“Which one’s your oldest? Reggie?”
“Rory,” she said, wiping away a tear. “He acts like it’s his job to be strong.” A smile flashed briefly. “You know, to be the man of the house? But he’s just a kid.”
“What is he?” Weezer asked, hands folded in his lap. “Ten years old?”
“Nine,” she said. “I got pregnant the summer after we graduated.”
“And were married that fall.”
She glanced at him. “I loved Dan. We didn’t marry because of Rory.”
“I never suspected otherwise.”
She made a harsh scoffing sound. “His parents did. They figured I was loose. Didn’t want their precious Danny marrying me.” Her expression went steely. “But we showed ’em. Danny got a good job. And now he’s—” She paused, swallowed thickly. “—was vice president of his company. Six healthy children and a house on the lake.”
“It’s a nice house,” Weezer agreed.
“Damn right,” she said. “We showed ’em what we were made of.”
Yes, you did, he thought. You showed them, all right. You showed me too, showed me how little you thought of me. On a breakup with Dan, drunk at a graduation party, you let old Weezer have a quick lay, let me have my bright, gleaming moment in your parents’ bedroom, and you never talked to me again, never looked at me again, and when you did it was like you were looking at an insect, or something worse, something vile and grotesque and unmentionable, a dark thing from your past, a revolting mistake, and a week later you were back with Dan. A week of unreturned phone calls and unanswered emails. Of dodging me like I had the fucking plague. And you didn’t care how I ached. How I longed for you. You didn’t care that it had meant something to me. That it—
“Weezer?”
He jolted. She was watching him, wide-eyed.
“Sorry,” he said. “I was thinking of something else.”
“Well, whatever it was, it must not have been good.”
Nice guess, he thought.
“I’m okay, Jessica. And I think I will have a drink.”
The sound of a baby crying startled him. The noise was coming from his left. He glanced at her for an explanation.
“We converted Dan’s office to a nursery. I better go,” she said. “Stephanie’s always fussing.” Rising, she nodded toward the front of the house. “Beer’s in the fridge.”
She went out to quiet the baby, and Weezer moved down the hallway. When he reached the foyer, he ignored the kitchen, curled left, and ambled up the staircase. The first door he reached was ajar, and by screwing up his eyes a little he could see the child within, a small girl of maybe seven who took after her father. Her dead father.
Next up was a room on the right, this one housing bunk beds. The twins, Weezer recollected. They’d be about five. And feisty, like their mom. Weezer moved on.
Next up was a closed door on the lakeside of the house. That would be Rory, the oldest. He was old enough to want privacy, Weezer supposed.
Beyond that on the right was a bathroom.
He doubled back, listening for Jessica and the baby below. Little Stephanie was still crying, but not wailing anymore.
Weezer passed the staircase and saw there were two more rooms at this end of the hall. The first was a small room that evidently belonged to her two-year-old son. It was dark in there, and the kid’s curly hair was long, but Weezer was pretty sure it was a boy.
At the end of the hall was the master suite. He could figure that much out by the layout of the house.
Weezer ran through it all in his head on the way down the stairs. He was so lost in his thoughts that he almost ran over Jessica.
She was standing at the foot of the stairs, staring at him. “What were you doing up there?”
He put on a smile. “Bathroom,” he said.
“There’s one on the main floor.”
He reached the bottom step. “I didn’t want to disturb you and Stephanie.”
She continued to watch him a moment. Then she nodded absently.
They came back into the great room, but before she could make it to the stiff-backed ivory chair, he put an arm around her waist, directed her toward the couch. “Sit here, Jessica. It’s more comfortable.”
“But I don’t wanna sit here,” she said, sitting anyway. “There’s a glare on the TV.”
Weezer held his patient smile, crossed the room. “We’re not going to worry about the television,” he said, and pushed the Off button. He bent and lifted the stupid, uncomfortable chair and placed it directly across from Jessica, so that their knees would only be a foot or so apart, and he could face the window.
She eyed him warily, crossed her legs so that her robe folded open a little, the dark skin glimmering in the lamplight, about six inches of flesh above the knees. The black crease where her legs met.
“Weezer?” she asked.
His reverie broke and he was instantly in control again, instantly smooth. “We need to talk about your situation.”
“My situation.”
“You and your children, and what sort of future you’re going to have.”
She cocked an eyebrow. “You sure you’re okay? You sound like a different person.”
He smiled with good humor. “Do I? How so?”
“I don’t know,” she said, hugging herself and shivering a little. “You sound more mature. Smarter, I guess.”
Thanks a lot, he thought. Cunt.
He forced a smile. “I guess what happened at the bonfire changed all of us.”
It acted on her like a good hard fist to the jaw. She was about to cry again.
He reached out, took her hand, which had evidently been holding the robe closed because now it peeled open another couple inches, a good deal of her thighs visible now. The skin dark and shaved despite the ordeal she’d been through, despite the six kids and their needs.
A fighter, he thought. Good.
“Now listen,” he said, in what he hoped was a rallying tone. “You’ve been through hell. You don’t have to tell me that. Any fool could see how hard it’s been on you.”
