by Zoe Carter
He removes his shirt, and then his pants. His belt clinks as he tosses his clothes to the floor, the hair on his chest scratching my chin as he climbs into bed with me again.
“You know,” he says, pressing his weight against me until I’m sure I will die. “That sister of yours is getting to be pretty cute. If you like, I can visit both of you. Would you like that, sweetheart? Would that make you happy?”
His words make me wild with fury. I struggle underneath him, trying my best to bite him. He just laughs.
“Don’t you touch her. You leave Maisey alone or I’ll—I’ll—”
“You’ll what?” he taunts me.
“I’ll tell Mom.” The very thought makes me want to faint from shame. But I’ll do it if it means protecting Maisey.
Peter smirks. “You go ahead and do that. We’ll just see who she believes. You open your yap, and before you can turn your head, you’ll be on your way to the reformatory. You want to help your sister? Shut your mouth and do what I want.”
I don’t know anything about reformatories, but Peter has made them sound like hell on earth. He spent some time in one when he was a boy, so I guess he should know.
He lowers his head to my breasts, which I’ve tried to conceal from him. Once I’d wound a tensor bandage around and around my chest until I couldn’t take a deep breath anymore, but it kept coming loose. I’d contemplated cutting off my hair, wondering if he’d still visit me in the night if I looked like a boy. Only fear of what he might do to Maisey stopped me.
Ducking under my nightgown, he begins to nuzzle me. His lips close around one of my nipples. I’m propelled backward, snatched away from him. I land on a blue blanket that puffs around my body when I fall.
“Sarah? Why are you crying?” Mom fills the sky as she leans over me, but she is different, this version of her. She is Mom Before. She smells like the cinnamon candies she used to be addicted to, and her skin is smooth, free from worry lines. Her eyes are bright and clear, with none of that faraway look I’ve become accustomed to. I’d forgotten how pretty she used to be.
I breathe deeply, rolling over on my stomach to bury my face in the grass. Beside me, Maisey giggles and makes funny little clucking sounds. She grabs a fistful of wildflowers and throws them into the air. Most of them land on her head, but some of the petals drift over me like confetti.
“Sarah?” Dad puts his arm under my back, helps me sit up. “Did you know you can make jewelry from these wildflowers? How would you like it if I taught you? We can make a crown for your hair.”
Leaning against his shoulder, I sob. I cry for a long, long time. And when I’m all cried out, I yell. “Why did you abandon me? You promised to always be there when I needed you. You said you would protect me. Do you see what happened when you left us? You ruined everything.”
He ignores my outburst and takes hold of my hands, guiding them as he weaves the daisies into a chain. “It’s all right, my girl. You’re safe now. Everything’s okay.”
“Sarah? Sarah!” Baby Maisey isn’t cooing and burbling anymore. Instead she’s yelling at me. The meadow vanishes as quickly as it appeared, the sky growing dark. Thunder growls a warning overhead. “What the hell is the matter with you?”
Maisey shakes me. She’s shouting right in my face. I twist out of her grip, shoving her away.
I’m not a little girl anymore, clinging pathetically to some memory of my childhood. I’m a mother, and the only thing that matters now is my child.
“Where’s Elliot? What have you done with him?”
My sister’s features are so distorted by hatred I scarcely recognize her. “‘Where’s Elliot?’” she whines, raising her voice in a cruel falsetto. “‘Where’s Elliot?’ Christ, Sarah, you just told me that you killed Frankie. Do you have any idea how much Frankie’s death messed me up? Do you know what it did to me? I tried to kill myself once. Drove my car into oncoming traffic. All because of you.” She charges at me, hitting me with her shoulder so I slip on the wet sand and nearly fall. “I haven’t been able to hold down a steady job, never mind a relationship. How could you do that to me? How could you let me think it was my fault?”
She moves toward me, as if to charge again, but I hold up a hand to ward her off. She may be more athletic, but I’ve always been bigger and stronger. I suspect that hasn’t changed. “What did you do with Elliot?”
