Chapter Eighteen

SHAE-LYNN? YOU THERE, precious?”

My stomach begins to churn. I try to respond, but nothing happens on my first attempt. My lips move but no sound comes out. I clear my throat.

“Don’t call me precious,” I manage to say.

He laughs again.

“Whoa. Hold on. Don’t sue me for sexual harassment. I forgot. You’re one of those feminist types running around fixing your own car and being a cop. I suppose you think your gun is bigger than mine.”

“I know my brain is bigger and that’s good enough for me.”

He laughs again. It’s a big, hearty, privileged laugh, the kind that brings to mind images of fat fairy-tale kings holding jeweled chalices of wine and golden legs of dripping venison while roaring over the antics of a court jester no one else finds funny.

“I suppose I always knew you’d turn out that way. You were that way when you were a kid, too. Always dressing like a boy. Covering up those great tits and legs of yours. Playing in the dirt. Getting into fights. Honestly. Tell me the truth. You wish you were a man, don’t you?”

“No, I don’t. Do you?”

This retort is met with silence.

“Well, Shae-Lynn, I have to be honest with you,” he begins slowly, the merriment having left his voice. “I was hoping you might be a little happier to hear from me after all this time.”

“What could possibly ever make you think that?”

“Because we had some good times together. Times I thought for sure you’d remember with some fondness.”

I’m too stunned to reply.

“We didn’t part on the best of terms” is all I can come up with as an explanation.

“That was your fault, not mine.”

These words cut right through me. The falseness and injustice behind them makes them sharper than any knife, yet I know he believes what he’s saying, and trying to convince him otherwise would be a waste of my time.

“That’s why I’m calling you,” he says.

“Why?”

“I’d say we have a little unfinished business.”

“We have no business together, finished or unfinished.”

“Yes, we do, sweetheart, and I need something from you and you’re going to get it for me.”

“What are you talking about?”

“It’s not something I want to talk about on the phone. I think it’s best if we talk face to face. Meet me at the J&P building tonight at seven.”

“No.”

“Don’t make me go behind your back.”

The kind of fear I haven’t felt since my childhood when I occupied the same room with my father sweeps through me.

In my mind I’m watching and waiting, afraid to breathe or speak, sweating, every internal organ having turned to stone, every muscle tensed, my mouth filled with a metallic bitterness while he does nothing more remarkable than eat his dinner or watch a ball game on TV.

I never knew when it would happen or if it would happen at all.

I’ve dealt with many kinds of fear during my life: the fear of facing a dangerous situation on the job; the fear of ending up broke and homeless; the fear all mothers have for the welfare of their children. But no matter how intense the fear, I could always attach an explanation to the source: I’m a police officer doing my job; life is hard and expensive; there are illnesses, and drunk drivers, and an endless list of random accidents that cause the death of children.

The fear my father inspired in me was entirely different. It was the free-falling terror of having been pushed from a cliff by an unseen hand without reason, without anyone to catch me, without any chance of survival.

Each time he hurt me I felt like I was falling, and each time he stopped I felt like I had hit the bottom of a canyon. I would pick myself up and realize I had become a ghost looking at life from another dimension, unable to feel the things the living felt and unable to care about the same things they cared about. The only course left to me that could bring me any peace was to discover what had I done to make my own father want to harm me. I did everything he wanted and gave him everything he asked for. I had been as generous and uncomplaining as the hills he mined.

“Did you hear me?” Cam Jack breaks into my thoughts.

I’m trying to find my safe place, but for the first time in my life I can’t get to it. A fear bigger than the fear of what’s scaring me on the outside is keeping me from getting inside. It’s the memory of the face at the window—pale, blurred, desperate. That it could be someone who knows me or someone who doesn’t, that it could be trying to get in or trying to convince me to come out are equally terrifying thoughts to me.

I glance at Dusty through my reflection on the driver’s side window. He’s scooping the last bites of waffle into his mouth.

I hover on the glass, a specter of myself: colorless, translucent, temporary.

“Yes,” I tell Cam.

“Meet me in my office at seven.”

“I will.”

In Cam Jack’s case, I had been as easy to rape as the land he owned.