He couldn’t deny that. The unlucky one, in all of it, had been Olivia. If she hadn’t forgiven him for all those years of drunken abandonment and flagrant infidelity, maybe she’d be alive today.
Pushing aside the guilt, before it suffocated him, he studied his daughter’s beautiful face. She looked exactly like Olivia had when she was seventeen. “Are you thinking about having sex?”
Carly blushed. “No.”
“Come on.”
“I’m not! Not right now anyway. I’m not ready.”
She started to get up, to clear away the plates, but he detained her, holding her wrist. “What if he wants to, and you don’t? What will you say?”
“I’ll say no, Dad. He won’t pressure me. He’s not like that.”
“All boys are like that, Carly.” Some grown men were, too. Ones old enough to know better, and dumb enough to do it anyway. “They say they’re in pain. They say all the girls do it, and you’re a tease if you won’t. They say they’ll find another girlfriend who will. What if James says those things? Are you ready for it?”
She met his eyes. “Yeah. If he says anything like that, we’re over.”
“Okay.” He thought of another thing boys did when they wanted something a girl wouldn’t give. “What if you say stop, and he doesn’t?”
“I’ll kick him in the balls, Dad. But don’t worry. James stops when I tell him to.”
He felt like he’d been sucker-punched. “He does?”
“Yeah. We were kissing, the day before yesterday, and he tried to, um-” Carly broke off, wondering how to phrase it.
“What?” he growled.
“Dad, if you’re going to get all mad, I’m not going to tell you this stuff.”
Ben much preferred being in the dark. “Tell me,” he said anyway, clenching his hand into a fist beneath the table.
“He touched my, um”-she made a sweeping gesture over her chest-“you know. I made a noise, and he thought he hurt me, so he stopped. It wasn’t that kind of a noise, I said, but-”
Ben held up a hand, having heard more than enough. “I get the idea. Don’t you think you guys are moving a little fast? How long has he been your boyfriend?”
“Not very long. But I’m not a little girl anymore. I can decide when I’m ready.”
Ben and his daughter were close, but he was far from comfortable with this topic of conversation. His parents had never said a word to him about sex, and at St. Mary’s, the private school where he’d suffered through adolescence, sexual education was limited to receiving penance for confessing to impure thoughts.
Maybe that was why he’d been so intent on educating himself with every willing female he could find when he was Carly’s age.
He didn’t want to encourage her to take the same path he had, yet he couldn’t bear to treat sex like a sin. “When you’re ready, will you use protection?” he asked finally, wondering if he sounded too permissive.
“Of course. I’m not as stupid as you and Mom were.” She took the plates to the sink. “Do you want to know? I mean, if I decide to do it?”
He didn’t want to know anything more, ever again, but if she needed to talk to someone, he had to be there for her. It was his job. “Yes. You can tell me anything.” As she rinsed the plates and put them in the dishwasher, he said, “Carly?”
“Yeah, Dad?”
“You know I love you, right?”
Her hands, busy wiping down the granite countertop, stilled. “Yeah.”
She never said it back to him anymore, like she used to. That was normal for a teenager, he supposed, but it still hurt. “Okay. I just wanted to make sure that you weren’t thinking I was ignoring you, or feeling like I didn’t care. That I’d rather go surfing than spend time with you.”
“Well, that last one is true.”
“No. It isn’t.”
“Don’t get all mushy, Dad. Just take me shopping.”
“Cut her loose.”
Stephen couldn’t tear his gaze from the girl’s ravaged face. Her hair hung like lank seaweed, curling around her throat. Scavenger marks riddled her naked body, and her skin was tinged greenish black.
“Did you hear? Take out your blade and cut her loose. She’s tangled up.”
James staggered to the side of the boat and lost his breakfast over the edge. A motley mess that had once been Fruit Loops floated on the surface. Tiny surfperch made jerking, stabbing motions at it while he groaned with nausea.
“Do it,” Arlen said, motioning at Stephen with his knife.
“No way. They’ll know if I touch her. Don’t you watch those police shows?”
“They won’t know jack shit. Her skin’s sloughing off all over the place.”
Stephen grimaced, glad he was still jacked up enough to feel numb. At the helm, James started dry-heaving.
“Quit your bellyachin’, boy,” Arlen yelled over his shoulder, “or I’ll throw you in with her.”
“Maybe we should call the Coast Guard,” Stephen suggested.
Arlen squinted at him. “We’re on the preserve,” he said, as if that were reason enough to throw a dead girl back into the sea like undersized catch. It was illegal to drop a net in protected waters, and the penalty for breaking that particular environmental sanction was a $500 fine. “Besides, don’t you recognize her?”
Stephen glanced down at the body and shuddered. “No.”
Arlen eyeballed him derisively. “Drugs done fried your brain, son. It’s that little neighborhood whore. Don’t look like she’ll be putting out no more.”
Shaking his head, Stephen turned away from the gruesome sight.
In the end, Arlen did the job himself, muttering about lazy boys and loose women, shaking the body from the net instead of cutting her free, to save the time and hassle of having to mend it later.
The rest of the day passed in taut silence.
After work, Stephen took his daily wage without a complaint. When James asked if he could spend the night at Stephen’s, Arlen grunted his permission. His truck was squealing around the corner before they got to the front door.
Stephen sat on the stoop, pulling out his pack of cigarettes and a wad of cash. “Here,” he said, counting out half his pay. He knew their dad never gave James a dime. Living expenses, Arlen claimed, ate up every cent of his little brother’s paycheck. “Merry Christmas.”
“Thanks,” James said, pocketing the cash and taking a seat next to him.
Stephen lit up a smoke and waited for James to speak, although he dreaded the conversation. He was coming down hard, his brain like mush, his body ready to crash. Times like this he hated being an addict. The higher the high, the lower the low.
“Did Dad ever bring home whores, when you used to live with us?”
Stephen took another drag. “You know he did.”
“Yeah. Yeah, I remember.” James came around to the real question he wanted to ask. “Did he try to make you do stuff with them?”
Stephen inhaled deeply, wishing it was dope. “Yep.”
James looked away, his mouth drawn. “I can’t do it.”
“You don’t have to,” Stephen replied. “Don’t let him bully you into it.”
“He rapes them,” James said. “Whether he pays or not. Whether they tell anyone or not. That’s what it is.”
Stephen nodded, thinking that what he and Rhoda did behind closed doors wasn’t much different. Hell, he was so screwed up that he’d begun to think pain and depravity were normal. No better than he deserved. No worse.
“I never want to have a girl like that. If she’s willing, you don’t have to pay her.”
“Don’t think about it,” Stephen said, giving the only advice he could. “Don’t worry about what he does.” Reaching out, he wrapped his fingers around James’ upper arm. “You’ll be eighteen soon. You’ll get out.” His voice shook with intensity. “Promise me you’ll get out.”
James squirmed in Stephen’s grip. “What will you do?”
“Don’t think about that,” he repeated. “Don’t think about anything. Just go. Go and never look back.”