The Feminine Touch

by V. J. Chambers

  “Home,” said Nash, latching onto that. “She lives with you?”

  “Well, I live with her, or in her house, anyway. I mean, Siobhan would tell me to say it’s our house, but I… well… when she’s home, yes, we do live together.”

  Nash licked his lips, feeling a little excited somehow. He wasn’t sure what this new tantalizing thread of information meant, but he was at once thoroughly confused and extremely intrigued. “I wonder if I could come and see you.”

  “What?”

  “I make a podcast. Do you know what that is?”

  “No… I don’t think so.”

  “It’s like a radio show, only it’s posted on the Internet.”

  “Oh,” she said. “Well, that’s interesting. Maybe I have heard of that.”

  “Anyway, I’d like to interview you for it.” He’d get this Charity person to trust him, make friends with her, and then he’d get her to tell him where Siobhan was. Once he was face to face with Siobhan, he’d know for sure if she was actually a crazy psychopath or not. He’d be able to see it in her eyes.

  “Me? Really?”

  “Really,” said Nash. “Where do you live?”

  THE PAST

  Nash slid into the only empty seat at the picnic table. He was in a park near the school. The park had a few rickety picnic tables like this one and a sad-looking playground. The swings moved in the wind. The sky was gray, threatening rain.

  He’d found a note in his locker from Daisy that he had to come here after school. It was a week after the party at Pike’s, and everything was strange and painful between them all. Though they’d all bonded in that room, in the regular world, they didn’t know how to be friends. At first, they’d all said hi to each other in the halls, but then they’d all just stopped. They didn’t travel in the same circles and what had seemed easy and natural under the influence of psychedelic drugs was difficult now in a way that Nash couldn’t explain.

  Still, he wasn’t about to ignore a request from Daisy. In some imperceptible way, they were all very close friends now, even if they mostly ignored each other.

  Arthur, Daisy, and Robin were already there. Daisy was on the one side and Arthur and Robin were on the other side. They were holding hands.

  Nash noted that. Huh. So, were they like together now?

  “Where’s Siobhan and Pike?” said Arthur, who looked nervous.

  “I don’t know,” said Daisy.

  “Did you give them notes?” said Arthur.

  “Yes,” said Daisy, glaring at him.

  And then, there they were, coming across the park. Pike had his arm slung around Siobhan.

  Nash got a suddenly sour taste in his mouth. He hadn’t realized it, but he’d formed a possessive feeling about Siobhan, and it was obvious she didn’t reciprocate. He looked down at the whirls in the wood of the picnic table, remembering her fingers squeezing his, and the intimacy of that moment. Now it was tainted in his memory forever. He’d thought… but that was such a babyish thing to think. Of course holding hands didn’t really mean anything.

  Pike and Siobhan sat down.

  “It’s about time,” Arthur said, glowering at them.

  Pike removed his arm from Siobhan’s shoulders. “I don’t think we should all meet up like this. If someone sees us—”

  “No one comes to this park,” said Daisy. “You got a better idea of where we should meet?”

  “Let’s not meet at all,” said Pike. “We’ll just call each other or something.”

  “No,” said Daisy. “We talk in person, because that can’t be traced or recorded or screenshotted.”

  “Why…?” Nash was confused. “Are we worried about something?”

  “Have the police talked to you yet?” said Daisy.

  Alarm shot through him. “Why would the police talk to me? Do they know about the acid?”

  “No, you idiot,” said Daisy. “And we have to keep it that way.”

  “It’s about Farrah,” said Siobhan, her voice quiet.

  “Oh,” said Nash. Everyone knew Farrah was missing.

  “People saw her at the party,” said Daisy. “And they saw us too. But we didn’t do anything. We didn’t hurt her.”

  “If the police find out we let her run off into God-knows-where while she was tripping balls, who knows what they’ll do to us,” said Pike.

  “Why did we let her do that?” said Siobhan. “You were supposed to find her.”

  “I tried,” said Pike.

  “Not very hard,” said Robin.

  “None of us even gave her a second thought,” said Arthur, looking disgusted.

