“He told you his fantasy, didn’t he?” she asked, voice somehow small, as if she didn’t want to say her words too loud, because doing so would make them bigger, more real.
“He told us about your relationship,” Newman said.
Jocelyn looked up then, tears shining in her eyes, but the anger was back blazing so that her brown eyes looked almost black like dark water glistening in sunlight as the first tear trailed down her cheek. “The only relationship I have with Bobby is as brother and sister.”
“I’m sorry, Jocelyn. Bobby says it was a little bit more than that,” Newman said, and he sounded almost apologetic.
“He wanted it to be more, but I said no.”
“Bobby says that the two of you aren’t genetically related and that Ray only adopted Bobby and not you, so you’re not even legally brother and sister.”
She threw her hands up in the air, more tears trailing down her face from those angry eyes. “Bobby’s my brother. He told me all that stuff about not being related, but I was only five when my mom married his uncle. To me they are my dad and my big brother.”
“So you and Bobby never had sex?”
She looked disgusted. “No, I would never . . . That’s a horrible thing to say, and I told Bobby that. I told him I was going to tell Dad.”
“You planned on telling Ray?” Newman asked.
“I told him. He was shocked, but he said he’d talk to Bobby and get him to leave me alone.”
“You told Ray the night he died that Bobby was wanting to date you?” Newman asked.
“Yes. Dad said he’d talk to Bobby after I left for the night.” She started to cry in earnest. “Don’t you see? It’s all my fault.”
“How is it your fault?”
“Dad must have confronted Bobby and told him to leave me alone, that I didn’t feel that way about him, and he went crazy and killed Dad.” She hid her face in her hands. The nails were that pale-pink-and-white French that always looked weird to me, like something you’d do for a wedding but not for real life.
Newman glanced at me as if for help, so I took the hint and said, “Bobby says he proposed, and you told him that you had to see him change into his leopard before you’d know if you’d be comfortable with it.”
She looked up with tears drying on her face, but no new ones. Her voice finally held the angry scorn that I’d felt roll off of her earlier. “That’s ridiculous. I’v
e lived with his leopard for ten years. I don’t have any problem with him being a wereanimal. Well, I didn’t, but after what I saw . . . after what he did to our dad. Oh, God! It’s all my fault. I should have told Dad sooner or stayed home, but I never dreamed Bobby would hurt him. We both loved our father, or I thought we did.” She stared off into space as if seeing things we couldn’t: maybe the sight of her father’s bloody body or maybe things we couldn’t have guessed at.
“Did you tell anyone else that Bobby was trying to be . . . inappropriate with you?” I asked, struggling to find words that wouldn’t make it worse for her.
She nodded. “I told Helen that he was leaving his door to his room open so I’d see him undressing as I walked by, and that he’d peek at me if I left mine open. I couldn’t tell her the worst of it. It was so wrong and embarrassing.” She shuddered, hugging her arms to herself.
“Helen Grimes, the cook?” Newman asked.
“Yes, and I told my friend Marcy at a lunch a few days before the girls’ night out. Bobby had tried to . . . He forced his way into my room, and he . . . he tried to make his fantasy a reality. It’s what made me finally try to tell Dad. I didn’t even know if he’d believe me. You hear about women telling their families all the time that someone is molesting them, but nobody believes them, you know. Dad loves us both—loved us both—and it was like making him choose between us.”
“We believe you, Jocelyn,” Newman said.
She smiled up at him, but it left her eyes empty and sad. “Did you believe Bobby, too?”
“He believes what he says,” Olaf said.
His comment made her look past us to where Olaf stood trying to be nonthreatening by the door. “I know he does, which is what scared me, but I wasn’t scared because he was a wereleopard. I was just scared because my own brother was trying to force himself on me, wanted me to marry him. It’s crazy, and when Dad confronted him over it, Bobby killed him. So you see, I did it. I killed my father, just as much as Bobby. We killed him together!” Her voice rose in hysteria with the last two sentences until she started to sob—big, deep, hyperventilating sobs.
“That’s enough,” Nurse Trish said.
“I agree,” Dr. Jameson said.
Newman nodded. “We’re done for now.”
The nurse looked at him with eyes shining with tears and said, “How much more do you want from her?”