Crimson Rain

by Meg O'Brien

  “Even better than I’d hoped for,” she said. “Mom’s got a boyfriend, Daddy’s got a mistress—”

  She broke off at Gina’s aghast expression. “You didn’t know, Gina? Golly Molly, Paul, she didn’t know! We must have been very good at hiding—well, never mind.”

  “Lacey,” Paul said, his mouth so dry he could barely get the words out. “What the hell? What are you doing?”

  “Lacey?” Rachel said, appearing at Paul’s side. She looked with bewilderment at the other woman. “Who’s Lacey?”

  Paul couldn’t answer. His mind had gone numb.

  “Dad, don’t you even recognize her?” Rachel asked. “It’s Angela! I found her for you.”

  Lacey grinned. “She’s right, Paul. Surprise! You, too, Mommy. It’s me—your long-lost little girl. Aren’t you thrilled?”

  21

  This must be hell, then, Paul thought. There were times when he’d wondered if people created their own hell right here on earth, and now he was sure of it.

  Lacey was here, in this room. She was here with Gina and Rachel.

  And Rachel was calling her “Angela.”

  Had the whole world gone crazy?

  Or was it Rachel who’d gone crazy? Rachel had brought Lacey here. Rachel, who had always been the “quiet” one. He recalled Vicky saying, “There are certain kinds of mental illnesses that only show themselves when a child is older.”

  But that didn’t explain about Lacey. Why would she go along with such a thing? Had she sensed he was going to break it off with her? Had she been angrier than he’d ever imagined she would be—and was this her payback?

  That was it. Rachel and Lacey had met somehow. Rachel had found out about his affair with Lacey, and she had been angry, too. Together, they had cooked up this meeting to teach him a lesson.

  But why have her pretend to be Angela?

  It took only seconds for so much confusion to whirl through his brain, but the seconds seemed like hours. Then, through the muddle of his thoughts he heard a broken voice. “B-baby? Angela? Is—is it really you?”

  He remembered Gina, who was still several yards away with a man he didn’t recognize at first but who seemed familiar now, and who also seemed to have intimate knowledge of his wife. The man had stepped back, as if becoming an uneasy observer of this family play.

  “Of course it’s Angela!” Rachel said. There was a tone in her voice that Paul couldn’t even begin to understand. Excitement? Fear? “I found her for you, Mom. You, too, Dad. I know how you always miss her at Christmas.”

  Gina’s eyes widened, and her hand went to her mouth, which was trembling. “Found? You found Angela?”

  Rachel nodded. “When I was in Spokane. She wanted to see you guys for the first time alone, where you wouldn’t be bothered by work or anything, so I arranged for you all to come here.”

  Gina made a small, strangled noise in her throat. She stumbled forward, her hand outstretched. “Baby,” she said softly. Her eyes scanned the other woman’s face, wonderingly. “I can’t believe it’s you.” She began to cry. “You’ve changed so much! I would never have recognized you. But it is you, isn’t it?”

  She turned to Rachel. “It is Angela, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, Mom. It’s Angela.”

  It was only then that understanding dawned for Paul. Yet even with the evidence laid before him, he couldn’t see it. Lacey’s eyes were a deep green, not hazel, and her hair was blond, not brown. Those things were easily changeable, of course—contact lenses, hair color. Vicky had told him that Angela might have changed her appearance.

  But beyond that—the nose, the chin—nothing about Lacey resembled the little girl Angela had been the last time he had seen her.

  Of course, Angela had been only six years old that day. This person was a full-grown woman. He of all people knew that.

  A deep flush rose to Paul’s face. His stomach heaved, and black spots appeared before his eyes. For him, everyone else in the room disappeared. If he saw anything at all, it was only the gold A on the necklace he had given Lacey for Christmas.

  A for Allison, her last name. That was what she had told him she wanted. Not L for Lacey, but A for Allison.

  He knew, now, as that gold A flashed against her chest in the light from an overhead chandelier, what it really stood for.

  “How could you have done this?” he cried. “I was your father, for God’s sake! Do you know how sick—” Scenes flashed back to him—being in bed with Lacey, playing with her in a teasing way. Completely absorbed by her and, yes, even wondering if he should leave Gina for her.

