Gerald's Game(63)

By the time her blouse was buttoned and tucked into her shorts, the anger was gone, or-same difference-banished back to its cave. And what she kept seeing in her mind was her mother coming back early. It wouldn't matter that she was fully dressed again. The fact that something bad had happened was on their faces, just hanging out there, big as life and twice as ugly. She could see it on his face and feel it on her own.

"Are you all right, Jessie?" he asked quietly. "Not feeling faint, or anything?"

"No." She tried to smile, but this time she couldn't quite manage it. She felt a tear slip down one cheek and wiped it away quickly, guiltily, with the heel of her hand.

"I'm sorry." His voice was trembling, and she was horrified to see tears standing in his eyes-oh, this just got worse and worse and worse. "I'm so sorry." He turned abruptly, ducked into the bathroom, grabbed a towel off the rack, and wiped his face with it. While he did this, Jessie thought fast and hard.

"Daddy?"

He looked at her over the towel. The tears in his eyes were gone. If she hadn't known better, she would have sworn they had never been there at all.

The question almost stuck in her throat, but it had to be asked. Had to be.

"Do we... do we have to tell Mom about it?" He took a long, sighing, trembling breath. She waited, her heart in her mouth, and when he said "I think we have to, don't you?" it sank all the way to her feet.

She crossed the room to him, staggering a little-her legs seemed to have no feeling in them at all-and wrapped her arms around him. "Please, Daddy. Don't. Please don't tell. Please don't. Please... "Her voice blurred, collapsed into sobs, and she pressed her face against his bare chest.

After a moment he slipped his arms around her, this time in his old, fatherly way.

"I hate to," he said, "because things have been pretty tense between the two of us just lately, hon. I'd be surprised if you didn't know that, actually. A thing like this could make them a lot worse. She hasn't been very... well, very affectionate lately, and that was most of the problem today. A man has... certain needs. You'll understand about that somed -"

"But if she finds out, she'll say it was my fault!"

"Oh, no-I don't think so," Tom said, but his tone was surprised, considering... and, to Jessie, as dreadful as a deathsentence. "No-ooo... I'm sure-well, fairly sure-that she... "She looked up at him, her eyes streaming and red. "Please don't tell her, Daddy! Please don't! Please don't!"

He kissed her brow. "But Jessie... I have to. We have to."

"Why? Why, Daddy?"

"Because-"

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Jessie shifted a little. The chains jingled; the cuffs themselves rattled on the bedposts. The light was now streaming in through the east windows.

"'Because you couldn't keep it a secret,"" she said dully. "'Because if it's going to come out, Jessie, it's better for both of us that it should come out now, rather than a week from now, or a month from now, or a year from now. Even ten years from now.""

How well he had manipulated her-first the apology, then the tears, and finally the hat-trick: turning his problem into her problem. Br'er Fox, Br'er Fox, whatever else Y'all do, don't th'ow me in dat briar patch! Until, finally, she had been swearing to him that she would keep the secret forever, that torturers couldn't drag it out of her with tongs and hot coals.

She could in fact remember promising him something just like that through a rain of hot, frightened tears. Finally he had stopped shaking his head and had only looked across the room with his eyes narrowed and his lips pressed tightly together-this she saw in the mirror, as he almost surely knew she would.

"You could never tell anyone," he'd said at last, and Jessie remembered the swooning relief she'd felt at those words. What he was saying was less important than the tone in which he was saying it. Jessie had heard that tone a good many times before, and knew it drove her mother crazy that she, Jessie, could cause him to speak that way more often than Sally herself. I'm changing my mind, it said. I'm doing it against my better judgment, but I am changing it; I'm swinging around to your side.

I No," she had agreed. Her voice was wavery, and she had to keep gulping back tears. "I wouldn't tell, Daddy-not ever." "Not just your mother," he said, "but anyone. Ever. That's a big responsibility for a little girl, Punkin. You might be tempted. For instance, if you were studying with Caroline Cline or Tammy Hough after school, and one of them told you a secret of hers, you might want to tell-"

"Them? Never-Never-Never!"

And he must have seen the truth of it on her face: the thought of either Caroline or Tammy finding out that her father had touched her had filled Jessie with horror. Satisfied on that score, he had pushed on to what she now guessed must have been his chief concern.

"Or your sister." He pushed her back from him and looked sternly down into her face for a long moment. "There could come a time, you see, when you wanted to tell her-"

"Daddy, no, I'd never

He gave her a gentle shake. "Keep quiet and let me nish, Punkin. You two are close, I know that, and I know that girls sometimes feel an urge to share things they ordinarily wouldn't tell. If you felt that way with Maddy, could you still manage to keep quiet?"