“Is that really why, Grace? Or did you have a secret?”

“Of course not.”

But Molly wouldn't let go of her. Her voice reached out to Grace and pulled her toward her. “He raped you that night, didn't he?” Grace's eyes flew open wide, and she looked at Molly, and hoped the young doctor didn't see her tremble.

“No … of course not …” But her breath caught, and she found herself praying she wouldn't have an asthma attack. This woman already knew too much without that. “How can you say such a thing?” She tried to look shocked but she was only terrified. What if she knew? Then what? Everyone else would know their ugly secret. Even after their deaths, she still felt an obligation to hide it. It was her fault too. What would people think of her if they knew it?

“You have bruises and tears all through your vagina,” Molly said quietly, “that doesn't happen with normal intercourse. The doctor who examined you said it looked like you had been raped by half a dozen men, or one very brutal man. He did an awful lot of damage. That's why you shot him, isn't it?” She didn't answer. “Was that the first time, after your mother's funeral?” She looked pointedly at Grace as though she expected an answer, and the teenager's eyes filled with tears that spilled down her cheeks in spite of all of her best efforts to stop them.

“I didn't … no … he wouldn't do a thing like that … everyone loved my dad …”

She had killed him, and all she could do now was defend his memory so no one would ever know what he had really been like.

“Did your father love you, Grace? Or did he just use you?”

“Of course he loved me,” she said woodenly, furious at herself for crying.

“He raped you that night, didn't he?” But this time, Grace didn't answer. She didn't even deny it “How often had he done that before? You have to tell me.” Her life depended on it now, but Molly didn't want to say that.

“No, I don't. I'm not going to tell you anything, and you can't prove it,” Grace said angrily.

“Why are you defending him?” Molly asked in total frustration. “Don't you understand what's happening? You've been charged with murdering him, they could even decide to charge you with murder in the first degree, if they can get away with it, and they think you have a motive. You have to do everything you can to save yourself. I'm not telling you to lie, I'm telling you to tell the truth, Grace. If he raped you, if he hurt you, if you were abused, then there were extenuating circumstances. It could reduce the charges to manslaughter or even self-defense, and it changes everything. Do you really want to go to prison for the next twenty years in order to preserve the reputation of a man who did that to you? Grace, think about it, you have to listen to me … you have to hear me.” But Grace knew that her mother would never have forgiven her for sullying her father's memory. It was her father whom Ellen had loved so blindly, and needed desperately. It was he she had always wanted to protect, even if it meant holding her thirteen-year-old daughter down for him. She wanted to make him love her at any price, even if the price was her own daughter.

“I can't tell you anything,” Grace said woodenly.

“Why? He's dead. You can't hurt him by telling the truth. You can only hurt yourself by not telling it. I want you to think about that. You can't be loyal to a dead man, or to someone who hurt you very badly. Grace …” She reached out and touched her hand across the table from where she sat. She had to make her understand, she had to pull her out from the place where she was hiding. “I want you to think about this tonight. And I'm going to come back and see you tomorrow. Whatever you tell me, I'll promise not to tell anyone else. But I want you to be honest with me about what happened. Will you think about that?” Grace didn't move for a long time, and then she nodded. She'd think about it, but she wasn't going to tell her.

Molly left her that night with a heavy heart. She knew exactly what was going on, and she couldn't seem to bridge the gap with Grace. She had worked with abused children and wives for years, and all their loyalty was always to their abusers. It took everything she had to break that bond, but usually she was successful. But so far, Grace wasn't giving an inch. Molly was getting nowhere.

She stopped in the detective's office to look at the hospital report and the Polaroids again, and it made her feel sick when she saw them. Stan Dooley came in while she was reading the report, and he was surprised to see her still at work, fourteen hours after she had started.

“Don't you have anything else to do at night?” he said amiably. “A girl like you ought to be out with some guy, or hanging out in bars, looking for her future.”

“Yeah,” she laughed at him, her long blond hair hanging invitingly over her shoulder. “Just like you, huh, Stan? You were here the same time I was this morning.”

