The Good Daughter (22 page)

Howie had reached the car, opened the driver’s-side door but Delilah didn’t want to get in with him until he looked at her. She needed to see his eyes. When he was in a good mood, they were blue. But when he was angry, they turned to ice, and when they were ice, you started praying. Even if you didn’t believe in God.

“Howie,” she panted, hanging back.

He looked at her and his narrowed eyes, pale blue, practically froze her to death. “Get in the car, Dee.”

“It wasn’t Mama’s fault.”

A muscle pulled in his jaw. “Get in the car.”

“It’s my fault—”

“Not going to talk about it with you. Now get in the car—”

“The school wanted to meet with Mama last Wednesday after I got in trouble and I knew you wouldn’t want them to see her. She had that, you know—” Delilah’s hand jerked up to her nose and eye. “And so I told them Mama was sick and you were gone, but I wasn’t trying to lie to you. I was just trying to make things better.”

“For the last time, Dee, get in that car, or I’ll put you in there myself.”

She swallowed her tears and walked around the car to sit in the front passenger seat. She fought to buckle her seat belt. It was hard when her hands were shaking so much.

Howie didn’t speak on the drive home. Delilah stared out the window but saw nothing.

Once they were home, Howie called Mama into the bedroom and locked the door.

Delilah hadn’t even made it into her room before she heard the first slap, and then another. Mama cried out. Howie told her to shut up. And then the awful thudding sounds began in earnest. Weeping, Delilah curled up on her bed, her pillow pressed over her head, but not even the pillow could muffle the sound of Mama screaming.

K
it left school not long after Michael and Delilah, walking out of the classroom with Delilah’s student folder in her purse. She didn’t know why she’d brought the folder but she felt panicked, queasy, and she wanted Delilah’s folder, and contact numbers, with her.

But what would she do? Call Michael? Call Missy? Call Delilah?

On her way home, she stopped at the drugstore to shop for last-minute toiletries to take on the cruise, grabbing random bottles of suntan lotion, eye-makeup remover, and Advil, dropping them into her basket. It was hard, if not impossible, to concentrate on shopping when even now, forty minutes after the meeting had ended, she felt physically ill.

What would Michael do to Delilah when he got her home?

And just as disconcerting, why had Delilah lied to her about Jude, and why had Jude lied to her in turn?

Standing in the middle of the store, Kit opened Delilah’s student folder for the emergency contact number.

There at the bottom was Jude’s number.

She stared at the number, remembering how he’d impatiently,
even arrogantly, scrawled it on the form. As if he really was Delilah’s guardian. As if he had a right to be there.

But he had no right. He was merely a friend. A neighbor. And yet Delilah had called him when she needed someone, and he had come to school for her. Stood by her. Would he be able to tell Kit anything about Delilah now?

Swallowing her misgivings, she sent him a text.
This is Kit Brennan. I need to talk to you about Delilah.

She finished shopping and returned to her car. Jude hadn’t yet replied. Kit didn’t think she could handle going home and headed to the gym instead.

She normally didn’t run on Thursdays but she changed into her workout clothes and ran this afternoon. She ran for miles, fast, hard, at a steep incline, trying to clear her mind, trying to forget how scary Michael had been, and how terrified Delilah had looked sitting at Kit’s corner table. But running today didn’t calm her. Running didn’t erase the image of Delilah’s hands trembling as she tried to pick up her backpack at the end of the meeting.

Delilah’s fear had triggered something in Kit, tapping into her fears, and she ran even faster, arms pumping, feet pounding, aware of her own demons chasing behind her.

But Kit wasn’t a distance runner and had no endurance and couldn’t run forever. Gradually she slowed, resetting the treadmill to a lower speed, decreasing the incline at the same time, until she was at a brisk walk.

Was it possible she was overreacting?

Was it possible that she was projecting onto Delilah, and creating a story, and a reality, that wasn’t even there?

Still trying to catch her breath, Kit mopped her forehead and replayed the meeting with Michael and Delilah once more, and this time without being so sensitive to Delilah’s emotions.

If Delilah hadn’t come to her before the meeting…if she
hadn’t crouched trembling next to Kit’s desk and painted a picture with Michael as this really bad guy, would Kit have found Michael’s behavior during the meeting so disturbing?

