Greg Iles - Blood Memory

I’m dreaming. If I can wake myself up, I won’t have to hear this. But I can’t wake up. I keep sitting motionless, and my grandfather keeps talking.

“I slipped inside the house. Gwen’s door was open, but she was sound asleep. Then I opened your door and clicked on my flashlight.”

“No,” I whisper. “Don’t.”

“Luke was in the bed with you, Catherine. I hoped it was some kind of psychological dependency, something like that. That he needed to get into bed with you to be able to sleep. But it wasn’t that. When I yanked back the covers-”

“Don’t!”

“He wasn’t wearing pants, Catherine. And your gown was pushed up to your chest.”

I’m shaking my head like a child trying to reverse time: to bring back a dog that was run over by a car or a parent who was just lowered into the earth. But it does no good.

Grandpapa stands and looks at the French windows, his voice rising with emotion. “He was molesting you, Catherine. Before I could say anything, he jumped up and started trying to explain himself. That it wasn’t what it looked like. But there was no denying the state he was in. I grabbed his arm and yanked him toward the door. He went crazy. He started hitting me.” Grandpapa turns to me, his eyes bright. “Luke was so passive most of the time, it took me completely by surprise. But he could be savage when he wanted to be. He wouldn’t have survived the war without that capacity for violence.”

Grandpapa stops three feet away from me, looking down from what seems an enormous height. “I wanted to get you out of there, but he’d hit me several times and showed no sign of stopping. I remembered the rifle that hung over the fireplace in the den. I ran out and grabbed it, chambered a round, and went back in to get you.

“Luke was in the corner by the closet, down on his knees. Your bed was empty. I knew you must be terrified, and I figured you’d tried to escape through that closet. Back then it didn’t have a back wall. It was like the old country places, where adjoining bedroom closets are actually the same space. Anyway, I told Luke to get away from you and stand up. When he didn’t, I walked over with the rifle and told him to get the hell off my property and never come back.”

Grandpapa shakes his head, his eyes cloudy with memory. “Maybe it was the sight of the gun that did it. Or maybe he couldn’t deal with the idea that he was going to be exposed. But he attacked me again. He came up out of that corner like a wild animal. I pulled the trigger out of pure reflex.” Grandpapa’s hand actually jerks when he says this. “You know the rest. The round hit Luke in the chest, and he died quickly.”

The silence in the study is absolute. Then, out of the vacuum that is me at this moment, a question rises. “Did I see it happen?”

“I don’t know, baby. When I got to the closet, you weren’t there. You must have crawled through to your mother’s bedroom. I suspect you tried to wake her up but couldn’t do it. Do you remember any of this?”

“Maybe that,” I whisper. “Trying to wake Mom up. But maybe it wasn’t that night, I don’t know. I think that happened a lot back then.”

“But you remember nothing of the abuse?”

I shake my head with robotic precision.

“I thought not. But you’ve never recovered from it, just the same. It’s haunted you your whole life. I’ve watched you all these years, wishing I could do something for you. But I couldn’t see what . I didn’t see how telling you this about your father could help you. They say the truth shall set you free, but I’m not so sure. If you hadn’t found that blood in your room, I doubt I’d ever have told this thing.”

He goes to the sideboard, pours a nearly full glass of vodka, and holds it out to me. The vodka might as well be water. I’m so anesthetized by shock that even my craving for alcohol is gone.

“Take it,” he says. “Do you good.”

No, it won’t, I say silently. It’ll hurt me. It’ll poison my baby .

“What are you thinking, Catherine?”

I don’t speak. I’m not sharing my only pure secret with anyone.

“I’m not sure what to do now,” he says. “You’ve had problems with depression in the past, and I was damn little help to you. I was from the old school. If I couldn’t palpate it, irradiate it, amputate it, or resect it, it wasn’t a problem. I know different now. I worry that telling you this could trigger a major depressive episode. Are you still taking SSRIs for that?”

I don’t reply. My silence must remind him of the wordless year that followed my father’s death, because it spooks him.

“Catherine?” he says in an anxious voice. “Can you speak?”

I don’t know. Am I speaking now?

“Surely you have some questions. You always do.”

But I’m not me anymore.

“Well, after you’ve had time to absorb this, I think you’ll see why I don’t want you bringing outsiders here to search that room for more blood. No possible good can come from anybody learning what I just told you. None at all. But great harm could result.”

“Who else knows?” I whisper.

“No one.”

“Not Pearlie?”

A solemn shake of the head. “She might suspect, but she doesn’t know.”

“Mother?”

“No one, Catherine.”

“Did you really examine me that night? After the police left?”

He nods sadly.

“What did you find?”

A deep sigh. “Vaginal and anal irritation. Old scarring. Your hymen wasn’t intact. That’s not conclusive in itself, but I knew what I’d seen. If I’d waited ten minutes to go into that room, I’d have found more evidence. And if a forensic team had tested your bedsheets back then-”

“Please stop.”

“All right, darling. Just tell me what I can do.”

“Nothing.”

“I’m not sure that’s true. Now that you know the truth about your past, it might be helpful to speak to someone. I can get you access to the top people in the country.”

“I have to go.”

“Where?”

“Anywhere.”

“Why don’t you stay here for a while? I’ll have Pearlie fix a room upstairs. You don’t ever have to go back into that slave quarters again. You’d have never lived there in the first place if it had been up to me. It was Luke who refused to move in here. I offered him a whole damn wing. I guess now you know why. Anyway, you take a few days and start trying to get your mind around this. It could take a long while to really deal with it.”

I can’t believe this is my grandfather talking. His philosophy was always unequivocal: When life throws you a curveball, you knock that son of a bitch right down the pitcher’s throat. I actually heard him say that many times. Yet here he stands, talking like he’s been watching Dr. Phil with my mother.

“I have to go now, Grandpapa.”

I turn and walk quickly to the French doors that lead out onto the lawn. His footsteps follow me, then stop. In a moment I’m standing in bright sunlight on an endless plain of freshly mown grass.

And there the tears come. Great racking sobs that make my ribs hurt. I fall to my knees and bend over the grass the way I would if I were puking drunk. But I’m not drunk. I am desolate. What I want most is out of my skin. I want to take a knife, slash myself from my pubic bone to my neck, and crawl out of this disgusting body.

“Catherine?” calls a frantic female voice. “What’s the matter? Did you hurt yourself?”

It’s my mother. She’s kneeling in the flower beds near the front entrance of Malmaison. The mere sight of her throws me into panic. When she gets to her feet, I stand and race for the far corner of the house.