“Yes, Susan was my daughter.”
For the first time, sadness wilted Pearl’s calm and collected demeanor. “My only daughter. I never had another child after her, and I knew I would never have another. You see, Arthur never wanted any children. He was adamant about it, said it was the only contingency he had when we got married. And so I agreed, though I realize after all these years that I hated him for it. At the time I told myself I didn’t mind, because I had my Susan. Even though she was adopted by someone else, I could still be close to her here in Notchey Creek, I could still look over her like a mother. After all, that is why I moved here in the first place.”
“And Susan’s real father?”
“Susan’s real father,” she said, looking wistfully past Harley to the row of windows overlooking Main Street, “was the only man I ever truly loved.”
Her eyes met Harley’s. “Oh, don’t look so surprised. You think I don’t know about Arthur’s late-night dates, his preference for cheap women? Of course, I know it. I’ve always known it. The difference is I don’t care. You have to love someone to be made jealous by them, and I don’t love Arthur, never have.”
“But you’ve always acted so convincingly.”
“Oh, yes, I’m quite the little actress.” A smile formed on her face, then disappeared. “Always have been, even when I was a child. That’s what you do when you grow up one of seven in a two-room housing project, fighting for every little scrap you have. You become crafty, artful, doing anything within your filthy little means to rise above the squalor. And I did. Oh, how I did.”
A look of triumph lit up her face then darkened. “My father was a drunk, you see, always between jobs, could never keep one for very long because he couldn’t stay sober for any period of time. And when he did have a job, he squandered his wages at the neighborhood bar, leaving nothing for us. My mother … she started bringing men home when my father wasn’t there—for money—just to buy food for us. The men …” She swallowed hard and exhaled. “When they left my mother, some of them tried to come into my room and …”
Her face tightened with disgust then relaxed. “Anyway, I left after that. I ran away from home when I was sixteen, and I got a job at one of the department stores in Knoxville, convincing women that if they would just buy that new pair of gloves, that new dress, that new pair of shoes they would feel beautiful. And it worked. By year’s end, I was number one in sales in my department.
“I also knew that if I was going to rise above my station at work or anywhere else, I was going to have to look the part, so I started stealing little things from the store, just here and there, nothing that would be noticed. First a pair of earrings, then a pair of stockings, and then graduating to clothes. By the time I was eighteen, I had a complete wardrobe I could wear to my evening typing classes and then to my job interviews in the afternoons.
“Then, a law office hired me as a secretary, and that was where I met Susan’s father, one of the partners in the firm. He was handsome and charming and dignified, tall and regal in his suits and ties. He was quite a bit older than me, at least fifteen years, I think, and married with children of his own, but it didn’t matter. I was so taken with him from the very first time I ever saw him, ever talked to him, that I knew my fate had already been sealed.
“I didn’t want to fall in love with him, of course. I didn’t want to fall in love with anyone. But then again, you can’t choose who you love, can you? It happens even when you want to be completely self-reliant, like I did, not letting anything interfere with the goals you’ve set for yourself. But Susan’s father was a weakness I could not resist, and to this day, he’s been the only weakness I’ve ever had besides Susan.
“It all started very innocently, our affair. He was staying at the office late some nights, working on cases, and it was just the two of us there, all alone, in the dim office, just the streetlights and table lamps keeping us company.
“When I first started working there, you see, I pledged that I would always be the last to leave the office and the first to arrive in the morning. That was the key to success, I told myself. And so you see, I wasn’t going to leave there until after he did. So there I sat at my desk, typing away, the light filtering in from his corner office as he pored over his cases.
“I caught him looking at me from time to time, and when our eyes met, he blushed with embarrassment, and returned to his work. But over time, the looks grew longer between us, lingering, until there was no embarrassment behind them at all, no blushing, just an understanding.
“One night he asked me to come into his office, said he needed to ask me something. I knew the real reason behind his request, of course, and I knew what was going to happen between us when I crossed the threshold that night, that my life was about to change, that my world would be forever altered.
“And when I did go in there, and he rose from his desk, and he stood over me, so handsome and dignified and strong, his eyes caressing my hair, my face, my figure, I knew fate had dealt a heavy hand. And then he closed the door behind us and shut off the lights, darkness covering our desire, our sin, a sin that has followed me like a shadow for more than fifty years.”
