Free Hide and Seek by Jack Ketchum Page A

was all muscle.
     
    Well, we came close to taking out the front seat in that pickup of mine.
     
    I could barely see her and she could barely see me, so there was a lot of inadvertent pain for both of us. One of us broke the rearview mirror. Somebody put a dent in the radio as big as an apple.
     
    When it finally wore down for us the palms of my hands were wet with her tears and the musty smell of them filled the car as she sobbed into my shoulder, great mangled racking sounds that tore what was left of my anger to shreds and left me holding her, stroking her, wondering how in the hell it had come to this, anyway.
     
    "Just hold on to me, huh?"
     
    Her voice was very small against me. She sniffled, laughed a little.
     
    "I... I think I've got a screw loose somewhere, you know? So please just... hold on?"
     
    I did hold her.
     
    And then a little later I heard her sigh.
     
    "God, I'm fucked up!"
     
    "You want to tell me about it?"
     
    She laughed again. It was weighted with sadness.
     
    "No."
     
    "Tell me anyhow."
     

For a moment she was very still. My hand found the warm bare flesh of her shoulder where I'd torn the shirt. Her breathing was calmer and more even now.
     
    "He hasn't done anything fora longtime now. I'd almost forgiven him.
    Both of us."
     
    She paused, thought a moment. Her voice turned colder.
     
    "No, I hadn't. That's a lie."
     
    "Who? Who are we talking about?"
     
    "My father."
     
    She turned her head away from me slightly so that it rested just below my shoulder and stared out through the windshield. Clouds had parted for the moon again just moments before and now I saw snail tracks of tears across her cheeks, bathed in cool white light, dissolving the tan into something pale and famished-looking.
     
    "He drinks. A lot. You're not supposed to do that when you're vice-president of a bank. So he drinks at home where there's nobody there but us to see.
     
    "My mother would go out. Clubs and meetings and all that, the kind of thing that's expected of a wife in ... her position. Because he couldn't manage his end of it. Get him around liquor, and he's drunk.
    So he stayed in. With us, me and Jimmie, my little brother. Maybe she just wanted to get away from him. I don't know.
     
    "He's not a bad man. He's not mean. Even when he's drunk, he's not mean. Just weak, and foolish. She's very smart. Intolerant, and disappointed, I guess. They should never have married at all. But where she comes from, you get married. You just do."
     
    She glanced at me once and then looked away, shaking her head.
     
    "I'm not doing so good at this."
     
    "Go on."
     
    "When I was thirteen ... I guess you could say he raped me."
     
    I waited. I could feel something clog my throat. I think I'd half expected it. I felt the sudden press of the inevitable. Itwasas though the car sat underneath a bell jar and we were in a perfect vacuum, with everything extraneous sucked out of it and us except this one moment in time, this one event.
     
    Figure this if you can:
     

It was then that she seduced me utterly.
     
    I waited. I don't think I so much as blinked. Perhaps a car went by, playing over us with its headlights. I know I saw her very clearly.
     
    "I was in the tub. I still liked baths then. "We were never very big on privacy. I'd left the door open. I looked up and saw him standing there, and I knew he was drunk. You could always tell. He looked bad.
    Very bad. I wasn't angry. I felt sorry for him. I watched him looking at me and I didn't yell and for a while I didn't move or say a word. He'd seen me naked before, but this was ... different. I was already a woman by then. I knew. I really knew. And I felt bad for him.
     
    "I got up and wrapped a towel around me and walked past him. He didn't touch me. He didn't say anything. I went into my bedroom and closed the door. I remember looking into the mirror for a long, longtime.
     
    "I read for a while until I got sleepy and then I went to bed. I could hear him