Malice (32 page)

“Where did you go to college?” he asked, and she smiled at the memory.

“In Dwight, Illinois,” she said honestly.

“And who did you go out with there?” This time she laughed, remembering what would have been her choices.

“Not a soul. It was an all-girls school, so to speak.” But she knew then that she'd have to tell him soon. She just didn't want to tell him all of it on her birthday. It was too hard to go through, and they'd had such a nice time. It was the best birthday she'd ever had, even with her broken bones and her stitches and her crutches. He had made up for everything and a lot of years with his dinner, and his present, and his kindness.

He didn't want to push her much further than he already had, but he wanted to understand something more clearly. “Am I correct in believing that you're not a virgin?”

“That's right,” she glanced up at him, looking breathtakingly beautiful in a blue satin bathrobe he'd bought her.

“I just wondered … but there hasn't been anyone in a long time, has there?”

She nodded. “I promise we'll talk about it sometime … just not tonight. …” He didn't want to talk about it on her birthday either. He suspected correctly that it was going to be hard for her, and he didn't want to spoil their evening.

“Whenever you're ready … I just wanted to know … I don't ever want to do anything that scares you.” But as he said the words, and she had her face turned up to his, listening to him, he found himself melting toward her and he couldn't help it. He gently took her face in his hands, and ever so carefully kissed her. She seemed cautious at first, and then he felt her responding to him. He lay down next to her, and held her close to him, and kissed her again, wanting her desperately, but he never allowed his hands to wander toward her body.

“Thank you,” she whispered, and kissed him this time. “For being so good to me, and so patient.”

“Don't press your luck,” he almost groaned after he'd kissed her again. This was not going to be easy. But he was determined to bring her back across the bridge eventually. He knew that whatever it took, and however long, he was going to save her.

He left her apartment late that night, after he'd tucked her into bed, and she was almost sleeping. He kissed her again, and let himself out. He had borrowed a key from her, so she didn't have to get up, and he could lock the door behind him. And the next morning, as she hobbled to the bathroom and brushed her hair, she looked startled as she heard him let himself into the apartment. He had brought orange juice and bagels with cream cheese, and the
New York Times
, and he made her scrambled eggs and bacon.

“High cholesterol, it's good for you, trust me.” She laughed at him. And he told her to get dressed. He took her for a short walk down First Avenue, and then brought her back when she was tired. And he watched the baseball game while she slept in his arms that afternoon. She looked so beautiful and so peaceful. And when she woke up, she looked up at him, wondering how she'd been so lucky.

“What are you doing here, Mr. Mackenzie?” She smiled sleepily at him, and he leaned down to kiss her.

“I came over so you could work on your dictation.”

“No kidding.”

They ordered pizza that night, and he had brought some work with him, but he absolutely refused to let her help him. And after he'd finished, she looked at him, feeling guilty. It seemed late in the day to be keeping secrets from him, although she knew that he would never press her.

“I think I ought to tell you some things, Charles,” she said quietly after a few minutes. “You have a right to know. And you may feel differently about me after you hear them.” But it was time, before they went any further. Not everyone wanted a woman who had committed murder. In fact, she suspected that most wouldn't. And maybe Charles wouldn't either.

He took her hands in both of his, before she started and looked her in the eye squarely. “I want you to know that whatever happened, whatever they did to you, whatever you did, I love you. I want you to hear that now … and later.” It was the first time he had told her that he loved her, and it made her cry before she'd even started. But now she wanted him to listen and see how he felt after she had told him all of it. Maybe everything would change then.

“I love you too, Charles,” she said, holding him, with her eyes closed, and tears rolling down her cheeks. “But there's a lot you don't know about me.” She took a deep breath, felt for the inhaler in her pocket, and started at the beginning. “When I was a little girl, my father beat my mother all the time … I mean
all
the time … every night … as hard as he could … I used to hear her screams, and the sound of his fists on her … and in the morning I'd see the bruises … she always lied and pretended it was nothing. But every night he'd come home, he'd yell and she'd cry and he'd beat her again. After a while, you stop having any kind of life when those things happen. You can't have friends, because they might find out. You can't tell anyone, because they might do something to your daddy,” she said sadly. “My mother used to beg me not to tell, so you lie, and cover up, and pretend you don't know, and act like nothing's wrong, and little by little you become a zombie. That's all that I remember of my childhood.” She sighed again. It was hard telling him, but she knew she had to. And he squeezed her hand more tightly.

