Page 43 of Price of Angels

“Try – at least try, please – not to hate me, after I tell you.”

“I won’t.”

Her smile was small and wry. She took a deep breath. “My mother fell in love with a monster…”

Holly had a handful of precious, closely-guarded memories of her mother. Lila Jessup had been slight, almost boyish, with lush tangles of dark hair that were always catching in the wind. She was soft-spoken, always-gentle. Trapped in the old farmhouse out in the woods, with no one but her husband and daughter for company, she had been far from depressed. She loved nature; she knew the name of every songbird, every tree and tiny sprouting flower.

She took Holly by the hand, and together they walked the wooded trails, passing in and out of golden shafts of sunlight, freezing at the sight of a doe and fawn passing through the trees, staying so silent the mother deer never noticed them, and they could marvel at the fawn’s perfect blanket of white spots.

They clipped flowers and carried them back to the house to arrange in old jelly jars and sweet tea glasses, set up in the window above the sink, so the sun shone through the water and translucent petals. Lila knew which berries were safe to eat, and she baked them into pies and tarts. She stood behind tiny Holly, helping her roll out the dough with the floured pin, holding her little hands steady on the knife as they cut the lattice strips for the pie tops.

Holly’s father, Abraham, was a handyman, on the road all day every day looking for work among the local farms. Fixing a fence here, installing a new bathroom sink there, mowing grass in summer and shoveling snow in winter.

On Sundays, he held a bible study group in their living room, somber men in pressed plaid shirts talking about the King James version for hours, smoking cigarette after cigarette until the entire house was swimming with the exhalations. Those were the days when Lila took Holly down to the pond, where they hunted for frogs and minnows. And inevitably, Abraham would come looking for them, and he’d grab Lila by the arm, squeezing until Lila’s skin was red, and take her back to the house.

Abraham’s brother, Holly’s Uncle Jacob, stayed with them often. He didn’t work, and spent his afternoons on the sofa, watching soaps and calling for Lila to bring him another beer, to rub his feet, to treat him “like a good sister should.”

A horrible memory, one Holly couldn’t shake: She came bolting into the house, pigtails flying behind her, clutching a bundle of wildflowers for her mother. Down the long cool hallway from the front door, Holly stepped into the kitchen, and tried to make sense of what she saw.

Her mother stood at the kitchen sink, hands braced on the porcelain edge, eyes fixed on the window, face blank and lifeless. Her legs were spread wide, and her dress was hiked up to her waist in back, so her pale legs were bared up to her round white bottom. Jacob stood behind her, right up against her. His jeans were unbuttoned. His hips thrust forward, again, again, a fierce gyration, almost like he was dancing. He panted, and grunted, his face pressed into Lila’s hair. His hands clutched at Lila’s thighs, leaving dark bruises. And Lila rocked forward with each movement, swaying in time to Jacob’s hips.

Neither of them noticed small, silent Holly standing there.

“Say you like it,” Jacob growled. “You say you like it, bitch!”

“I like it,” Lila said in a high, breathless voice, as devoid of emotion as her face.

Holly fled, running out of the house, across the yard, into the forest until she thought her lungs would burst. She sank down onto the dirt path, and sobbed into her hands, the flowers scattered at her feet, the songbirds trilling in the trees above.

Lila found her just before nightfall, her smile its usual warm reassurance. “Come on, darling. It’s dinner time.” She took Holly’s hand and pulled her up, and Holly didn’t dare mention what she’d seen, though Lila’s eyes were sad, like she knew anyway.

It grew worse after that. Lila’s dress torn open in the front, her lip split, Abraham zipping up his jeans in the middle of the living room on a Saturday afternoon, Holly unseen in the doorway.

At night, when she should have been sleeping, Holly saw Jacob go into the bedroom with both her parents. Heard the door lock. Heard the incomprehensible sounds from within. Saw her mother’s bruised wrists the next morning.

A Saturday. Cold kitchen. No sign of Lila. Abraham and Jacob sat at the table, smoking, foreheads heavy with creases.

“What’re we gonna do?” Jacob asked. “Dig a hole?”

Abraham glared at his brother. “We wouldn’t have to do anything if you hadn’t covered her damn mouth.”

“You did it too!”

“But I didn’t suffocate her!”

Abraham tapped the ash off his cigarette onto a teacup saucer and sighed. “We can’t just leave her up there.”

Holly crept up the stairs on her tiptoes. To her parents’ bedroom. Door ajar. Narrow ribbon of light slithering across the hall floor.

The door swung inward with the lightest touch. Sun pouring through the bare windows, framing the wooden bedstead. Ropes at all four posts. Lila, pale and limp, lashed to the bed, naked, her skin tinged with blue. Eyes open, glassy. Mouth agape. Like she was screaming. But her skin was cold, cold when Holly touched her.

“Mommy?”

But there was no response.

An unmarked grave in the forest, a place where the dirt was fresh and wet on top. No explanation from anyone.

Jacob moved into the house permanently.

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