Oh, that’s too much, she thought. If he’d raped me, maybe it would be different. But what happened on the deck that day was really just another accident, and not a very serious one, at that-if you want to know what a serious accident is, Jess, look at the situation you’re in here. I might as well blame old Mrs Gilette for slapping my hand at that lawn-party, the summer I was four. Or a thought I had coming down the birth-canal. Or sins from some past life that still needed expiation. Besides, what be did to me on the deck wasn’t anything compared to what he did to me in the bedroom.

And there was no need to dream that part of it; it was right there, perfectly clear and perfectly accessible.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

When she looked up and saw her father standing in the bedroom doorway, her first, instinctive gesture had been to cross her arms over her breasts. Then she saw the sad and guilty look on his face and dropped them again, although she felt heat rising in her cheeks and knew that her own face was turning the unlovely, patchy red that was her version of a maidenly blush. She had nothing to show up there (well, almost nothing), but she still felt more naked than naked, and so embarrassed she could almost swear she felt her skin sizzling. She thought: Suppose the others come back early? Suppose she walked in right now and saw me like this, with my shirt off?

Embarrassment became shame, shame became terror, and still, as she shrugged into the blouse and began to button it, she felt another emotion underlying these. That feeling was anger, and it was not much different from the drilling anger she would feel years later when she realized that Gerald knew she meant what she was saying but was pretending he didn’t. She was angry because she didn’t deserve to feel ashamed and terrified. After all, he was the grownup, he was the one who had left that funny-smelling crud on the back of her underpants, he was the one who was supposed to be ashamed, and that wasn’t the way it was working. That wasn’t the way it was working at all.

By the time her blouse was buttoned and tucked into her shorts, the anger was gone, or-same difference-banished back to its cave. And what she kept seeing in her mind was her mother coming back early. It wouldn’t matter that she was fully dressed again. The fact that something bad had happened was on their faces, just hanging out there, big as life and twice as ugly. She could see it on his face and feel it on her own.

“Are you all right, Jessie?” he asked quietly. “Not feeling faint, or anything?”

“No.” She tried to smile, but this time she couldn’t quite manage it. She felt a tear slip down one cheek and wiped it away quickly, guiltily, with the heel of her hand.

“I’m sorry.” His voice was trembling, and she was horrified to see tears standing in his eyes-oh, this just got worse and worse and worse. “I’m so sorry.” He turned abruptly, ducked into the bathroom, grabbed a towel off the rack, and wiped his face with it. While he did this, Jessie thought fast and hard.

“Daddy?”

He looked at her over the towel. The tears in his eyes were gone. If she hadn’t known better, she would have sworn they had never been there at all.

The question almost stuck in her throat, but it had to be asked. Had to be.

“Do we… do we have to tell Mom about it?” He took a long, sighing, trembling breath. She waited, her heart in her mouth, and when he said “I think we have to, don’t you?” it sank all the way to her feet.

She crossed the room to him, staggering a little-her legs seemed to have no feeling in them at all-and wrapped her arms around him. “Please, Daddy. Don’t. Please don’t tell. Please don’t. Please… “Her voice blurred, collapsed into sobs, and she pressed her face against his bare chest.

After a moment he slipped his arms around her, this time in his old, fatherly way.

“I hate to,” he said, “because things have been pretty tense between the two of us just lately, hon. I’d be surprised if you didn’t know that, actually. A thing like this could make them a lot worse. She hasn’t been very… well, very affectionate lately, and that was most of the problem today. A man has… certain needs. You’ll understand about that somed -”

“But if she finds out, she’ll say it was my fault!”

“Oh, no-I don’t think so,” Tom said, but his tone was surprised, considering… and, to Jessie, as dreadful as a deathsentence. “No-ooo… I’m sure-well, fairly sure-that she… “She looked up at him, her eyes streaming and red. “Please don’t tell her, Daddy! Please don’t! Please don’t!”

He kissed her brow. “But Jessie… I have to. We have to.”

“Why? Why, Daddy?”

“Because-”

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Jessie shifted a little. The chains jingled; the cuffs themselves rattled on the bedposts. The light was now streaming in through the east windows.

“'Because you couldn’t keep it a secret,"” she said dully. “'Because if it’s going to come out, Jessie, it’s better for both of us that it should come out now, rather than a week from now, or a month from now, or a year from now. Even ten years from now."”

How well he had manipulated her-first the apology, then the tears, and finally the hat-trick: turning his problem into her problem. Br'er Fox, Br'er Fox, whatever else Y'all do, don’t th'ow me in dat briar patch! Until, finally, she had been swearing to him that she would keep the secret forever, that torturers couldn’t drag it out of her with tongs and hot coals.

She could in fact remember promising him something just like that through a rain of hot, frightened tears. Finally he had stopped shaking his head and had only looked across the room with his eyes narrowed and his lips pressed tightly together-this she saw in the mirror, as he almost surely knew she would.

“You could never tell anyone,” he’d said at last, and Jessie remembered the swooning relief she’d felt at those words. What he was saying was less important than the tone in which he was saying it. Jessie had heard that tone a good many times before, and knew it drove her mother crazy that she, Jessie, could cause him to speak that way more often than Sally herself. I’m changing my mind, it said. I’m doing it against my better judgment, but I am changing it; I’m swinging around to your side.

I No,” she had agreed. Her voice was wavery, and she had to keep gulping back tears. “I wouldn’t tell, Daddy-not ever.” “Not just your mother,” he said, “but anyone. Ever. That’s a big responsibility for a little girl, Punkin. You might be tempted. For instance, if you were studying with Caroline Cline or Tammy Hough after school, and one of them told you a secret of hers, you might want to tell-”

“Them? Never-Never-Never!”

And he must have seen the truth of it on her face: the thought of either Caroline or Tammy finding out that her father had touched her had filled Jessie with horror. Satisfied on that score, he had pushed on to what she now guessed must have been his chief concern.

“Or your sister.” He pushed her back from him and looked sternly down into her face for a long moment. “There could come a time, you see, when you wanted to tell her-”

“Daddy, no, I’d never

He gave her a gentle shake. “Keep quiet and let me nish, Punkin. You two are close, I know that, and I know that girls sometimes feel an urge to share things they ordinarily wouldn’t tell. If you felt that way with Maddy, could you still manage to keep quiet?”

“Yes!” In her desperate need to convince him, she had begun to cry once more. Of course it was more likely that she would tell Maddy-if there was anyone in the world to whom she might one day confide such a desperate secret, it would be her big sister… except for one thing. Maddy and Sally shared the same sort of closeness Jessie and Tom had shared, and if Jessie ever told her sister about what had happened on the deck, the chances that their mother would know before the day was out were very good. Given that insight, Jessie thought she could quite easily withstand the temptation to tell Maddy.