8
"Oh, God!" Dawn wailed. "Oh, /VO!"
She knelt outside the closet in the extra bedroom—"the shit closet," he'd called it. Seconds ago she'd been on her feet, but her knees had given way.
She'd started going through Jerry's backpack, looking for roofies. She'd come up empty everywhere else, and then she'd unzipped the main compartment.
She hadn't found drugs. She'd found something a lot worse.
A Talbot's bag containing a quarter million in cash.
She'd seen it before. At Mom's place. Only one way Jerry could have got his hands on this.
She screamed.
Oh, God, he killed Mom. But she was already out of their lives. He had no reason to hurt her. Unless—
Oh, shit! If the letter was right about him killing Mom, it could be right about why he'd done it.
To keep her from finding out that he was her rapist, that he was Dawn's father.
My father?
This was a nightmare, a total nightmare. Had to be. She was going to wake up any second and find herself next to Jerry and write this off as the worst dream of her life.
But even if that happened, who was Jerry, really? She didn't know.
One thing she did know was that she could so not count on this being just a bad dream.
A line from the letter came back to her: / suggest you vacate the premises.
Totally.
Clutching the wall for support, she struggled to her feet and lurched toward the hall. Thoughts cascaded through her brain in a jumbled avalanche, tumbling, bouncing off each other without connecting, without coherence. She had to get out, find a place away from here to think, sift out truth from lies, if she could.
If she could…
But how could she know—ever really know the truth about this?
What I'm telling you is easily verifiable. Simply bring samples of his hair . . . and yours to any commercial lab and ask for a paternity DNA analysis.
Just what she'd do. Because she totally had to know.
She stumbled to the bathroom and found his hairbrush. He used it a lot, saying he was afraid it was thinning on him and he'd read where regular brushing would stimulate it. She used to think it was cute, but now nothing seemed cute.
She grabbed a comb and cleaned the brush, removing a lot more than a dozen strands. She stared at the tangle in her hand.
What if this proved that Jerry was really her father?
For God's sake, Dawn, he's old enough to be your father!
How many times had Mom said that?
Other memories followed… straddling him in ecstasy, sucking his—
She leaned over the toilet and vomited.
Had to get out of here. But Jerry had her car. So what? She'd take his. Do anything to get away and stay away until she'd figured this out.
But stay where? Her house was out. A motel? But she didn't have much money.
The bag.
She rushed back to the shit closet and grabbed the bag from where she'd dropped it, then hurried down to the main floor. She grabbed a set of Jerry's keys from the bowl and was heading for the door when she saw lights sweep across the windows. She peeked out and saw her Jeep pulling into the driveway.
No! No. she couldn't confront him, couldn't even face him or stand being in the same room with him until she knew the truth. Had to get out.
Since she couldn't take his car, her first thought was to run—go out the back door and keep on going. But that wasn't going to work. And even if she could somehow get to her car, he'd only chase after her in his.
She looked down at the bowl where they tossed their keys when they came in, and had an idea.