And then when it was over…
But then when it was over…
A most horrible thing: the thing he made her do.
After the two had dressed, or at least after she had covered her nakedness with her pretty pink silk chemise (purchased from the damaged-goods table in the basement of Pemberton, Day, because there was a long snag in it that could not be repaired), he stood up. He asked her to kneel before him.
She obeyed.
“Now look up at me. Look up at me, Jane. We aren’t finished yet. There. That’s a girl. I want you to thank me.”
It took a moment for her to form the words. “Thank you,” she mumbled. Her eyes had strayed. He snapped his fingers to return them to his face.
“Say it as if you mean it.”
“Thank you,” said Jane in a stronger voice. “Please go.”
“First, you must tell me that you’ll always be grateful for what I’ve done for you today.”
Jane shook her head. “I’m not grateful. I want to die.”
“You’ll be grateful once your head is clear and you’ve had time to think about it. I’m going now. You don’t have to see me out. In fact, I’d rather you not. I’d like to remember you in parting — there on the floor, wanting more — begging me with your eyes for more.”
Jane shook her head again. The word was all but inaudible: “Go.”
Tom left. Jane did not move. She remained on her knees for several minutes, even as her kneecaps began to ache from the hardness of the oak floorboards. And then she lay herself down, lay on her side, pulling her knees up tight against her stomach. She closed her eyes. The room was no longer spinning. The cloud was lifting. She was thinking more cogently. She was thinking about what she’d just done — what she had allowed herself to do, what she had intentionally surrendered herself to.
This is how Ruth and Carrie found her. They went to her and knelt next to her, Ruth taking her carefully into her arms like the Madonna in the Carracci Pietà.
“What did he do to you?” Carrie asked in a terrified whisper.
Jane didn’t answer.
“Tell us what he did,” said Ruth. “Tell us, Jane. Did he do the thing we think he did?”
“Walk me to my bed, sisters. My legs are weak.”
Having tucked Jane into bed, Ruth put the question to her again.
Jane smiled and said, “You’re so sweet to come.”
“But we came too late,” said Carrie softly. “If only Lyle had been here.”
“I’m here now,” said a voice at the door. Ruth and Carrie turned. Lyle was standing in the hallway just outside Jane’s bedroom, his face hidden in shadow.
“Where were you?” snapped Ruth.
“I came as fast as I could. I saw her leave from the Fatted Pig saloon, and I came.”
“Did you crawl, you useless bastard?” cried Ruth. She had been running her hand through Jane’s perspiration-drenched hair. Now her hand stopped so she could point accusingly at Jane’s brother.
Carrie had begun to cry. “Oh stop it, Ruth. Just stop it. He cares about her. He’s here. He came. He’s here.”
Ruth turned back to Jane. “Tell us what happened.”
“I’ll tell you, yes.”
Jane swallowed.
Lyle stepped into the room. His head was half bowed and he was holding his cap at his waist with both hands, with respect and reverence, as if he were visiting a deathbed or a body upon a bier.
Jane formed her words with great difficulty: “He raped me.”
“I thought so,” said Ruth, speaking for Carrie and Lyle as well.
“But it isn’t what you think,” said Jane.
“What do you mean?”
“He—”
“Yes?”
“Raped—”
“Yes?”
“My heart, Ruth. He raped my heart.”
The blows came fast and furious, but they were clumsy and generally missed their mark. Pat was dodging them with some success, even as he snatched up his clothes and tried to find a way around the drunken, enraged man who looked at him with flaming, murderous eyes. Molly screamed at her father to stop. She screamed that she wanted Pat there, that she loved Pat and wanted to be with him.
Michael Osborne heard none of this. There was a fire in his head and it would not be put out until he had killed the young man who had come to his flat to take his daughter’s heart away from him — to steal the only thing left of the family he once possessed in full.
And so he swung and largely missed, and picked up a rail-back chair and pitched it in Pat’s direction, but it struck nothing but the wall, where it splintered into pieces. Molly didn’t suspend her screams. Pat made it past the madman and into the front parlor (where Osborne saw his dental patients), and he very nearly made a clean escape with both life and limb intact when Molly’s father overcame him, and with the kind of bodily strength that comes only to those for whom strength is sought to do the most incredible kind of good or the most incredible kind of bad, Michael Osborne shoved Pat toward the window with such terrific force that Molly’s young lover was propelled through the shattering panes of glass and the brittle framework of the sash and out the window and directly into the smooth ceramic enamel of the enormous tooth, which swung wildly from the impact, and, though fixed to the projecting wrought-iron rod above, did not prevent Pat’s plunge to the concrete sidewalk three floors below.
Where he lay.
Motionless.
Chapter Eighteen
Zenith, Winnemac, July 1923
Maggie was the last to hear what had happened. Ruth had tried to reach her by telephone all through the night, but she wasn’t home. Maggie wasn’t even in Zenith. The previous morning, and in spite of her mother’s vociferous opposition, she’d put herself on the train to the Winnemac state capital, Galop de Vache, for the purpose of meeting Mr. and Mrs. Caster, the adoptive parents of the brother whose existence she’d only recently discovered. Maggie had done this even though Herbert Mobry had asked her to wait until after he’d had the chance to pay his own visit of inquiry to the Casters.
Herbert and Lucile Mobry hadn’t known she’d gone — that is, not until Clara Barton told them. She told them over late-morning Denver sandwiches at Lily’s Lunch Box on Chaloosa Street.
“The girl certainly has a mind of her own!” Lucile had marveled aloud.
“Oh, she’s every bit as stubborn and willful as her father,” Clara exasperatedly agreed. “But what was I to do? Block the door with my body? She was put into such a foul mood when I confirmed it all. Yes, I could have told her years ago. But I never saw any purpose to it. Why should I give her one more reason to hate me?”
“Maggie doesn’t hate you, not at all,” said Herbert, shaking his head in his wonted display of pastoral, avuncular understanding.
“There, there,” Lucile Mobry contributed. Clara had been a longstanding member of the congregation Herbert Mobry used to shepherd, and the Mobrys continued to feel responsible both for Clara’s spiritual health and for her general sense of well-being.
“But traveling to Galop all alone—” Clara shook her head.
“Maggie’s a big girl,” Herbert concluded. “One night alone in Galop will do her no harm. And once she’s had the chance to talk to the Casters about her brother, she’ll return to Zenith in amazingly good spirits. You’ll see.”
Maggie didn’t return in good spirits. Neither Mr. Caster nor Mrs. Caster happened to be in Galop de Vache during the brief period of her stay. From one of the Casters’ forthcoming neighbors, Maggie discovered that her brother’s adoptive parents were 330 miles away in Madison, Wisconsin, attending a convention of the Midwestern Association of Cheese Purveyors.