“No, she didn’t.”
“Look. Just look, why don’t you?”
I leaned toward her and checked. The rope did appear to be awfully tight. It was making grooves in her wrists.
“Can you make it looser for me? Please?”
“I don’t know. Maybe Kimberly had a reason…”
“She had one, okay. She just loves to hurt me. It turns her on.”
“Sure,” I muttered.
“If you make it looser,” she said, “I’ll tell you whatever you want to know.”
Naturally, I was suspicious of her motives. I couldn’t get around the fact, though, that the rope was digging into her wrists.
“I’ll redo it,” I told her. “But you’d better not try anything.”
“I won’t. I promise.”
I put the ax out of reach behind me, then moved in close to Thelma on my knees and picked open the knot. When the knot came apart, I began to unwrap the rope from around her wrists.
She suddenly pulled her hands free.
I was left holding empty loops of rope.
Before I could do anything, she swung both her arms around behind her back and started shaking her head. “Please. I’m not doing anything. Don’t tie me up again, okay? Please? Give me a break. I can’t stand having them tied. Just give me a few minutes, okay? Please?”
“No. Come on, you promised.” I glanced over at the sleeping area. The gals were still down, thank God. I faced Thelma. “You’ll get me in all kinds of trouble.”
“They don’t have to find out. I won’t tell them if you don’t.”
“Damn it.” Dropping the rope, I leaned forward on my knees and reached out and grabbed Thelma’s upper arms. They were thick, but not flabby. They felt strong. Squeezing them, I tried to pull her arms out from behind her.
She struggled not to let me. After a few seconds, though, she said, “Stop it or I’ll scream.”
I let go fast.
It took a while to catch my breath. Then I said, “Come on. If somebody wakes up and your hands aren’t tied…”
“You’ll get in more trouble than me.”
“We’ll both be in trouble. Come on.”
“I’ll make you a deal,” she said.
I picked up the rope. “Like what?”
“Just let me stay untied for a while, okay? Just while we sit here and talk, and then—I’ll let you tie them up again, I promise.”
“Somebody might wake up. And besides, you tricked me. You took advantage of me trying to do you a favor. So just give me your hands.”
She shook her head, and kept them behind her back.
“Come on,” I said. “Please. I’ll make it really loose.”
“I thought you wanted to ask me a lot of stuff about Wesley. And about Kimberly? Don’t you wanta know about how Dad used to abuse her?”
“He abused her?”
“He used to do all sorts of things to her. To both of us.”
“Really?” I glanced over at the sleeping area. So far, so good.
“You’re so worried, well just pretend I’m tied.” Thelma offered her hands. I wrapped the rope around them a few times to make it look good, but left it loose and unknotted. “There,” Thelma said. “Now you’re covered if anyone comes snooping.”
“Just don’t try anything,” I warned her. Then I went back to where I’d been sitting, sat down and put the ax across my thighs. “What did he do to her?” I asked.
“To both of us,” Thelma said.
“Okay.”
Family Ties
“It’s… awful nasty. Sick. Are you sure you want to hear about it?”
I nodded. Already, I was feeling a little shaky inside with a mixture of dread and excitement.
“Well, okay then. You asked for it. Don’t blame me if you don’t like what I have to tell you.”
“I won’t. I promise. Come on.”
“One thing was, he used to make us strip naked and then wrestle on the floor. We’d all be naked. Me, Kimberly and Dad.” She spoke in a quick, hushed voice, as if she were sharing a very juicy bit of gossip. “He’d start off by making just me and Kimberly go at it, while he watched from the side and… like cheered us on, gave us orders. He’d try to get us to hurt each other. And do perverted things. Then, after a while, he’d join in.”
“Jeez,” I muttered. “How old were you?”
She shrugged, shook her head. “I don’t know. It went on from the time I was nine or ten, all the way through high school.”
“What about Billie? They were married for… twenty years? She let all this… ?”
“He never did anything in front of her. But she worked, you know. Dad found plenty of time to be alone with us.”
“Wasn’t he away at sea a lot?”
“Not that much. Not nearly enough, if you ask me. And when he did come back from sea tours, he was worse than ever. He had all sorts of games. The wrestling was just one of them. But it was his favorite, I think. He wanted to do it whenever he had us alone. He used to get these holds on us, and make us scream. We’d be screaming and crying, squirming around with him on the floor and he’d—you know, stick his fingers in us. And his tongue. And he’d bite us.”
“Billie didn’t know any of this was going on?”
“No, huh-uh. It was our dark little secret. Dad said he’d kill us if we ever told on him.”
“What about Connie?”
Thelma shrugged. “I don’t know. I stopped living at home when I went away to college. I mean, that’s like twelve years ago. Connie would’ve only been like… how old?”
“She’s eighteen now.”
“So that would’ve made her only six when I left. I know he kept it up with Kimberly after I was gone. We never talked about it, but I knew. I mean, they weren’t about to stop. But I don’t know if they got Connie doing it. It sure wouldn’t surprise me, though.”
“’Weren’t about to stop’?” You almost make it sound like Kimberly was… a willing participant.”
Thelma blew a huff of air out her nose and mouth. “Kimberly didn’t go away to college. What does that tell you? An honor student, class president, you name it, she could’ve gone to Princeton or Yale if she’d wanted to. But what did she do instead? Enrolled at the community college and lived at home.”
“You think she kept on doing things with him?”
“Hell, yes. She really got into it. The whole pain thing. Delicious pain. That’s what Kimberly always called it, delicious pain.”
“Really?” I was a bit dumbfounded by all this. “She hasn’t got any scars. Not that I’ve seen, anyway.”
“No, no. Of course not. Scars are a dead giveaway. She’s always been very careful not to let herself get hurt in any ways that show. You don’t want people knowing about your nasty little secret life. They’ll think you’re a degenerate, a sicko. You know what I mean?”
“What about her and Keith?” I asked. “I mean, she married the guy. If she was having this thing with Andrew… ?”
