Generational Sins (26 page)

I was lost. Planning what?

"I've thought about it a few times over the years," Ellen admitted, "I even went as far as learning how to cut the brake lines in a car. I don't think I could have done it though. What if he didn't die, and I only succeeded in angering him?"

She was planning to kill him? Holy shit.

"Where?" David again.

"The sharp bend right before the house comes into view. He nicked a deer there a few years ago, if you remember. It left a tiny dent in the front bumper. He beat the shit out of me over it and then traded the car in for a new one."

"Is it steep enough?"

Wait. David was considering this? We were going to try to cover this up with a car accident? Had everyone gone nuts?

"It's a forty foot drop. It should be sufficient."

"Wait, wait, wait," I interjected. "We can't seriously be thinking about this. We need to call the police. They will understand that it was self-defense. David will be cleared of the charges."

"No, Kat," Ellen said softly. "I know your father was a cop, and I'm sure that you think the best of them, but why do you think I stayed silent all this time? Why wouldn't I have gone to the police before?"

I thought about what she was implying. She thought the cops were crooked. Why would she think that?

"He paid them, Kat," she continued. "He made huge donations to the local police every year. They thought he was the greatest thing to walk to face of the earth. They won't let his death go unavenged. They won't believe us. He has a team of lawyers that will attack us in the event of his death. He was paranoid and well prepared. He has every possible scenario covered in his will. Even from the grave he can ruin my son. We can't fight the plan that he had in place. This needs to be an accidental death. I need to be a grieving widow and you, David, need to be his son."

I could do nothing but stare at her with my mouth open like the village idiot. I knew that she hated him, but the extent of her forethought was astounding. Maybe we should be listening to her.

"Where are his keys?" David asked. "I'll pull his car up to the kitchen door."

And just like that we were covering up the not-so-accidental death of his father. The law-abiding part of me was screaming to put a stop to this nonsense, but Ellen knew him best, and if she thought that calling the cops would mean danger for David then I was willing to go along. I would give my life to protect him.

We got Richard's body situated in the driver's seat and David and I pushed the car down the driveway to the spot that they had picked. I had never noticed before how far the ground sloped away from the drive. You'd have to crane your neck out the window to see it properly. It was a pretty shear drop. We turned the car around so that would look as if the accident had happened on Richard's way home.

David put the car in park and taped a brick to the accelerator with packing tape. He was planning to hike down to the bottom of the hill and remove the brick once the car was wrecked.

I held my breath.

David looked to his mom for confirmation and she nodded. David turned the car on, and it immediately sprang to life, the engine revving hard. He shifted it into drive and the car shot off, over the cliff.

We watched in silence, as it seemed to take flight and then tumbled downward. There was a sickening crunch and then it was quiet again. The car lay upside down, wedged between two trees. It appeared unlikely that anyone would have survived that crash – if there had been anyone alive in the car to begin with.

Ellen and I returned to the house to clean the blood from the kitchen floor while David made the trip down the hill to remove the brick and arrange the scene of the accident.

While we waited for David to return, Ellen and I discussed the next part of the plan. David and I would leave. We shouldn't be so far from campus during the school year. After we left, Ellen would call the police and report the accident. She would then call us and ask us to come. We will show up a couple of hours later and pretend to be shocked. That shouldn't be too hard. I was in shock.

I refused to think. If I let my brain get carried away, I would lose my composure completely. I was a little bit amazed that none of us were hysterical. My father in law had just raped me, my husband had murdered his own father, and his mother was telling us all how to cover it up with eerie precision after admitting that she'd been planning to kill him for years. Where was the screaming and crying? Nothing felt real.

Ellen was a woman of many hidden talents. Not only did she know how to cover up a murder, she knew how to get blood out of nearly every surface. I didn't want to think about the number of things that she could have possibly bled on over the years. It was too horrifying. I mostly stood and watched as she cleaned. When she finished, her kitchen was spotless as always.

A spotless kitchen floor, now there was something to focus on. I smiled in spite of myself. I wondered what Ellen would think of me if she knew what her son and I had done on her floors together. It wasn't in this house of course, but the mountain house. I had never forgotten about the first punishment that David had prepared for me. He told me I would have to scrub his mother's kitchen floor naked. We hadn't used it that weekend, but I had requested to keep it on the list of things to do. We didn't use it as a punishment but as a reward. It was a really fun reward.

"Do I want to know why you're suddenly a million miles away and smiling?" Ellen asked from across the room.

I blushed furiously.

"It's my son? He makes you feel that way?"

"Yes, ma'am," I answered.

"Good. There's been enough misery in this family. The love is a pleasant change." She gave me a half smile and I hoped it was a foreshadowing of more smiles to come. Happier times. They couldn't get much bleaker.

David came in a moment later, shutting the kitchen door with a bang.

"I'm finished," he said.

We needed to get moving.

David and I both washed up and changed our clothes. They found me a pair of Ellen's workout pants and one of David's t-shirts. It would look like we had gotten out of bed and driven straight here. We put our soiled clothes in a garbage bag and put them in the trunk of David's car. There wasn't time for a real shower, but I would take one at the first opportunity that I got. I felt violated and dirty. I was uncomfortable in my own skin.

