He is one ugly son of a gun, Genna thought as she flipped through the stack of surveillance pictures of Allen LeVane that she’d received via e-mail and printed out just minutes earlier. Just looking at his face made her skin crawl. The closely set dark eyes. The fleshy nose. The thin lips stretched over too-perfect-to-be-real teeth in a genial smile, a chilling touch considering the loathsome business in which he was engaged.
He’d been picked up at ten that morning as he left a town house in a fairly upscale neighborhood outside of Trenton. He’d arrived with a child of perhaps six or seven. He’d left alone. Only the patience and tenacity of the local police combined with the skills and the resources of the Bureau had prevented the child from being subjected to the unspeakable. Genna had stood across the street and watched as three adults were led out of the house in handcuffs, the child in the arms of an officer specially trained to work with juvenile victims. It had taken five police officers all day to load up the photographic equipment and the boxes of video tapes from the three floors of the house.
Good riddance to bad rubbish, Patsy would have said. Yet Genna knew that unless the judge set the bail at an unusually high number, by the next morning LeVane would be back at home in his luxurious penthouse in one of New York’s finest hotels.
But he was on the hot seat now, and the little boy who’d been lured from his mother’s side in a mall in Cleveland the previous week had been returned to his anxious family, not, unfortunately, before LeVane had taken a personal interest in the child. It would take years for the boy to recover from less than two weeks in LeVane’s company.
Genna closed out the computer file after sending the photos via e-mail to the Cleveland police. She’d had enough for one day. Hell, she’d had enough for the month. She snapped off her computer and stood up to stretch. A few hours at the gym would be greatly appreciated right about now. She gathered her belongings and left the office, cautious, as she’d become over the past week, and more attentive to her surroundings. But her “spidey sense,” as John called it, was quiet as she walked to her car, and she drove directly to the gym she’d joined months before but rarely had time to attend. Tonight she’d run a few miles on the track. Ride a stationary bicycle. Maybe lift a few weights. Then finish up with a swim followed by a hot shower. She’d been working like a demon on this case, and she was due a little downtime.
As she methodically followed the indoor course around the elliptical-shaped track, Genna wondered what she’d be working on this time next week. There was no break between one case and the next. There was only the next squeaky wheel. There were a number of them already sitting on her desk. Between now and Monday morning, any one of them could blow up.
Best to get in a good workout while one could.
The disappearance of the wife of the president of a West Virginia college dominated the news on the television that hung over the juice bar where Genna stopped on her way out of the gym.
Hadn’t she seen a phone message that John called Decker that morning from Beckley, West Virginia?
Damn.
It would only be a matter of time before someone started to add up the number of missing women. How many had there been? Eight? Nine? How much longer did the Bureau think they could keep this under wraps? And of course, the certain notoriety would only make John’s job that much more complicated.
The exercise and the swim should have relaxed her, but it seemed it would take more than a workout to relieve the tension of the past few days. Maybe, she told herself wryly, she should try aromatherapy. Or yoga. She’d had a roommate back at the Academy who swore that yoga was the only thing that kept her inner self balanced.
Genna suspected that it would take more than yoga to balance out her inner self right now, and was thinking about signing up for an aerobics class as she made the turn into the parking lot at her apartment building. Someone must be having a party, she thought, as up one row and down the next, she searched for an available spot.
Must be one hell of a party. She frowned as she spotted a vacant place near the end of the third row.
Music drifted from one of the end apartments and floated over the parking lot.
Wonder how long before someone calls the manager, she mused as the volume was turned up on a particularly spirited song dating from the seventies.
Don’t let ‘em tell you disco’s dead. Genna smiled to herself, walking in time to the music across the dimly lit lot toward her building.
She was almost to the walkway when the prickling sensation began to creep along her spine.
Whether a snap of a twig or the rustling of last fall’s forgotten leaves, something drew her attention to the darkened area off to her left. Slipping her hand into her bag, she sought the reassuring cold metal of the Glock. She slowed her pace as her fingers closed around the handle, and her eyes searched the shadows for a shape that shouldn’t be there.
