room, and maybe I'm breathing the air, but nobody really sees me.' He rubbed his eyes. 'Then I think maybe if I'm not really here, that I need to be someplace else. Like, maybe I should just go ahead and pull the trigger, you know?'
Lena nodded, because she did know.
'What made you stop?' he asked her. 'Why didn't you pull the trigger?'
She told him the truth about the gun, but not about the pills. 'I thought about my partner finding me in the morning, and I couldn't do that to him.'
'Do you believe in God?'
'I'm not sure,' she answered. 'Do you?'
He shook his head no.
'Is that why you stopped going to church?'
He looked at her, angry. 'Don't be a cop with me.'
'I am a cop, Mark.' Lena kept her tone even, not matching his anger. She reached out and put her hand on his arm.
'I want to know what happened. Why did Jenny want to kill you?'
He sighed, slouching against the pillows. 'She was such a sweet kid,' he said. 'I really cared about her.'
'I know you did.'
'Do you?' he asked. 'I mean, do you really understand what it means to care about somebody?'
Lena thought of Sibyl when she said, 'Yes, I do.'
'Not me,' he said. 'I mean, before Jenny. I just didn't know what it meant to care like that.'
'You love your mother.'
He laughed, a hollow sound that vibrated in his chest. 'She's going to die soon, isn't she?'
Lena pressed her lips together.
'I feel it,' he said, putting his hand over his heart. 'I felt it this morning, somehow, like she wasn't going to last much longer, like she wanted to let go.' He started to cry. 'It's this connection, you know? Like, I can feel what she feels.' He turned to her suddenly, a bit of desperation in his tone. 'Did you know when your sister died?'
'Yes,' Lena lied. At the time, she had been on her way back from Macon and had no idea that something bad had happened. 'I could feel it here,' she said, putting her hand to her chest.
'Then you know,' he said. 'You know what that emptiness feels like.'
Lena nodded, not saying more.
Mark looked away, then closed his eyes. She studied his profile, his sharp nose and squared jaw. Tears rolled down his cheeks and fell onto his chest.
'The first time,' Mark began, his voice low, 'I guess it was at Thanksgiving.'
Lena kept her mouth closed, letting him take his time.
'Lacey and Jenny were down the hall in Lacey's room, and I wanted to borrow one of her CDs.' He sighed, his chest rising and falling with the sound. 'She started yelling at me, all mad and shit. I dunno. I guess Mama heard her yelling and came in and told us to stop.'
Lena felt her heart rate accelerate, and said a small prayer to whoever was listening that Brad would not pick now to come back into the trailer. She tried to do the math and figure out how much time had passed since he left, but since she dared not look at her watch, Lena wasn't sure.
'Lacey turned up the radio in her room really loud,' he said. 'Mama let her. It's always been like that. She was always the favorite.' He shook his head. 'Lacey's sweet underneath, you know? Maybe she's spoiled, but she's sweet underneath. She has a good heart, just like Mama.'
Lena waited, counting to twenty-five before Mark started speaking again.
'She came into my room a little later,' he said. 'I guess she knew I was still pissed off. Wanted to smooth things over. She was always like that, trying to make peace. I guess that's why so many people liked her, because she was good like that.' A slight smile came to his lips, but he kept his eyes closed. 'She just put her hand around the back of my neck, and then we started kissing for some reason. I mean, just kissing real deep for a long time.'
Lena tried to remember what Jeffrey had said about not letting her personal feelings ruin a confession, but the thought of Mark Patterson kissing his baby sister made her stomach roll. She wanted to say something, to stop him so that she would not go through the rest of her life knowing this story, but she knew that she could not.
'I don't know how the rest of it happened,' Mark said. 'You know, we were kissing, and then she started rubbing me, and it felt so good.' He looked at her, asking for her ap-proval. 'I know it was wrong, okay? It just felt so good. I didn't want to stop.'
Lena nodded, trying to control her expression. She doubted very seriously that Lacey Patterson had seduced her brother. Saying the victim had 'asked for it' was a common theme among sexual predators.
'I can tell you don't understand,' he said. 'But you don't know what it's like. My dad is so fucking hard on me.' He slammed his fist into his leg. 'He just never lets up on me. Ever.'
'I know,' Lena told him, reaching out, making herself touch his arm. 'I understand that part, Mark. I really do.'
His expression softened, and he said, 'I didn't make her do it.'
'I believe you.'
'She came on to me first,' he said. 'She was the one who came into my room. She was the one who started kissing me, who started touching me.'
Lena nodded because that was all that she could do.
'She was so wet for me. I just…' He shook his head, squeezing his eyes shut, as if to bring back the memory. 'It felt so right being inside of her. And she wanted me. I could tell she wanted me. The way she put her hand on the back of my neck, and pulled me closer to her, deeper.'
Lena swallowed back bile.
'Touching her and being with her and inside of her,' Mark said. 'I just felt complete, you know? Like things were finally right.' He put his hand over his eyes. 'She was so good at it. I mean, where did she learn to be so damn good at it?'
He seemed to want an honest answer, but Lena could not give him one.
'I mean, I look at my dad,' he said, shaking his head. 'It's not like he knows anything.'
Lena spoke without thinking. 'Your dad was sleeping with her, too?'
'Well, duh,' he said, as if she were stupid.
Lena put her hand to her stomach, thinking about poor Lacey Patterson, and what hell she must have been through.
She said, 'Tell me about Jenny.'
Mark gave a humorless laugh. 'Yeah, Jenny,' he said. 'I had been with her a couple of times before, like I told you.' He paused. 'She was sweet. She was all those things I told you.'
'She seemed like a good friend.'
'Yeah, well,' he said, a bit of derision slipping into his tone. 'She was a