Not once during the meeting did he raise his voice or lose control. Nor did he threaten Delilah.

He did call her a liar, but to be fair, Kit could see where he was coming from.

Last week Delilah had proven she was an accomplished actress. Had she been acting earlier, when she came to Kit? And had she been acting during the parent–teacher meeting?

Kit wished she knew. Wished she could trust herself to know. But her judgment was faulty, had always been faulty, ever since that thing had happened to her when she was little…

That thing.

That’s how Kit always thought of it. As a thing out there, distant, not at all part of her, and yet it was part of her. It’d happened to her. She’d been little. Three, four. Maybe five.

Kit didn’t really know how old, but she remembered the shoes she wore that day to his house. Her pink Keds. And she was wearing them with ankle socks.

How funny to remember the color of her shoes, and the lace on her ankle socks, and his house, but not everything else.

But wasn’t that the tragedy? That Kit still didn’t fully understand what had happened to her, only that something
had
.

Thirty-five years later she could still see him—shaggy hair, dirty blond; plaid shirt, blue—he lived on the street behind theirs, and he’d told her to never, ever tell anyone what he’d done, and for years she’d thought she couldn’t tell anyone that he’d pressed a coat down on her face, pressing so hard she couldn’t breathe.

For thirty-some years she’d kept her secret, that she couldn’t tell anyone about the man who’d put a coat over her face.

It’d never crossed her mind that perhaps there was something else she wasn’t supposed to tell. It’d never crossed her mind that
she could have any other secret until Richard came home drunk one night after attending a friend’s bachelor party and, deciding he wanted kinky, hot sex, attempted to take her from behind. As he forced himself on her, in her, Kit felt pain, unbearable pain, and all she could hear was the sound of screaming. But it wasn’t her screaming, it was a little girl. She was screaming in pain. Screaming for help.

Richard sobered up pretty fast and apologized. Kit nodded and escaped to the bathroom to shower. But in the shower, she cried, shattered.

Someone had hurt her badly when she was just a little girl.

Someone had hurt her, and made her afraid, and not just of men, but of feelings and touch. Intimacy. Sex.

Thanks to that someone, that man, she’d spent her whole life afraid…

Spent her whole life not feeling…

It was bewildering to think that for thirty-plus years she’d blocked out the actual incident, remembering not what he did, but what she couldn’t tell.

Bewildering not to remember pain, but the weight of the coat on her face.

Exhausted, flattened, Kit hit stop on the treadmill, unable to take another step. The rubber belt stopped moving. She stood there swaying on her feet.

As a little girl, she’d wanted to be special. That man had promised her she was special. And then in his bedroom with all the shades down, he’d taken whatever it was that was good about her away.

Kit stepped heavily off the treadmill. Her legs shook. Slowly she walked to the locker room, and as she opened the door to the room, a little voice whispered,
Are you sure that’s what happened? Or are you making it up? You’ve always loved stories, Kit. Did this really happen to you, or did you read it in a book?

Kit bit her lip, and shook her head to silence the voice, and yet the mocking voice had once again successfully sowed the seeds of doubt, creating distrust.

Because that little voice was right.

Kit didn’t really know what had happened. She had impressions, sensations, fragmented memories, but what were they?

And were those really her memories? Or had they come from somewhere else?

She didn’t know. And she’d never know. And maybe that was what troubled her the most. If she couldn’t discern truth…if she couldn’t separate fantasy from reality…how could she trust herself to know what was true…what was right…what was real?

In the locker room, Kit showered and changed back into her clothes and was walking to her car when she checked her phone.

Jude had texted her back.

Working but can take an early dinner and meet you between five and six at Gaylord’s Caffe in Piedmont.

Kit glanced at her watch. It was almost five now. She quickly texted a reply.
Just got your message, on way to Gaylord’s, will take me 5-10 minutes. Can you still meet me?

He answered immediately.
Will be waiting
.

K
it’s heart pounded as she walked into Gaylord’s Caffe Espresso, and she hated that she felt so nervous. There was no reason for her to be afraid. This wasn’t a date. Jude had never threatened her. They were meeting to discuss Delilah. That’s it.

