"Heaven, she slapped you, didn't she? She saw you wearing an expensive new dress and tried to tear it off, didn't she
?" he asked in a voice thick with emotion. Deep in my own thoughts I didn't even notice that he'd raised my hand to press it against his heart. Beneath his shirt I could feel the steady heartbeats, thumping, making it seem I was already part of him. I wanted to speak and tell him I was almost his daughter, and he shouldn't be looking at me the way he was. But no one had ever looked at me with love before--love I had needed for so long. Why was it making me afraid of him?
He both comforted me and frightened me, made me feel good and made me feel guilty. I owed him so much, perhaps too much, and I didn't know what to do. A funny glazed look came into his eyes, as if I had unknowingly pushed some switch, perhaps because I lay so submissively in his embrace. Much to my surprise, his lips were making a trail all around my throat, savoring the taste and feel of my flesh. I shivered again, wanting to tell him to stop, afraid if I did he wouldn't love me. If I drove him away I wouldn't have anyone to protect me from Kitty, or to care any longer what happened to me . . . and so I didn't say stop.
I had journeyed away from tears into unknown territory, where I lay trapped, not knowing what to do, or what to feel . . . It wasn't wrong, was it, this sweet tenderness he showed when he brushed his lips over mine, gently touching me as if afraid he'd frighten me with too bold an approach--and then I saw his face.
He was crying! "I wish you weren't just a beautiful child. I wish you were older."
Those tears glistening in his eyes filled my heart with pity for him. He was as trapped as I was, in debt to Kitty up to his hairline; he couldn't just walk out on all the effort and years of learning electronics. I couldn't pull away and slap his face when he'd given me the only kindness I'd ever had from a man, and saved me from a life that could have been so much worse here in Candlewick.
Still, I whispered, "N0000," but it didn't stop him from kissing where he wanted to kiss, or fondling where he wanted to fondle. I quivered all over, as if God above were looking down and condemning me to eternal hell, as Reverend Wise had said he would, and where Kitty reminded me every day that I was sure to go. It surprised me that he would want to nuzzle his face against my breasts while his tears poured like hot rain and he sobbed in my arms.
What had I done or said to make him think what he had to be thinking? Guilt and shame washed over me.
Was I truly innately wicked, as Kitty was always saying? Why had I brought this on myself?
I wanted to cry out and tell him what Kitty had done, burned my mother's doll--but perhaps he'd think that a trivial, silly sorrow, to see a doll burned. And what were a few slaps when I'd endured so much more?
Save me, save me! I wanted to scream.
Don't do anything else to take away my pride, please, please! My body betrayed me. It felt good, what he was doing. It felt good to be held, rocked, cuddled, and caressed. A precious thing he made me feel one second, an evil, wicked thing the next. All my life long I'd been starved for hands that touched kindly, lovingly. All my life yearning for a father to love me.
"I love you," he whispered, kissing my lips again, and I didn't ask how he loved me, as a daughter or as something more. I didn't want to know. Not now, when for the first time in my life I felt valuable, worthy enough for a fine man like him to love and desire . . . even if something deep within me was alarmed.
"How sweet and soft you are," he murmured when he kissed my bared breasts.
I closed my eyes, tried to not think about what I was allowing him to do. Now he'd never leave me alone with Kitty. Now he'd find ways to keep me forever safe, and force Kitty to tell him where Keith and Our Jane were.
Thank God caressing my thighs and abdomen and buttocks under my torn dress seemed to satisfy him enough. Perhaps because I began to talk, to make him remember who I was. In a burst of words I gushed it all out, about the doll, the burning, how Kitty had forced me by saying she knew where Keith and Our Jane were. "Do you really think she does know?" I asked.
"I don't know what she knows," he said shortly, bitterly, coming back to himself as the dazed look in his eyes went away. "I don't know if she knows anything but how to be cruel."
He met my wide, frightened eyes. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't be doing this. Forgive me for forgetting who you are, Heaven."
I nodded, my heart pounding as I watched him take from his shirt pocket a tiny box wrapped in silver and tied with blue satin ribbon. He put it in my hand. "I have a gift to congratulate you for being such a good student, and making me so proud of you, Heaven Leigh Casteel." He opened the box and lifted the lid on the smaller black velvet box inside, which revealed a dainty gold watch. His eyes met mine, pleadingly. "I know you're living for the day when you can escape this house, and Kitty, and me. So I give you a calendar watch, to count the days, hours, minutes, and seconds until you can find your brother and little sister. And I swear I'll do all I can to find out what Kitty knows. Please don't run from me."
Truth was in his eyes. Love for me was there as well. I stared and stared, until finally I had to accept, and I held out my arm and allowed him to fasten the watch about my wrist. "Naturally," he said bitterly, "you can't let Kitty see this watch."
He leaned to kiss my forehead tenderly, cupping my face between his palms before he said, "Forgive me for trespassing where I should never go. Sometimes I need someone so badly, and you're so sweet, so young and understanding, and as starved for affection as I am."
He didn't notice that I'd sprained my ankle, since I took great pains to see that I didn't walk until he had left the room and my bedroom door was closed. I couldn't fall asleep. Cal was so close, dangerously close, and we were alone in the house. He was in the other room, a few feet away. Right through the walls I could almost sense his need for me, and my terrible fear that need would override his sense of decency made me get up, pull a robe over my nightgown, and painfully make my way down the stairs and into the living room, where I lay on the white sofa and waited for Kitty to come home.
All night long the rain was a steady drumming, slashing against the windowpanes, pelting the roof, rolling thunder and far-off flashes, keeping me always on edge. However, I had a purpose in mind. I meant to confront Kitty, and this time come out the winner. Somehow or other I had to force her to tell me where Keith and Our Jane were. I clutched in my hand a tiny crystal bead with a few threads of charred white lace I'd found in the fireplace. Yet as I sat there on her sofa, in her spanking-clean white house, with her rainbowed creatures all around me, I felt
outnumbered, overwhelmed. I fell into sleep and missed Kitty's stumbling steps when she came home dead drunk.
Her loud voice coming from the bedroom woke me up.
"Done had me a good time!" Kitty bellowed. "Best damned party eva! Gonna do it every year from now on--an ya kin't stop me!"
"You may do as you damn well please," answered Cal as I drifted nearer and nearer the stairs. "I don't care anymore what you do, or what you say."
"Then yer leavin me . . . are ya, are ya?"
"Yes, Kitty. I am leaving you," he said, to my surprise and joy.
"Ya kin't, ya know. Yer stuck wid me. Once ya go ya ain't got nothin. I'll take yer shop, an all these years ya done been married up t'me go down t'drain, an yer penniless agin . . unless ya go home to Mommy an Daddy an tell em what a damn fool ya are."