Free Antonelli - 03 - The Judgment by D. W. Buffa

Jeffries drew back, a scowl on his face. ‘Did it ever occur to you that he wanted to get “back at everyone,” as you put it, because of what was done to him?’
    She did not back down. ‘Nothing was done to him,’ she insisted.
    ” ‘Do you have any more questions of this witness, Mr. Antonelli?’ Jeffries asked, eager to get her off his hands.
    “Nodding, I gazed down at the floor, reluctant to begin the series of questions that I knew would be unlike anything anyone in that courtroom had ever heard, questions the answers to which might shatter the last illusions we had about who we were and what we could trust.
    ” ‘Amy, how old were you when your father first started to do things with you?’
    ” ‘Eleven,’ she replied without hesitation. ‘That’s when he started to touch me. I was twelve the first time we actually had intercourse.’
    “She was sixteen years old, with hair that, depending on the light, looked brown or blond, and with just enough freckles on her face so that even in a dress she had the fresh-scrubbed look of a tomboy who could outrun any kid in her class.
    ” ‘When this first started,’ I asked, ‘why didn’t you tell your mother? Why didn’t you ask her to make him stop?’
    ” ‘He was my father,’ she explained. ‘He told me it was the way he could show me how much he loved me. He told me it had to be our secret.’
    ” ‘That wasn’t the only reason though, was it?’
    “Her eyes were fixed on mine, and she did not open her mouth.
    We had been over all of this before. We both knew what she was going to say. She kept looking at me, and then I realized what she was doing. She was waiting for me, waiting until she was sure I was ready. She had seen it the first time she told me, the stunned disbelief, the awkward embarrassment, and she did not want that to happen to me again. It had become second nature to treat adults like children. I smiled at her and repeated the question.
    ” ‘That wasn’t the only reason, was it?’
    ” ‘No. The real reason is that I didn’t want it to stop. I liked it. That’s what everyone forgets. Sex feels good.’
    “It was so deathly quiet in that courtroom that I swear you could have heard a heartbeat if you had been able to take your eyes off this woman-child on the witness stand.
    ” ‘But despite that, there were times when you wanted it to stop, weren’t there?’
    “She hesitated, and beneath that air of worldly self-confidence there was the first glimpse of doubt. No, not doubt, certainty. She knew that it was wrong, and she knew—or she thought she knew—she could have stopped it.
    ” ‘Yes,’ she said, looking down at her close-clipped schoolgirl hands. ‘Sometimes I’d ask him not to.’
    “It was like trespassing on evil, asking those questions. I had the strange sensation of engaging in some utterly depraved private vice.
    ” ‘What would he do, when you asked him not to?’
    “She lifted her head, a lost look in her eyes. ‘He’d leave.’
    “We were in the dark, just the two of us, falling down a bottomless black hole. ‘What would happen then?’
    ” ‘He’d come back.’
    ” ‘And then?’
    ” ‘And then he’d sit on the edge of the bed and tell me that he knew I really wanted to, and that it was all right because a lot of people did the same thing; and he’d tell me that he really loved me and that there was nothing to worry about because it was always going to be our secret. And he’d tell me that he’d never do anything I didn’t want him to.’
    ” ‘And then?’
    ” ‘And then I’d do what he wanted.’
    ” ‘But only after he made you believe it was really what you wanted?’
    ” ‘Yes.’
    ” ‘You thought it was wrong?’
    “With a gesture almost identical to the one her mother had used, she bit her lip and nodded. ‘Yes.’
    ” ‘But he told you it was all right?’
    “Again she nodded. ‘Yes.’
    “It was in some ways worse than murder, worse than what we