“For fuck’s sake, Elliot is fine. Can’t we ever talk about me for once? The world doesn’t revolve around you and your precious fucking baby.” Her mascara runs down her face like blackened tears. She grimaces at me, weeping.
She doesn’t look like my sister, and she certainly isn’t acting like her.
“Tell me where he is, Maisey. Tell me before I beat it out of you.”
“Touch me and you’ll never see him again.” The threat is too much—I lose it. Before I realize what’s happening, I’ve lunged for her neck and wrapped my fingers around it, squeezing. Maisey slaps at my arms, trying to fight me off, but I have the added strength of a mother’s fear on my side. She’s no match for me.
“Sarah,” she gasps, her voice a strangled croak. “Let go of me.”
I bring my face closer until we are nose to nose and I can see the terror in her eyes. “Tell. Me. Where. He. Is.”
“I told you—he’s with Mom. He’s fine. Now let me go.”
I shove her away from me so she falls flat on her butt in the sand. “You’d better not be lying.” Turning, I start running toward the house, my heart leaping into my throat. She quickly catches up to me, pulling on my arms, but each time I wrest out of her grip. Elliot. If Alice has done something to my child, I’ll kill them both.
“Sarah, please. We need to talk. Can you forget about Elliot for a second, please? He’s fine, I swear. I wouldn’t hurt him.”
“I’m sorry I haven’t been there for you. I’m sorry if there was a...misunderstanding about Frankie’s death. I thought you knew what happened, and really, Maisey, you can’t blame me. I only finished the job you started.” Clenching my fists to stop myself from shaking her, I feel the dread and anxiety of the past few days simmer to the surface. “But kidnapping my son isn’t the solution, no matter how upset you are. We had plenty of time to talk. We could have talked for days, but instead you had to send me those horrible emails. What kind of person does something like that? I don’t want to talk to you anymore. I want you to get out of my face.”
A terrible thought occurs to me. “Was Caleb in on this, too?”
Maisey’s surprise seems genuine. “No, of course not. This is about you and me. It’s always been about you and me.”
She scurries along the sand, keeping pace with me. “I’m sorry. It was wrong to scare you like that, I see that now. But I was angry. And no, you wouldn’t talk about it, so I wanted you to feel what it’s like to be scared for a while, see how you’d like to feel that guilty.”
The sight of Maisey, so self-righteous and indignant, disgusts me. Something foul tasting coats my mouth and I spit the bitterness onto the sand.
“You want to talk about scared? You want to hear what’s really scary? How would you have liked it if it was your room Peter came skulking into every chance he got instead of mine?”
She furrows her brow. “What are you talking about?”
I’m weary of protecting her, tired of watching her act like the spoiled child she obviously still is. The only thing I care about in this moment is my son. We’re not far from the house now. It would be easy to run inside and make sure he’s okay. “How would you like to be raped by your stepfather for four fucking years?”
“What are you saying?”
“What do you think I’m saying? While you and Mom were sleeping, Peter was coming into my room and raping me. And when Alice went to prison, it only got worse.”
“Wow. I knew you were low, but not that low. That’s really
sick.” She’s trying her best to sound flippant, but I can see the shock begin to hit. Her teeth chatter as the color drains from her face.
“I’m sick? I’m the one who’s sick? I’m not the one who sent threatening emails to her own sister. Why would you do something like that, why?” My voice breaks and I’m furious with myself. I refuse to show any more weakness around her. Bad enough I’d confided in her, told her how much the emails had bothered me. “I bet you had a good laugh over how upset I was, didn’t you? It must have been a huge ego stroke, finding out how well your little plan had worked.”
Raising my arms to protect my face from the wind and rain, I make my way through the sand toward my home. Before I can take more than two steps, Maisey grabs hold of my nightgown and won’t let go. I thrust my body forward, but the sand is too deep and too wet to get any traction. Slipping back toward her, I try to force the fabric out of her hands, but her grip is too tight. It would be ridiculous enough to laugh over if I wasn’t so worried about Elliot. “What the hell do you want? Let me go.”
