Patricia Rosemoor - Skin

“I like living here in luxury. I like driving a fast car, wearing nice clothes, going to the best restaurants.”

“What about what you do to get all that?”

“Who the hell do you think you are?”

“Your sister, who is concerned about you.”

“My sister abandoned me.”

Even as her stomach tightened, Lilith shook her head in denial. “It wasn’t like that, Hannah. I just went away to school so I could get a good job and take care of us.”

“I know it’s been twelve years, but if I remember correctly, when you were getting ready to leave, I asked you to take me with you, and you said no.”

“I was seventeen!”

“And I was twelve. You left me there, knowing.”

“I didn’t think he would hit you , Hannah. You weren’t like me. I was the one with the big mouth. I was the one who stepped between him and Mama.” She could see Mama now, bruised arms, blackened eye. Horrified that had happened to Hannah, as well — her mother never admitted to the abuse going on in their home — she said, “You were the quiet one, the mouse.”

“When you left, someone had to protect Delores.”

Why was Hannah calling their mother by her first name? Had Hannah cut them both out of her heart?

Lilith shook her head. Someone always had to protect Mama. Someone always had to take care of her. That’s why she’d married Marlon Aldrich when Lilith had been fourteen, Hannah nine. That’s how they’d gotten to this place. Lilith fought buried feelings of resentment and betrayal for her mother from surfacing.

“Have you seen Mama lately?” Lilith asked, wondering if she had known where Hannah was but hadn’t told her.

“Go back to that house? What are you on?”

“She just won’t leave. I keep trying to convince her–”

”Why bother any more?”

“Because she is our mother.”

“Mothers take care of their children,” Hannah said. “They make sure they’re safe. Not the other way around.”

Lilith didn’t say anything. As long as she’d had to deal with it, she still didn’t know why. Why had Mama stayed with a man who used his fists on her? Who used his fists on her daughters? Their real father hadn’t been like that. He’d been gentle and kind, a dreamer as Mama had always told them.

“ You were like my mother once,” Hannah admitted. “But you turned out to be no better than she was.”

The back of Lilith’s throat thickened. “So you hate us both?”

“Shouldn’t I?”

“I didn’t make you do this.”

“Oh, this. You mean strip. That’s the difference between us, Lilith. I like what I do.”

“I’m not judging you. I realize you had to take care of yourself.”

“I do more than take care of myself. I make terrific money. Look around you to see what it buys.”

Lilith’s gaze skimmed over the expensive furnishings. “These are nice things,” she agreed.

“Things that have value.”

“ People have value.” As soon as the words came out of her mouth, Lilith regretted them. She couldn’t stand the hurt on her sister’s face.

Then Hannah laughed. “Oh, yeah. Let me count how many worthwhile people I know.” She looked directly at Lilith when she said, “I guess maybe that’s zero, because they all disappoint you in the end.”

Meaning she had disappointed Hannah, Lilith knew. “I wanted to make a better life for us.”

“You wanted out.”

“For all three of us!” Lilith insisted. “I was seventeen and had only a high school degree. What could I do with that? I couldn’t have gotten a job to support us. That’s why I went away to school, to get an education so that I could.”

Not listening to reason, Hannah said, “You were tired of the arguments and the beatings and you took the first opportunity to leave all that — to leave me — behind.”

“I would have come back for you.” The weekly phone calls with Hannah begging to be with her had gotten to Lilith. “I was coming back for the summer after the semester was over.”

“After Marlon broke me the way he did Delores? The first time he beat me, I had a concussion. The second time a broken arm. And Delores lied to the police for him.”

Hot tears seared the back of Lilith’s eyelids. “Mama told me about what Marlon did after you’d left.” She hadn’t said she’d lied to the authorities, of course. That hadn’t been necessary. It had been her pattern of denial.

“I wasn’t waiting for a third time. I wasn’t waiting for him to break me . Or kill me. You can’t hide from abuse when it’s in your own house, Lilith. You know that. And I guess I was trying to be like you.” On the heels of that announcement, Hannah said, “You know, I think you’d better leave.”

Like her? Hannah had been nothing like her, Lilith thought, swallowing a lump too large for her throat. “But we have so much to talk about.”

“We have nothing in common, Lilith. You’re still you and I’m, well, I’m Anna Youngheart now.”

“You don’t have to be. I can help you. We can figure something out together.”

“You think you’re going to walk back into my life after all these years and I’m simply going to give up everything because you disapprove?” Hannah opened the door and indicated she should leave. “Get real.”

Lilith knew she’d handled this all wrong. Having her sister back in her life was more important than what she did for a living. She took out her business card, scribbled her home phone number on the back and left it on the table. “I’m leaving you my work and home phone numbers, Hannah. I want to see you again, and I hope you’ll want to see me, too, when you get done being mad at me.”

“You don’t have that long.”

Lilith might have believed her. Might have believed that there was no hope for the hard bitter young woman who was giving her the boot. But at the last minute, when she took one final look around, and Hannah was standing in the doorway, in the light, Lilith finally saw it.

Hannah was still wearing the heart-half.

HE SLAMMED INTO his special place where no one could find him and stood surveying the center of his power. A cabinet snugged against one wall housed well-cared-for tools of destruction. Rifles. Handguns. Knives. Opposite were reminders of his prowess. Several stuffed animal heads with glass eyes reigned near the ceiling. Beneath the remains of deer and moose and bear, he’d hung likenesses of the real prizes.

Pictures of women.

Beautiful, dark-haired women. Three of them. So far. Starting with her , the one woman he could not touch.

And next to the carefully framed photographs stood his souvenir case of teak and glass with red velvet-lined shelves. Only the best for his mementos, tokens of the women he’d slain.

Skin.

He was ready to add to the meager collection.

Whipping the photograph from beneath his jacket, he stared at the slut’s face. She could be her , he thought, and soon she would be for him, if only for a short while.

He hadn’t expected the need to resurface so soon. That worried him. What if it meant he’d lost control? The possibility made him almost as angry as she did. It was her fault those women were dead. Her fault that he was ready to strike again. For if he couldn’t punish the woman who really deserved it…

Thinking about his next quarry, he fetched the case and set it on his leather chair. Oh-so-carefully chose and packed his tools. Handcuffs. Rope. Hunting knife. Rifle. Ammunition. Thin leather gloves.

He made an inventory.

Had he forgotten anything?

Lovingly smoothing a hand over the contents, he closed and locked the case.