She looked away, but he thought he’d seen a grateful smile ghost across her lips.
He pushed on. “I know I’m just an old high school acquaintance—”
“Friend,” she amended.
He smiled, but it cost an effort. “Thanks, Jessica. But what I mean is that even though you’re a strong girl, you shouldn’t have to be. Not all the time.”
She watched him, interested.
“What I’m proposing,” he said, “is that you let me help you out. Make this transition a little easier.”
“Transition?”
“You know, your life after Dan. Don’t tell me you haven’t thought about it.”
Something darkened her face. Guilt? Anger maybe? Spiritual resentment over losing her life partner?
“Like I said, I know I’m not anyone’s concept of the ideal man. But I could step in with your children, give them a good role model. Someone to roughhouse with. Someone to change diapers, to help them with their homework.”
And God help him, he meant it. At that moment, he really meant it. On the way over here he’d been thinking only of how to punish her for the mortifying shunning that had taken place a decade ago, the broken heart she didn’t give two shits about. Yet now, those old feelings of affection for her were getting dredged up. She was still a pretty girl, just about as pretty as she’d been that drunken night in her parents’ bedroom. And he’d always had a soft spot for kids. Okay, not all kids. Maybe not even most of them. Most kids were royal pains in the ass, burdens who did nothing but take and whine and shit and make you sick with their Dorito breath. But there had been moments over the past few years when he’d toyed with the idea of being a dad. Hell, he’d found himself envying Dan Clinton at times, even imaginin
g himself taking old Dan’s place. And this was before Dan had gotten tossed onto that bonfire like a lively hunk of kindling.
And now, as he spoke, Weezer realized that this could be the realization of a dream. He could be a father to all these urchins. He could be a husband to Jessica. Go down on her all he wanted and make up for that embarrassingly brief rut, the one where he’d gotten to pump maybe three or four times before squirting and wilting and climbing off with an apology that she hadn’t listened to anyway because she was already half-dressed again.
But now Jessica was watching him with an expression that bordered on tragedy.
“Oh God, Weezer,” she said, a horrible look of pity crumpling her face. She wiped her cheeks, glanced up at the ceiling.
“Go on,” he said, knowing what was coming. Inviting it. “You can be honest with good old Weezer.”
She gave him a grateful smile and the robe slid open another couple inches. If the pink material spread any wider, if the furry pink tie loosened any more, he’d see what was between her legs. Would she have even bothered with underwear? She hadn’t planned on guests. The kids were in bed. It was just her and her beer and her stupid reality show.
Was she naked beneath the pink robe?
“Okay,” she said, relaxing a trifle. “I mean, it’s really nice of you to stop by, Weezer, and I want you to know how flattered I am by your offer…”
Go on, he urged. Make it easier. Tell me how you think it’s sweet of me, but how you don’t feel ready for another relationship at the moment. How you care about me and all, but as a friend. A good, loyal friend.
And that was pretty much what she said, though he was only half listening. Because the robe had split open a mite farther, and he realized she wasn’t wearing any underwear, and though her legs were pressed together, he could just see the upper rim of her pubic hair, the same hair he’d luxuriated in that night ten years ago, the cleft she’d allowed him to lick, and he’d loved it, and so had she, writhing and squirming and moaning and calling out his name, and if he had to choose the greatest moment of his life it would have been then, then and the eight or ten seconds he’d been able to hold back from ejaculating while they had sex, but she didn’t mind it, he could tell, because that part was for him, she’d already had her orgasm, and now she wouldn’t have to go down on him to reciprocate, because maybe that was beneath her. Because he was beneath her, so far beneath her that she’d never acknowledged they’d been together. And because he could feel the pulse in his temples, the throb in his biceps, the twitch coming everywhere now, he decided to say it, to try her out so he’d know what her reaction would be.
“…and getting into another relationship this soon would confuse the kids,” she was saying. “Not to mention making me look bad. And you wouldn’t look too good either, going after a woman so soon after her husband’s murder. She leaned forward. “You understand, don’t you, Weezer?”
“But Jessica,” he said, “we already had sex once.”
She looked away immediately, shifting herself back on the couch. Covering her crotch with the robe in what might or might not have been a conscious gesture.
“Jessica?” he said. Beyond her head, the spangled water rippled and undulated, a breeze kicking up. The moon wasn’t full, but it was waxing. And the moon was a halogen spotlight.
“That was a long time ago, Weezer,” she said. “And I was drunk.”
“I was drunk too,” he pointed out.
Jessica shifted on the couch, looking everywhere but at him.
“Jessica?”
“What?” she snapped.
“Look at me.”
She didn’t. “It’s late, Weezer.”
He gripped both her legs, just above the knees. “Look at me.”
But she was pawing at his hands. “Weezer.”
“Fucking look at me, you bitch!”
He could hear it in his voice, and apparently so could she, because she was seizing his forearms, toiling to prise them off her legs. But he sank the fingers in, his talons protracting. She began to cry out but he was too quick, thrusting a hand up and clamping a palm over her mouth, driving her backward into the voluminous green couch, and her eyes were bugging out. He repositioned his grip so he wouldn’t cover her nose, suffocate her, hell no. She needed to see this. Would see this.
