“Okay.” Cass seemed relieved. “Are you still going to find them? Find the island? Find those horrible people, even though I did what I did with the boatman?”
Leo looked at Abby. She could see the father in him screaming to come out. This was one of those moments when Cass seemed like a child, and it stood in glaring contrast with the other moments when she was wise beyond her years.
All of this was alarming to Abby.
“We will find them,” Leo said with conviction. “And we will find your sister.”
Cass appeared neither surprised nor comforted by the reaction she had provoked. It was something else, something akin to satisfaction, which meant it was calculated.
Cass Tanner was taking them all on a journey, and the only way they would find Emma was to go along for the ride.
THIRTEEN
Cass
Our mother had taught us about “sex power” around the time when Emma was thirteen. It was just after Mrs. Martin had started having sex with Mr. Martin behind our father’s back, and so I think she was very pleased with herself because she had discovered that this power had not left her. Mr. Martin was very powerful, and my mother was getting older.
It’s not just about age and beauty, girls,she used to say with that smile I hated.It’s how you make them feel—like they’re the ones who are powerful! Like they make you melt like no other man. It’s a trick women play. Think of it like a game.
She gave us lessons like this whenever something came up that seemed relevant to her. A woman with big breasts and a low-cut shirt at the club—See how all the men are trying to talk to her?Things like that. Emma always listened but pretended not to. I always pretended to listen when I was actually blocking out the sound of her silly voice and her even sillier words.
When I first met Dr. Winter, I knew she had never used Mrs. Martin’s sex power on a man. I don’t know how I knew this. Maybe because she was still single. Maybe because she did notreact to Mrs. Martin the way most women do, which is with a mix of envy and contempt because they wish they had her sex power but hate that they need it to get things in life. I think that when you see a woman who has sex power but chooses not to use it, she is someone you can trust.
I considered then the possibility of trusting Dr. Winter. I considered falling apart in her arms the way I did with my brother when I saw him the next day, and telling her about my mother and the things she had done. But I had learned my lesson years before with that woman from the court, and with my father. It’s like I keep saying—people believe what they want to believe, and I had no idea what Dr. Winter wanted to believe. I feared I had already told her too much with the story about Emma’s hair.
Sex power has its limits. I knew this because of the things that had happened at home before I left. I knew this again when I saw Hunter and his girlfriend. And I knew this from Mr. Martin and how he looked at Emma when Mrs. Martin was right there for the taking, every second of every day.
I knew this before the naked photos of Emma were posted on the Internet. So when I saw them, I knew who had taken them.
The IP address was traced to our Internet at our home, which meant they had to have been sent from the desktop computer we all shared, or Hunter’s laptop. Neither of them had any stored photos of Emma without her top, so it was also assumed that they had been deleted. We could have had the computers sent away to see if they could find traces of them in the deleted files, but Mr. Martin refused. He told my mother that because Emma was a minor, if a technician found traces of naked photos, they could all be accused of child pornography because the computer technician would have to turn the information over to the FBI. The technician confirmed this. He told Mr. Martin that this verything had happened in divorce cases—a suspicious wife let him poke around the deleted files of her husband’s computer, and he found images of underage girls from sites that pop up when you’re surfing porn. The husband probably wasn’t looking for underage girls when he was doing his porn surfing, but that’s what he got, and once it’s on your computer, it never really leaves.
Mrs. Martin could not argue with that. I think she was relieved because she didn’t want to know anything about the photos.
So everyone assumed Hunter had taken them and posted them to the Internet. Witt punched him in the face. I asked to live with my father. And my mother cut off Emma’s hair.
But it was not the events after the photos were posted that gave Mr. Martin away. It was everything that happened before.
It started the previous spring, with that evil boy from Hunter’s school that Emma had sex with. Emma did not speak to Hunter for weeks after that incident, because Hunter called her a whore and laughed at her. But this didn’t last long.
Hunter missed Emma. He missed snuggling with her on the couch watching scary movies and he missed getting high with her and he missed sneaking out with her to go to parties at the beach. He missed her smiling at him and flipping her hair and telling him things about her life. So when she came back from her summer program, Hunter made nice with her and they went back to their usual fighting but then getting high and laughing and snuggling on the couch. That didn’t last long either.
In early August, Emma started dating a new boy from our club. Hunter became insane with jealousy again. He was as cruel as he had ever been. He did lots of small, petty things like stealing all her underwear and hiding her phone so she couldn’t find it. But the worst part was how he just kept calling her a whore.Good morning, whore. How was the movie, whore? Lose your phone again, whore?
My mother did little to help. Every time she spoke to Mr. Martin about it, he got angry with her because he felt like she was criticizing his son. That’s what he said. But he was also angry with Emma for hurting his son, and for the way she made them both feel, which was wrong for both of them but especially for Mr. Martin.
One night late that summer, Emma came home from a party she’d gone to with that new boyfriend. Hunter was waiting for her.You’re such a little whore!he said. She ignored him and started to walk upstairs. Hunter followed her.Get away from me, loser!she said. But he didn’t. He followed her to the upstairs hallway and pushed her against the wall so hard that one of Mrs. Martin’s framed pictures crashed to the ground. He used his forearm to press into her chest and then stuck his hand down her pants.Is that what you let him do to you? Huh? Like this?
Emma just stared at him. I was standing in my doorway, frozen. It was such a strange and scary thing to see, but somehow Emma was not afraid. I could tell by her expression. She was defiant. He could put his hand in her pants. He could even kiss her and stick his tongue in her mouth. It wouldn’t matter. Emma had power over Hunter and she was never going to give it up by letting him have her. She was going to use it to torture him.
The next day, Emma was in her bedroom. She was getting dressed for another party and wouldn’t let me in to watch her. She said she wanted her privacy and that I was being a pest. Mr. Martin was driving her because our mother was at a charity function.
I heard Mr. Martin call her name from the bottom of the stairs. Emma did not respond. This made me curious, so I turned off my music and listened. Footsteps bounding up the stairs. Another shout for Emma from down the hall. A knock on her door. The door opening. Then silence.
Very softly, I opened my door. Mr. Martin had disappeared inside Emma’s room. It was silent in that room for a moment, and then Mr. Martin walked out, a little dazed. He looked at me standing in the hall. He looked the other way, then back at me. His phone was in his hand. Shame was on his face.
Tell your sister to hurry up.
I walked to Emma’s room and found her smiling in front of her mirror. She was wearing a sundress with spaghetti straps and Dr. Scholl’s on her feet. Her long hair was straight from her iron, and her lips were bright, bright red and shiny with gloss. Her face was flushed.