  “We were a little distracted,” said Daisy. “I mean, we were on a… a substance.”

  “Yeah, but Pike wasn’t,” said Robin.

  “I wondered where she was,” said Daisy. “But when I thought about it, it made me feel bad, and I liked the good feelings, so I just stopped thinking about her.”

  “Me too,” whispered Siobhan.

  Nash felt like hell. He hadn’t thought about her at all.

  “It must have been so scary for her,” said Robin. “She was out there tripping all by herself. Can you imagine what that would have been like?”

  Nash couldn’t even picture it. Once they’d been cocooned in that little bedroom, he hadn’t wanted to go anywhere at all. Why would Farrah have run off? It didn’t make any sense.

  “I’ve heard of people having a bad trip and getting stuck there,” said Daisy. “Maybe that’s what happened to her.”

  “I don’t think that can happen,” said Pike quietly. “I mean, maybe if you drank the whole container of Kool-Aid or something. But with what she took—”

  “But she was all alone,” said Robin.

  “Look, we were shitty friends,” said Daisy. “But we have to protect ourselves. So, we have to come up with a story. Why were we all in that room together? What were we doing? Because people at the party told the police about us already, and they’re coming for us next.”

  “I don’t see why there has to be a story,” said Arthur. “We just leave out the LSD part.”

  “And if they ask why were all in that room together, what we were doing?” said Daisy.

  “We say we were hanging out together,” said Arthur.

  Robin gave him a look.

  “They’ll believe it,” said Arthur. “They don’t get us. We’re teenagers. We do weird stuff all the time.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  “I’m so happy to meet y’all.” Charity was shaking hands with Zoe, a huge smile on her face. She met them at the door to her house, which was an old farmhouse that had been built onto extensively. Though it wasn’t too wide in the front, its footprint extended far backwards and there was an overhanging balcony on the side that formed a porch area on the ground floor. It was a nice house.

  A little girl was standing behind Charity, clutching the woman’s leg, peering around at them.

  Charity reached back and brushed the girl’s head. “Rachel, sweetie, you want to let Mama back up here?”

  Rachel didn’t let go of her mother’s leg, but she did back up, pulling on Charity’s leg.

  Charity half-stumbled backwards. “Rachel!” she scolded, peeling the little girl’s grip away.

  The girl looked up at her mother with wide eyes.

  “It’s okay,” said Nash, kneeling down so that he was eye-level with her. “I have a little girl too. She’s a little younger than you, though.”

  Rachel seemed interested in this. “What’s her name?”

  “Ariel,” said Nash.

  “Like the mermaid?” said Rachel.

  Nash inwardly winced, but he nodded, smiling. “Yup.”

  “Really?” Zoe said. “You have a daughter?”

  Nash straightened. “Yeah, it’s actually kind of a long story.” He wondered about Charity’s daughter as well. Was she a daughter from before Charity had gotten into a relationship with Siobhan, or had the two used a sperm donor to have a child together?
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br />   “Come on in,” said Charity, gesturing to Zoe, who was still outside the door.

  Nash shifted inside a bit to give her room.

  Charity shut the door behind them. “How far did y’all travel?”

  “It was, what, a seven-hour drive?” said Nash, looking at Zoe. He’d told her she didn’t have to come along, but Zoe had insisted.

  “Yeah, about that,” said Zoe.

  “Oh, well, heavens,” said Charity. “You two should stay here tonight.”

  “Oh, no,” said Nash. “We couldn’t do that. We couldn’t accept that kind of hospitality.” He couldn’t take advantage of this woman when he wasn’t certain what he was going to expose about Siobhan. She might not look at him kindly after this was all said and done, and he didn’t want to deal with the guilt of that.

  “I insist,” said Charity. “You’re an old friend of Siobhan’s. You have to. We have plenty of room.”

  “No way,” said Nash.

  “Let me show you around,” said Charity. “You think on it, okay. It’s really no trouble, I promise.”