Was witnessing this as the coarse, dark hair slithered out of his knuckles, over his wrists, the muscles tautening under the cuffs of his black shirt, the thread straining, the material groaning like a live thing. And she gave up slapping at him and started fluttering her hands like a helpless damsel in a movie, and he wanted to laugh at her, a strong, liberated woman cowering like that, but he couldn’t laugh because of the pain. It was exquisite, rapturous in its promise, but on a literal level it was fucking awful, a red-black agony, but he held his position, kept her pinned to the couch. She would witness the whole process, the entire goddamned show, and as his facial bones began to rearrange themselves she began to hammer at his arm, and he actually liked that, though to hold on to her face he had to squeeze a little, and apparently he didn’t know his own strength because the skin at one of her ears split from being stretched so hard. But that wouldn’t kill her, hell no, it wouldn’t. Cast her into a state of anguish, maybe, scare the living shit out of her for sure, but not kill her. She drummed her bare feet against the front of the couch, sobbed into his hand, and from the nursery he heard the baby wailing, but that was fine. He’d be in there eventually. But first Jessica, then Rory. Then the seven-year-old, the twins, and the curly-haired boy.
The baby he would save for last.
Chapter Twenty-Three
From behind the pole barn, the dogs barked incessantly. Melody assumed her father and brothers had been too preoccupied to feed the dogs, which meant they’d grown scrawnier than they already were.
The images tore at her, so she pushed them away.
Melody did her best to collect her thoughts. She was fairly certain it was Friday evening. If that was correct, that meant they’d had her locked up in the basement for two days.
Keeping her prisoner.
Melody wished she were surprised by this, but the fact was, she’d idly wondered from time to time why they didn’t just strip away the patina of normalcy with which they’d concealed their atrocities and treat her like what she was—a serially abused sex slave.
In the two days since Melody had been ambushed by John back in that thicket, Father Bridwell and her brothers had unleashed a torrent of physical and psychological abuse so horrific that, by the end of the first night, she’d found herself simply shutting down. Gone was the fury that had gripped her in the pole barn, gone was the indignation at their ill treatment. Her limbs were crosshatched with a gruesome network of scratches and slits, her genitalia and breasts crusted with dried blood and pus, her anus so swollen and painful she couldn’t shit even if there’d been anything in her digestive system to expel. Melody lay on the dank concrete floor, her filth and the cobwebbed grime her only bedding. The sun would go down soon, and the degradations would begin anew. Eyeing the somber bloodred rectangle of light from the basement’s lone window, Melody realized the truth.
Her father and brothers had decided to kill her.
They would inflict violence on her until her body succumbed.
She was never going to breathe fresh air again.
She was never going to leave the basement.
She opened and closed her cracked, crusted lips and endeavored to run her swollen tongue over them, but the pain made her stop, the feeble movement enough to clog her airway and set off an excruciating, body-racking coughing fit. She wheezed for breath, her nostrils too crammed with blood and mucus to be of any use. Her body juddered with the coughs, and her eyes burned from the gummy tears that oozed from their corners. A coppery heat sizzled in the back of her throat, and she realized that from somewhere, somehow,
she was bleeding internally. She might not make it past sundown, might just expire before Father Bridwell and his sons got to work on her.
Melody’s airway was needle-thin, the breaths of musty air she stole insufficient to keep her conscious. She wavered into a nebulous slate-colored fog, her limbs going numb, her ears filling with the roar of sea tide.
Some time later—it might have been ten minutes, it might have been an hour—she blinked slowly awake to discover a shape hovering over her. She thought at first it was Father Bridwell, but when her vision swirled into focus, she realized it was her oldest brother.
Donny was leering at her, his knobby, grubby fingers kneading the bulge in his blue jeans.
My God, she marveled. How can you still view me as a sex object? She imagined how she must look and shuddered. For the millionth time she was struck by the depravity of her family members, by their capacity for evil.
Donny reached for her, but just as his fingertips brushed her cheek, Father Bridwell’s voice echoed from the basement steps. “Not yet, Donny.”
Donny froze, an anguished look in his glittery eyes. He stood there a moment, perhaps debating whether or not he could disobey Father Bridwell this once. She thought she heard him moan in vexation. He glanced pleadingly up at his father, who was coming down the steps with Robbie and John in tow. All of them carried bulky white objects under their arms. She noticed the same self-satisfied grin on each of their faces. And as Donny watched them file in and take positions near her, his pained, horny expression morphed into one of smug anticipation.
Bemusedly, Melody surveyed their faces. Then, despite the pain blurring her vision, she understood what they were all grasping.
Her paintings.
They’d found out about the attic.
Melody began to whimper.
Father Bridwell’s hatchet face split into a grin. “Figured that’d have an effect. And here I was beginning to think you were too far gone to care.”
Melody opened her mouth, but the broken-glass anguish of her throat precluded speech.
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