The Marsh King's Daughter(47)

I also felt sorry for my father. He knew I was restless. I’m sure he hoped that by showing me what he considered the marsh’s greatest treasure, he could convince me to stay. But after I saw that family, all I wanted was to leave.

I turned away from the railing with no explanation for my tears except to say I wasn’t feeling well and we needed to go home right away. Naturally the girls were disappointed. Stephen swung Mari onto his shoulders and started up the stairs without question. But as I followed more slowly with Iris, I could tell she didn’t believe me.





17





The naked dead man lying on the cabin’s kitchen floor is not my husband. The idea that this might be Stephen was only a momentary thought, one of those illogical emotional reactions that pop into your head during the first few seconds after you’ve had a surprise or a shock that are just as quickly dismissed.

That the man is naked is disturbing. Easy to assume that when my father walked in on him, the man wasn’t cooking his breakfast without any clothes on. Just as easy to figure the dead man isn’t wearing clothes because my father made him take them off before he shot him. This means that not only did the man know he was about to die, but my father humiliated him during his final moments. But of course my father always had a sadistic side. I doubt that thirteen years in a maximum security prison have improved his disposition.

What bothers me more than the way my father killed the man is that my father didn’t have to kill him at all. He could have tied him to a chair, gagged him if he didn’t want to listen to the man’s objections, fixed himself something to eat, changed clothes, taken a nap, played cards, listened to music, and otherwise hung around the cabin while the searchers beat the bushes for him down in the marsh, then gone on his way again after it got dark. Someone would have found the man eventually, most likely within the next couple of days once the searchers realized they’d been tricked and turned their attention north. If the man was even moderately resourceful, there are any number of ways he could have gotten free on his own. Instead, my father made him take off his clothes and get down on his knees and beg for his life, then shot him in the back of the head.

I pull out my cell. No service. I punch in 9-1-1 anyway. Sometimes a call or a text will go through. But this one doesn’t. Instead another text alert appears on the screen. Four messages from Stephen:


Where r u?

r u ok?

Call me

Come home. Pls. We need to talk

I read the first text again, then look down at the man’s body. Where am I? Stephen definitely wouldn’t want to know.

I cross the kitchen to try the landline. No dial tone. Whether the man didn’t pay his bill or my father cut the line doesn’t matter. I go outside and walk up the driveway with my phone in hand to see if I can catch a signal. I don’t care about looking for footprints or other signs that my father was here. Whatever game he’s playing, I’m done. I’ll drive until I get a signal—go all the way to state police headquarters and report the murder in person if I have to—then it’s straight home to my husband. The police won’t be happy I went looking for my father, and neither will Stephen, but that’s the least of my problems. Stephen might think that going forward will be as simple as both of us saying “I’m sorry, I love you,” but I know better. Always in the back of his mind will be the knowledge that the father of the woman he married is a very bad man. Stephen can pretend that nothing has changed. He might even fool himself into believing this is true. But in reality he’ll never be able to forget that half of my genetic makeup comes from my father. He’s probably at the computer right now, reading everything he can find about The Marsh King and his daughter.

And this time when the media vultures swoop down to rip me apart, it’s going to be worse because of my girls. Stephen and I can try to shield them from the attention, but we may as well try to hold back a waterfall. Mari will probably be able to handle the notoriety. Iris not so much. Regardless, one day, Iris and Mari will know everything about me, about their grandparents, and about the despicable thing their grandfather did to their grandmother. Everything is online, including the People magazine article with that ridiculous cover. All they have to do is Google.

I hope when that time comes my girls realize I’ve tried to be a better mother to them than my mother was to me. I understand it was hard for her after we left the marsh. She came back to a world that had moved on without her. The kids she’d gone to school with had grown up, gotten married, had kids of their own, moved away. Without the notoriety her kidnapping brought her, it’s hard to say how my mother’s life would have turned out. I picture her marrying as soon as she graduated high school, having a couple of kids in quick succession, living in a trailer on the back of her parents’ property or someone’s empty cabin, washing dishes and cleaning house and cooking dinner and doing laundry while her husband delivered pizzas or cut pulp. Not that much different from her life in the marsh, when you think about it. If that sounds harsh, you need to remember that my mother was only twenty-eight when she left the marsh. She could have finished her education, made something of herself. I understand my father kidnapped her when she was at a vulnerable age; I know there’s a terrible toll on children who grow up in a state of captivity. Confinement stunts them at the very point in their lives when they’re supposed to be maturing emotionally and intellectually. I’ve often wondered if the doll my mother made for me on my fifth birthday was, really, for her.