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“You asked,” Peabody shot back. “If she had to be told, I don’t see why you shoved it in her face the way you did. Why you couldn’t have found a way to soften it.”
“Soften it? Her father was fucking her. You tell me how you soften that. You tell me how you put that in a pretty box with a bow on it.”
She turned on Peabody, and like Carry’s, Eve’s eyes were ravaged. “What the hell do you know? What do you know about it with your big, sprawling, happy, Free-Ager family where everybody gathers around the dinner table with clean faces and chirpy news of the day.”
She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t draw in enough air. She was strangling. But she couldn’t stop the words.
“When Daddy came in to kiss you good night, he didn’t crawl into bed with you, did he, and put his sweaty hands all over you. Fathers don’t jam themselves into their little girls in your tidy world.”
She strode off the elevator, through the lobby, and out to the street, while Peabody stood stiff with shock.
Eve paced the sidewalk, barely restrained herself from kicking the duet of white poodles and the droid that walked them. A headache was raging, a rocket blast that screamed inside her skull. She could feel her hands tremble, even though they were balled into tight fists in her pockets.
“Dallas.”
“Don’t,” she warned Peabody. “Keep back a minute.”
She could walk it off, she promised herself. She could walk off the leading edge of the fury that made her want to scream and pound and rip. And when she had, all that was left was the headache and the sick misery deep in her gut.
Her face was pale but composed when she walked up to Peabody. “My personal remarks were over the line. I apologize for them.”
“It’s not necessary.”
“It is. In my opinion, it was also necessary to be cruel up there. It doesn’t make me feel any better about it. But you’re not here to be a punching bag for my foul moods.”
“That’s okay. I’m kind of used to it.”
Peabody tried a smile, then gaped with horror when Eve’s eyes filled. “Oh, jeez. Dallas.”
“Don’t. Shit. I need some time.” She bore down, stared hard at the face of the building. “I’m taking a couple of hours’ personal time. Grab some public transpo back to Central.” He
r chest wanted to heave, to throw the tears up and out. “I’ll meet you at Roosevelt in two hours.”
“All right, but—”
“Two hours,” Eve repeated and all but launched herself into the car.
She needed to go home. She needed to hold on and to go home. Not trusting herself, she set the car on auto and rode with her head back and her hands balled in her lap.
From the age of eight, she’d built a wall or her subconscious had mercifully built one for her to block out the ugliness that had happened to her. It left a blank, and on that blank she’d created herself. Piece by painful piece.
She knew what it was to feel that wall crumble, to have the cracks form so the ugliness oozed in.
She knew what Carly faced. And what she would go through to live with it.
The headache kicked like a tornado inside her skull by the time she drove through the gates. Her eyes were glazed with it, with the greasy churn of nausea in her belly. She ordered herself to hold on, to hold it in, and staggered up the steps.
“Lieutenant,” Summerset began when she stumbled inside.
“Don’t mess with me.” She tried to snap it out, but her voice wavered. Even as she bolted upstairs, he moved to the house intercom.
She wanted to lie down. She’d be all right if she could just lie down for an hour. But the churning defeated her. She turned into the bathroom, went down on her knees, and was vilely ill.
When she was empty, too weak to stand, she simply curled on the tiles.
She felt a hand on her brow, cool. Blessedly cool. And opened her eyes.
“Roarke. Leave me alone.”