  * * *

  Charity showed them all around the house. She said that before she moved in, Siobhan had purchased this house, which had been an old, rundown farmhouse. Siobhan had hired people do all the renovations on the place, and built on. There was a big library and a state-of-the-art kitchen. In the back of the house there was an in-ground pool. And there was a huge studio, with at least ten workstations in it. All the stations had tools, like soldering irons and wire cutters.

  “This is where Siobhan makes her jewelry,” Charity told them.

  So, the Siobhan on Etsy was the same Siobhan.

  Charity kept chattering, and they learned all about Siobhan’s business. Apparently, she was so successful now that she hired people to work on her orders for her. She got hundreds of orders for the pieces on her site and for custom pieces weekly.

  “People are always in and out of here,” said Charity. “It’s a busy little place.”

  Nash was amazed. He’d never seen Siobhan do anything crafty in his life. Of course, there seemed to be a lot of things that he didn’t know about Siobhan.

  After the tour, Charity took them upstairs, above the studio, where there were four bedrooms and a bathroom.

  “Sometimes,” Charity said, “in the peak season around Christmas, people who work with Siobhan will just sleep up here so that they can get right back up and go to work in the morning. If you two want to stay here, it’s no problem. You have your own entrance right there.” She pointed to a door that led to a set of steps leading to the out of doors. “You’ll have to do your own meals and everything, but it’ll be better than a hotel. You’ll see.”

  “We really can’t impose,” Nash said.

  “It’s not an imposition,” said Charity. “Siobhan pays people to come in and do laundry and cleaning. You just pile up your sheets when you leave, right here at the door, and it’ll all be taken care of. Besides, there isn’t a real hotel around here. You’d have to go all the way up to Bington.”

  “Where’s that?” said Zoe.

  “About a forty-five minute drive,” said Charity. “Just stay here.”

  Nash finally relented, even though he still felt bad about it.

  He and Charity had a little conversation about when he wanted to do an interview. He’d expected to do it that day. But Charity said that now that he was staying overnight, they might as well wait until morning. So, they set up the interview for sometime after breakfast.

  “What’s this all about, anyway?” said Charity. “I looked you up, and your podcast is all about unsolved crime. What crime are you looking into?”

  “It’s, um…” Nash licked his lips. “Siobhan seems to have married a man named Bart Martin under an assumed name.”

  “What?”

  “Bart Martin is dead now. He was found buried in the same place as fifteen other women.”

  “Oh, my goodness,” said Charity. “Oh, my goodness.”

  “Listen if you don’t want us to stay—”

  “No,” said Charity. “I’m not upset.” She laughed a little. “Siobhan is one of a kind. You can’t expect things of her like you’d expect of someone else. I learned a long time ago not to bother getting upset. I’ll be happy to talk about her for your podcast. But there’s whole areas of her life she just keeps me shut out of, you know? So, I don’t know if I’ll be any help at all.”

  * * *

  “Well, things had gone badly for me lately,” Charity was saying.

  They were sitting in a study in the farmhouse. It had a desk along one wall, and a fireplace on the other. There were three overstuffed leather chairs gathered around the fireplace, and that was where Charity, Nash, and Zoe were sitting. The fireplace wasn’t on, as it was too warm outside for that. Charity was wired up with a microphone, as was Nash, and they were recording.

  Charity continued, “When I met Siobhan, I mean, things had not gone good.”

  “I see,” said Nash. “Can you talk a little bit about that?”

  Charity sighed heavily. “You know, let’s just say that it involved what I call Rachel’s sperm donor and leave it at that. There’s more to the story, but I don’t want to get into it.”

  “Fair enough,” said Nash. “So, you were in a bad place and you met Siobhan?”

  “Yeah, I didn’t have anywhere to live,” said Charity. “This was five years ago, in September. There’s a woman’s shelter up in Bington. I was staying there, but I had a job all the way down here at Dino’s Bar and Grill, and I was trying to get back and forth, but my car was not very reliable, and I was pregnant at the time, and I just would get so, so tired.”

  “That sounds awful,” said Nash, his brow creasing in sympathy. “I guess you didn’t have any family or friends or anyone to lean on?”