And there, close up to the side of the building, she found it. Someone crouched between the shrubs.
Dropping her gym bag to the ground, Genna drew the gun and called, “Come out with your hands up. Now.”
For a long moment, the figure remained motionless.
“You’ve got to five.” Genna took several steps toward the landscaped area. “One. . . two. . .”
The figure stood slowly, and arms raised, began to pick its way through the shrubbery.
“Keep your arms up. Out here, into the light where I can see you.” Genna motioned with the Glock in her right hand.
“I didn’t expect you to welcome me with open arms, but really, Genna, pulling a gun might be a wee bit extreme. Even under the circumstances.”
Genna froze, every muscle in her body tensing. Even after all the years that had passed, she knew the voice that drifted out of the darkness.
The figure moved into the light, arms no longer held overhead, but out in front as if to show they were empty.
“Crystal?” Genna’s eyes grew wide with disbelief. “Chrissie?”
“Hello, Genevieve.”
The young woman stopped almost ten feet away from where Genna stood, and while Genna’s eyes and ears told her that Crystal Jean Snow, her older sister, was the woman who stood before her, her brain was having a hard time believing it.
“A ‘hello, Crystal’ might be a nice start.” The woman’s arms dropped to her sides.
“Chrissie. . .” Genna appeared stunned. “How. . . ?”
“How did I find you?” She laughed softly. “You have to be kidding. You’re famous. Genna Snow, intrepid FBI agent. I saw you on television last year, there was a news special about that magazine heiress who was being stalked up in New England by some crazy who had killed her sister. It took me a while to get up the courage to come looking for you, but it wasn’t hard to find you, once I made up my mind.”
Genna wished there was a place to sit down. Her knees had begun to knock together.
“I can’t believe this. After all this time. . .”
“Eighteen years, Genna.”
“I should invite you in.” Genna said as if to herself.
“It’s okay if you don’t want to. I wouldn’t blame you. I only wanted to see you, Gen. I just wanted to see if you were as pretty in person as you were on television. I wanted to see just how tall you’d grown over the years—just look at how much taller than me!—and what color brown your hair had finally settled on.” The woman dug her hands into the pockets of her light jacket. “And I wanted you to know that they’re gone.”
“Gone?” It didn’t occur to Genna to ask who. She knew. “When?”
“About three months ago.”
“How did it happen?” Genna asked.
“Car accident. They were run off the road, so the witness says. But who knows? All we know for sure is that the car went down an embankment and flipped over once or twice.”
“Why’d you wait so long to let me know?”
“For one thing, I wasn’t sure you’d care. And for another, I’ve been. . . away. . . for a while.” Her voice dropped.
“Away?”
“I had a breakdown a few years ago—that’s what they called it, a breakdown. It’s taken me a good while to get back on my feet, though God knows I still feel a little broken. Anyway, after I got out, I was in a group home, a halfway house of sorts. Then I found out about them and went back for a time.” The touch of the old South crept steadily back into Crystal’s speech. “I was cleaning out the house. . . they spent the last few years in that little house out back of Grandma Petersen’s, remember? That little three-room place that sat out by the apple orchard?”
“I remember,” Genna whispered.
“Well, I was cleaning it out—hoping I’d find something of enough value to sell, to be honest with you. It’s been a while since I’ve worked.” A nervous hand found its way to her neck. “Anyway, I was pulling stuff out of there and Dwight—you remember cousin Dwight—he was bringing his truck out to take the furniture down to the secondhand store. He was helping me take the mattress off the bed. I found these, tucked under the mattress.” She took something from her pocket, and held them out to Genna. “You can probably put the gun away. I swear I’m not armed.”
Surprised to realize she was still holding the Glock, Genna opened the top flap of her bag and, after making sure the safety was on, slipped the gun back in.
“What is it?”
“Take a look.”
