He picked up one can, tilted it, and began to pour.
The gurgle of fluid from the spout set Erin’s heart racing still faster. Her legs twisted, knees bending and straightening, boot heels dragging on the floor’s hardwood planks.
In her mind a stranger’s voice kept up a manic, witless patter: I’m afraid, so afraid, so very afraid…
But when she spoke, her own voice was calm and reasonable, the voice of a therapist doing her job. “You’ll never be free that way.”
“Yes, I will.” Oliver walked with the can, pouring as he went, staying close to the living room wall. “Once I’m through with you… once you’re out of my life…”
“We’ve been out of your life before. After 1968 you weren’t Oliver Ryan Connor anymore. You could have stayed away from us forever. You didn’t.”
“No.”
“You waited until August of 1973. And then… Well, you know what you did then.”
No response.
“It was you, Oliver. It had to be. Albert Reilly never set that fire. You did.”
Still nothing.
“Why? Oliver, tell me why.”
Even now he was silent. She feared he had slipped still deeper into the fugue state, to the very bottom of the abyss, where no voice could reach him.
Then, without looking up, he spoke one word.
“Revenge.”
Not much of a reply, but something. She had to capitalize on it, maintain a dialogue. “Revenge-for what?”
“I’d warned her. Warned Maureen never to tell.”
Erin understood. “She waited two years-but in the summer of ’68 she told Lydia at last. That’s why Lydia disowned you.”
“Yes.”
He reached the corner, then continued along the adjacent wall, methodically laying down a trail of fuel along the room’s perimeter. The smell of gasoline, the smell Erin hated more than any other, rose to her nostrils. Nausea coiled in her stomach.
She forced herself to continue her charade of disinterested professionalism. “Tell me about it.”
The noise he made was intended as a chuckle, but came out stillborn, a croak of pain. “An ugly scene. Lydia called me names. Terrible names. I told her she could say the same about the man she’d married. And I told her why.”
Erin nodded. It wasn’t fear for Oliver’s safety that had put Lydia in the hospital with a nervous breakdown, as everyone assumed. It was the double shock of learning the truth about her son and her husband.
The five-gallon can dribbled out its last drops. Oliver tossed it on the floor with a hollow clang. He walked past her, toward the doorway, where the other gas can waited.
Desperately Erin tried to keep him talking, fighting to reinforce the fragile connection she had established. “So you waited five years, then went to Maureen’s house-our house-for revenge?”
“But first I visited Albert at his office.” He hoisted the can by its handle. “He’d thought I was dead. I straightened him out about that… and other things.”
“You told him you were our real father.”
Remorselessly Oliver began wetting down the opposite side of the room. “Came as kind of a surprise,” he said mildly.
“Weren’t you afraid he’d go to the police?” Erin wished the sound of her voice would cover the low, insidious murmur of gasoline escaping from the can. “You were confessing to rape and murder-”
“There was no risk. If I were arrested, the truth about you and Annie would come out.”
The truth. That they were products of an unnatural union, products of incest. Sideshow specimens. Freaks.
Oliver was right. Neither Albert nor Maureen would have willingly brought that fact into the light. Especially not in a small town like Sierra Springs, where everyone would talk.
He reached the doorway to the hall and continued past it to the living room’s rear wall. The thread of fuel was lengthening, inexorably boxing her in.
“What was Albert’s reaction?” she asked slowly.
“Shame. Grief. Most of all, anger. But not at me alone.”
“Who else?”
“Maureen.”
“My mother? She was the victim in all this.”
“Was she?” Another lifeless chuckle. “I told you, Maureen wasn’t married when she visited the ranch. Wasn’t even engaged.”
“Then when she found out she was pregnant-”
“That’s right, Doc.”
Erin shut her eyes. Her mother, panicky, unwilling either to abort the babies or have them born out of wedlock, had lied to Albert, convinced him that whatever precautions he’d taken had failed, railroaded him into a hasty wedding.
She remembered that nightmarish summer evening when Albert, drunk, wild with rage, had railed at his wife, rejected his children, and finally, in a fit of bellowing fury, had promised they would burn, burn, burn.
“In hell, he meant.” Her voice was a whisper, the words spoken half to herself. “In hell.”
The gasoline gurgled to a stop, the can empty. Oliver threw it aside.
“I let him suffer awhile,” he said. “Maureen, too. They might have assumed I’d done my worst. Then on the night of August eighteenth…”
“You broke into the house.”
“Yes. Found Albert asleep in the den. Clubbed him unconscious. Soaked the ground floor first, then carried Albert upstairs and finished the job.”
“In the master bedroom. That’s when Maureen woke up.”
“She saw me, screamed. I gave her a good hard slap, just like I’d done in the barn. She was pleading with me when I tossed the match.”
The floorboards shivered under his slow, heavy tread. He moved to the stove and stood before her, staring down.
“You two got out that night.” Cold words. “But not this time.”
Erin gazed up at him, his face as round and pale as a full moon, his gaze still blank, void of compassion, empty of self.
“You’re lying,” she whispered.
Puzzlement flickered briefly in his eyes. “What?”
“Revenge wasn’t your motive. You had another purpose. A purpose you’ve never been willing to consciously acknowledge.”
“Too late, Doc. Therapy’s over.” He began to turn away.
“That wasn’t a fatherly kiss you gave me, Oliver.”
The words stopped him.
“In Sierra Springs,” she said, “you did more than visit Albert in his office. You spied on Maureen. Found out where she lived and observed her from hiding.”
He blinked. “How did you know that?”
“It’s what you always do. When Maureen visited the ranch, you spied on her from the arroyo. And when you came to Tucson, you must have followed me to learn where I live. I’ve got an unlisted address.”
“All right. I watched her. With binoculars.”
“And while you were observing Maureen’s house, you saw her two little girls- your girls. You saw us, didn’t you?”
“I… saw you.”
“And you wanted us.”