  “My God, Lacey—Angela—whoever the hell you are! Do you know how dirty that makes me feel?”

  Her laughter mocked him. “In the first place, Paul, you were never my father. You were some guy who adopted me and then threw me away four years later. In the second place, I want you to feel dirty. Don’t you get it? That’s been the whole point!”

  She laughed again, and the sound of it made him ill. “It’s why I came to Seattle, why I set up our meeting in the bar that night, and why I became your vapid little mistress—always there ready to do your bidding, always waiting patiently till you had time for me. I did it all for this moment—this moment when I would see that look on your face, knowing you had been making love to your sweet little Angela.”

  She shoved her fists deep into the pockets of the black coat and paced frantically about the room, as if physically propelled by her rage. “Didn’t you ever wonder why I didn’t feel bad about you spending time with your family? Most mistresses would, you know.”

  “I thought…I just thought you didn’t mind,” Paul said, his voice as strangled as his thoughts. “You said you understood.”

  “God, you are stupid!” Angela cried, coming so close her eyes were only inches from his. Paul had a memory that tore through his gut, of Angela that Christmas Eve night, spitting into his face. The look in her eyes then was the same as this one tonight: pure evil.

  “Sometimes you’re so stupid I want to shake you,” Angela said. “Do you have any idea how I felt when your dear Dr. Chase did things to me and made me do things to him? That’s why he told you and Mom not to come back, you know. It’s why he said I would never be normal, never go home. He wanted me for himself. By the time I was six, I was his little prostitute. ‘Come here, Angela. Kneel down. Do this, do that. Ahh, yes, that’s right. Not so hard, though. Do it softly.’”

  She had squeezed her eyes shut and turned away, but now she whipped back, the long hair flying, and fixed a full charge of hatred on him. “He trained me, Paul. How the hell do you think I knew what to do with you? I’m twenty-one years old, Daddy. I’m barely legal, and I made you happier than your wife ever did! How do you think I learned all that?”

  Gina cried out, and Paul came back to the rest of the room. His wife was on her knees on the floor, tears pouring down her cheeks. He had all but forgotten she was there. Rachel knelt next to her, an arm around her shoulders.

  “I’m so sorry, Mom,” she was saying. “I didn’t know. I never would have…”

  Paul wanted to go to them both, but he couldn’t move. He barely heard the words Lacey continued to hurl at him, but he knew what they meant. He had committed the worst possible sin, and he would never be cleansed of it, no matter how many penances he made or how many prayers he offered to a God who could not possibly forgive what he’d done.

  It wasn’t just the sex, the betrayal of his marriage. That was terrible beyond imagining. But it wasn’t the worst. The worst happened sixteen years ago when he left his little girl there in that monster’s hands. When he didn’t see what was happening to her.

  How could he not have seen?

  There was no answer to that, but Lacey—Angela—was right. He had thrown her away. What she had done to Rachel that Christmas Eve had been so terrible, so recent, he couldn’t see beyond it. Much as he had loved Angela, he had become afraid of her. She was something he didn’t want in his house, or even near
him. The old Biblical word came to mind: anathema. Something to be abhorred. Cast off. Excommunicated.

  We left her with no hope, he thought miserably. Helpless, with no one to protect her. He could only imagine how afraid she must have felt every time he and Gina had left. The image of her being taken back into Saint Sympatica’s by Dr. Chase that last time, the way she had pulled away from his hand and run through the door alone, slamming it, came back in a rush of pity. Tears flooded his eyes as remorse filled his heart. When he looked at Lacey now he was startled to see that she was crying, too. Her entire body shook with silent sobs, and tears poured down her cheeks.

  “My poor little girl,” he whispered brokenly. “I am so sorry. Angela, I’m so sorry.”

  “Why did you leave me there?” she whimpered.

  “We thought we had no choice. After what you did to Rachel—”

  Quick as a flash her anger returned. “Don’t you even get it now?” she cried. “It was Rachel who tried to kill me! All I did was defend myself. Why did I have to be the one to go away?”