Genna reached for the envelope, and taking it, walked toward the light that illuminated the very front of the building. One by one, she studied the photographs.
Pictures of Genna and her mother.
Pictures of Genna and Crystal. Of Genna and Crystal and their mother.
Pictures from Easter Sundays, the Snow girls dressed in their best dresses, their hair in tight braids. Chasing the ducks on the pond behind Grandma’s house. Sitting with her mother on the porch swing at Aunt Mary Claire’s house that summer she and Crystal had gotten poison ivy so badly they could barely open their eyes. Their mother had sung to them, read to them. Rocked them in her arms when the itching had gotten so bad they couldn’t sleep.
Genna couldn’t bear the memories. They hurt and confused her and took her breath away. She’d never been able to reconcile the mother who had been so caring with the woman who had walked away from her without a backward glance.
It was too much to deal with at one time. Genna put the photos back into the envelope with shaking hands.
“I could offer you some coffee or something,” she said weakly.
“Only if you want to, Genna. I’d understand if you didn’t.”
“I think I want to.” Genna walked back to where she’d dropped her gym bag and fished the keys out of the pocket. “I think there’s still some iced tea left from yesterday, if you’d rather have that. . .”
“Whatever is the least trouble for you, Gen. I know you weren’t expecting me, and I don’t want to put you out.”
Crystal followed her up the steps and into the lobby, across the dark green and navy plaid carpet to the elevator. Genna hit the up button and stood aside when the doors opened and Crystal stepped in. She hesitated slightly, prompting Crystal to quip, “It’s okay, Genna. I won’t hurt you. I promise. Besides, you’re still the one who has the gun, remember?”
“I’m sorry,” Genna told her. “I’m just so stunned. I never thought I’d see you again. I don’t know how to react.”
She reached out and hit the button for the fourth floor. They rode in silence until the doors slid open and Genna stepped out.
“It’s the door at the end.” Genna said.
They walked the length of the hallway, and it wasn’t until they had stepped into the cool of Genna’s apartment and she’d turned on the lights that Genna took a good look at her sister for the first time in eighteen years.
Crystal was shorter than Genna, and her dark hair bore traces of a strand of gray here and there. The lines in her face made her seem older than her thirty years, but all in all, Genna thought she’d probably have recognized her anywhere.
“Are you glad to see me?” Crystal asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Well, there’s something that hasn’t changed over the years. You’re still painfully honest.” Crystal tried to smile. “Honest to the core, our Genna. At whatever the cost.”
Genna turned from her and walked into the kitchen and snapped on the light. “Would you like something cold to drink? I have soda, iced tea. . .”
“Whatever. Anything is fine. Ice water is fine.” Crystal stood in the doorway. “I think that since I’m here we should get it out of the way early, Genna.”
“I don’t. . .”
“. . . want to talk about it? Any shrink will tell you that’s a very unhealthy attitude. There’s something that’s been standing between us for more than half our lives, Gen. I need to get it off my chest.”
“If you’re talking about the fact that I didn’t hear from you all that time, about the fact that you never made any attempt to contact me all these years. . .” Genna’s control was forced, the words shooting out of her mouth beyond her control.
“I was a kid too, remember.” Crystal’s hands shook as she accepted the glass of iced tea that Genna held out to her. “I didn’t have the means or the opportunity to come and find you. And I didn’t have the guts, either.”
Genna reached past Crystal to grab her own glass from the counter.
“I never had your sense of right, your sense of justice. I never had your strength, Gen.” Crystal sipped at her drink. “I wish I had. But I never did, even when I wanted to so badly. Even when I knew I should, knew how important it was for me to. . .”
Genna stepped past her and turned off the light, gesturing for Crystal to follow her into the living room. At that moment, she wasn’t sure of just how much she wanted to hear, and she moved like a cornered animal, wary and watchful and suspicious.
Crystal stood in the doorway, watching as Genna hit the message button on her answering machine. There were four messages. Crystal stood patiently waiting for them to end.
