Blind Pursuit

53

“It must have been the summer of 1965,” Erin said softly as the stun gun wavered in Oliver’s shaking hand. “You would have been fifteen.”

“Fifteen,” Oliver whispered, memory dulling his gaze.

“Maureen was twenty-one.”

“And beautiful.” The flashlight on the floor shined up at him, casting weird shadows over his face. The hollows of his eyes were deep wells of ink. “So beautiful.”

Erin squeezed more tightly into the corner. The floor under her was cold. The bricks at her back-cold. A trickle of sweat ran down her spine like an icy finger.

“How did it happen?” she asked, fighting to hear herself over the pounding of her heart.

He looked away, toward the open door, but she knew he wasn’t seeing it, wasn’t seeing anything around him.

“In July of ’65,” he said quietly, “Maureen came out from Sierra Springs, alone, to celebrate Lydia’s birthday. One afternoon she set up a lounge chair out back. I sneaked through the arroyo to where she was sunbathing. And spied on her.

“She took off her shirt. Squeezed suntan oil onto her breasts. Touched herself. I heard her moan. Skin wet with oil, legs twisting

…”

Erin felt it was wrong somehow, a violation of some ancient taboo, to picture her mother touching herself so intimately.

She blinked the thought away. “How long did you watch?”

“Until she was finished. Then I returned to the house. Lincoln saw me as I entered. And he saw the stain. On my pants. A big, dark stain.

“I didn’t even know I’d… done that. Hadn’t felt it. Hadn’t felt anything at all.”

She understood. He must have survived the years of abuse by disconnecting himself from his emotions, even from physical sensations-and from sexual feelings most of all.

“Lincoln said he knew what I’d been up to. I’d been peeping at my Aunt Maureen. That kind of behavior demanded punishment. A boy needed to learn discipline.

“Lydia was in town, and Maureen was still outside. Nothing to stop him, so he did it right then, on the living room floor, near the potbelly stove.

“Afterward, I locked the bathroom door, scrubbed my pants and underwear. I didn’t think about Lincoln. I thought about Maureen.”

He lowered his head, the flashlight’s pale radiance brightening his face like a flush of shame.

“I wanted her. Before, it had been enough to just watch, but now I had to have… had to prove…”

Erin knew what he’d felt the need to prove.

“Next morning, Maureen was up before dawn; she liked to walk when it was cool. I found her by the barn. Said I’d hidden a birthday present for Lydia in the tack room.

“She went in with me. Trusted me. I was only a kid, after all. But I was taller than she was. And in my back pocket I had a knife.

“Her eyes got big when I popped the switchblade. I was going to stick something in her, I said-the knife or my cock. Her choice.

“She was crying, saying I couldn’t mean it. Good hard slap shut her up.

“We did it there, on the floor, with the knife at her throat and the horses restless in their stalls on the other side of the wall.”

On the floor. The same way Lincoln had abused Oliver. The same pattern of perfunctory violence, repeated.

The son had learned from the father, but it was not discipline that had been taught.

“Once you let her go,” Erin whispered, “she didn’t tell?”

“No. She was scared. I let her know that even if I served time, I’d be out in a couple of years. That was all I had to say.

“She left later that day, even before Lydia’s party. Made some excuse. Drove back to Sierra Springs. And not long afterward…”

“She found out she was pregnant.”

“That’s right, Doc. I got twin girls started that morning in the barn. I gave you life.” He switched on the stun gun again. “And what I gave, I can take back.”

Erin stared at the ribbon of current as Oliver guided it slowly toward her throat.

Upstairs, the groan of a door.

Her glance ticked upward. Oliver cocked his head.

They listened, frozen, breathless, wax figures in a tableau.

Softly, footsteps.

Someone in the house.

An emotion so intense as to be unidentifiable swept through Erin and set her body shaking.

Oh, God-the words in her mind began as a plea, ended in a silent shriek-let it be a cop, please, let it be a cop!

The footsteps stopped directly overhead.

In the sudden silence, in the motionless air, a voice.

“Erin…?”

Annie.

Recognition jerked Erin half upright. All the breath rushed out of her lungs in an urgent, warbling cry.

“ Annie, get away, he’s got a gun, he’s-”

The pincers slammed into the soft skin under her jaw, and she fell instantly into a lightless void, pursued by the echo of her scream.