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“Do you really think that what happened to your daughter was for the best?” I ask, closing the door behind me and pulling a guest chair up to the couch.
Her glassy eyes flicker.
“I saw Joyce on Saturday.”
“Th-that’s not possible.”
“It is. I saw her and she’s nothing like the girl she once was.”
“Please.” Her hands move to cover her ears.
“Don’t you want to hear how your daughter has fared after running away from you?”
She shakes her head swiftly from side to side.
“Joyce had heroin tracks on the inside of her arms. She’s been hooking, selling her body for drugs. And now she’s locked up in a Louisiana jail for the next four years because she lured men to a motel room for sex and robbed them at knifepoint. That’s how your daughter has been living.”
“Nooo.” Joan Franklin gulps as fat tears pool in her eyes and spill over.
“How do you think it was for Dwayde?”
“Pl-please.”
“For five years, she beat him. He has scars and broken bones that never healed properly. He was exposed to her bringing strange men back to whatever rundown dump they were living in and screwing them right in front of him. Some of the men wanted him too.”
“Stop. Pl-please.”
“Your daughter had a scrap of decency left not to sell him. But what do you think witnessing that would do to a child?”
“We-we tried to find them.”
“Joyce would not have run in the first place if you had protected her. Instead she took Dwayde away from you as payback. And she abused him out of all that pain and loathing.”
“It-it was the drugs.”
“That’s what you want to tell yourself to cope, even though you know it’s not true. Drugs weren’t the cause, you and your husband were.”
“I-I didn’t…do you think I would have let him hurt Joyce if I had known?” she inadvertently confesses.
“I don’t blame you for the rape. But…” I lean in closer, right in her ghostly face. “You are responsible for what happened after Joyce told you. Not getting her help, sending Alden away without consequence, forcing your teenage daughter to have a baby to give your husband a son. You allowed that.”
“You-you can’t understand,” she says, weeping.
“You’re right, I don’t understand. Joyce told me you blamed yourself for not giving your husband a male child. But that doesn’t justify your actions.”
“Pl-please.”
There’s a soft knock on the door prior to it clicking open. “Ms. Chase?” Gretchen startles, holding a tea cup on a saucer. It rattles in her hand. She observes what she can only perceive as a defenseless deer being attacked by a ferocious lion. “I’m getting Mr. Jackson.” She purses her lips and exits the office.
I have mere seconds until the cavalry arrives. I direct my attention back to Joan Franklin, who is sobbing on shallow breaths, her narrow shoulders quaking, her face buried in her palms. I’m not impervious to her anguish. She may not be a bad person but she did a terrible thing.
“Mrs. Franklin, you can’t undo the damage that’s been done to Joyce. But you can do the right thing for Dwayde. Don’t let your husband’s ego and selfishness ruin another child.”
She lifts her face. Mascara-streaked tears run down her blotchy cheeks, over her mouth and chin.
I hand her a wad of tissues from a box on the desk. She wipes her nose and dabs at her face, snuffling. “I-I just w-wanted us to be a-a family.”
“Not another word, Joan.” Jackson comes marching into the room like an army sergeant with Franklin fast on his heels. “Ms. Chase!” His tone is scalding. “Your tactics today are reprehensible. Mrs. Franklin is in no position to be interrogated. Whatever you may have coerced her into saying will not stand.”