Genna sat back on the sofa and put her feet up on the coffee table.
“You can sit down,” she said, without her characteristic grace.
“This isn’t easy for me.” Crystal perched on the edge of the dark green hassock and studied her sister’s face.
“Well, it was your idea, Chrissie. You must have thought it out.”
“I thought out what I’d say to you. I couldn’t think out how I’d feel.”
“How do you feel?”
“Worse than I expected to. Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea, after all. Maybe I should leave.”
Genna withdrew the envelope holding the photos and tossed them on the table. Several escaped and fell onto the floor. “You can take those with you.”
“I just thought you’d like to see. . .”
“See what? The best moments of my early childhood? The smiling, loving face of my mother, who let that wacko, crazy, abusive man who fathered us, control her life, control her emotions, turn her against her own flesh and blood? That loving mother who abandoned her own child for the crime of telling the truth?” Genna grabbed one of the toss pillows that graced the corners of the sofa, and pressed it to her stomach as if to press away the pain that shot through her. “Do you really think I need photographs to remind me of what I lost, Crystal?”
“I’m sorry, Genna. I thought maybe you’d want them.” Crystal stood up. “I thought maybe it would be good for both of us. I was very wrong.”
Crystal picked up the pictures that had slipped onto the floor and tucked them back into her pocket, her face red with embarrassment.
“This was clearly a disaster,” Crystal said as she picked up her bag with trembling fingers. “Just another example of how bad my judgment is. I just wish. . .”
Genna looked up at her with eyes darkened with emotions she’d spent years denying, but did not trust herself to speak.
“Well, I just wish you could have been just a little happy to see me.” Crystal crossed the carpet toward the door.
“I’d have been a lot happier if you hadn’t waited all these years to show up,” Genna said curtly.
“That door swings both ways, Gen. Your resources are much more sophisticated than mine.” For the first time since she’d arrived, a touch of anger rose in Crystal’s voice and she stopped at the door, her hand on the doorknob. “How much of an effort did you make to find me?”
“I was the chick who was pushed out of the nest, remember?”
“I wasn’t the one who was doing the pushing. And for the record, you just don’t know how lucky you were.” Crystal opened the door and let herself out, closing it quietly behind her.
For several long minutes, Genna sat on the sofa, trying to make sense out of what had just happened.
The last person in the world that she’d expected to show up on her doorstep, just had. The pain that initially had been dulled by shock began to spread through her chest, and she clutched the pillow tighter.
“Crystal. Crystal was here.” Genna said the words aloud as if to convince herself that it had really happened.
She rose and carefully replaced the pillow on the sofa, then bent to pick up one of the fallen photos, missed, apparently, when Crystal gathered up the others. Genna, her brown hair in tight, neat pigtails, dressed in a hand-me-down dress of ugly green and gray plaid that someone in the church had given them, posing for her school picture. Crystal had worn it the year before. Genna studied the face of the child she had been. This must have been in second or third grade, she recalled. The side of her jaw bore the faintest tinge of purple, where her father’s fist had taken its toll for some infraction the weekend before. Genna searched her memory for what her transgression had been that time. . .
It occurred to Genna then that her mother must have taken great pains to hide the photographs that Crystal had brought with her. Her father had forbidden them to have their pictures taken.
Looking at yourself promotes vanity.
Even in the silence of her apartment, so far from that small house in Kentucky where they’d lived the year the class photo had been taken, Genna could hear his voice. The backwoods church had been without a preacher and when her father had been offered the position, he’d jumped at it. For a while, Genna and Crystal had been almost happy. The house backed up to a woods where they could sneak off and play on those afternoons when their father had been busy counseling members of his congregation. And the busier he was, the less time he had to worry about the many ways in which they were leading themselves into the arms of the devil.
There in the woods, Genna’s imagination could run wild, unrestricted by constant quotes of Scripture that reminded her that this world was not her home. The two girls would gather sticks and lay the outline of the grand mansion they pretended to live in. A mansion that had lots of windows that were always open to let in those gentle breezes that would push out the stifling air of their father’s dominance that hung over them all.