“I want you to tell me the truth about what happened. No more lies.” She has to scream to be heard over the storm now. Rain assaults her face, but she grits her teeth and holds on.
“I am telling the truth. You just don’t want to believe it because it makes you feel guilty. Peter raped me, over and over again. It happened. And if you or Alice had cared about someone other than yourselves, you would have noticed there was something wrong.” My chest heaves as I gasp for breath. Fighting to break free from my sister, I feel nothing but resentment. It’s difficult to believe she was once the little girl I’d sacrificed everything to protect. “He molested me for years, and no one gave a shit—not you, not Caleb, not Mom—no one.”
Maisey digs her heels in, and I slide on the sand, losing any ground I’d gained. “If that’s true, why didn’t you say anything?”
I stop fighting to get away. We’re not getting anywhere. All I want is to escape the storm and find Elliot, make sure he’s okay. Nothing else matters—Maisey, Alice, Caleb—they can go to hell, as far as I care. I never have to see any of them again after this, and I don’t plan to.
The memories I’ve repressed for so many years overwhelm me, my stomach roiling with nausea. “Shame, for one. Peter always blamed everything on me, said it was my fault for ‘seducing’ him. My God, I was just a kid! It wasn’t like I knew anything about sex, so I believed him, believed that somehow I was to blame for him acting that way. He made me hate myself.”
Seeing I’ve ended the tug-of-war, Maisey cautiously lets go of my nightgown. “Peter was a scumbag, but I never saw anything that would make me think he was a pedophile. Your story is hard to believe. How do I know it’s not another one of your lies?”
I lunge at her with a roar, gratified when she flinches. “I don’t give a shit what you believe. What did you do with my son? I want to see him now. You never should have used him as a pawn. He’s only a baby.”
“Elliot is fine—he can wait. I’ll show you where he is as soon as you tell me the truth.”
“I am telling the truth. Why would I lie about something like this? Talking about it makes me sick.”
“If you’re telling the truth, why didn’t you at least talk to Mom? She would have put an end to it. She would have kicked the bastard out on his ass. We would have been free from his abuse.”
His voice is smooth as he strokes my thighs, which are sticky from his semen. I squirm from his touch, wanting to get as far away from him as I can, to wash away any evidence he’d been there. He refuses to let me go. “You understand this would destroy your mother if she found out, right? She’d never survive it. You’ve seen the way she drinks. Do you really want to be the one to push her over the edge? What if she kills herself? It would be your fault, Sarah. Do you want to break your mother’s heart?”
“He told me she’d never believe me, and that if she did, it would destroy her. And he was probably right. Remember what a wreck she was after Daddy died? She would never have recovered if she found out her beloved Peter was sticking his dick in her own daughter.” The wind that howls around us is cold, and I shiver, wishing I’d thought to grab a jacket. “Peter was nicer to everyone after he’d been with me. The beatings stopped, at least for a little while. He promised to leave you and Mom alone as long as I did whatever he asked. He told me I was a natural whore, born to make men happy. He said it was the only thing I was good at.”
And the sad thing was, he’d been right. Here I’d always believed I was talented, some big-shot artist who was going to set the world on fire. But in the end, I couldn’t get a job. No one wanted to hire me. The only way I could survive was by whoring myself out.
Maisey has grown still, her features composed in an expressionless mask. She’s so quiet I don’t know if she believes me or not.
“This is exactly what he said would happen. He insisted no one would ever believe me. He was the good guy, the family man, the one who sent Caleb to college and married Alice even though she was an alcoholic with two kids. I was just a two-bit whore.” I spit on the sand again, wishing the rain could rinse the bad taste from my mouth. “I was the only one who could have survived it, don’t you see? His abuse was already destroying you. You were wetting the bed, jumping a mile high if anyone so much as coughed around you—you were a nervous wreck. I couldn’t refuse him. Not when there was a chance he would go after you. I wanted you to have the life I couldn’t. I was happy that you had found your calling because it let you escape.”
