Danielle Steel - Malice

“Not yet,” she said almost inaudibly. “I'm not sure what to say to him. He and my father were really good friends.”

“Don't you think he'll want to help you?”

“I don't know.” But she didn't think so.

Molly was looking at her pointedly as she asked the next question. “Do you have any friends at all, Grace? Anyone you could turn to?” She suspected long before Grace spoke that she didn't. If she had, maybe none of this would have happened. Molly knew without asking her that she was isolated. She had no one in her life except her parents. And they had done enough to ruin anyone's life, or at least her father had. At least that was what she suspected. “Did your parents have any friends you were close to?”

“No,” Grace said thoughtfully. They really didn't have any close friends, they didn't want anyone to get too close to their dark secret. “My father knew everyone. And my mom was kind of shy …” And she had never wanted anyone to know that she was being beaten. “Everyone loved my dad, but he wasn't really close to anyone.” That in itself made Molly wonder about him.

“And what about you? Any real close friends at school?” Grace only shook her head in answer. “Why not?”

“I don't know. No time, I guess. I had to go home and take care of my mom every day,” Grace said, still not looking at her.

“Is that really why, Grace? Or did you have a secret?”

“Of course not.”

But Molly wouldn't let go of her. Her voice reached out to Grace and pulled her toward her. “He raped you that night, didn't he?” Grace's eyes flew open wide, and she looked at Molly, and hoped the young doctor didn't see her tremble.

“No … of course not …” But her breath caught, and she found herself praying she wouldn't have an asthma attack. This woman already knew too much without that. “How can you say such a thing?” She tried to look shocked but she was only terrified. What if she knew? Then what? Everyone else would know their ugly secret. Even after their deaths, she still felt an obligation to hide it. It was her fault too. What would people think of her if they knew it?

“You have bruises and tears all through your vagina,” Molly said quietly, “that doesn't happen with normal intercourse. The doctor who examined you said it looked like you had been raped by half a dozen men, or one very brutal man. He did an awful lot of damage. That's why you shot him, isn't it?” She didn't answer. “Was that the first time, after your mother's funeral?” She looked pointedly at Grace as though she expected an answer, and the teenager's eyes filled with tears that spilled down her cheeks in spite of all of her best efforts to stop them.

“I didn't … no … he wouldn't do a thing like that … everyone loved my dad …”

She had killed him, and all she could do now was defend his memory so no one would ever know what he had really been like.

“Did your father love you, Grace? Or did he just use you?”

“Of course he loved me,” she said woodenly, furious at herself for crying.

“He raped you that night, didn't he?” But this time, Grace didn't answer. She didn't even deny it “How often had he done that before? You have to tell me.” Her life depended on it now, but Molly didn't want to say that.

“No, I don't. I'm not going to tell you anything, and you can't prove it,” Grace said angrily.

“Why are you defending him?” Molly asked in total frustration. “Don't you understand what's happening? You've been charged with murdering him, they could even decide to charge you with murder in the first degree, if they can get away with it, and they think you have a motive. You have to do everything you can to save yourself. I'm not telling you to lie, I'm telling you to tell the truth, Grace. If he raped you, if he hurt you, if you were abused, then there were extenuating circumstances. It could reduce the charges to manslaughter or even self-defense, and it changes everything. Do you really want to go to prison for the next twenty years in order to preserve the reputation of a man who did that to you? Grace, think about it, you have to listen to me … you have to hear me.” But Grace knew that her mother would never have forgiven her for sullying her father's memory. It was her father whom Ellen had loved so blindly, and needed desperately. It was he she had always wanted to protect, even if it meant holding her thirteen-year-old daughter down for him. She wanted to make him love her at any price, even if the price was her own daughter.

“I can't tell you anything,” Grace said woodenly.

“Why? He's dead. You can't hurt him by telling the truth. You can only hurt yourself by not telling it. I want you to think about that. You can't be loyal to a dead man, or to someone who hurt you very badly. Grace …” She reached out and touched her hand across the table from where she sat. She had to make her understand, she had to pull her out from the place where she was hiding. “I want you to think about this tonight. And I'm going to come back and see you tomorrow. Whatever you tell me, I'll promise not to tell anyone else. But I want you to be honest with me about what happened. Will you think about that?” Grace didn't move for a long time, and then she nodded. She'd think about it, but she wasn't going to tell her.

Molly left her that night with a heavy heart. She knew exactly what was going on, and she couldn't seem to bridge the gap with Grace. She had worked with abused children and wives for years, and all their loyalty was always to their abusers. It took everything she had to break that bond, but usually she was successful. But so far, Grace wasn't giving an inch. Molly was getting nowhere.

She stopped in the detective's office to look at the hospital report and the Polaroids again, and it made her feel sick when she saw them. Stan Dooley came in while she was reading the report, and he was surprised to see her still at work, fourteen hours after she had started.

“Don't you have anything else to do at night?” he said amiably. “A girl like you ought to be out with some guy, or hanging out in bars, looking for her future.”

“Yeah,” she laughed at him, her long blond hair hanging invitingly over her shoulder. “Just like you, huh, Stan? You were here the same time I was this morning.”

“I have to. You don't. I want to retire in ten years. You can be a shrink until you're a hundred.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence.” She closed the file and put it on his desk with a sigh. She was getting nowhere. “Did you see the hospital report on the Adams girl?”

“Yeah. So?” He looked unmoved.

“Oh come on, don't tell me you can't figure it out.” She looked angry at the casual shrug of his shoulders.

“What's to figure? So she got laid, nobody says she got raped. And who says it was her father?”

“Bullshit. Who do you think laid her? Six gorillas from the zoo? Did you see the bruises, and read what he found internally?”

“So she likes it lively. Look, she's not complaining. She isn't saying that she was raped. What do you want from me?”

“Some sense for chrissake,” she blazed at him. “She's a seventeen-year-old kid, and he was her father. She's protecting him, or some misguided illusion about saving his reputation. But I can tell you one thing, that girl was defending herself, and you know it.”

“‘Protecting him.’ She blew the guy away. What kind of protection is that? I think your theory is real nice, Doctor, but it won't hold water. All we know is that she may have had a little rough sex. There is nothing to prove that she had it with her father, or that he was roughing her up. And even if, God help me, she did fuck her old man, that's still no reason to shoot him. That still doesn't make it self-defense, and you know that too. There's nothing to prove that her father hurt her. She's not even saying that. You are.”