It was there, in Kentucky, where her father had first come to the attention of Clarence Homer, a wealthy man from the small town of Lindenwood in the southwesternmost point of Pennsylvania, just over the West Virginia border. Homer had been visiting the Blue Grass members of his family when he’d first heard Reverend Snow’s fiery rhetoric, and his own fundamentalist leanings had been incited. Returning to Lindenwood, which at the time had a church but no resident preacher, he convinced his brother elders that Reverend Snow was just the man they needed to bring around the wayward in their community. Reverend Snow had a definite gift for reminding transgressors of what awaited them in the hereafter.
The move to Pennsylvania had proven, for a while, to be their salvation. Back in Kentucky, school had been an endless series of religious lectures presented by dour teachers in a small clapboard building over which their father ultimately presided, for the school was run by the church. Mr. Homer, however, had felt Preacher Snow’s time far too valuable to be spent in the classroom, and had effectively removed him from the educational process. The children in Lindenwood attended the local public schools, as had Mr. and Mrs. Homer and each of their six children, and they’d all turned out just fine.
And so Genna and Crystal had their first exposure to public education, with books to read that told stories that weren’t just from the Bible. It had taken the Snow girls a good two weeks to adjust to the changes—none of which, they agreed, they should discuss with their parents—but before the first month had passed, they’d become acclimated to their new school. Happier than they’d ever been, they knew instinctively to keep that joy under wraps at home, lest their father find a way to take it from them in the guise of saving their souls. It seemed the more they enjoyed their life and their new surroundings, the wider their horizons became, the more their father’s vision narrowed.
And then came that first summer, and Mr. Homer’s pronouncement that the Snow girls should spend the months of July and August at the camp that was owned by his family and run by his brother, Michael, in the woods upstate. Before their father could object, Genna and Crystal had been shuttled off to the Way of the Shepherd where, besides endless hours memorizing yet more Scripture—much of which they interpreted during arts and crafts—they learned to swim and play soccer and baseball. Rarely, if ever, had Genna seen Brother Michael, who roamed the camp like a wayward monk, his white robes flowing around his ankles, its loosely fashioned hood folded around his head and hiding his face. Genna’s only contact with him had been at morning and evening prayers, and so he had not been a factor in her life. Not until that second summer, anyway. . . and even then, she’d never seen his face.
Only his dark eyes.
Genna went to the window that overlooked the parking lot, searching for Crystal in the dim light, but there was no movement to be seen. Perhaps she had parked along the street side. She pushed aside the living room drapes and peered out toward the main road. There, halfway to the corner, a woman walked slowly in the shadow of the street lamps.
She must have taken the bus, Genna realized. She came all this way on a bus, just to see me. Just to find me.
I can’t even begin to count the number of times I’ve thought of her. Wondered where she was. How she was. What her life was like.
Genna turned from the window, the sight of the lonely woman growing smaller and smaller in the night more than she could bear.
We shouldn’t have had to wonder about such things. We should have been able to grow up together, Genna thought as her anger began to swell inside her. Anger at her parents. At the fate that had separated her from that one member of her family who hadn’t voluntarily walked away from her.
Then why such anger toward her, Genna asked herself. Because they cared enough about her to keep her?
But Chrissie couldn’t have prevented what happened, her conscience reminded her. It’s not fair to be angry with her now because of what others did so long ago.
And regardless of anything else that may have happened, we are still sisters. Strangers, yes, but in the end, we are still sisters. . .
Grabbing her keys, Genna unlocked the front door and ran down the hallway. Too impatient to wait for the elevator, she raced down the steps and through the lobby. Her long-legged stride carried her quickly to the corner, where she found Crystal seated on the bench, blowing her nose and trying to pretend she wasn’t crying.
“I’m not used to all the car fumes,” she said without looking at Genna. “I’ve lived in the country all my life, you know.”