“Then my mother got cancer,” Grace continued. “I was thirteen. She had cancer of the uterus, and they had to do some kind of radiation, and …” She hesitated, looking for the right words, she didn't know him that well yet. “I guess that changed her … so …” Her eyes began to swim with tears, and she felt the asthma closing her throat, but she wouldn't let it. She knew she
had
to tell him. Her survival depended on it now just as it had on opening her eyes at Bellevue. “My mother came to me then, and told me I had to ‘take care’ of my father, to ‘be good to him,’ to be ‘his special little girl,’ and he would love me more than ever.” Charles was looking seriously worried as she told the story. “I didn't understand what she meant at first, and then she and Daddy came into my room one night, and she held me down for him.”

“Oh my God.” Tears filled his eyes as he listened.

“She held me down every night, until I knew I had no choice. I had to do it. If I didn't, no matter how sick she was, he would beat her, I had no friends, I couldn't tell anyone. I hated myself, I hated my body. I wore baggy old clothes because I didn't want anyone to see me. I felt dirty and ashamed, and I knew that what I was doing was wrong, but if I didn't do it, he would beat her, and me. Sometimes he beat me anyway, and then raped me. It was always rape. He loved violence. He loved hurting me, and my mother. Once when I didn't do it, because …” she blushed, feeling fourteen again, “because I had … my period … he beat her so bad, she cried for a week. She already had bone cancer by then, and she almost died of the pain. I did it anytime he wanted after that, no matter how much he hurt me.” She took a deep breath. It was almost over now. He'd heard the worst, or almost, and he couldn't stop crying. She gently wiped the tears from Charles's cheeks and kissed him.

“Oh Grace, I'm so sorry.” He wanted to take the pain away from her, to erase her past, and change her future.

“It's all right … it's all right now …” And then she went on. “My mother died after four years. We went to the funeral, and lots of people came over afterwards. Hundreds of them. Everybody loved my father. He was a lawyer, and everyone's friend. He played golf with them, went to Rotary dinners with them, and Kiwanis. He was the nicest guy in town, people said. He was the man everyone loved and trusted. And no one knew what he really was. He was a sick, sick man, and a real bastard.

“The day of the funeral, everyone spent the afternoon eating and talking and drinking, and trying to make him feel better. But he didn't care. He still had me. I don't know why, but somehow in my mind, it was all tied up with my mother. I was doing it for her, so he wouldn't hurt her. But I figured when she was gone, he'd find someone else. But of course he didn't want that. He had me. Why did he need anyone else? Not right off anyway. So when everyone left, I cleaned up, washed the dishes, put everything away, and locked the door to my room. He came after me, he threatened to knock the door down, and he got a knife and sprung the lock. He dragged me into her room, and he'd never done that before. He always came to my room. But going to her room was like becoming her, it was like knowing that it was forever and it would never stop, never, until he died or I did. And suddenly, I just couldn't do it.” She was choking again, and Charles had stopped crying, horrified by everything she'd told him. “I don't know what happened after that. He really hurt me that night, he pounded at me, he hit me, he'd won, I was his to beat and rape and torture forever. And then I remembered the gun my mother kept in her nightstand. I don't know what I was going to do with it, hit him, or scare him, or shoot him. I don't really know anything except that he was hurting me so much and I was so scared and half crazy with misery and pain and fear. He saw the gun, and he tried to grab it from me, and then the next thing I knew, it went off, and he was bleeding all over me. I shot him through the throat, and it severed his spinal cord and punctured his lung. He fell on top of me and bled horribly, and after that I don't remember anything until the police came. I'm not sure what I did. I called the police, I guess, and the next thing I remember was talking to them, wrapped in a blanket.”

“Did you tell them what he'd done to you?” Charles asked anxiously, wanting to change the course of history, and agonized that he couldn't.