Maisey shakes her head. “No—no. I don’t want to hear this.”
“You just don’t want to believe it.” I take her by the shoulders. “Maisey, look at me. He was already starting to sniff around you. As soon as you weren’t a little girl anymore, he was interested. Remember how he used to force you to eat that rotten food until you threw up? He was testing you, trying to see how much he could push you, how far he could make you go.”
“He wasn’t like that.” She’s starting to cry now, and I know she believes me, no matter how much she protests. “He was bad, but he wasn’t a pervert. You’re trying to tell me he was a monster.”
The first time I resisted, he was furious. He slapped my face until it was raw, split my lip open like an overripe grape. It didn’t matter. Pain was better than being his mistress any longer. Pain I could take.
We eyed each other from across my bedroom, predator and prey—only today, the bunny had fought back. His chest heaving from his exertions, he snarled at me. But then he smiled. An evil light came into his eyes, and I knew I was in trouble.
“Fine,” he said. “Fine. You don’t want to make your daddy happy anymore. I guess I can respect that.”
“You’re not my daddy. Don’t talk about my daddy. My daddy was a good man. He loved us. He took care of us. He was nothing like you.”
Peter rolls his eyes. “Oh, yes, the saintly Jim. I’ve heard enough of that fairy tale to last me a lifetime. That’s what it is, you know—a fairy tale. No one is that perfect.”
“Don’t you say his name. You’re not good enough to say his name!” I snatch a can of hairspray off my dresser and wing it at him. It bounces harmlessly off his arm.
“What’s the matter? Afraid you might hear something about Daddy Dearest that you won’t like? Afraid he wasn’t so perfect after all?”
“Shut up, shut up, shut up.” I’m throwing everything in reach at him now: picture frames, hairbrushes, teddy bears, books. To my great frustration, he dodges most of them, laughing. The few things that do connect don’t even faze him.
“I seem to have hit a nerve. But then, you always were Daddy’s little girl, weren’t you?” He licks his lips, letting his eyes rove over my body.
“Stop it! My dad was never like that. He wasn’t sick like you.”
Peter grins. “Oh, wasn’t he? How do you know? Maybe you were s
till too young when he died, but trust me, a man has needs. And your dimwitted mother isn’t enough to satisfy them, not by a long shot.”
If he’d punched me in the stomach, it would have hurt less. He’d tormented my mother so much—beaten her, abused her in horrific ways. If he didn’t want her, why did he stay? “Then leave us alone,” I scream at him. “If you don’t love her, leave us alone.”
He closes the distance between us, bringing his body next to mine. I turn my face away, but he whispers in my ear. “This has nothing to do with love, little girl. I thought you’d get that by now.”
I’m battered. I’m exhausted. But with the last bit of my strength, I shove against his chest. He’s much bigger than I am, but he’s not expecting me to lash out and he stumbles backward, falling on my carpet with a thud. Now it’s my turn to laugh.
Lying on his ass at my feet, surrounded by stuffed animals, dolls and everything else I’d thrown at him, he’s a clown. A fool. And I keep laughing. I laughed more than I have since that day in the meadow.
“Fine. You’ve humiliated me for the last time. You’re not the only one in this house I can spend time with, you know. You’re not the only one who can keep me company.”
The laughter dies in my throat. “You wouldn’t touch her. She’s just a child.” But I know he would—of course he would. The man has no shame.
He staggers to his feet, looming over me. “Well, you have to be young to keep up with me. The older ladies don’t seem to cut it for very long.”
Peter goes to leave, but I race to block the door. “Don’t you dare. Don’t you dare touch her. I’ll tell Mom, I swear it.”
“Go ahead. Go ahead and tell her. How are you going to explain keeping quiet about it all this time? It’s obvious you’ve been enjoying this. I know it, and she’ll know it, too. Is that what you want your mother to think? That her precious firstborn is nothing but a dirty whore?”
He has me trapped. Even if she did believe me, he’s right. Mom will never understand why I’ve kept quiet about it for so long. And she’s bound to take Peter’s side. She usually does.