Cursed be the Wicked (28 page)

She balks and walks over to her sofa. “Depends on who you ask but technically? No. She wasn’t insane, Cooper.”

“Why was she diagnosed then?”

Liz shrugs. “Who knows, maybe by the time the trial was over she
had
lost her damn mind.”

She takes a seat and stares out the large picture window at something outside. A memory maybe.

I push away the fear of asking her something else.

“Did she kill my father?”

Liz decidedly answers without even thinking, without blinking, and without losing focus on whatever it is she’s watching on the other side of that glass. “No.”

“Then why-?”

“The police had to put
some
one away.”

“But you just said she didn’t kill him.”

Now she turns to me, and with the slightest glint in her eyes, she tells me, “I know what I said.”

“Well if you knew she didn’t kill him, why’d you let her go to jail? Why didn’t they-?”

“She wanted to take the blame,” she mutters. “Who was I to stop her?”

I breathe out. I can’t imagine what drove her to let it go down like that. I need to move this conversation along, now.

“So the psychic was right.”

Liz looks over at me, confused. “What?”

“There was this psychic, at the fair, she said you’ve known. Her exact words were, she’s
always
known.”

Liz skips a beat. Her expression contorts into something I can’t put a finger on, then she gathers herself again and starts telling me a story.

“Ben was a good man, Cooper,” she tells me. This is nothing I haven’t heard before. In fact it’s what I thought my whole life until just a couple of short weeks ago. It’s when she begins her next sentence that I get the impression it’s Mom she has a problem with.

“And your mother didn’t deserve him. Especially after what she put him through.”

She sounds bitter now. Maybe this has something to do with why she let Mom take the fall.

“What do you mean
what she put him through
?”

“I mean if she hadn’t lied to your father, maybe he wouldn’t have married her in the first place and maybe he wouldn’t be dead!”

Lied to him? This doesn’t compute or line up with anything I’ve learned so far.

“About what?” I ask her. “What the hell did she lie to him about?”

“Sometimes I think he knew, though,” she mumbles to me with an evil grin playing at her lips. “I think that’s why they fought so badly.”

Something else crosses her mind and she puts her fingers to her lips, thinking. It feels like she’s no longer talking to me as she stares off at the floor. “The way he acted . . . but then why wouldn’t he leave her? Why would he keep up the charade?”

“Liz,” I whistle and snap at her. “What are you talking about?”

“I put two and two together long before he did,” she tells me, sounding proud of herself. “Of course, by then Maggie and I weren’t talking, were we?”

“Why weren’t you talking?” I flip through the journal, looking for a page to reference. “What
happened
?”

She doesn’t answer me and I stop my search to eye her.

“Liz.”

“Ben wasn’t your father, Cooper,” she tells me, as though she’s finally decided to spill every last secret she’s kept all these years.

“Never was. Never will be.”

“What?” The words are like a hard slap in the face. I’ve lost my train of thought when she says it.

“After he forced himself on her, she . . .”

“Wait” I have to stop. The shock of that choice of wording sends me into a tailspin of sorts. “
What
?”

Liz just stares but she can’t just pretend she didn’t say what she just said. So I push. “By who? Dad?”

“Never told anyone. Not even Ben, stupid girl. By the time they were married she was already pregnant.”

“Liz, who raped my mother?”

Saying it out loud like that makes me sick to my stomach and I feel the need to sit down, but I don’t.

“Told Ben it was his,” she cackles. “And he believed her. And when he did find out, she wouldn’t even press charges against the jackass.”

“Liz!”

Her eyes meet mine but they seem vacant, like she’s looking past me. Or through me. “I think that made Ben angrier than anything, when he figured it all out, you know?”

“
Answer me
, Liz.”

“Guess it was just dumb luck that sexual deviant never found out, otherwise we’d have had to deal with a whole new mess of issues.”

She smiles now. Like we’re talking about freaking tea or something. I’m losing my mind and she’s smiling.

“I guess her friendship with him cost her the ultimate price after all, didn’t it?”

“Friendship with who? Liz? The guy that made her . . . she was
friends
with this guy?”

What in the hell is this woman talking about?

She nods.

“Who?”

Liz leans toward me and says the name slowly. “Jack. Diggs.”

What the . . .?

“Excuse me?”

Liz breathes out hard and long. Like she’s free. “You were right, Cooper. I have been calling you. But it wasn’t because I was playing games with you. I wanted to tell you. I thought you deserved to know. After I saw you with him those couple of times? I was worried. I wanted to tell you everything but even after all the problems Maggie and I had, even after everything she did, I still loved her. I knew she wouldn’t have wanted you to know you were the son of a rapist.”