Genna sat down on the hard concrete arm of the bench.
“Where was the halfway house?” Genna asked as she struggled to catch her breath.
“Outside of Hazard.”
“Kentucky?” Genna’s eyebrows raised in the dark.
“Yes.”
“Near Gramma’s house?”
“Actually, closer to Uncle Neil and Aunt Hazel’s.”
“Hazel from Hazard,” Genna whispered, and in spite of themselves, both women smiled. “Remember when we were little, we always thought that sounded so funny?”
“And a sweeter woman God never did put on this earth.” Crystal nodded. “She never did come around to Momma after they. . . after you. . .”
“After the trial?”
“Yes. When she realized what had happened, she lit into Daddy like no one ever had.” Crystal shook her head, remembering. “Momma turned white as a ghost, I swear it. She just stood there like a statue. Shocked, I guess, that anyone—-least of all her own sister—could stand up to him that way, or talk to him like that. No one had ever defied him, you know.” Her voice dropped and she added, “Except, of course, for you.”
“And I guess Aunt Hazel fared about as well as I did as a result,” Genna said wryly.
“Momma never spoke to her again.” Crystal searched her pockets for another tissue.
“Seems she paid an awfully big price for loving him.”
“Oh, I don’t know that I’d call that love.” Crystal shook her head. “Daddy had an iron grip on her will, Genna. Which he did, as you will recall, enforce with his fists, if nothing else was handy. Suffice it to say that Momma had a lot of problems that really started to surface more and more after you. . . after you were gone.”
“Like what?”
“Like being afraid to go outside. She wouldn’t go anywhere after a time, not even to church, no matter how much he yelled at her. Like crying all the time, though I always figured that was because she missed you. I never thought she wanted to leave you, Gen. I just think she wasn’t strong enough to face him down. None of us were. We were always so afraid in that house, remember?”
“Yes,” Genna said softly. “I remember.”
They sat in silence, watching the headlights of the Greyhound approach.
“There’s probably another bus in the morning.” Genna took her hand. “Maybe there’re still things we need to say to one another.”
The bus pulled up to the curb and stopped.
“Maybe you won’t want to hear it all,” Crystal told her. “And after you do, you might wish you hadn’t.”
“Maybe I should hear it anyway.”
The bus door opened with a whoosh. The driver sat staring impatiently at the two women on the bench.
Finally, he called out to them.
“Hey! You two gettin’ on, or are you just passing time?”
“Just passing time,” Genna told him.
He slammed the door shut and the bus pulled away in a huff of exhaust.
“I thought they were supposed to have some emission thing on them to keep all that crap out of the air.”
“They are.” Genna stood, pulling Crystal with her. “Come on. Let’s go on back to my apartment and we’ll start all over.”
Crystal shifted her bag onto her shoulder as she rose to her feet.
“Do I have to stand in the bushes again?” Crystal asked as she fell in step with her sister. “Because if I do, I hope you have a lot of calamine lotion. The mosquitoes are really fierce around here.”
“Jerseys,” Genna nodded. “We grow ’em big and mean.”
They were halfway back to the apartment building when Genna asked, “Did you ever miss me, Chrissie?”
“Oh, my God, Genna, every day. I can’t even begin to tell you what it was like.” Crystal’s voice caught in her throat.
“Tell me. Tell me what it was like after I left.”
“You sure you want to know?”
“Yes.”
“We weren’t allowed to mention your name. It was like you had never been. Like I was the only child and there had never been anyone else.”
“Jesus,” Genna growled, her hands unconsciously closing into fists.
“And Mr. Homer told Daddy right off—right after the trial started—that he thought perhaps it might be better if we left, though I never was sure if it was because he was angry with you for blowing the whistle on his brother, or angry with himself because he knew what his brother was and he hadn’t blown the whistle himself. In any event, the people in the church were really divided over the whole thing. Some people believed you and the other girls were telling the truth, and some others—like Daddy—thought that you were lying and that the social workers and the child psychologists had talked the other girls into lying, too.”
