“Oh Grace, I'm so sorry.” He wanted to take the pain away from her, to erase her past, and change her future.

“It's all right … it's all right now …” And then she went on. “My mother died after four years. We went to the funeral, and lots of people came over afterwards. Hundreds of them. Everybody loved my father. He was a lawyer, and everyone's friend. He played golf with them, went to Rotary dinners with them, and Kiwanis. He was the nicest guy in town, people said. He was the man everyone loved and trusted. And no one knew what he really was. He was a sick, sick man, and a real bastard.

“The day of the funeral, everyone spent the afternoon eating and talking and drinking, and trying to make him feel better. But he didn't care. He still had me. I don't know why, but somehow in my mind, it was all tied up with my mother. I was doing it for her, so he wouldn't hurt her. But I figured when she was gone, he'd find someone else. But of course he didn't want that. He had me. Why did he need anyone else? Not right off anyway. So when everyone left, I cleaned up, washed the dishes, put everything away, and locked the door to my room. He came after me, he threatened to knock the door down, and he got a knife and sprung the lock. He dragged me into her room, and he'd never done that before. He always came to my room. But going to her room was like becoming her, it was like knowing that it was forever and it would never stop, never, until he died or I did. And suddenly, I just couldn't do it.” She was choking again, and Charles had stopped crying, horrified by everything she'd told him. “I don't know what happened after that. He really hurt me that night, he pounded at me, he hit me, he'd won, I was his to beat and rape and torture forever. And then I remembered the gun my mother kept in her nightstand. I don't know what I was going to do with it, hit him, or scare him, or shoot him. I don't really know anything except that he was hurting me so much and I was so scared and half crazy with misery and pain and fear. He saw the gun, and he tried to grab it from me, and then the next thing I knew, it went off, and he was bleeding all over me. I shot him through the throat, and it severed his spinal cord and punctured his lung. He fell on top of me and bled horribly, and after that I don't remember anything until the police came. I'm not sure what I did. I called the police, I guess, and the next thing I remember was talking to them, wrapped in a blanket.”

“Did you tell them what he'd done to you?” Charles asked anxiously, wanting to change the course of history, and agonized that he couldn't.

“Of course not. I couldn't do that to my mother. Or to him. I thought I owed him total silence. In my own way, I guess, I was as crazy as he was. But that's what happens to children, and women too, in situations like that. They never tell. They'll die first. They called in a psychiatrist to talk to me, when they took me to jail that night, and she sent me to the hospital, and they found out that he'd raped me, or ‘someone had had intercourse’ with me, according to the DA”

“Did you ever tell them the truth?”

“Not for a while. Molly, the psychiatrist, hounded me to tell her. She knew. But I lied to her. He was still my daddy. But finally, my lawyer wore me down, and I told them.”

“And then what? I assume they let you off after that.”

“Not exactly. The prosecution concocted a theory that I was after my father's money, that if I killed him, I'd get everything. Everything being one small but highly mortgaged house, and half of his law practice, which was a lot smaller than yours. I couldn't inherit any of it anyway, because I killed him. I had no friends. I had never told anyone. My teachers said that I was withdrawn and strange, kids said they never knew me. It was easy to believe I'd just flipped out and killed him. His law partner lied and claimed I'd asked about Dad's money after the funeral. I'd never said a word to him, but he claimed that Dad owed him a lot of money. And in the end, he grabbed everything, and gave me fifty thousand dollars to stay out of town and leave him to take it all. I did, and I still have the money by the way. Somehow, I can't bring myself to spend it.

“But the D.A. decided that I had killed my father for his money, and that I'd probably been out screwing around, and when I came home, Dad got mad and yelled at me, so I killed him.” She smiled bitterly, remembering every detail. “They even said that I'd probably tried to seduce my father too. They'd found my nightgown on the floor where he threw it after he tore it in half, and they claimed I had probably exposed myself to him, and when he didn't want me, I shot him. They charged me with murder one, which would have required the death penalty. I was seventeen, but they tried me as an-adult. And aside from Molly, and David, my attorney, no one ever believed me. He was too good, too perfect, too loved by the community. Everyone hated me for killing him. Even telling the truth didn't save me. By then it was too late. Everybody loved him.