  “No,” said Charity. “Not really. If you want to know the truth, I grew up in the foster system, and I didn’t have the best of experiences with some of my placements. Anyway, there was not anyone I could really turn to. And I already knew Siobhan, at least by sight. I had served her at Dino’s now and again, because she would come out for a drink sometimes. But I never really… well, I was always nice to her, but I was a little wary, because everyone in town knows that she is a lesbian. I mean, it is well known. And she would be sometimes, really, uh, I guess forward is the word.”

  Nash shook his head, wondering at this. “I really have a hard time believing this.” What if this was all wrong? Could it be a different Siobhan after all? No, because of the connection with Sibel. But he wondered. “You don’t have a picture of Siobhan, do you?”

  “Oh, sure.” Charity took her phone out of her pocket. “There’s a picture of her and me as my wallpaper.” She passed it over to Nash.

  Nash studied the photo. That was Siobhan all right.

  “Can I see?” said Zoe.

  Charity nodded.

  Nash handed the phone over.

  “What is it that’s making it hard to believe exactly?” said Charity, smiling. “Is it because you said she was straight when you knew her?”

  “Uh, yeah, kind of,” said Nash. “Maybe, though, she was, um, repressed or in denial or something.” He furrowed his brow. “Actually, maybe that would explain a lot.”

  “Well, I will say this,” said Charity. “Siobhan says that she’s not a lesbian. She says she doesn’t believe in that kind of thing.”

  “What kind of thing?” said Nash.

  “Sexual preference,” said Charity. “She says all people are sexual. The end. She says the only thing that keeps people from exploring both genders is fear. So, I mean, I know that she has been with men, and maybe is still with men. We have an open relationship, but I don’t really choose to do that myself. I’m not…” She shrugged. “I’m not built that way.”

  “Wait a second,” said Nash. “What you’re saying is that there’s sanctioned infidelity for Siobhan and not for you.”

  “No, no, that’s not it
,” Charity, for the first time, sounded a little perturbed. “We are both allowed to do whatever we want. And I’m just happy staying here with my daughter and living my life. You know, Siobhan takes care of me. I don’t have to lift a finger around here. I like to cook, so I do make dinner, and I do a bit of light cleaning, but she hires people to do everything. And she’s always been good with Rachel. And I just, I mean, I am really lucky is the way I look at it. Now, is our relationship perfect? No. It’s not. But who’s is, you know?”

  Nash tried to digest this. Charity was basically saying she was a kept woman, and she liked it? Was it different if the person doing the keeping was a woman instead of a man?

  “You’re judging me,” said Charity, raising her eyebrows. “Are you going to make me look bad on your podcast?”

  “No,” said Zoe.

  Nash leaned in closer. “Do you think saying this makes you look bad?”

  Charity raised her shoulders. “Well, from a certain point of view, maybe. I don’t really care, though, because I’m not going to do things differently just because other people don’t approve. They can try to walk in my shoes for a bit, and then we’ll see what they do. I’m happy. I have a good life. But Siobhan… well, I don’t know everything there is to know about her. I don’t think anyone does.”

  For several moments, Nash couldn’t think of anything to respond to that, so it was dead silent in the room.

  Then he cleared his throat. “I’m not judging you, Charity. I promise. Why don’t you go back to your story?”

  Charity nodded. Then she wrinkled her brow. “Where was I?”

  “You were saying that you knew Siobhan from serving her at work,” Zoe said.

  “Right,” said Charity. “Um, so I knew her and all, but I kind of was just polite and steered clear was all. I didn’t engage in conversation with her. But anyway, one day my car broke down in front of her house, and she came out, and she was so nice. She let me stay at her place that night and she drove me to work, and she took me to pick up my car from the shop. It about wiped me out to pay for the repairs, and I think she saw that. She offered to pay for it for me, and I said no. I mean, like I said, everyone knows her in town, and they all know she’s loaded from selling that jewelry on Etsy. I mean, half the people in town know someone who comes up here and works for her. So, it’s not like people don’t like her, it’s just that they’re a little wary sometimes.”