“I have to. You don't. I want to retire in ten years. You can be a shrink until you're a hundred.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence.” She closed the file and put it on his desk with a sigh. She was getting nowhere. “Did you see the hospital report on the Adams girl?”

“Yeah. So?” He looked unmoved.

“Oh come on, don't tell me you can't figure it out.” She looked angry at the casual shrug of his shoulders.

“What's to figure? So she got laid, nobody says she got raped. And who says it was her father?”

“Bullshit. Who do you think laid her? Six gorillas from the zoo? Did you see the bruises, and read what he found internally?”

“So she likes it lively. Look, she's not complaining. She isn't saying that she was raped. What do you want from me?”

“Some sense for chrissake,” she blazed at him. “She's a seventeen-year-old kid, and he was her father. She's protecting him, or some misguided illusion about saving his reputation. But I can tell you one thing, that girl was defending herself, and you know it.”

“‘Protecting him.’ She blew the guy away. What kind of protection is that? I think your theory is real nice, Doctor, but it won't hold water. All we know is that she may have had a little rough sex. There is nothing to prove that she had it with her father, or that he was roughing her up. And even if, God help me, she did fuck her old man, that's still no reason to shoot him. That still doesn't make it self-defense, and you know that too. There's nothing to prove that her father hurt her. She's not even saying that. You are.”

“How the hell do you know what he did?” she shouted at him, but he looked unmoved. He didn't believe a word of what she was saying. “Is this what she told you, or are you just guessing? I'm looking at the evidence, and a seventeen-year-old girl who is isolated and so removed she's practically on another planet.”

“Let me tell you a little secret, Dr. York. This is not a Martian. She's a shooter. Simple as that. And you want to know what I think, with all your exams, and fancy theories? I think probably she went out and got laid that night after her mother's funeral, and her old man thought it wasn't right. So she came home and he gave her hell, and she didn't like it, got pissed off, and killed him. And the fact that he was jacking off in bed is pure coincidence. You can't take a guy that the whole community knows as a good guy and convince anyone that he raped his daughter and she shot him in self-defense. As a matter of fact, I talked to his partner today, and he said pretty much the same thing I did. I didn't share the evidence with him, but I asked him what he thought must have happened. The idea that John Adams would do anything to harm his child, and I didn't even say what you thought it might have been, horrified him. He said the guy adored his wife, and his kid. He said he lived for them, never cheated on his wife, spent every night with them, and was devoted to his wife till the day she died. He said that the kid was always a little strange, very unfriendly and withdrawn, didn't have many friends. And wasn't that keen on her father.”

“There goes your theory that she was out with her boyfriend.”

“She doesn't have to have a regular to go out and give it away for half an hour, does she?”

“You just don't see it, do you?” Molly said angrily. How could he be so blind and stubborn? He was buying the guy's reputation, without even looking to see what was behind it.

“What am I supposed to see, Molly? We've got a seventeen-year-old girl who shot and killed her father. Maybe she was odd, maybe she was crazy. Maybe she was scared of him, what the hell do I know? But the fact is she shot him. She isn't saying he raped her, she isn't saying anything. You are.”

“She's too scared, she's too afraid that someone is going to find out their secret.” She had seen it a hundred times. She just knew it.

“Did it ever occur to you that maybe she doesn't have a secret? Maybe this is all your invention because you feel sorry for her and want to get her off, what do I know?”

“Not much, from the sound of it,” she answered him tardy. “I didn't invent that report, or the photographs of the bruises on her thighs and buttocks.”

“Maybe she fell down the stairs. All I know is that you're the only one yelling rape, and that's not good enough, not with a guy like him. You're just not going to sell it.”

“What about her father's partner? Is he going to defend her?”

“I doubt it. He asked about bail, and I said it's not likely in a murder case, unless they reduce it to manslaughter, but I doubt that. He said it was probably just as well, because she had nowhere to go now anyway. She has no other relatives. And he doesn't want to take responsibility for her. He's a bachelor, and he's not prepared to take her in. He said he didn't feel right defending her. Said he just couldn't and we should get a public defender for her. I can't say that I blame him. He was obviously pretty upset about losing his partner.”