“They found me guilty of voluntary manslaughter, and I got two and two. Two years of prison, two years of probation. I served two years almost to the day in Dwight Correctional Center, where,” she smiled sadly at him, “I did a correspondence course and got an AA degree from a junior college. Actually, it was quite an education. And if it weren't for two women there, Luana and Sally, who were lovers, I'd probably be dead now. I was kidnapped by a gang one night, and they were going to gang-bang me and use me as a slave, and Sally, who was my cellmate, and Luana, her friend, stopped them. They were the two toughest but kindest women you could ever meet, and they saved me. No one ever touched me after that, nor did they. I don't even know where they are now. Luana is probably still there, but Sally's time would be up, unless she did something dumb so she could stay with Luana. But when I left, they told me to forget them, and put it all behind me.

“I never went home again, and that was when I went to Chicago, where my probation officer kept threatening to send me back if I didn't sleep with him. But somehow I managed not to. And you pretty much know the rest. I told you that last night. I worked in Chicago for two years while I was on probation. No one ever knew where I'd been, or where I came from. They didn't know I'd been in prison, or had killed my father. They didn't know anything. You're the first person I've ever told since David and Molly.” She felt drained but a thousand pounds lighter when she finished. It had been a relief to tell him.

“What about Father Tim? Does he know?”

“He's just guessed, but I've never said anything to him. I didn't think I had to. But I worked at St. Mary's in Chicago, and now St. Andrew's, because it's my way of paying back for what I did. And maybe I can stop some other poor kid from going through what I did.”

“My God, my God … Grace … how did you survive it?” He held her close to him, cradling her head against his chest, unable to even begin to fathom the kind of pain and misery she'd been through. All he wanted to do now was hold her in his arms forever.

“I just survived, I guess,” she answered him, “and in some ways, I didn't. I've only been out with one man. I've never had sex with anyone but my father. And I'm not sure I could. The man who drugged me said I almost killed him when he tried to lay a hand on me, and maybe I would have. I don't think that can ever be part of my life again.” And yet … she had kissed him, and he hadn't frightened her at all. In some ways, she wondered if she could learn to trust him. If he even wanted her now, after all he'd heard. She searched his eyes looking for some sign of condemnation, but there was only sorrow and compassion.

“I wish I could have killed him for you. How could they send you to prison for that? How could they be so blind and so rotten?”

“It happens that way sometimes.” She wasn't bitter. She had long since come to accept it. But she realized that if he betrayed her now, and told people about her past, her life in New York would be ruined. She'd have to move on again, and she didn't want to. Telling him had required a great deal of trust from her, but it was worth it.

“What makes you think that you could never deal with intimacy again? Have you ever tried to?”

“No. But I just can't imagine doing that, without reliving the nightmare.”

“You've left the rest of it, and moved on. Why not that too? You owe it to yourself, Grace, and to anyone who loves you. In this case, me,” he smiled, and then he asked her another question.

“Would you go to a therapist if you needed to?” he asked gently, but she wasn't sure. In a funny way, it would seem like a betrayal of Molly.

“Maybe,” she said uncertainly, maybe even therapy would be too hard to handle.

“I have a feeling you're sounder than you think. I don't know why, but I don't think you could come through all you did, if you weren't. I think you're just scared, and who wouldn't be. And you're not exactly a hundred years old, you know.”

“I'm twenty-three,” she said, as though it were a major achievement, and he laughed at her and kissed her.

“I'm not impressed, kiddo. I'm almost twenty years older than you are.” He would be forty-three in the fall, and she knew that.

But she was looking at him very seriously then. “Tell me honestly. Isn't that history more than you want to deal with?”

“I don't see why. It's not your fault, any more than being mugged on Delancey Street was your fault. You were a victim, Grace, of two very sick people who used you. You didn't do anything. Even when you had sex with him, you had no choice. Anyone would have done the same, any kid would have been terrorized into thinking they were helping their dying mother. How could you possibly resist them? You couldn't. You've been a victim all along. It sounds like you stayed a victim right up until you left Chicago and came to New York last October. Don't you think it's time you changed that? It's been ten years since the nightmare began. That's almost half your life. Don't you think you have a right to a good life now? I think you've earned it,” he said, and then kissed her hard, and with everything he felt for her. There was no mistaking what he was feeling. He was deeply in love with her, and willing to accept her past, in exchange for her future. “I love you. I'm in love with you. I don't care what you did, or what happened to you, I'm just sorry as hell that you had to suffer so much pain, and so much misery. I wish I could wash it all away, and change your memory of it, but I can't. I accept you exactly as you are, I love you exactly as you are, and all I want is what we can give each other now. I want to thank my lucky stars for the day you walked into my office. I can't believe how blessed I was to have found you.”