“Fifteen. I was so afraid.” Her shame could still be heard. “But when I found Shelby sobbing and she told me—”
“I understand.”
Zach was ashamed of himself, because for his own reasons he’d actually hoped she’d admit to having been molested by her father. Tunnel vision. He hadn’t thought of her.
Then he paid attention to the uneasiness awakened by what she’d said. “Are you sure about her first time? Your sister’s, I mean? When you found her crying?”
“Yes. Why would she lie about that? She was almost exactly the same age I’d been.”
“Eleven.”
“Yes.”
They talked for a few more minutes. Her mother had eventually remarried, she told him, but not until her daughters were grown and gone.
Andrea’s hostility didn’t reawaken until he asked for her mother’s phone number.
“I don’t want you bothering her. She had a really hard time. Don’t you understand?” She was almost hysterical. “I’ve already told you more than I probably should. Leave her out of this!”
Realizing there wasn’t a thing he could do for her, Zach thanked her for her honesty and let her go.
He wondered if Andrea Womack would sleep at all tonight.
He dropped his phone on the coffee table and met Tess’s eyes. She’d closed and set aside her book, and was watching him steadily.
“That son of a bitch,” he growled.
“Both daughters,” Tess murmured.
“Yep.”
“So...it really might have been him.”
“Yeah,” he said hoarsely.
“How could police back then not know?”
“Because he hadn’t molested either daughter yet.”
Tess somehow radiated compassion and worry both. “Do you think Sheila was...well...his first? That he’d somehow kept himself from touching his own daughters even though he was thinking about sex with children?”
Zach shook his head. “I don’t know. What she told me doesn’t entirely fit. He went for his daughters when they were entering puberty. Almost twelve years old for both. Sheila was half that age. If he liked girls when they were that young, why didn’t he start in on his own two way earlier?”
“Because...what he did to Sheila shocked him?”
“Maybe.” He didn’t like the doubt he was feeling, but couldn’t deny it, either. “It’s also possible Andrea lied. She might not want to admit even to herself how long it had been going on.” But he remembered Nolte saying he’d talked to her teacher and the school counselor, and had gotten no vibes whatsoever to suggest she was being molested. “Or her sister lied.”
“You didn’t get the mother’s phone number, did you?” Tess asked.
“No, she flipped out. Maybe the stepfather doesn’t know the history?”
“Or...there’s something she doesn’t want her mother telling you,” Tess said slowly.
He mulled that over. “I don’t know.”
“Are you going to call the sister?”
“Yeah, although what do you want to bet big sister is already on the phone with her? Which will mean Shelby won’t answer.”
“Probably,” Tess agreed. She watched him brood for a minute then patted the cushion beside her. “Do you want to come over here?”
“Yeah.” He cleared his voice. “I would.”
Sunday, after talking to his mother, he had come perilously close to telling Tess that he needed her. Somehow he’d kept the words to himself. Close to saying the same thing now, he held back again. Admitting as much even to himself still scared him.
To think he’d always considered himself even-tempered, not given to a lot of emotion. Maybe in returning to his hometown he had opened his own Pandora’s box.
Most of the consequences so far had been unintentional but powerful: meeting Tess, opening a schism in the sheriff’s department, coming face-to-face with his long-lost brother.
Now, he might have severed the bonds between him and his mother, who, despite his complicated feelings for her, had been his only remaining family. Tonight, he’d upset a nice woman who might have tucked her memories of sexual abuse safely away until he had prodded them to life again. He was obviously pissing people off at the city police department as well as the county sheriff’s department.