floor, and it was hot up there, the heat of mid-summer rising to blanket these
attic rooms. She was screaming, and she simply didn’t stop. Scream upon scream,
and then, suddenly, she was silent. I heard people talking. She screamed again,
but not as loud this time, and I knew she was exhausted. I saw her gross belly,
naked now, saw her back arch up and her face distort with agony. They pulled a
small, limp, bloody object from between her legs. Then there was blood,
fountains of gushing, spurting blood, covering Molly’s legs, flowing onto the
bed, dripping onto the wooden floor. My fingers were sticky red, the blood all
over me, covering my clothing. Now they were screaming, rushing frantically,
stuffing sheets between Molly’s legs.
But Molly wasn’t screaming anymore. Her head lolled to the side. Her eyes were
wide and blue, and there was no life at all in them now.
The blood, so much blood, and it was dripping silently to the floor, a red pool
that was now turning black. There was my mother, my beautiful mother, just
standing there, her hands at her sides. She was so stiff, so cold to the touch,
so white.
And I heard her whisper, “He killed her. He killed Molly as well. How many other
women has he killed with his lust? He is an animal. I had hoped he would die,
but he didn’t. He won’t ever die, ever.”
Lawrence jerked me upright and shook me, nearly shouting in my face, “For God’s
sake, get a grip on yourself. You’re damned hysterical. Snap out of it.”
I opened my eyes, and I was back here, alone with this man in the library, and
he was shaking me. I looked up into my husband’s face. I felt battered, ripped
apart inside, and terribly, terribly alone. But he was here, and he was going to
hurt me, perhaps kill me, as my father had killed Molly.
His eyes were intent as he looked down at me. I was trembling, I knew that, but
I couldn’t stop it. “How I wish I had never seen any of it, never known any of
it,” I said. He let me go. I stepped away from him. I rubbed the palm of my hand
across my forehead. Was I trying to rub away those dreadful memories? Memories
that I hadn’t seen or felt so clearly in more years than I could count.
The silence was deep, endless, but it did not really matter, for I was trying to
vanquish my own personal nightmare, and the coldness of the silence, the menace
of it, didn’t really touch me.
I heard his voice over the snapping and soft explosions of the burning logs in
the fireplace. “Perhaps now I understand why you married me, Andrea. You thought
I would take your grandfather’s place, did you not? That I would protect you and
keep you safe from your own fears, those horrible nightmares and visions from
the past that still come to you as they did just now? No, there is no place for
a lusty young husband in your plans, is there?”
I saw John laughing, stroking his large hand over Small Bess’s mane. John,
holding George, again laughing at something I had said, and I had loved his
laugh, felt it to my very soul. John, angry now, that surge of violence stark in
his dark eyes, angry because I was his uncle’s wife and couldn’t ever be his. A
knife turned in my heart.
Slowly, I shook my head.
“Would you like to tell me what your father did? What you saw him do? What you
heard about him?”
“My father,” I said slowly. “My father. What do you know of him? What has he to
do with this madness?”
“It is really of no importance, not now. You will learn that I know more of your
past than you realize.”
He leaned down over me, his face close to mine. He must have seen the soul-shattering
fear in me, because he straightened and laughed. It wasn’t a nice laugh; it made
my heart shrink. “Ah, don’t worry that I will rape you. I haven’t the time,