Greg Iles - Blood Memory

“I know. When I’m off my meds, I feel much more alive and in the moment, but that comes at a price. My memory and logic definitely suffer. Maybe if I wean myself completely, they’ll come back.”

“Malik’s at the center of this whole mess. He’s the only known connection between you and the New Orleans murders. He’s already demonstrated that he’s fixated on you. I think you should consider him the prime suspect.”

I hold some ice cream in my mouth, savoring the rich taste of vanilla. “Well…the FBI is already searching for him, and he couldn’t have known I was on the island.”

“You don’t know that. You do know he’s going to call you back, yet you haven’t told the FBI that. Why?”

“How do you know I haven’t?”

Michael’s eyes say, Give me a break. “I think you want to talk to Dr. Malik without anyone listening in. You think he can figure out things about your life that other therapists never could.”

“Like…?”

“Like why this abuse happened to you. Proof that it did happen. That’s one thing I read today about people with delayed memories of abuse. Even when they manage to find proof that their memories are real, they still doubt the truth of what comes back to them.”

This gives me an unexpected chill. “Why?”

“Because accepting that the abuse really happened means accepting that the person who abused them never really loved them. To accept your abuse, Cat, the little girl inside of you is going to have to admit, My daddy never loved me. Do you think you can do that? I’m not sure I could.”

I’ve never wanted ice cream less than I want it now.

“That’s the core of this whole problem,” Michael reflects. “Denial. Mothers deny it’s happening to their children so they can keep their families together. The rest of us refuse to believe that our doctor or our minister or the nice mailman is having sex with his three-year-old child, because if we do, we admit that the whole veneer of civilization is bullshit. Worse, we’d have to admit the danger that our own kids are in. Because if we can’t recognize the abusers we shake hands with every day, how can we protect our children?”

“This is a depressing conversation.”

“You want to watch that movie now?”

“God, no. I want to sleep for thirty hours straight.”

“Then that’s what you should do.” Michael shrugs as if we’re on vacation together, deciding whether to go out to dinner or to eat in. “I don’t blame you for not wanting to go home. Going back into the physical space where the abuse happened to you can’t be a good idea.”

“Do you really have a guest room I can stay in?”

He smiles. “I have three. You’ll have total privacy. The whole second floor is yours. You won’t know I’m here unless you come downstairs and find me.”

I wait a moment before speaking. “I don’t want to sound ungrateful, but guys have made me promises like that before. They never seem to live up to them.”

“I’m not most guys.”

“I believe you. But why aren’t you?”

A self-deprecating smile. “Probably because my puberty years sucked so badly. I understand deferred gratification.”

“Is that what you want from this relationship, though? In the end? Gratification?”

Michael suddenly looks very serious. “I’m not thinking that far ahead, okay? I don’t even know if you’re sane enough to handle a real relationship. I just like you. I always did. I also happen to think you’re beautiful. But anyone can see that. The point is, you can stay here as long as you want, and you don’t have to worry about sex being in the mix.”

I don’t know why, but I believe him. “Okay, deal. Show me the bedroom.”

“You can find it. Upstairs is all you need to know. Take your pick.”

The wide smile on my face surprises me. Before it can fade, I turn and walk to the foyer, where the stairs are. I remember the layout from when the Hemmeters owned the house. As I put my foot on the second step, I hear Michael’s voice.

“I have to go to work in the morning,” he says, walking into the foyer. “But I’m going to leave the Expedition for you.”

“What will you drive?”

“I have a motorcycle.”

“A motorcycle?”

“Does that surprise you?”

“Well…” A strange laugh escapes my lips. “You have a plane and a motorcycle. I guess I associate that with a certain kind of guy. And you don’t seem like that kind of guy.”

“It doesn’t pay to stereotype people.”

“Touche.”

He takes a step back toward the kitchen. “I’ll leave the keys on the counter.”

I start to go up, but something has been nagging me since he said it. “Michael, what you said before…about why mothers keep quiet about abuse going on in their homes?”

“Yes?”

“You said they do it to keep their families together, right?”

“Right.”

“I would think that’s because the father in those situations is the primary breadwinner. The source of support for the whole family.”

Michael nods. “Exactly. The abuser creates a situation in which everyone in the family is dependent upon him. By denying the abuse, the mother avoids her worst nightmares of abandonment and poverty.”

“But that doesn’t work in my case, see? For my family.”

“Because your father wasn’t the provider?”

“Right. My grandfather was.”

“What about your father’s sculpting?”

“He didn’t make any real money from that until a couple of years before his death. Grandpapa paid for everything. I mean, we lived in his slave quarters, for God’s sake. It sounds terrible, but if my dad had been hit by a bus, it wouldn’t have affected our situation in the least.”

“Materially speaking,” Michael says. “But money isn’t everything. Based on what you’ve told me tonight, I think your father’s early death went a long way toward wrecking your life.”

He’s right, of course.

Michael steps back toward the staircase. “So why would your mother deny that your father was abusing you if she didn’t have to fear losing him?”

I feel blood heat my cheeks. “Right.”

“It may be that she didn’t really know about it. But think…your father returned from Vietnam with severe post-traumatic stress disorder. He told you himself that you couldn’t be around him at certain times. Now you’ve learned that he was part of a military unit that committed atrocities during the war. It would probably be difficult to overestimate your mother’s fear of what that man might do to her-or to you-if she confronted him about abuse, or worse, tried to take you away from him.”

Michael’s logic leaves me in cold shock. Why is it so easy to see the essential nature of relationships in other people’s families but not in our own? I’ve been angry at my mother for years, and I didn’t know why. Today I thought I’d discovered the reason. But now…given an idea of what it must have been like to live with Daddy, not as a blindly loving daughter but as a wife, my mother seems a completely different person to me.

Michael lays his hand over mine, which is resting on the newel post. “Get some sleep, Cat. It’s going to take a while for all this to sink in.”

I’ve gotten similar advice countless times from the women in my life: Go to sleep. Everything will look better in the morning. But it doesn’t sound the same coming from Michael. He has no illusions that things will be better tomorrow. “Thanks,” I tell him. “I mean it.”

“You’re welcome.” He withdraws his hand and walks back toward the kitchen.

I slowly climb the stairs and flick on the light in the first bedroom to my right. The walls are pale yellow, and the queen bed has a white comforter on it. Walking to the window, I see that it overlooks the glowing blue rectangle of the swimming pool.