Unspeakable Things(77)
“You can save your therapy bullshit,” Mom said. She was shaking. “My girls don’t need to see you flirting with their father, that’s all. They’ve both gotten some terrible news. If you can’t respect this family, you don’t need to be here.”
“Hey, hey now,” Dad said, his voice lazy. He grabbed Jin’s hand and tried to pull her back onto the couch. “You’re family. You’re always welcome here.”
Mom and Jin faced off. The air crackled between them. Dad could have been a booger on the ceiling for all they cared at this moment.
“Cassie, Seph, I guess I’ll be going,” Aunt Jin finally said. She was still glaring at Mom. She didn’t move, maybe hoping we’d try to talk her into staying.
None of us did.
No one stopped her, either, when she stomped away. We all four stayed still as statues when the front door slammed. It wasn’t until her car started up that Mom’s shoulders slumped.
“I hope you’re happy.” The poison in Dad’s voice startled me. He was staring at Mom with the blackest of hate.
“Not for years,” she said. “Sephie, Cassie, go to bed.”
Neither of us argued that it wasn’t yet full dark.
Halfway up the stairs, Sephie grabbed my hand. “Sleep with me tonight. Please.”
CHAPTER 53
Sephie held me in her bed. We were both shivering, me so hard that my teeth chattered.
Mom and Dad were yelling in the living room below.
“You try to fuck every woman you see!”
Dad’s burry voice, a low-enough rumble that I could only hear snatches. “. . . lucky . . . past your prime . . .”
Mom yelled over him, her voice breaking. “I could leave you!”
“Sephie,” I whispered, “I thought Bauer was the one attacking the boys, but I’m not so sure anymore.”
“What?”
Dad’s voice came through loud and clear this time. “I pay my share. Me and Bauer’s side business makes twice what you do.”
I raised my voice just enough to drown out Mom and Dad. “Every single boy who was attacked rides our bus. Ricky, Gabriel, Wayne, Clam, Teddy. Ricky said he heard clicking when he was grabbed, same as that clicking noise Bauer’s dog tags make.”
“The other night, Wayne told me it was Mr. Connelly’s metronome,” Sephie said, sitting up.
“If Connelly was gonna attack kids, he would never bring along a metronome,” I said, wanting to believe my own words. “That’s just stupid. Besides, he’s not like that. Bauer is.”
The moon shone in through Sephie’s window, laying a strip of light across her eyes. She was piecing together scraps of a story. “Clam made the noise for me at summer school. It wasn’t the sound of dog tags jangling.”
Mom and Dad grew quiet below us, like they were waiting along with me.
“What did it sound like?” I asked.
She squished her eyes shut. I felt the noise more than heard it, back in her throat.
Cuk-cuk-cuk.
Like something small was trying to get out of her voice box.
Hearing it felt like my skin was being peeled off, like it hurt just to be alive.
Because I recognized that noise.
It was the same back-of-the-throat sound Goblin had made when I’d collided with him at the liquor store, and then again when he’d appeared in our driveway, arguing with Dad about his dog.
It wasn’t Bauer molesting boys, hadn’t ever been. The Goblin had been the one all along, and the police knew it but couldn’t stop him. Dad didn’t hate Goblin because he was a draft dodger, like Mom said. He hated him because monster hates monster.
“Sephie, if that’s the noise, it means it’s Goblin attacking the boys.” The words surged out of my mouth, hot and painful. “It makes sense. He follows our bus a lot, and all the boys who were attacked ride bus twenty-four. Besides, we heard him make that same noise a couple times.”
I could see her connecting everything she knew with what I’d just said. She shuddered. “We should tell Mom and Dad.”
They were still arguing, but now they were using their civilized, educated voices to slice into each other. Dad told Mom she wasn’t pretty anymore and that he could do better. Mom said Dad was a loose cannon and that he didn’t really have PTSD like he claimed. They were both taking their fears out for a walk. They didn’t mean it. They never did.
“They won’t do anything.”
“Then go to the police,” Sephie said.
I rolled my eyes, even though I felt like puking. “Bauer told me no one would believe me because I got caught stealing that lip gloss.”
“So we do nothing?”
I thought for a moment. “Let’s run away!”
“How will that help Gabriel?”
“We’ll run away to somewhere where they believe kids. I can tell them about Goblin and about Dad.” I felt older than her, or more whole than her, and that realization made me feel emptier than I ever had.
I pulled her into an embrace. “Dad isn’t going to change. You know that, right? He’s going to keep hurting you, and he’s going to come for me. Maybe if we turn him in, you can stop having sex with all those boys.”
She drew back, her face as white as her sheet. “I don’t have sex with all those boys.”