“Of course not. I couldn't do that to my mother. Or to him. I thought I owed him total silence. In my own way, I guess, I was as crazy as he was. But that's what happens to children, and women too, in situations like that. They never tell. They'll die first. They called in a psychiatrist to talk to me, when they took me to jail that night, and she sent me to the hospital, and they found out that he'd raped me, or ‘someone had had intercourse’ with me, according to the DA”

“Did you ever tell them the truth?”

“Not for a while. Molly, the psychiatrist, hounded me to tell her. She knew. But I lied to her. He was still my daddy. But finally, my lawyer wore me down, and I told them.”

“And then what? I assume they let you off after that.”

“Not exactly. The prosecution concocted a theory that I was after my father's money, that if I killed him, I'd get everything. Everything being one small but highly mortgaged house, and half of his law practice, which was a lot smaller than yours. I couldn't inherit any of it anyway, because I killed him. I had no friends. I had never told anyone. My teachers said that I was withdrawn and strange, kids said they never knew me. It was easy to believe I'd just flipped out and killed him. His law partner lied and claimed I'd asked about Dad's money after the funeral. I'd never said a word to him, but he claimed that Dad owed him a lot of money. And in the end, he grabbed everything, and gave me fifty thousand dollars to stay out of town and leave him to take it all. I did, and I still have the money by the way. Somehow, I can't bring myself to spend it.

“But the D.A. decided that I had killed my father for his money, and that I'd probably been out screwing around, and when I came home, Dad got mad and yelled at me, so I killed him.” She smiled bitterly, remembering every detail. “They even said that I'd probably tried to seduce my father too. They'd found my nightgown on the floor where he threw it after he tore it in half, and they claimed I had probably exposed myself to him, and when he didn't want me, I shot him. They charged me with murder one, which would have required the death penalty. I was seventeen, but they tried me as an-adult. And aside from Molly, and David, my attorney, no one ever believed me. He was too good, too perfect, too loved by the community. Everyone hated me for killing him. Even telling the truth didn't save me. By then it was too late. Everybody loved him.

“They found me guilty of voluntary manslaughter, and I got two and two. Two years of prison, two years of probation. I served two years almost to the day in Dwight Correctional Center, where,” she smiled sadly at him, “I did a correspondence course and got an AA degree from a junior college. Actually, it was quite an education. And if it weren't for two women there, Luana and Sally, who were lovers, I'd probably be dead now. I was kidnapped by a gang one night, and they were going to gang-bang me and use me as a slave, and Sally, who was my cellmate, and Luana, her friend, stopped them. They were the two toughest but kindest women you could ever meet, and they saved me. No one ever touched me after that, nor did they. I don't even know where they are now. Luana is probably still there, but Sally's time would be up, unless she did something dumb so she could stay with Luana. But when I left, they told me to forget them, and put it all behind me.

“I never went home again, and that was when I went to Chicago, where my probation officer kept threatening to send me back if I didn't sleep with him. But somehow I managed not to. And you pretty much know the rest. I told you that last night. I worked in Chicago for two years while I was on probation. No one ever knew where I'd been, or where I came from. They didn't know I'd been in prison, or had killed my father. They didn't know anything. You're the first person I've ever told since David and Molly.” She felt drained but a thousand pounds lighter when she finished. It had been a relief to tell him.

“What about Father Tim? Does he know?”

“He's just guessed, but I've never said anything to him. I didn't think I had to. But I worked at St. Mary's in Chicago, and now St. Andrew's, because it's my way of paying back for what I did. And maybe I can stop some other poor kid from going through what I did.”

“My God, my God … Grace … how did you survive it?” He held her close to him, cradling her head against his chest, unable to even begin to fathom the kind of pain and misery she'd been through. All he wanted to do now was hold her in his arms forever.

“I just survived, I guess,” she answered him, “and in some ways, I didn't. I've only been out with one man. I've never had sex with anyone but my father. And I'm not sure I could. The man who drugged me said I almost killed him when he tried to lay a hand on me, and maybe I would have. I don't think that can ever be part of my life again.” And yet … she had kissed him, and he hadn't frightened her at all. In some ways, she wondered if she could learn to trust him. If he even wanted her now, after all he'd heard. She searched his eyes looking for some sign of condemnation, but there was only sorrow and compassion.