The Best American Mystery Stories 2014 (26 page)

It’s like he knew exactly what I was thinking. “I’m not that guy anymore,” he said. He kissed her shoulder. I nodded and closed my eyes.

Every day Mr. Peter came and made me tie up my sister. He took me to the other room. He took what he wanted from my body. Carolina went mad, always trying to reach me, always trying to make me tell her what happened. I couldn’t. It was worse for her until Mr. Peter made her tie me up. I screamed until my throat bled. I split blood at his feet. “We were supposed to be friends,” I said. “You promised.”

He laughed. “Your sister is going to be my friend too, little girl.”

While she was gone, I threw myself against the door, bruising my body with rage, calling out her name. I knew too much. When he brought her back, she limped over to me and untied my wrists. We sat on the floor. She said, “It’s better this way, more fair.”

After that, Mr. Peter came for us every day, sometimes more than once a day. Sometimes there were other men. Sometimes we lay next to each other on his big bed and stared at each other and we would never look away, no matter what they did to us. We’d move our lips and say things only we could hear. He bathed us in a little bathroom with a sea-green tub where we sat facing each other, our knees pulled to our chests. He wouldn’t even leave us alone to clean ourselves. He made our whole world the windowless rooms in his house, always filled by him.

The smell of the Blue Desert Inn was driving me crazy. The air was moldy and too thick. It covered my skin and my clothes and my teeth. One morning I saw a cockroach lazily ambling across the television screen and snapped. I stomped into Darryl’s room and found my sister curled up in his arms while he smoothed her hair. I looked away, my face growing warm. I hadn’t considered that such intimacy was possible between them.

“I am not staying here for one more day.”

Carolina sat up. “I don’t want to go home.” The edge in her voice made my heart contract.

I was ready to argue, but she looked so tired. “We can stay somewhere nicer.” I waved around the room. “But we’re not going to live like this.”

She poked Darryl’s chest. “What about him?”

“Aren’t you guys playing house right now?”

Carolina grinned. Darryl gave me a thumbs-up.

As we pulled out of the parking lot of the Blue Desert Inn, the sign read
VAC Y
.

The police caught Mr. Peter when we were fifteen and sixteen. His name was Peter James Iversen. His wife and two sons lived in the house behind the house where he kept us. The authorities found videotapes. We didn’t know. Two detectives came to our house. Carolina and I sat on the couch. The detectives talked. We did not blink. They told us about the tapes; they had watched. I leaned forward, my forehead against my knees. Carolina put her hand in the small of my back. Our parents stood to the side, slowly shaking their heads. When I sat up, I couldn’t hear anything. The detectives kept talking, but all I could think was
People have seen videotapes
. I stood and walked out of the room. I walked out of the house. Carolina followed. I stopped at the end of the driveway. We watched the traffic.

“Well,” she finally said. “This sucks.”

A convertible sped by. There was a woman in the passenger seat and her red hair filled the air around her face. She was smiling, all white teeth.

“That bastard,” I said.

We went back into the house and said we wanted to see the tapes. At first the detectives and our parents protested, but eventually we got our way. A few days later my sister and I sat next to each other in a small windowless room with a TV and VCR on a cart. Concerned adults hovered over us—a detective, some kind of social worker, a lawyer.

“Our parents can never see these,” Carolina said. “Not ever.”

The detective nodded.

We watched hours of black-and-white videos of the girls we used to be and what we were turned into. I held my hand over my mouth to keep any sound from escaping. After a particularly disturbing scene, the detective said, “I think that’s enough.” Carolina said, “Being there was worse.” When we were done, I asked if the tapes could be destroyed. That was the one thing we wanted. No one would look us in the eye.
Evidence
, they said. As we walked out of the police station, my legs threatened to give out. Carolina did not let me fall.

