He told her another story while she ate her breakfast, and then she helped him do the dishes.
'It rained hard early this morning. Thunder shook the rafters.'
'I didn't hear a thing.'
'I wore you out.'
He sounded cocky. She decided to let him have his due. 'Yes, you did,' she agreed as she folded the tea towel and put it on
the counter. 'We have to make plans.'
'I know,' he agreed as he followed her into the living room. She curled up on the sofa. He sat down in a chair, kicked his
shoes off, and propped his feet up on the opposite end of the sofa. He was such a big man he swallowed up the chair.
'But not today,' he said. 'Today we rest and talk. Tomorrow we plan.'
'What will we talk about?'
'Not what, but who,' he said. 'We need to talk about Jilly.'
She had put it off as long as she could. Nodding, she said, 'Carrie kept a diary. She was very young, around eleven, when she started writing in it. The diary wasn't filled with her hopes and dreams and crushes, though. No, it was all about Jilly. Every
single page was filled with one horrific incident after another involving her sick sister. Carrie told me she wanted to have some kind of record… proof, I guess, in hopes that one day Jilly would get caught, be put away. She thought that if the doctors read her diary, they would realize how dangerous Jilly was and make sure she stayed behind bars for the rest of her life, but I think there was more to it than that. I think that deep down Carrie believed that one day Jilly would kill her.'
'That was a hell of a way to grow up,' he said.
Avery agreed. 'Carrie stopped writing in the diary when Jilly left town, but she always kept it, just in case Jilly came back.
I knew where it was hidden, but Carrie wouldn't let me read it.'
'But you did read it, didn't you?'
'Yes, I did. I wish to God I hadn't, though. I was old enough to think I could handle anything, but there was such scary, sick
stuff in there…'
'How old were you?'
'Fourteen. I read every word, and I had nightmares for months. Carrie had put in a lot of details, and I learned all the twisted
facts about Jilly.'
She was hugging a throw pillow to her chest in a death grip. The sadness in her eyes was heartbreaking.
'I hate talking about her,' she whispered.
'I know.'
Her shoulders slumped. 'There really are monsters in this world. Predators,' she said. 'Jilly's one of them. Do you know what scared me the most after I read that diary?'
'What?'
'That I would wake up one morning and be just like her. You know, Dr. Jekyll-Mr. Hyde. Genetically, I'm forever linked to her.'
'That isn't going to happen, Avery.'
'How can you know that?'
'You have a conscience. That's not going to go away. You're nothing like her.'
'That's what Dr. Hahn told me,' she said.
'Who's Dr. Hahn?'
'A psychiatrist. I was waking up screaming every night, and in desperation, Carrie took me to Dr. Hahn.' She added, 'Carrie made me promise not to tell anyone because she didn't want people to think I was crazy.'
'She was worried about what other people thought?' he asked, trying to keep the censure out of his voice.
'Dr. Hahn was wonderful, and he helped me… cope, I guess you could say. Carrie didn't know why I was having the nightmares because I hadn't told her I'd read the diaries, and I think it was the third or fourth session when Dr. Hahn asked her to come in and I told her then what I had done. She had a fit, of course, but when the doctor had gotten her to calm down, he asked her if he could read the diary, and she agreed. She would have done anything to help me get over what she called my night terrors.'
She smiled at John Paul as she swung her legs down from the sofa. 'I think the doctor had nightmares after he read them.
I grew up knowing that Jilly was crazy, and Carrie did tell me stories, but they paled in comparison to what was in the diary.'
'What did Hahn say about Jilly after he read it? What was his reaction?'
'He was excited.'
'Excited?' he repeated, not understanding.
'He was sure Jilly was a pure sociopath, and he wished he'd had the opportunity to study her. Based on what he read, he concluded that Jilly was morally and emotionally stunted, which was why he believed she was incapable of feeling guilt or remorse. Other people's pain certainly didn't make her feel bad. On the contrary,' she explained, 'she enjoyed hurting people
for no apparent reason. She just liked it. She was a master at blaming others and rewriting history, and she was very deceptive.'
John Paul put his feet down on the floor and leaned forward, bracing his arms on his knees.
'She was… amazing, the way she could manipulate people. Everyone loved her, no matter what she did. She was so damned clever.'
'Give me an example.'
'When she was quite young, she started having fun with pets. She tortured and killed Carrie's cat with gasoline and a match.
She told Carrie what she'd done, but in front of their mother, she cried because, she said, she so loved that cat. One of the neighbors took her to get an ice cream cone to make her feel better. By the time she was a senior in high school, she was into bigger and better. She was the most popular girl in school, of course. Everyone loved Jilly. A girl named Heather Mitchell was voted homecoming queen, and Jilly was voted first attendant. According to Carrie, Jilly was gracious about it at school, but when she came home that afternoon, she went into a rage that lasted for hours. She nearly destroyed the house. Carrie's bedroom suffered the most damage. Not Jilly's room, of course. Then, after dinner, she became real quiet and got that sly look in her eyes and pretended to accept it.'
Avery took a breath. The muscles in her arms were aching, and she realized she was gripping the pillow. She let go.
'The next day a beaker of sulfuric acid was missing from the chemistry lab. After school, Jilly got Heather alone, but Carrie
saw her take her arm and lead her down the street. Jilly told Heather that she'd better not show up for homecoming weekend
or she'd be sorry. Heather was a sweet girl, and she was going through a terrible time. Her mother had died two weeks before
of an aneurysm, and the poor girl was still reeling from the shock. When Jilly got through tormenting her, Heather locked herself
in her bedroom, but her father finally got her to tell him what was wrong. He said that Jilly had admitted stealing the acid. She threatened to wait for Heather one day after school when she was all alone in her house and throw the acid in her face.'
'Good God.'
Avery nodded. 'What Carrie wrote wasn't hearsay. She talked to Heather.'
'What did Heather's father do?'