She closed her eyes and paused in a moment of silence, then opened her eyes once more. “The affair carried on for a few months after that, in the same way it had that first night. I thought he must love me by that point, the way he would send me flowers, jewelry, dresses, tell me how beautiful I was, how desirable I was. And his interest did not wane, did not abate until I asked him what his intentions were for our future. He was married, I knew, and with two children, but I assumed that the love he felt for me, the passion that had caused him to betray his family in the first place, would drive him to leave them, to start a new life with me.
“But this wasn’t the case. I began seeing less and less of him. He would avoid me, leaving early in the evenings, inventing fabricated meetings that took him outside the office. Before long, I was seeing him hardly at all. I thought perhaps he needed time to think, to mull over what his next step would be for us. After all, it was a major life decision, leaving your family for a woman who was so many years your junior, and who came from nothing.
“But this wasn’t the case, of course, either. I knew the affair was over between us, that he had wiped his hands of me completely, when one of the other partners came into my office one evening after everyone else had left. He set a pair of diamond earrings on my desk and told me they could be mine if I met him at a hotel after work the next day. He said he heard I liked nice things, that I liked to have a little fun too for the right price, and that he would give me those earrings, and other things, lots of other things, if I did what he wanted.
“I handed in my resignation the next day. By then, though, I knew I was pregnant with Susan. I confronted her father about it, told him about the child, that I expected to keep her, expected him to help me raise her. He said the baby probably wasn’t even his, that I should try to get rid of it, that a child didn’t deserve to be brought up by a soiled woman who turned tricks for anybody with a wallet.”
Pearl paused, her mind caught up in the memory as if it were happening all over again, as if Susan’s father was standing right before her eyes. “It’s amazing, really,” she said, “how love can turn so quickly to hate. How you can live your entire life for someone in one moment, then want the world rid of them the next. Susan’s father was the first person I ever loved. He was also the first person I ever killed. It was so difficult for me that first time, I felt so conflicted over him. It gets so much easier, you see, over time, the more you do it, the more experience you have of separating your emotions from the act of killing. But his death … his death was the hardest.”
She looked at Harley. “So hard for me … but so easy in the execution.”
She deflected her gaze back to the windows overlooking Main Street. “My father was a drunk, you see, but he was a good mechanic when he was sober. He taught me a few things about cars, enough to know my way around an engine without any problems, and while Susan’s father was working late one night at the office, probably seducing the poor girl who replaced me, I cut the brakes to his Mercedes while it was parked in the office lot.
“A few hours later, as he was driving home to his precious family, he tried to brake for a deer in the road, and his car swerved, striking a tree head-on. It killed him instantly.” She paused and her eyes met Harley’s. “Can you believe that even after everything he had done to me, even after all of the hurt and pain he had caused me, I mourned him? That I missed him? That I still miss him to this very day?”
She drew in a deep breath and released it slowly. “The human heart is a mysterious thing. Anyway, I gave birth to Susan some months after that, and as much as I hated to, I gave her up for adoption. You see, it wasn’t as accepted back then as it is today. People frowned upon unwed mothers. It was a shame that followed you for the rest of your life, killing any chances you might have at marriage with a respectable man.
“Giving up Susan was the only viable option I had at that point. Sometime thereafter, I discovered Susan had been adopted by a childless couple here in Notchey Creek, the Thompsons. When the opportunity arose, I moved here and took a job at the public library as an aide. I met Arthur, we were married soon after, and I still had the opportunity to be near Susan. I volunteered at the school, always ensuring that I would get to interact with her class, spend time with her in a safe environment. We became very close over the years, and she adored me, just as I adored her. It was almost like she somehow knew I was her real mother, and that made the bond between us that much stronger.
“Then, when she became pregnant with Martin’s child, and she moved out of her mother’s house, she came to live with us. Arthur didn’t care, of course, as long as it didn’t interfere with his extramarital liaisons, and he never suspected, not once, that Susan was my daughter.
“And then everything started coming together in a way that seemed like it was ordained from above, that what was about to happen had been fated in the stars.”