  With those words, the stunned tableau came back to life. Gina still knelt on the floor, but now covered her face with her hands, as if she could no longer bear to see what was going on. The man Paul now recognized as a former client bent over her and said in a low voice, “You know where to reach me if you need me.” She nodded, and he hugged her and left the room. A few moments later Paul heard the sound of a car leaving the driveway.

  Paul’s gaze swung to Rachel. “Angela’s right!” she said. Huge tears ran down her cheeks. “I’m the one who tried to kill her.”

  “Stop that!” Gina whispered harshly. “Don’t listen to her!”

  “Mom,” Rachel said softly, “remember that summer you sent me away to the camp in Wisconsin?”

  “We never sent you away,” Gina cried. “Don’t say that.”

  “Yes, you did. You sent me to music camp.”

  Gina raised her head. There was unabridged pain in her eyes. “Rachel, we did that for you, not to you. It was what you wanted.”

  “Not at first,” Rachel said. “I only decided to go to camp after I saw you were trying to get rid of me. Then I figured if I went to Wisconsin, I’d be that much closer to Minnesota and finding Angela. And that’s what I did. I found Angela.”

  Gina stroked Rachel’s hair. “Oh, honey, you were so difficult that summer. You kept asking questions we couldn’t answer, and then you would take it out on us.…”

  She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. “Honey, we thought we were supporting you.”

  She remembered though, that when Rachel came home from camp depressed, she had said to Roberta, “We never seem to be able to do enough for Rachel. No matter what we do, she always acts like we’ve got some secret agenda for doing it.”

  A bottomless well. She had always been a bottomless well.

  “Why didn’t you tell us,” Gina said now, “that you’d seen Angela that summer?”

  Rachel’s eyes filled with tears. “I couldn’t. You would have sent me away for good.”

  “What do you mean? Honey, we never would have—”

  “You did Angela.”

  “But that was different! Angela was dangerous. Not only to you, but to everyone.”

  “No, Mom. That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. It wasn’t Angela—it was me. I remember it now. And I didn’t just try to kill her. I’m pretty sure I killed that doctor, too.”

  Angela planted her hands on her hips and laughed. “I told you that you were stupid, Paul. You, too, Gina. See what you’ve been living with? And all this time you could have had me!”

  Paul ignored her. “Rachel, what in the name of God are you talking about? You didn’t kill Dr. Chase. You couldn’t have! This is some monstrous story Angela’s made up.”

  “I thought that, too, Daddy. But I’m starting to remember. I remember that night, and how I saw him doing things to Angela, and I couldn’t stand it. I remember running over and beating on his back, but he turned around and grabbed my wrist. He had the most awful look on his face, and when he jumped up and put his hand on my throat I really thought he was going to kill me. Then I remembered a steak knife I’d taken from dinner the night before, in case anything bad happened on the road. It was in an open side pocket of my backpack, and I yanked it out and screamed at him to let go or I’d kill him…”

  “Go on,” Paul prompted softly. “What do you remember next, Rachel?”

  “I…” She shook her head. “Nothing. I can’t remember anything after that.”

  “Because you didn’t kill him!” Paul said. “That’s just one more lie of Angela’s—”

  “Lie?” Angela interrupted, still pacing. “You want lies, Paul? How about all the ones you and Gina told, the ones where you said I’d be able to come home again? How about the times you said you’d come to see me and you didn’t?”

  She flung her hair back and laughed coldly. “You know what I did on those visiting Sundays when you didn’t show? I play-acted, Paul. That’s what he called it. I play-acted with one of the other kids—Billy Rix. Poor Billy. He hated the good doctor as much as I did. And why wouldn’t he? From the time I was eight and Billy was ten, Chase forced Billy and me to perform sexual acts with each other while he watched. Sometimes he’d just watch us take a bath together and touch each other, but there were other times…”

  She broke off. “You know what that is, Paul? When a psychiatrist likes to watch? Even if he never had touched me, they still call it incest. That’s because a psychiatrist becomes like a father to his child patients. And fathers are people we’re supposed to be able to trust.”

