“It was natural for him to stray from the marriage. Nothing was ever enough. Guys like him could be sleeping with their wives at all hours of the day and night and after a little while it’ll just get old.” She crushes her smoke out, hard. Like it were Ben instead.
“I got old.” Bitter. Rightfully so. The betrayal and hostility in those three words speak volumes. The small corner of her soul she has allowed to rot because of her ex-husband has just come out, spoke those words and receded back into the darkness.
Checking her out I don’t think she would get old. But I also hear the word “no” to mean “no,” so it’s difficult to put myself in Ben Boothe’s shoes. I wonder if it were Darla’s literal age or if he had explored her until he became bored. I don’t ask for clarification.
“Dozens of things pushed him out of our house, I’m sure. None the least of which was the way I would not tolerate him looking at our daughters.”
Hold the phone.
“Do you think he molested them?” I ask.
A long pause. The world around us revolves through a century before she draws breath to speak. Then: “I think that to Ben...female genitalia are separate entities from anything else in the world. When he walks around viewing God’s green earth I think he sees everything we do, but in place of women’s faces and personalities and clothes and relation to him he just sees...something to have sex with.”
“You mean like women aren’t real or they’re just objects...”
“I guess so. There’s a total disconnect. In the same way I suppose a serial killer will not connect that other people are living entities just like him, I think Ben cannot make the connection that when it comes to having sex there are certain rules to abide by. Morals.”
“So you’re saying that even if he did molest your girls to him it was simply fulfilling a need.”
“Yes.”
“Family relation, age, nothing mattered.”
“Yes. Any detail, any detail would be irrelevant.”
“Just sex?”
“Yes.”
“He’s still a damn child molester,” I say. “Did either girl ever tell you he touched them?”
“No. Neither girl likes to talk about him. We just moved on.”
“Do you think it’s plausible that Delilah went to see her dad?”
“For what?”
“For anything.”
“Like what?”
“Some people can just up and leave. It happens. They re-establish themselves somewhere else as somebody else. They have transferrable skills, they have cash on hand, they have some defining moment where they eradicate who and what they are. Look up the Flitcraft Parable from the book The Maltese Falcon. But Delilah is not going to disappear without help. Not from how she’s been described. I’ve called anywhere her college degree would take her. No one has a Delilah Boothe working for them. I checked other names, like Delilah White. I checked for her under your maiden name. Nothing.
“Scared people either run for their life or they orbit their familiar locations. Look for the all-clear. So she’s programming computers in Fishkill, New York or she’s here. In Saint Ansgar. Somewhere.”
“But where?”
“That’s it. If she’s employed I would have found the address her taxes go to. Or the bank account that gets her paycheck. Let’s assume she’s not. She’s getting money from somewhere. She had none herself. She’s either found a new cash source—and it’s not the government; I checked—or she’s stealing. Or bumming.”
I have not told Darla about the drug deal that Dobbins arranged. No sense in it really.
“So?”
“So would Ben give her money? A place to crash?”
“He could do anything,” Darla says, getting worked up. “I never thought he was a rapist until he was one.”
“What about Belinda?”