Secrets in the Attic (Secrets 1)

"I was unable to wait to put our plan into action," she said, looking up at me. "I knew my mother was going to be shopping and having dinner with one of her friends in Middletown. She wouldn't be home until at least nine, maybe even ten. Your idea was too good to delay, and I knew with my mother away, Harry was surely coming to my room last night."

"What did you do?"

"Exactly what we planned I went into the apartment, got Harry's mother's wig and one of her dresses, put her makeup on my face just the way she did it, and waited for him, trembling so much I nearly passed out before he came to my door."

"What did he do when he saw you?"

"He stopped and looked at me in disbelief at first, and then his shock changed quickly to outrage. I could see his anger bubbling in his eyes and around his mouth. It was as if his skin erupted with tiny volcanic explosions. I couldn't move, and for a moment, he couldn't, either. Then he roared with such power I thought I was blown back into the wall. 'How dare you?' he screamed. 'How dare you make a mockery of my mother?' "

As Karen described this, I couldn't move. It was as if I had been in the room with her, as if I were there right now. She wasn't looking at me. She was looking ahead, with her eyes so wide I felt she was truly reliving it all. I actually glanced in the same direction, thinking I might see Harry Pearson there in front of us right at that moment.

"He took a step toward me," she continued after another deep, painful breath. "I whipped off the wig and threw it at him and shouted, 'Keep away from me!' The wig hit him in the face and fell to his feet. He paused and looked down at it, and then he picked it up gently and with such loving care my blood turned cold. He was crying and petting it as if it was his mother's real hair."

"Crying?"

"Tears streamed down his cheeks, and he looked at me as if I had killed his mother. I was never so afraid."

"I can't imagine .. ."

She rose and turned toward me, her face in imitation of what Harry's face had been like.

"He took another step toward me, now clutching the wig in his fist," she said, her right hand in a fist. "I had nowhere to run, but I even considered opening the window and leaping out."

She stepped toward me, and I sat on the sofa and looked up at her as she continued. "I backed up until I hit my night table. He continued to come forward, his lips stretched so tight and thin they looked like they would snap like a rubber band. And they were as white as milk, bloodless. My hands went down to my drawer."

She reached to her right as if the drawer were there. "I opened it and reached in for my knife "

She held her hand up the way she would have held the knife.

"I thought, I might frighten him away, but when he saw it, he grew even angrier. He tossed his mother's wig to the bed and reached out for me. I ducked under his hand and lunged to go around him and through the bedroom doorway, but he managed to grab onto the back of the skirt of his mother's dress that I was wearing and tugged so hard I fell back, slamming down on my rear end."

She paused to take a breath. I couldn't move, couldn't swallow, couldn't stop staring at her and waiting.

"At first, all he wanted to do was get his mother's dress off me. He groped and pulled, tearing it but managing to rip it off me, practically lifting me completely off the floor when it got caught on my arms. The knife fell out of my hands and landed in front of me. I fell forward, too. Instantly, his fingers were around the back of my bra, pulling at me to keep me from going any farther forward. I resisted, and the bra unsnapped.

He fell back, and I rose. Maybe if I hadn't stopped to pick up my knife, I could have gotten out of the room and out of the house, but when I did that, he embraced my legs. He was on his knees, and I couldn't pull myself free.

"I looked down at him," she said, gazing at the floor, "and saw he was mumbling and crying as if he were trying to get his mother to forgive him for something. I knew he wasn't ever going to let go of me, and when his hands began to move up my legs, I brought the knife down and caught him in his neck, in his throat. I was just as surprised as he was. I was doing it only to drive him away. He let go of me and grabbed at the knife and then fell to his side.

"I didn't wait to see how he was or anything. I hurried to my closet, pulled a dress off the hanger, and put it on in the hallway as I went out and down the stairs. I didn't know what to do, but Lwas crying so hard and gasping for breath, so I hurried out the door and then just crouched behind our hedges. I was there for a while, calming myself. Then I got up, and as inconspicuously as I could, I walked down the sidewalk.

"I headed into the woods behind Echerts? garage and just walked and walked until I recognized some of the places you and I had been behind your house and realized how far I had come and how I had instinctively headed in this direction. There was no one home in your house, so it was easy to climb the fire escape and climb in through the attic window. I hid up here as quietly as I could until I knew you were home with your mother. I saw her leave the house and thought you might be alone. That's when I started to knock on the floor. I could have yelled for you, but I wasn't positive your father wasn't here."

She closed her eyes and sat again, leaning back to let her head rest against the cushion, exhausted from the effort to describe it all to me.

"You've been here all day?"

"Yes, sleeping most of it. He's dead, isn't he?" she asked without opening her eyes.

"Yes. According to what I heard, your mother found him on the floor of your bedroom, near the door, just as you described."

"She hated me when I was born, and she'll hate me forever now," Karen said.

"No, she won't. We're going to take you right to the police, and you'll tell your story."

She looked at me and grimaced. "Are you crazy? They're not going to believe me. No one in this community is going to believe Harry Pearson would have done such a thing, and everyone knows how I feel about him. I haven't exactly kept it a secret. On many occasions, especially before you moved here, I had arguments with him openly in the drugstore. I can't count how many times I shouted at him in front of his customers, 'You're not my father. You'll never be my father. I hate you.' And he always wore this t

erribly hurt look on his face, like he was doing everything he could to make a home for me, to be a father to me, and I wasn't letting him He played it up so well for his audience. You know people believed him, felt that I was the one who was ungrateful and felt sympathy for him. How many times have you told me yourself about the way his customers look at me when he talks to me nicely and I don't respond or I answer him without respect?"