  She stopped pacing just short of Paul and he was sure she was going to spit into his face, just as she had on that terrible Christmas Eve. Instead, she said in a soft, deadly tone, “God, I hate men!”

  All the moments he had spent with her as Lacey rushed back into Paul’s mind. A woman so different, so good, so beautiful…and all of it lies. A performance. A staged play to bring them to this very moment, a moment when she could bring down the curtain and destroy him with the truth.

  Paul made an angry motion toward her, but Angela backed up and was suddenly between him and the hallway. She drew her right hand from a pocket. In it she held a gun, which she grasped with both hands and pointed directly at him.

  “Don’t you dare come near me,” she said.

  “Why not? What will you do?” Paul said bitterly. “Kill me? Kill us all? Do you have any idea how many years I’ve thought about you and wondered if we’d done the right thing, sending you away? Well, now I know, thank God. I’ll never have a sleepless night over you again.”

  “You told me you wouldn’t hurt them!” Rachel cried.

  “And you believed me,” Angela said scornfully. “That’s the difference between us. I don’t believe anybody.”

  The cold smile Angela sent to Rachel twisted her beautiful face. “I even eliminated your little policeman friend. Too bad. He had potential, but I knew once I got rid of all three of you, he’d figure things out. Trouble with good old Al, he had too much time on his hands.”

  “What did you do?” Rachel cried. “Oh, my God! That’s why he didn’t answer his phone! What did you do to Al?” She swung back to her father. “Daddy, she’s killed him!”

  Paul stared. “Rachel, what are you talking about?”

  “I…I set it up. This. Tonight. Daddy, I wasn’t visiting a friend. Angela kidnapped me. She made me promise to get you and Mom together where you wouldn’t be interrupted. She said she only wanted to talk to you, and she promised she wouldn’t tell you it was me who tried to kill her, if I got you here. But then I got scared and I tried to call Al, but he didn’t answer.”

  “You were going to turn me in?” Angela said. “You little bitch!”

  Rachel’s eyes narrowed. “I can’t believe I killed that doctor just to save you. You know what? You weren’t worth it. I wish you were dead!”

  She flew forward, her han
ds poised as if to grab Angela by the throat. Her movement was so unexpected it took Angela, who had turned the gun in Rachel’s direction, by surprise. Rachel knocked her arm aside and barreled into her, shoving her to the floor.

  Gina and Paul both rushed to help Rachel in a twisted déjà vu from years before. As they reached her, a siren echoed from the street. It grew louder and closer, whining more slowly as it reached the driveway. Red and blue lights flashed through the windows, reflecting against the walls. Almost immediately, someone knocked on the front door, followed by a pounding.

  “Island County Sheriff! Open up!”

  Paul held Angela’s gun arm flat to the floor, while Gina fought off her other arm and tried to pull Rachel away from her throat. The pounding stopped, and two uniformed sheriff’s deputies rushed from the entryway into the living room. One of them pulled Rachel away from Angela, while the other sat on Angela, shoving Paul aside and forcing the gun from her hand. Pulling her to her feet, the cop cuffed her wrists behind her.

  The other deputy was still hanging on to Rachel, who was sobbing uncontrollably. Paul and Gina tried to put their arms around her, but she pushed them off. “D-don’t touch me. I—I’m no better than she is. I almost got you killed.”

  Paul looked at the deputy, who answered his unspoken question. “We got a call from a Detective Al Duarte in Seattle. He asked us to get out here fast and see if you folks needed help. Are you Paul Bradley?”

  Paul nodded.

  “Well,” the deputy continued, “Detective Duarte said your daughter Rachel left him a message. He wasn’t sure what was going on, but he said if we ran into somebody with long blond hair—this one here with the gun, it looks like—we should grab her and bring her in.”

  “Al’s alive?” Rachel cried. “Oh, thank God!” She let Paul take her into his arms then, while Gina put an arm around her and stroked her hair.

  “Is he all right?” Paul asked.

  “A bullet grazed the side of his head and knocked him out. They’re keeping him overnight at Harbor-view, but he’ll be okay.” He looked at Angela. “You are Lacey Allison, right?”