“Why would he think that I would make up something like that? I’ve never understood it. I know that he did, because he tried to beat it out of me. I just never understood why.”
“I think it was to hold onto his church. He’d never in his life had a church like that one, and he’d never had a congregation near that big. And you telling on Brother Michael, well, that just brought shame to the entire community. Remember that Michael was the only brother of Daddy’s benefactor. Because of you, Daddy lost it all. His church, his congregation, Mr. Homer’s favor. . . everything. Going back to Kentucky, goin’ from one country church to another again was a big blow to him, Genna. He’d thought he’d never have to see that preachin’ circuit again, and there he was, right back on it.”
“He’d rather have seen his daughters raped than lose his church?”
“Yes. Apparently, he would. But it wasn’t just the church. It was the position. The power. The feeling of importance.”
“And after it was done, he pushed me out of his mind as if I’d never been born.”
“I’m sorry. But you asked. And it hurt me, too. You were gone out of my life in a blink, but I wasn’t ever allowed to grieve.”
“Is that what put you in therapy?”
“Part of it. And partly it was because it just got too hard to be perfect. And because of what I. . .” her voice trailed away.
They stopped in front of the apartment building.
“It isn’t too late, Genna. We can stop now, and I can go back to the bus stop. Maybe it would be better if I did.”
“Better for who?”
“For both of us. Maybe in the long run, there are things you’d be better off not knowing.”
“Not at this stage of the game.” Genna put an arm around Crystal’s shoulder. “After all these years, I don’t think I can let you walk away just yet. So, come on, we’ll go upstairs and. . .”
“You may not want me in your house after you hear what else I have to say.” Crystal took a tentative step backward.
“Then say it now and get it over with,” Genna told her.
“When they came back without you, at first, I didn’t think a whole lot of it. I mean, you’d stayed up north there for a while before the trial. . .”
“The district attorney had to get a court order to keep me there. He was afraid that if they took me out of the county, that they wouldn’t bring me back for the trial and the case would fall apart.” Genna swallowed hard and asked, “What did they tell you? What reason did they give you, when they came back without me?”
“A few days after they got back, Daddy announced, ‘Genevieve is lost to the devil. We will not speak of her again.’ And we never did.” Crystal crossed her arms over her chest as if to hug herself. “But then I started to wonder, if I did something that really angered him, wouldn’t they send me away, too? There’d never been much margin for error in that house. But if I was very good, then they’d keep me. So I tried and tried to be good as I could be. But as time went on, it became harder and harder. I could never falter, never make a mistake. I was so afraid of him. I was afraid all the time. But I never talked back. I never showed anger. I always did everything I was told to do. I was the good daughter. The one good enough to keep.”
Crystal paused, then added, “And then one day I started adding up what it had cost me, and I realized that it hadn’t been anywhere near worth it. I’d paid far too much for the privilege. And ending it seemed to be the only way out.”
“You tried to kill yourself?”
“Jumped off a bridge. Most people don’t survive a jump in excess of one hundred and thirty-five feet into the water, did you know that? The death rate is just about one hundred percent from that height.” Crystal nodded her head slowly. “Well, I survived it. Some damned do-gooder fishing off the damned bridge radioed for help on his cell phone, then jumped into the water after me.”
“Chrissie, why didn’t you come sooner?” Genna whispered. “Why did you wait so long to look for me?”
“Because after all that happened, I couldn’t face you. I just felt so damned guilty.”
“You were twelve years old that summer. What do you think you could have done that would have made a difference?”
“I could have told the truth.” Crystal swallowed the lump in her throat and forced herself to say the words. “I could have told them.”
“Told them. . . ?” Genna’s eyes narrowed suspiciously.
“About Brother Michael. I knew that you were telling the truth, Gen. I knew exactly what he had done to the others, what he’d tried to do to you.” Crystal raised her face to look directly into her sister’s eyes. “I knew, because for all that summer and the summer before, he’d been doin’ it to me.”