The Quiet Game

"I know it's bad, Livy. I realize I can't ever understand what it was-what it is-to be in your position."

"How could you possibly know unless he told you? No one knows. He doesn't even know. Not as far as I-"

"Your father doesn't know about Jenny?"

She blinks. "My father? Of course he knows. But he doesn't know, you know… who the father is."

My mind reels, trying to parse the semantics. "Livy, who is Jenny's father?"

"You just said you knew."

"Pretend I don't."

Suspicion now. "If you don't know, I'm not telling you."

"Livy-"

"Who do you think it is?"

I take a step toward her, but she moves back, nearer the edge of the hill. As though she knows what I am about to say. As though she could fly from the edge of the hill if I dare speak the truth. "I think Jenny's father is your father."

She stares at me like she hasn't heard correctly. Then she closes her eyes and lowers her head into her hands.

"You don't have to say anything," I say softly. "You-"

"Shut up, Penn. Please just shut up. You might say something even more asinine than you already have."

"What?"

She takes her hands away from her face. She is not crying. She is staring at me with what looks like morbid curiosity. "Did you actually think my father raped me?"

Her voice is strong, but that could be the strength of denial, not truth. "I still think so. What I can't figure out is how he forced you when you were eighteen."

A bitter laugh. "That's easy. He didn't. Christ. First you accuse my father of murder. Now incest? Could you possibly be more sick?" She holds her palms out to me. "Have I done something to deserve this?"

"I'll tell you what you did to deserve this. You told me you wanted a future together and then disappeared. You let your father try to destroy mine without lifting a finger to stop him, and went on with your life as though none of it ever happened."

"My God, Penn. We were just kids! Haven't you grown up yet? After twenty years?"

"Have you? You've been chasing me around like the lost love of your life, trying to relive our past, pulling me into bed every chance you got. Was all that heat manufactured to distract me from going after your father?"

At last she gives me an unguarded look. "No."

"If my incest idea is so off the mark, why did you treat that poor girl like you did? You gave Jenny up for adoption, which is understandable. But she had a pretty shitty life, and when she showed up at your door looking for a little information, maybe an explanation, you treated her like dirt. And your father did worse."

"How dare you judge me. You don't know anything about it."

"You're right. Why is that?"

Her eyes flash in the dark. "You want an explanation? All right. Remember the week after graduation? The week you went touring battlefields with your dad?"

"I remember."

"I had two weeks before Radcliffe. The senior parties were still going on. Everybody was getting as drunk as they had been before graduation, maybe drunker. Someone from South Natchez threw a party on one of the sandbars past the paper mill. It was wild. Trucks driving all over the sand, people shooting guns, skinny-dipping. One car even went into the river. You were out of town, so guys were hitting on me all night. Ray Presley was there, watching me for Daddy, like he always did. At some point the police showed up. Ray put me in his truck and talked to one of the cops, got me past the roadblock."

She turns toward the river, and the wind carries much of her voice away. "I was as drunk as I'd ever been, and I decided to play a little game. Ray was always watching me, making me nervous, hanging around like some malevolent shadow. And I'd always heard these stories… how he'd killed people, been in prison, other stuff. Anyway, I started teasing him. I asked if he'd ever killed anybody, and he admitted that he had. I asked him what it was like, what prison was like, stuff like that. Then I told him I'd always heard this story about how he had the biggest thing in town. You know, his equipment. He kept driving, but I could see I was getting to him, he was gripping the wheel so hard. So I said, Hey, is it true or what? And he said, Only one way to find out. It was like a dare, you know? So I said, Okay, let's see it."

The knowledge of what's coming hits me like a blow to the solar plexus. "Livy…"