing itself to the corners as it swung around them at breakneck speeds, Sam feeling one with the vehicle, nothing but the driving experience in his mind, the abject danger of it all keeping his murkier thoughts at bay.
Suddenly, he was blinded as a huge floodlight came floating up the mountain at the corner ahead of him. Sam broke and the car instantly slowed, Sam pitched forward against the seatbelt as he struggled to see. The light moved up and then swung around and Sam could once again see the road ahead—a corner. He quickly grappled with the wheel and swung the car around, using the handbrake to drift the back of the car around the tight corner, dropping down through the gears to get more engine traction. With all his efforts, Sam kept the car on the road and made it through the chicane.
As to the light, it now followed him from behind, shining down directly on top of the speeding car. The moment Sam had seen it, he’d realized that it was a news helicopter come to follow him, and soon there were two of them floating around above. Sam merely ignored them and pushed the car further on until he began to come across news crews lining the road, photographing him as he passed by, blinding him with their flashes. Then as he reached a forest road, Sam was met with several police cars lining either side. The moment he passed them their lights burst into life and the cars began to chase him. But Sam couldn’t have cared less. Like the news helicopters following his every move, he ignored the police and pushed on toward oblivion.
Sam simply let the road swallow him up as he moved through the night, a lost soul attempting to disappear from itself.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Claire lay in bed staring up at the ceiling. Moments ago, her phone had kept ringing and it hadn’t been until the third time that she had picked it up from the floor to see who was calling. It was Sam, and the moment she saw the name ‘John’ on the face, Claire had slammed her thumb down on the red. She was in no mood to talk to him.
The confrontation with her father earlier had sapped so much of her energy. It had been something that she had wanted with all her heart to avoid when she had initially agreed to come back home during her placement. For the past seven weeks she had done brilliantly, working evenings during the week so that her father was asleep in bed when she got home, as well as spending her weekends with Beth or at her grandparents’ house.
For the past nine years she’d been living with the terrible horror of what he did to her when she was only a little girl. The abuse had begun when she was ten and had ended when she turned thirteen. Claire had never understood why it had stopped so suddenly, but she gathered that her father feared that a teenager was far more likely to tell people if the abuse was still going on. He’d stopped and now wanted to act as if nothing had happened.
In fact, when she had first realized that the abuse was at an end, having not been visited by Joe for over six months before she felt safe enough to even consider that it had stopped, Claire too had wanted to pretend that it had never happened and continue with her life, basking in the sweetness of ignorance. But that didn’t stop the nightmares or the bed-wetting or the panic attacks that still stalked her even if her fath
er didn’t. Claire was still haunted by the things that that man did to her, but was too afraid to tell anyone because she believed that she’d be accused of being a liar. Joe Prior was a local businessman owning five hardware stores, Priors, all throughout Colorado, two in Denver and three in the surrounding towns. Joe Prior was also seen by the local Republican party as a future candidate for them.
Claire feared that if she told anyone about things she believed happened to her when she was a little girl, they’d put it down to the fantasies of a child or the result of watching too much television dramas. And as each year passed, it became harder and harder for Claire to confess to anyone, until she began to wonder if she hadn’t just made it all up in her head; if it wasn’t some terrible nightmare that she had as a child mimicking a real memory.
But then when she was eighteen, Claire needed to use a laptop in the house as hers was broken. Every other laptop was unavailable except her father’s, who had forbidden anyone from using it. Joe was out at the time and Claire’s mum knew the password. She didn’t see the harm, so gave it to Claire to use. It was then, while Claire was on the internet, that she happened to look at the history and a rush of dark memories came crashing back in on her as she saw the titles of the pornography that her father had been looking at. It’s not for this writer to mention them, but let’s just say that they were of the role-play variety that included father and daughter sexual relationships.
All of a sudden, Claire was sure. The titles triggered something in her that made her certain like never before that her father had abused her. None of the pornography was illegal, Claire checked for that, but the perverse nature of the things he appeared obsessed with brought everything back to her in a wave of horrifying confirmation.
That night, Claire had confronted Joe in his study and it was then that she saw the truly evil face of her father. He immediately began telling her that she needed psychiatric help, that she was a sick fantasist, that he’d always suspected something wasn’t quite right with her. He began telling her that she’d been brainwashed by all the media hysteria into child abuse and had become so messed up by it all that it had made her think that she, herself, had been abused. The whole time, Joe acted like a victim of everyone from the media, to the morality of the contemporary teenager, as well as Claire. As he fell back into his defensiveness, Claire thought to herself that he would make a great politician one day.