The criminal trial went quickly. There was too much
evidence
. Mr. Peter was sentenced to life in prison. There was a civil trial, because he had money and our parents decided his money should be ours. We both testified. I went first. I tried not to look at him, sitting next to his lawyer, the two of them in their blue suits and neat haircuts. My words rotted on my tongue. Carolina testified. Between the two of us, we told as much of the story as we were ever going to tell. When she finished she looked at me, her eyes flashing worriedly. She stared at her hands, fidgeted. The courtroom was quiet, only the occasional shuffling of paper or a body shifting in the gallery. The judge excused her, but Carolina wouldn’t move from the stand. She shook her head and gripped the rail in front of her. Her lower lip trembled and I stood. The judge leaned toward my sister, looked down, then coughed and cleared the courtroom. I went to my sister. I smelled something sharp, her fear, something more. I looked down, saw a wet pattern on her skirt, stretching along her thigh. She had wet herself. She was shaking.

I took her hand, squeezed. “This is not a problem. We can fix this.”

“Come with me,” the judge said. We froze. I stood in front of my sister and she buried her face in my back, her trembling arms wrapped around my waist. I did not let her fall. The judge’s face flushed. “Not like that,” he stammered. “There’s a bathroom in my chambers.”

We followed, warily. In the bathroom Carolina wouldn’t move, wouldn’t speak. I helped her out of her skirt and her underwear. I washed her clean as best I could with dispenser soap and paper towels.

A while later, a knock, our mother, whispering. “Girls,” she said. “I’ve brought a change of clothes.”

I opened the door, just a crack. My mother stood in her Sunday suit, a strand of pearls encircling her neck. I reached for the plastic bag, and as she handed it to me, she grabbed my wrist gently.

“Can I help?”

I shook my head and pulled away. I closed the door. I dressed my sister. I washed her face. Our foreheads met and I whispered the soft words I give her when she locks up.

On the drive home, we sat in the back seat. Our parents looked straight ahead. As we turned onto our street, our father cleared his throat and tried to sound happy. “At least this is over.”

An ugly sound came out of Carolina’s mouth.

My father gripped the steering wheel tighter.

The new hotel was much nicer. There was room service and daily maid service and many
amenities
. While Darryl strutted around their room, Carolina and I sat on my bed, poring over a thick leather portfolio detailing the benefits of the hotel. There was a pool, Jacuzzi, and sauna.

While we studied the room service menu, I bumped Carolina’s arm gently. “What’s really going on here? No more bullshit.”

“I just woke up one day and realized we never left that town, and for what?”

“They have French toast.” I pointed to a bright picture of thick French toast, covered with powdered sugar.

Carolina reached for her purse and pulled out an envelope, the words
DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS
in the upper left corner. She smoothed the letter out.

“No,” I said, but it sounded like three words.

Her hands shook until she closed her fingers into tight fists. I started reading and then I grabbed the letter and jumped off the bed, kept reading, turned the letter over.

“Don’t freak out,” Carolina said.

I kicked the air. I set the letter on the nightstand and started banging my head against the wall until a dull throb shot through the bone of my skull.

Carolina closed the distance between us and grabbed my shoulders. “Look at me.”

I bit my lip.

She shook me, hard. “Look at me.”

I finally lifted my chin. I have spent the best and worst moments of my life looking my sister in the eye. “You brought us here to hide,” I said. “You should have told me the truth.”

Carolina leaned down and dried my tears with her hair. She sat next to me and I saw her at eleven years old, throwing herself into the mouth of something terrible so I would not be alone. “This is the truth: he knows my address and he sent this letter and that means he can find us. I don’t want to ever go back there,” she whispered. “I don’t ever want him to find us again.”

The jury awarded us a lot of money, so much money we would never have to work or want. For a long time we refused to spend it. Every night I went online and checked my account balances and thought,
This is what my life was worth
.

My sister and I went to work with Darryl. We sat in the back seat as he drove.

“You girls are awful quiet,” he said as we pulled up to the airfield.

I held his gaze in the rearview mirror. I wanted to say something, but my voice locked. Carolina handed him the letter from Mr. Peter. As he read it, Darryl muttered under his breath.

When he was done, he turned to look at us. “I may not seem like much of a man, but that SOB isn’t gonna hurt you here, and he won’t find you either.”

He carefully folded the letter and handed it back to Carolina. Right then I knew why she found her way back to him.