I am blown away by this conversation. This isn’t at all how I expected things to go and I’m starting to put something together I hadn’t thought of before. Something that would make sense of the way Jack acts around me, why he won’t talk much and why he seems like such an outcast in the city.

“Liz, do you think it’s possible that Jack killed Dad?”

She laughs, sort of.

After she stands up, she looks out that old window again.

“Anything’s possible, Cooper. The man turned into a drunk when he came home from college and found your mom married to Ben. They hated each other, those two. The man was obsessed with Maggie. Maybe it just became too much for him.”

She looks softer now, when she turns to see me watching her with every emotion under the sun threatening to make my head explode.

She smiles easily, sympathetically, maybe. “But what do I know? I’m just an old woman.”

My mind is spinning. Things start to piece themselves together somehow as I stand there, feeling bad for second guessing my aunt.

If Jack was angry at my mother for not returning his affections, it would make perfect sense for him to kill Dad in a jealous rage and let her take the fall for it. What doesn’t make sense though, is why would Mom confess to doing something she wasn’t guilty of?

Did he have something over her? Is that why she never told anyone about the rape?

Holy hell.

Am I really the son of a rapist?

Ben Shaw
isn’t
my father?

Anger bubbles up inside of me.

Part of me feels like I’ve found answers, another part feels more confused than ever, but I
am
certain that Jack Diggs is going to pay for abusing my mother, and for causing the problems he did for her and Dad.

Ben.

I don’t know how to process this. I don’t know what to do with the information I have now.

Then I think to myself,
Yes I do.

I take the journal I have out and shove it back into the backpack.

“Liz, I have to go.”

She snaps out of her own thoughts and nods. “Oh, okay then, Cooper, you have a nice night, dear.”

There’s something sinister in the way she says it. Like we didn’t just have this entire conversation. Or maybe she just wants to forget it. But my mind is on more important matters and I don’t have time to figure her out anymore.

“Thanks for talking to me, Liz.”

I go because there’s no time like the present for dishing out some paybacks from hell.

In the car, I try to focus on not driving like a maniac and when my cell phone rings I answer it out of habit.

“Coop? Is everything all right? I just thought I’d check on you.” I hear Finn’s voice come through.

“Not okay, Finn, but I will be.”

She pauses. “What happened, where are you?”

“I’m going to pay someone a visit,” I tell her honestly. I leave only one small detail out of the confession.

Another pause and she asks but I get the feeling she already knows.

“Who, Coop? Who are you going to see?”

“Jack.”

There’s silence between us for a minute or so.

“Coop, talk to me.”

“There’s nothing to talk about. Not anymore.”

It’s too late for Finn’s logical advice, there’s no room for logic left in my brain, so I hang up on her. And even though it crosses my mind that this guy has no real address and this could take me all night, I don’t care. I’m going to find him.

And then I’m going to kill him.

Chapter 17

Clear Conscience

My cell rings a few times as I drive around the city. I know it’s Finn and I don’t answer it. I feel bad about that but I know she’ll want me to leave Jack alone. I also know I won’t be able to follow through on that request and I can’t deal with the reality of disappointing her right now.

I drive by some of the places I remember seeing him hanging around-the diner, downtown Salem, Essex Street. So far I haven’t seen him, but I will. It’s late, past ten probably, but I know I’ll find him.

The emotions that run through me as I search for this man are all new to me. Over the past fifteen years, since Mom was incarcerated, I’ve been so focused on not feeling anything for her that I wasn’t paying attention to what it might feel like to care about what happened to her. I never thought about the fact that she had a side to tell in this whole thing.

It hits me hard how unfair I’ve been. And how selfish. And stupid.

I was so concerned with how the situation affected me that I didn’t give a second thought to her.

My mind is jumbled and my eyes are bleary, yet I’m focused on finding someone that I can actually make pay for all the bullshit that’s gone on.

A streak of color flies in front of the car. I slam the brakes, barely missing whatever it was. I look around and see some kids running to the other side of the road. My heart races. I could’ve hit them.

My inability to keep control over myself causes me to pull over and park the car. I close my eyes and take deep breaths until my pulse slows. I open them again and look to the backpack in the passenger seat. A journal pokes out and I reach for it.

I flip through the pages and come across a passage that hits home tonight.

If he finds out, he’ll kill him.

The fact that Mom tended to go out of her way to
not
use actual names most of the time makes it difficult for me to decide who she’s referring to. I make an educated guess that it’s Jack she thinks is going to kill someone.

In the end, I suppose he finally did.

I glance up to think over what it must have been like to be her, carrying the weight of so many people and things on her shoulders.

Luck must have decided I could use a break for once, because right there in front of me, across the street, is Jack.

