Page 98 of Purchase Power
He said it with such a forlorn voice that Lucy couldn’t help but hear the passive, guilty acceptance in his heart. Her own broke for the girl who never had a real childhood. “So what happened? Is that when it ended?”
“Ended? Fuck, no. I wish.” Noah turned toward Lucy. “She went to my mother about it, but she wouldn’t hear a damn thing. Nothing against her precious Ronnie, although Candace hadn’t even implicated him. It could have been anyone, you know. Anyone with access to my sister. But the fact my mother immediately assumed Candace was talking about my stepfather told me everything I needed to know. She had at least suspected something. Candace was threatened to be sued to hell and back if she said a thing to the authorities. Not that the local police would have done anything. The chief back then was good buds with my stepfather. Like I said, the sick bastard could charm a snake out of its basket.”
Lucy didn’t know what to say. She sure as hell couldn’t finish her dinner.
“It didn’t ‘end’ until I got a little older and started hitting puberty. You see, the longer it went on, the more I hated him. I knew what he was doing and how wrong it was, but I was a puny kid back then. And Gray had twisted my head… he turned everything into a game. He used to bring Stacey to my room because he knew I would turn up my video games and music really loud and drown out her crying. I don’t know why I did that. I don’t know what I didn’t say anything. I don’t know why thefuckI didn’t drive a stake in his heart. My sister. My sister! She was a baby, Lucy. He was doing that to ababy.”
“Your room…” That was all Lucy glommed to as soon as he said it. “Your room used to be…”
“Yes. The guest suite.”
Lucy launched out of her chair. “You’re kidding! The place you were fucking me!”
He didn’t ask her to quiet down. He didn’t even ask her to back away. “Yes.”
Lucy gasped. “How could you… how… how dare…” She didn’t know what made her angrier. The fact he knowingly put her up in that room, knowing what used to happen there, or the fact he used tofuckher there!
“You have to understand… it’s the best room for putting someone I don’t want stumbling over my sister. Stacey doesn’t like going there, for obvious reasons. And I couldn’t have you finding out about her because she’s very volatile and doesn’t take to change very well. Besides, if she grew attached to you and then you left at the end of the month… yeah. Not good.”
“Noah Gabriel,” Lucy growled. “You still fucked me in that room. Alot.”
He sighed again. “You have to understand, from my point of view, not only were younotsupposed to find out about this… but I don’t think of that room that way anymore. It hasn’t been my room for well over a decade. It was completely gutted and remodeled because I wanted it decimated. It’s not even the same walls. My brain has completely separated the two. I’m sorry, though. I know it’s a lot to process.”
“Is that why you didn’t want to kiss me outside of this room?” Lucy took one step closer toward him. “Because there is no intimacy allowed in the guest suite?”
“I suppose. I never really thought about it. As you can tell, I’m a guarded man. For obvious reasons.”
Lucy had to tear herself away. “What happened?” she asked.
“Huh?”
She snorted in derision. “I know your stepfather died, but did it at least end before that? Your sister would have been, like… ten…”
Noah didn’t answer for a minute. “Like I was saying before… when I hit puberty, things changed a bit. I started pushing back. I confronted my mother about it. She acted like she had no idea what I was talking about. The next time he got near my sister, I punched him right in the fucking face.” He looked at his right fist, as if it still hurt from the impact over fifteen years later. “He hit me back, of course. So I hit him again. Candace heard the commotion and came rushing in.” Noah paused. “She not only dragged me away before he hurt me more. She actually took one of his punches for me.”
Lucy had to stop that image infiltrating her head. “Surely, that wasn’t what stopped him.”
“I had friends, Lucy. Angry, bored boys of privilege looking for any reason to get into some shit. The next time I had them over, we found the bastard in his study and gave him a thorough once over. My mother freaked the hell out, of course, but I think he knew how serious we were. I don’t know if he was still fucking around with my sister, because I stayed glued to her. From that day, I don’t know… I changed. I grew up. I realized I had the power to protect my sister. I wasn’t a little boy anymore with nobody to turn to. My own father wouldn’t hear about it. He still won’t. My mother was fucking useless, so I did it. I took matters into my own hands. Must have scared the shit out of him enough, because he died of a major stroke a few weeks later. I don’t know, Lucy. Maybe my friends and I inadvertently killed him when we beat the shit out of him. All I know is that nothing had ever felt so good.”
Lucy had a sudden thought. “Was Mr. Hayes one of those friends?”
Noah looked right into her eyes. “He’s always been my best friend. He can be an idiot, but I trust him to do the right thing when the moment calls for it.”
Was it possible for Lucy to be more agog than she was before?I can’t even imagine it…A young Noah and David beating up Ronald Gray? Granted, Lucy would have done the same thing if given the chance, but that didn’t make the image any less ridiculous.
“How did you get away with it?” she whispered. “The ganging up on him part? Wouldn’t he have reported you?”
The way Noah laughed was unlike any sound Lucy had heard him make before.Sorry I asked.She hadn’t prepared herself for the flaring nostrils, the boyish hoot, and the wild look of disbelief in his eyes as he stepped away from the window. “We got away with beating him up the same way he got away with abusing my sister for years. When people asked questions, he brushed them off, or my mother paid somebody to stay quiet. My mother sent me away until past his funeral. I never saw her really mourn the guy, either. She had been in love with him, but didn’t care that he died. I think she knew. I mean, obviously she knew what he was doing to her daughter. Maybe she had a sliver of life within her still. The fat lot of good it did Stacey, though. She was never the same. Her body gets older, but her brain is trapped in a time when she didn’t have to think about what he put her through. The therapists think she’ll always be like that.”
His hands curled into fists. His lips trembled in righteous anger.
“What fucking right did that bastard have, Lucy?” Noah practically spat in her direction. “He killed her inside. He did everything in his power to get out of killing her physically, but he destroyed my sister. Death was too good for him. I’ve been covering his tracks to protect what’s left of my sister’s sanity and taking care of her since my father abdicated. I don’t have a sister anymore. I daresay I haven’t since…” He sighed. “I’m sorry. You have to understand, I’ve lived with a lot of guilt since those years. I always wondered why he targeted my sister specifically, you know? I mean,I knowwhy, as much as I hate to admit I’ve stepped into that predator’s mind a time or two to try to understand it. Yet he never once had interest in me. He always said it was because I was a boy. Yet I can’t help but think that… if it had been me instead of her…”
It took Lucy a few seconds to register his meaning. “Noah!” She didn’t know why she said his name out loud like that. Had she ever? Even outside of making love? “You don’t mean that. You didn’t want that man coming after you like he did your sister.”
“I know that, Lucy. Trust me. I understand that completely. It’s…” He sighed again, the weight of his sister’s trauma upon his shoulders.No, he must have his own, too.A boy didn’t grow up in that house, with that kind of crazy shit happening outside his bedroom door, anddidn’tget fucked up by it. What was Lucy supposed to say, though? That she understood his desire to be the target of his perverted stepfather instead of his much younger, much more tender sister? That was insane. Everything Noah had said throughout their dinner was the pinnacle of insanity.I don’t know what to believe any more.It wasn’t that Lucy didn’t believe him at all. More like she didn’t have the ability to look past the terror this house had seen and behold her place in it. Didn’t matter if Noah remodeled the guest suite. Didn’t matter if he fired everyone who went along with the horror. Didn’t matter at all, because it still happened, and it was still infused in these traitorous walls.
“Noah, you are not responsible for what happened.”