She’d just stepped into the coffeehouse when the door swung open again and Jude materialized behind her. Kit jumped, and turned quickly, knowing it was him.

“You’re here,” she said, her voice too high and thin.

“I am.”

She nodded, knowing she needed to take control, get control, before she lost what was left of her confidence. “Shall we order something?” she asked.

“I’ll have a drip coffee.” He reached into his pocket, pulled out a wad of bills, peeled off two tens. “And a scone or bagel or sandwich…whatever they have left. I’m going to grab that table.” He thrust the money into her hands and headed across the café to a corner table that had just been vacated.

Kit stood in line and watched him walk to the table, his legs long in old, faded Levi’s, hips lean beneath his black leather jacket. He said a few words to the girl at the table next to the empty one, and the girl, tattooed and pierced, grinned.

Kit wondered what he had said to the girl, wondered what would make her smile. She felt another flutter of unease as she carried her latte, Jude’s coffee, and Jude’s sandwich to the table. “Do you want sugar or anything?” she asked him as she sat down in the empty chair and pushed the coffee cup toward him.

“Nope. I’m good.”

Her chair felt hard. She was tired and worried. Very worried. Things right now weren’t making sense. Kit stared down into her latte, trying to summon courage to ask him the things she needed to ask him, already knowing she wouldn’t like the answers.

“Spit it out,” Jude said bluntly.

She licked her bottom lip, her mouth suddenly too dry. “You aren’t Delilah guardian.”

“Says who?”

“Delilah. She told me the truth today. Michael—”

“Michael?”

She flushed, her cheeks burning. “Howard, sorry. Howard came in to see me after school today. He found out about the suspension. Wanted a parent–teacher meeting.”

“And let me guess, Delilah’s mom wasn’t there.”

A lump filled Kit’s throat. “No. She wasn’t.”

“Doesn’t that ever seem strange to you? She’s Delilah’s mom, but she’s nowhere to be found?”

Kit jerked, as if stung, because, yes, it was strange, very strange, but she’d avoided thinking about Delilah’s mom, and until now she wasn’t sure why. “It does worry me.”

“Seems like a lot of things worry you.”

“No. Not a lot of things. But Delilah’s situation…yes.”

“Why are you so jumpy?” he asked, his deep voice rough.

Somehow she always forgot about that rasp. “I’m not.”

“Do I make you nervous?” he persisted.

“No,” she said quickly, reaching for her latte, and picking it up so fast that it sloshed over the rim of her glazed mug and burned her hand. She yelped and set the mug down hard, sloshing coffee all over her hand again. “Ow,” she said, pressing the scalded hand to her chest. “And yes,” she added, looking at him. “You do make me nervous. Okay?”

“Do you need ice?”

“No.”

“Can I see it?”

“No.”

The edge of his mouth lifted. “You don’t need to be scared of me, Kit Kat.”

“I’m not.” And she wanted to tell him her name was Kit, not Kit Kat, but she didn’t think he’d listen. She had a feeling he didn’t listen to things he didn’t want to hear. “Why did you pretend to be Delilah’s guardian?”

“Because Delilah called me. Asked me for help. So I went.”

“You can’t pretend to be a legal guardian when you’re not.”

He shrugged. “She needed me.”

“Jude, the law is very clear—”

“Don’t talk to me about the law.”

Kit held on to her temper, just. “Can I talk to you as a teacher,
then? Because as a teacher, I have very clearly defined responsibilities, and those responsibilities are to protect my students, not to in any way endanger them.”

“And you think I was endangering Delilah by coming in to school last week?”

“I think if Mi— Howard finds out you came in last week, there will be hell to pay.”

“If?”
Jude’s dark eyes met hers. “He doesn’t know yet?”

Kit shook her head. “Delilah begged me not to say anything to him today. She was afraid he’d flip out.” She took a quick breath, remembering the meeting. “It wasn’t a pleasant meeting. Delilah was
trembling
. I’ve never seen her—or any student—so scared. I honestly don’t know what to think.”

“Is that why you wanted to see me? Because you want to know what I think?”

“Yes.”

“Fine. I’ll tell you what I think. Your Mi— Howard is an abusive prick.”