Page 11 of Nightfire

She’d waited eagerly for her mother’s visits, every time, all through childhood. Never learning. The visits always followed the same script. Her mother would arrive with an expensive present or two, sit on the edge of the visitor’s chair with her coat on, ask how Chloe was feeling, not listen to the answer, visibly quivering to get away, leaving after a quarter of an hour. Often leaving Chloe in tears until she simply gave up on making her mother care for her, because it just wasn’t going to happen.

“I read a lot in the hospital. There wasn’t much else to do. I watched lots of movies and read a lot of books. They became my life. I rarely saw my parents. About the time I became a teenager I realized that I didn’t have in any way the feelings for my parents that people had in books and movies or that the nurses seemed to have for their families. It just wasn’t there. No good feelings, no bad ones. My parents were just these—these distant people who showed up now and again. My mother more than my father. I saw him just a couple of times a year while I was in the clinics. And then finally, when I was fifteen, there were no more surgeries scheduled. The doctors said I was as well as I was ever going to be. I was released, free to go home. My parents had moved house several times. When I got out of the hospital, I was taken to a home I’d never seen before, in a part of town I didn’t in any way know. A bedroom had been set up for me by an interior decorator. That first week was incredibly strange, as I was in a brand-new setting with parents I barely knew.”

“Where was this?” Michael Keillor asked quietly.

“Boston.”

“And yet you speak with a slight English accent.”

So far, Harry Bolt hadn’t spoken much. There was no doubt he was listening, though. Chloe had the feeling he was listening intently with every sense he had, not just hearing. And yet, though she Harry Bolt’s full attention, it was Michael Keillor who was asking her questions.

The reason she spoke with a faint English accent which she’d picked up subconsciously was hard to explain, in every way there was.

She sat there, trying to put the words together. This was so hard. It was a moment of her life she’d tried to understand, tried to forget, tried to forgive. Nothing worked.

Chloe took in a deep breath, watching the two men. She was taking up their time but there was absolutely no impatience vibes coming from them. She was familiar with people’s exasperation with her when she needed time to think about what she was saying. One of her many, many failings.

Only she didn’t feel it was a failing here. Both men were watching her, listening carefully to her, allowing her to talk at her own pace. She was all too familiar with people’s body language when she had to think over what she was saying. The impatient huffs of breath, leg jiggling or foot tapping. Looking up at the ceiling, looking down at the watch, doodling. She’d seen it all.

She wasn’t seeing it here. She was seeing two men hearing her out with no signs of anything but interest.

And since they were, she didn’t stammer. It came out as smoothly as if she were discussing the plot of a movie she’d once seen.

“When I was finally released, because there wasn’t anything else medicine could do for me, it was summer and there was no school. I was actually ahead two grades because about the only thing I could do in the hospitals and clinics was study. I didn’t have any friends and I had had nothing to do but read. I found it…hard, being home. My father acted very strange around me and my mother—my mother acted strange when he acted strange. They were both very strange, though I didn’t have much to compare them with.

“I couldn’t figure anything out. I thought it was my fault because I wasn’t used to living with people. We had these strained conversations about nothing at all. They never asked me any questions, I never asked any of them. They were both gone a lot because of business. It was a little like being back in hospital, only I was dressed and could go out if I wanted. Then one day, my father came home early.” Chloe closed her eyes. She’d had endless therapy but the memory could still jolt her out of her serenity. In an instant, she was right back there, living it, not remembering it.

A sunny day in Boston, hot and humid. She’d found a whole wardrobe of pretty summer dresses in her room, an unusual gesture of kindness from her mother. She’d spent so long in hospital gowns and track suits; the pretty clothes delighted her.

Being outdoors was still a novelty for her, a treat. The feel of the sun on her face and the breeze in her hair a shocking delight, even on a humid Boston summer day. She’d had on a sun dress with spaghetti straps and no bra because really, why wear a bra when your breasts were like two small teacups? The house had a garden, one she delighted in exploring. A Mexican came twice a week to do the heavy lifting in the garden. Mr. Martinez. Diego. Old and kindly, willing to explain to her what he was doing. Telling her the names of the flowers in both English and Spanish. She spent hours in the sunshine with him without ever thinking that maybe she was interrupting his work.

Coming in from the garden that day with a fistful of asters, flushed from the sun, she came across her father staring at her intently.

He walked right up to her, looming over her. He’d been a big man, very tall, and he used his size and height to intimidate everyone around him. Certainly her mother was often intimidated, as were the cook and the maid and the few dinner guests they sometimes had. He intimidated her all the time, which she dealt with by rarely being in the same room with him.

Without really realizing what she was doing, something she recognized only with hindsight and after painful therapy, she had avoided him as much as she could. Walking out of a room the moment he entered, keeping furniture between them, stepping back when he approached her.

Her skin crawled if he got too close to her. Once, brushing by him, the hairs on her forearm rose.

That day, there was no walking away from him. He cornered her, big hands against her shoulders, pressing her against a yellow damask-covered wall.

God, she remembered the instant panic, full-blown, almost outsized for that specific moment, as if this were a situation she’d already faced. Chloe had even sometimes wondered if she were in some way psychic because her nightmares were and always had been of being with her back to a wall and having a huge man attack her.

She’d had every variation of that nightmare, over and over again. And that afternoon, it became reality.

“Did he?” Mike Keillor’s very deep voice was low, harsh. The skin was tight over his cheekbones. He’d said something and she’d only caught the tail end of it.

Chloe blinked. “I beg your pardon?”

“We’ve heard a version of this story a lot of times.” He glanced at his partner without moving his head. “Did your father rape you?”

Chloe bowed her head. It was that obvious? She looked like a woman who’d been raped by her father? Oh God. She’d worked so very hard not to seem like a victim and yet here was this man, who had only just set eyes on her for the very first time, and he’d pegged her completely.

“No,” she whispered, looking at her knees. “Though he tried.” Backbone, Chloe. The voice of Sister Mary Michael sounded in her head, calm and strong.

Calm. Strength.

She lifted her head. “I fought back. Which was dumb, because he was a really big man. I should have run. But I didn’t.” She remembered every second of it, vividly. Rage had come ravening up, from some completely unsuspected place inside her, black, blinding rage, an emotion she’d never felt before, certainly not like that. It had been as overwhelming as his blow. “It was ridiculous. My, um, my father was six two, almost three hundred pounds. He backhanded me. To shut me up, I guess, because I was screaming while I was trying to hit him, hurt him.”