Neither of us spoke as we passed the significant bend in the road. I don't think I even breathed until we left the long drive and turned onto the main road. We had some time to kill. David drove out of town. We were going to need gas. I dug into my purse and pulled out the twenty dollars in cash that I had. We didn't want to use a credit card because we knew that it would be possible to trace the transaction later. For the next hour or two it would be cash only.

We got gas. We waited some more. We drove around. We sat in the car in Wal-Mart’s parking lot.

Twenty minutes into the wait, Ellen called. David pretended to be woken up by the tragic call.

Ellen cried and said that the police had taken the body out of the car and to the morgue. They were now attempting to get the Mercedes out of the woods. We told her that we would be there in an hour.

The timing was plausible.

Neither of us was hungry. Neither of us knew what to say.

Time ticked by slowly.

Eventually, we moved to the backseat of the parked car, deciding that we would try to rest. We both knew that there would be no rest.

Finally, I couldn't stand it any more. We had to talk about it.

"David?"

"Yeah?"

"I'm scared."

"Me too."

"What do you think will happen?"

"I wish I knew."

"Yeah."

"Yeah."

It was quiet again.

"David, I need to talk about this."

David's hand tightened in my hair, and he pulled me to his chest.

"What's there to talk about, Kat? He fucking raped you. I fucking let him rape you."

Finally the tears that I had been expecting came. David broke down, and I curled into him as tightly as I could.

"I couldn't let him touch you," David whispered brokenly into my hair. "I promised you Kat that no one would ever touch you like that."

"I'm going to be okay, David. I've had worse pain."

"Damn it, Kat, we both know this has nothing to do with physical pain."

"I know, David. But we'll survive the mental part too. We have each other. We'll get through this. I still love you."

"I love you too, baby, so much."

I kissed him gently and clung to him with everything that I had.

Every time I closed my eyes I saw his face. His eyes were wide with shock. His own son. He would never have believed it. I still didn't believe it.

I knew that he was a sadistic son of a bitch, but I never thought he'd go that far. I thought he respected me enough not to touch what was mine. I guess I wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt. How wrong I was.

I pulled Kat closer to me. The backseat of the car was growing cold as we waited. What would I ever do without her?

The tears poured down my cheeks as I replayed in my head the horrors of the evening. How could he betray me like that? How could I kill him? It had happened so fast. I just wanted to make him stop. I wanted him to stop hurting my wife.

What kind of a monster kills his own father? I didn't even feel human.

Kat pressed gentle kisses to the side of my neck. She murmured soothing words trying to assure me that she was okay, but she wasn't okay. How could she be? Her father-in-law had raped her. She would never be okay again. How had I let this happen? I swore to protect her, and I failed.

I failed my mother too. All these years I failed her. Why did we wait? We should have left years ago. I had let the fear make me immobile, and now it was too late.

Kat's body was warm against me as she tried to comfort me. How ridiculous that I should need comforting. I was supposed to be the strong one, the dominant one. What a joke. She had always been stronger than me. Much stronger.

"David, please," she whispered softly. I noticed for the first time that she had tangled her limbs with mine. She was trying to get close to me. How could I touch her? How could she stand the feel of my hands on her skin – a murder who had left her alone to be raped and abused? How could she stand to look at me?

"No, Kat," I choked out, tormented. "I can't."

"Please, David," she begged again, pressing her perfect body against me. I could feel the weight of each breast against my chest. Her breath was warm and gentle against my neck. She was trying to comfort me with her body. I didn't deserve that. I couldn't take that from her.

"I can't. I can't," I sobbed into her hair. I didn't deserve to touch her. She should leave. I could never be good enough for her. I had failed her in the worst possible way.

I pushed her away gently, my hands on her shoulders.

Her tears were warm and wet as she began to cry, clinging to my chest. Her words came out in one long rushed sentence. "I'm sorry that I disobeyed you. I should have stayed in the car. It's my fault that you had to rescue me. I deserved what he did to me. I'm so sorry. I know I'm unworthy of you now. Please just punish me. I'll do whatever you want to make it up to you. Please don't send me away. I'll be good. I promise I'll do better."

What? She thought I was rejecting her? She thought I was blaming her for what happened. Oh God. How much more could go wrong?

"No, baby," I said, pulling her back to me again.

Would this fucked up insanity never end?

"None of this is your fault. I'm not rejecting you, sweetheart. I love you. I love you so much. I'm so sorry that I failed you."

"Then why won't you touch me? Do I disgust you now?"

"You could never disgust me, Kat." I held her close and rocked her in my arms. "I just don't understand how you could want to be touched after everything that happened. For fucks sake, Kat, he violated you. How can you possibly want to feel my hands on your skin after that? You don't have to do this for me."

"It's not for you, David. I need to feel you. I need to replace the feel of his hands with the feel of yours. My skin is crawling with the knowledge that he was the last one to touch me. I need to know that you still want me."

What a pair we were. I thought she had been trying to comfort me with her body, but now I understood. She was asking for comfort. She was insecure. She thought I would reject her like some kind of tainted goods. Sometimes I was just in awe of how her mind worked.

I could give her that. If it would help her to know that I still wanted her physically, I would do this for her. I could never deny her anything.

I put my hands in her glorious hair and tipped her head back. I pressed my lips to hers and then lost myself in her sweet taste. If my hands could wipe away his actions, I would touch her more thoroughly than I ever had before. I wanted her to know how much I desired her. I would always desire her.