“I—”
“I told you.I told you.” Her friend’s voice turned harsh. “It’s Eddie’s brother. He found me out here, and he said he’s going tomake me pay for what I did.” A choked sob. “But I did. I paid. Isn’t that enough?”
“No,” Kara whispered. “It never is.”
Karalost consciousness again shortly after that. When she woke, the pain had subsided, but she could barely keep her eyes open. Not just beaten but drugged. Injected with something. She started drifting off again, but kept feeling that she’d woken for a reason.
That’s when she heard his voice, in the next room, lowered to a whisper, punctuated by Ingrid’s sniffs and snivels.
“Tell me about Kara’s stepfather,” he was saying.
“I told you,” Ingrid said. “I don’t know?—”
“I won’t ask again. Tell me what you did, and remember, I already know, so don’t lie.”
“I didn’t do anything.Anything.”
A smack, like leather hitting flesh and Ingrid screamed. Kara squeezed her eyes shut, scrunched into a ball on the floor and tried to block the sounds. He didn’t ask another question. He just kept hitting Ingrid over and over until her screams turned to horrible, animal-like wails.
Then, “It wasn’t me! I swear! It was Kara. Kara did it!”
Kara jerked her head up. The smack of the belt had stopped. Ingrid keened in pain as footsteps crossed her room. Then Kara’s door opened and she scrambled up as the figure filled the entrance. He shut the door behind him and walked toward her, a thick leather strap hanging from his hand.
“Tell me about your stepfather,” he said.
October 8, 2004
Itwas an old story. One told so often, by so many, that Kara wondered if it had lost its power to horrify and disgust. When forced into mandatory counseling, she’d hesitated to even tell her tale. They’d told it for her, those other girls, so many of them, variations on a theme that ultimately landed them in that room, bitter or broken. When the therapist finally coaxed Kara to spill her secret, she swore the woman’s eyes had glazed over, as if to say, “Not this again.”
His name was Bill. Her mother brought him home when Kara was nine, two years after her dad left. Well, two years after he left, and eighteen months after her mother finally realized he hadn’t just taken off temporarily, as he’d done all of Kara’s life. They’d never gotten married so he’d seemed to feel free to disappear at will, chasing some more exciting life. Come back when the money ran out. Stay until he got some again. This time, he must have found what he was looking for. Kara never saw him again.
Bill had seemed like a trade-up. That’s what her mom called him, giggling to her friends, “I sure did trade up, didn’t I?” They’d agree, with varying degrees of approval and envy. Bill was a proper family man, one with a proper job who cared for his new wife in a proper fashion. As for his stepdaughter…Kara was certain that, in Bill’s mind, he was caring for her in a proper fashion, too. That’s what he always said, anyway. That he was showing her how much he cared.
Old story. No further explanation required. Hers fit the other girls’ like it was a script they’d all memorized. The main rolevaried—boyfriend, stepfather, even Daddy himself—but the plot stayed the same. Creaking door. Creaking bedsprings. Our little secret. Can’t tell Mommy, because Mommy loves him. Mommy is happy. We want Mommy to be happy.
Kara was thirteen the night everything changed. She was in her room doing homework. Ingrid was staying the night, as she usually did on the weekends when Kara’s mom worked late. Bill hated that. He knew exactly why Ingrid stayed over, and he’d yell at Kara’s mom about how this was his house and he didn’t like strangers in his house. Kara’s mom would say Ingrid wasn’t a stranger and this was the one thing she defied him on and later, in those therapy sessions, Kara wondered if her mother knew what Bill did when she worked late, and that’s why she insisted on letting Ingrid stay over. The reason didn’t matter. If Ingrid stayed, Bill stayed out and that was all that counted.
Usually Ingrid got pissy when Kara did homework during their overnights. But it was the only time Kara could concentrate, safe in the knowledge that her bedroom door handle wouldn’t turn.
That night, though, Ingrid had encouraged Kara to do her homework.
“I’ll make Rice Krispie squares,” she said. “That’ll keep Bill happy.”
So Kara worked while Ingrid baked, and Kara had almost finished her worksheet when she heard the sound. Like a car backfiring.
She went into the hall and looked toward the kitchen. A moment later, Ingrid appeared. There was blood on her T-shirt. Kara gasped and ran down the hall. Ingrid put up her hands to stop her.
“It’s okay. It’s not mine. There’s been an accident.”
“What—?”
Ingrid motioned for her to follow. Kara jogged after her, through the living room, into the back hall, wheeling around the corner into Bill’s workshop, hearing a song playing on his tinny radio. Leonard Cohen.Everybody Knows.
There was Bill. Sitting at his bench. Laying facedown on his bench. His head…
There was blood. Blood and bits of…Bill’s head. The insides. His brains. Everywhere. On the bench. On the wall. On Ingrid.
Ingrid pointed at Bill’s shotgun on the floor. “He was cleaning it. I don’t know what went wrong. I came in to give him a snack andboom.”