He’s leaving a bar, of course, and he’s got nowhere to go, so I follow slowly for a while. When I find a convenient place to leave the car, I park and jump out to follow him on foot.

I’m not sure what’s holding me back from simply tackling the asshole and crushing his skull into the cement. I find it difficult to believe this timid man could have murdered my father.
Ben.
If I’ve learned anything since arriving back in Salem, though, it’s that anything is possible.

He ducks down a street that looks empty and I quicken my steps. The closer I get to him the stronger the scent of alcohol becomes.

I imagine him drinking like this when he was younger, harassing my mother, trying to get her attentions. I picture him putting his hands on her against her will. Hurting her. I hear her scream for help. No one comes to her aid. She’s alone, with no one to turn to for comfort but the man she eventually married.

I shake my head as I close in on him. When he notices he’s being followed, he stops. His entire body looks rigid to me. When he turns around finally, and sees me standing there, the bastard grins as he mumbles my name.

“Cooper.”

I growl as I run toward him.

Everything I’m feeling inside me, from the anger of losing my father, to the hurt of losing my mother, twice, to the lies my aunt’s been harboring, and the time I’ve lost with people who it turns out cared for me, to the realization that my mother wasn’t a killer, they all fly through me.

Jack doesn’t have time to react when I pull a fist up and it lands square against his jaw.

He goes down easily, letting out a loud moan as he hits the ground. He stumbles as he tries to get his bearings.

“What the,” he mumbles. “Fuck.”

“Get up, Jack,” I tell him. “Get up and fight.”

He starts to pull himself up with the assistance of a nearby car but I punch him again. This time in the ribs. He chokes and spits and rubs his jaw.

“Asshole,” I scream at him.

“You knew who I was,” I tell him. “You knew who I was and you had the fucking nerve to
speak
to me?”

He shakes his head.

“This about Maggie?”

“Yes, Maggie, you dick. You hurt her, and now I’m going to hurt you.”

I’ve got him standing again. I want a clear shot of the face my mother had to look at every day after what happened to her. I hold him still and I pull my fist back.

“I loved her,” he blurts out. His voice cracks when he says it. His hands shake as he holds them up in front of him. Tears well up in his eyes.

My fist is still cocked but it won’t move. I can’t move.

“What did you just say?”

“I,” he takes a shaky breath and pushes his words out. “I loved her.”

I hear the word love when he says it but when I mix it in with knowing what he did to her, it makes me lose my mind.

I jerk at his shirt. Pull him up face to face with me. “That doesn’t give you the right to rape her, asshole.”

Jacks eyes widen and his head shakes. “I didn’t.”

“Coop.”

I freeze when I hear Finn.

Her voice is calm. It somehow stops me from destroying this guy. I let him go and watch as she walks slowly over to join our reunion.

“How the hell did you know we’d be here?”

She shrugs. “I’m not sure. I was just looking around, hoping I’d find you before it was too late. Next thing I know, there you are.”

I lower my hands but I still rage inside. I want to pulverize Jack Diggs but I can’t now, not with Finn standing there, looking at me like I’m unstable.

Jack props himself up against a car now. He’s rubbing at his face, his eyes, he’s grabbing at his hair as if he’s about to bolt at any moment. I’m breathing heavy still but the adrenalin is subsiding.

“You shouldn’t be here, Finn,” I tell her. “You don’t know what he did.”

“You don’t either,” she counters.

“Liz said-”

“Liz says a lot of things, Coop. Right?”

I lose eye contact with Finn to stare at the ground.

Listen to your heart, Cooper.

I shake my head and force the words out of my mind.

“He’s . . . I mean my dad, he’s not . . . he wasn’t . . .”

I can’t get a complete thought out. When Finn’s hand rests against my arm, I calm myself. She waits until I look into her eyes again.

“I think you need to hear him out.”

I’m tired. Confused. My head hurts and I’m not even sure what I’m doing anymore. For lack of an argument against what she’s suggesting, I nod.

“You’re right.” I look pointedly over to Jack. “Let’s hear him out.”

Jack slides down to the ground, looking exhausted. He glances up at me for some sort of sign that I’m okay now but I give him nothing. I can’t right now. All I can do is listen.

Finn sits down on the grass next to Jack and I lean against a light pole but I remain standing. I don’t want to get comfortable.

I fidget as I wait for this conversation to begin. The sooner this happens, the sooner it can be over. The sooner it’s over, the quicker I can make a determination about whether he’s a liar or not.

Not that I’m that great of a judge of character lately.

Jack wipes some of the blood away from his lip with the sleeve of his jacket. He makes eye contact with me again and as much as I hate to admit it right now, I don’t see a liar. I see pain and distance, the same as when I first met him.