While he worked, my sister and I lay on the runway between two parallel lines of flashing blue lights. The pavement was still warm and the ground held us steady. Our bodies practically glowed.

Mr. Peter was up for parole because California prisons were overcrowded. Mr. Peter was a changed man. Mr. Peter needed to prove it, and to prove it Mr. Peter needed our help. Mr. Peter found God. Mr. Peter wanted our forgiveness. Mr. Peter needed our forgiveness so he could get parole. Mr. Peter was sorry for every terrible thing he did to us. Mr. Peter couldn’t resist two beautiful little girls. Mr. Peter wanted us so bad he couldn’t help himself. Mr. Peter was an old man now, could never hurt another little girl. Mr. Peter begged for our forgiveness.

We were young once.

I was ten and Carolina was eleven. We begged Mr. Peter for everything—food, fresh air, a moment alone with hot water. We begged him for mercy, to give our bodies a break before they were broken completely. He ignored us. We learned to stop begging. He would too.

Carolina pulled the letter out of her pocket and held the corner to an open flame before tossing the burning letter into the air. The flame burned white. The ashes slowly fell to the ground, drifting onto our clothes, our faces, our deaf ears, our silent tongues.

FROM
The Fiddlehead

St. John’s, July 2013

T
HE TROUBLE
with Paulette, Nish Flannigan decided, reaching for his cufflink: she overreacted. The cufflink had fallen beside the wedding photo of Paulette that Nish kept on his dresser. He studied it: Paulette, filling out a sleeveless beige dress, standing on a wharf between wooden lobster traps, and holding not a bouquet in front of her belly but a red buoy, scarred and beaten. Her red hair tumbled over her freckled shoulders, and her beige high heels stood before her, almost hiding her polished toenails. She’d tucked her chin down and looked up at the photographer, mouth in a smirk, eyes glinting.
Mischievous
, Nish had called her,
wicked
.

A thread dangled from his cuff. Nish turned around, arm stuck out before him, about to call for Paulette’s help. Instead he strode to the adjoining bathroom and hauled open medicine cabinet, cupboards, and drawers, scowling as nail scissors refused to appear. He found them in Paulette’s drawer, hiding beneath a stray panty liner and three bobby pins with long red hairs caught in them. The tiny scissors slipped off Nish’s broad fingers, and he kept missing the thread. He threw the nail scissors at the toilet. They bounced off the raised seat and fell to the floor. The thread, he tore.

Checking his bow tie in the mirror, he wished he’d not gone bald, not gotten fat, not become so damn vain. He slapped the light switches down and walked to the kitchen, where he poured some malt whisky and raised a cheer to his gala invitation, pinned to the fridge with a magnet.
To The Rooms, Alice, to The Rooms
.

Trying not to loom, Nish smiled at the arts reporter. —It’s always an honor to be nominated for these things. The victory’s in the nomination.

The arts reporter gazed up, and Nish recalled signing a book for her and suggesting she join one of his workshops, once he got them back on the go. She looked ten years younger than Paulette, midthirties maybe, and dyed blond. She finished asking a question Nish had been expecting.

He smiled again. —Yes, well, that two former protégés of mine are also nominated only sweetens the evening.

His two former protégés stood at the far end of the room. About the same size and height, they looked quite comfortable with each other, talking and laughing, looking up at the same moment.

The reporter cleared her throat and stepped back into Nish’s line of sight. —The Torngat is the Atlantic region’s most prestigious award for writing, and this year the gala’s not only being held in St. John’s, but all three nominees are Newfoundlanders: yourself, of course, Patrick O’Mara, and Paulette Tiller. Do you think—

—Last time we hosted the Torngat, there wasn’t a single Newfoundlander on the goddamned
long
list. So I think it’s about time.

Her polite laugh failed. She’d transferred from Halifax, a city she considered the cultural center of Atlantic Canada, and she found people in St. John’s arrogant: sure, we’ll talk to ya, but don’t think you can get too close. —You’re sixty-two this year, and it’s been eight years since your last book. Is this novel your swan song?

—God, I hope not.