Finn is quiet when she urges him to talk. “Jack, what happened with you and Maggie?”

His jaw clenches when Finn mentions my mother. “She loved me too. Once.”

He sounds nostalgic about Mom. His eyes become brighter and his mouth turns up slightly. Hearing him say she loved him once creates mixed emotions for me.

“What makes you think that?”

He looks right at me and doesn’t flinch one bit.

“Because she told me so.”

I haven’t noticed until now that my hands are balled into fists at my side. I stretch my fingers outward and try to relax, but it’s not easy.

Jack looks like he wants to smile when he continues, “You remind me of me, ya know.” He lets out a small laugh through a few coughs. “The night I went after Ben.”

The way he says it causes that pain in my chest to reappear. I grit my teeth before letting myself ask anything. I don’t want to know, but I have to know. Hell, he’s practically confessing.

“Why
did
you go after Ben, Jack?”

“He was-” He takes a shaky breath. This might be the first time he’s ever said anything about it out loud. Jack seems like he’s pushing away the cobwebs from his mind.

“I suspected he was before, but that day, I saw the bruise. She couldn’t hide it that time.”

His eyes become distant, like he’s seeing things behind them he doesn’t want to see.

I know how he feels.

And he said
bruise
.

“You’re saying he
hit
her?”

Jack holds my stare and nods.

“He never was very good at keeping his temper in check. Especially when it came to Maggie.”

“Why would she marry a guy that was hitting her?”

Jack’s expression is strained.

“He wasn’t always like that, I suppose. But he was always controlling.” He drifts off when he adds, “Always.”

I look to Finn who looks as confused as I am.

“Nothing good ever came from someone loving Maggie,” Jack says as an afterthought and Finn turns to him, shaking her head.

“You don’t mean that,” she insists.

He smiles for her, in a sad sort of way. He straightens his posture some. I now feel the need to sit for the rest of this story.

“We were best friends for what feels like forever,” Jack tells us, staring down at the gravel.

Finn leans forward. “What led up to that day you saw the bruise?”

“Long story,” he mumbles. Then he looks around like he needs something bad. Maybe the alcohol that’s slowly leaving his system. But he’s not getting any. Not if I can help it.

He looks like he’s getting up to leave and I grab his wrist.

“Jack.”

He looks back at me and I feel like I’m begging.

“I really need to know.”

He licks his lips. “I need a drink.”

I shake my head. “Not until we’re done here.”

“It’s really important, Jack,” Finn adds, a little nicer than I ever could. She seems to be his reason for continuing and I give her a nod in thanks.

“Ben liked Maggie. Everyone knew it. But every time he’d try to ask her out, she blew him off.” He blows out some air. “He’d get so mad.”

He pauses. Finn and I wait him out. After a minute or so, Jack rubs at his eyes and laughs. “That guy was such a dick, even back then.”

He looks to me when he stops himself. “No offense.”

I shake my head and divert my eyes. It’s not so much that I don’t want to say anything but that I want his story. I need it.

Jack clears his throat.

“We did everything together, Maggie and me. We were inseparable most of the time. We had all our classes together, so we studied together, ate together, walked to school together. Hell the only thing we never did was sleep together.”

He snorts, then realizes what he just said and stops himself. I, on the other hand, am not finding anything funny about what he just said. Liz told me he’s my father. But if he didn’t sleep with Mom, he can’t be.

I don’t want to stop the momentum Jack has going with his side of everything, so I let it go. For now.

“Seemed like it was a hobby of Ben’s to ask her out.” He stops speaking as though he’s recalling memories. “Once every couple of weeks, at least. I used to tease her that Ben thought she’d realize she was making the wrong decision all of a sudden and she’d spontaneously jump into his arms. Only Maggie couldn’t stand the guy. He was a jerk to everyone, even his friends. They didn’t mind so much, but Maggie wanted more than that. She wanted the real deal, not just some jock whose ego was hurt over not getting the girl he thought he wanted.”

Jack stops and drifts off for a minute and I think about Finn. Her situation with Dan and his brother sure seem similar to what Jack is saying Mom dealt with. I wonder if she sees herself falling into the same circumstance as Maggie.

When Jack comes back to the present, he’s slightly more serious.

“It was getting close to graduation. We’d both submitted applications to a few colleges but I was really hoping we’d land Berkley. They have a great humanities program there.”

He looks over at me and I see the excitement in his eyes about the subject. Faded as it might be.

“Anyway, one night we were talking, out in the woods.” He explains, “We used to go out to this old abandoned church, it was like our hideout.” He laughs a short laugh through his nose with a smile, remembering good times.

Finn and I exchange a knowing glance, wondering if he’s referring to
her
Church.

Jack doesn’t notice.