Finding Purgatory (14 page)

More than once, Tori told herself it wasn’t smart to let Raphe get close again. But he was the type that once he got his foot in the door, there was no pushing him back out. He was convincing that way. He got under her skin and lingered until the thought of not having him around made her more anxious than his being there in the first place.

“What are you smiling about?” Emily asked.

“Was I smiling?” Tori rubbed the back of her neck. “I wasn’t even thinking about anything. My brain is off.” She threw herself down into one of the chairs in the circle and grumbled. “I haven’t slept since I found out about the creepy dead people in my house.”

“They aren’t creepy just because they’re dead.”

Tori looked up, surprised by the edge to Emily’s voice. Her friend looked abashed. “I mean, just because they died there doesn’t mean they’re creepy, right?”

“How is it not creepy? Come on. It’s not like I can just avoid that spot. They died at the bottom of the stairs. I have to pass it at least twice a day—usually more.” Tori shuddered. “And I can’t help thinking about it. How they must have looked. Like, you know on TV deaths are all clean, especially when there are kids involved. But that’s not the way real life looks. It’s not clean. Like what if they blew a hole—”

“Stop!” Emily had her hands over her ears, and she was breathing erratically.

In a heartbeat, they were surrounded by some of the others.

“Sweetheart, are you feeling okay?” Dana asked, her hand on Emily’s arm. She looked over at Tori. “What’s going on here?”

Before Tori could defend herself—she was dumbstruck, confused as to what she’d said wrong—Emily sniffled and wiped at her eyes. “I’m fine.” She gave everyone a watery smile with a knowing look, shaking it off as another hormonal outburst.

Dana didn’t look convinced, but she let it go, calling the group to order.

The group was more trying than usual. Emily, obviously still huffy, had offered up that Tori missed group the week before because she was sick and had been hospitalized, so she got to tell that joyful tale. The way other girls groaned and hissed on her behalf was both sweet and annoying.

When the group ended, Emily was about to head off without a second glance, but Tori got in her way. “You’re not going to go all drama queen on me now, are you?” she asked, getting straight to the point. “I didn’t know you were so squeamish. I wasn’t trying to upset you on purpose.” She remembered giving Raphe crap about upsetting her. “Delicate condition,” she said sardonically. “I guess I should know to be careful.”

Emily looked uncertain for a moment before her expression softened. “I don’t want to picture it. I don’t want to think about things like that.”

“I don’t either. That’s the problem.”

Wrapping her arms around her big belly, Emily’s brow furrowed as she rocked back and forth in place. “Do you think it’s weird that your sister isn’t bothered? She saw them, right? They were her husband and daughter. She knows what they looked like when they died.”

The thought had crossed Tori’s mind. Sometimes, the way her sister acted toward the dead—their parents and her family—was beyond what Tori could comprehend. For years, she had wondered where her parents were buried. To this day it was the one thought she had whenever she happened to pass a cemetery. Whenever she saw flowers on the sidewalk marking the scene of an accident, she wondered if anyone had marked her parents’ passing.

Maybe it was understandable that Ani didn’t commemorate her parents’ death so long after the fact, but the way she was about her husband and daughter was just weird. There were no pictures of them in the main part of the house, but the little girl’s room was untouched—ready and waiting as if she would walk back in someday and want to play with all her toys. As far as Tori saw, Ani didn’t talk to anyone about them.

Then again, Ani didn’t talk to anyone about much of anything.

“He had a family,” Tori said, more thinking out loud than anything.

Emily looked at her with wide eyes. “What?”

“Her husband had siblings. A mother and father. A stepfather. I read it in that article I found. They had to have known Ani, right?”

Her expression unreadable, Emily nodded. “Yeah?”

Tori shrugged. “I don’t know. I wonder if it’s just too hard for them to see her.”

Emily paused. “What if it’s the other way around? Maybe she ditched them?”

“Ha.” Tori’s sentiment was humorless. “Yeah, actually. She’s good at that—just cutting people out of her life. I wonder if she did to them what she did to me.”

Ani had been very patient with Tori’s string of complaints about the house. She’d had the house blessed. She’d had the house’s aura read. She’d done just about everything she could think of, but Tori was still bothered by what had happened, and she had no problem going over that point. Repeatedly.

“Considering how many people have lived on Earth, don’t you think you’ve walked over spots where a lot of people have died?” Ani asked later that night when the topic came up yet again.

“I don’t understand how you can stay here knowing they died here.” It must have been the thousandth time her sister had said the exact same thing.

“It isn’t odd to me. Jett and I got a fabulous deal on this house because it’s built on an Indian burial ground.”

It was the first time in Ani’s life that she’d ever seen a spit take in person. “Are you fucking kidding me?”

“Of course.”

Tori blinked, her eyes wide, uncomprehending for a moment before they narrowed. “Goddammit, I’m pregnant. I’m pretty sure you’re not supposed to freak me out like that.”

She sat down, looking grumpy. Any other day Ani might have thought her technically-adult sister pouting like a three-year-old was funny. As it was, she was too tired and angry to think anything was funny.

“Why doesn’t it bother you?”

Ani sighed. “Tori,” she said with warning in her tone.

“No, I’m serious.” Her sister crossed her arms and slouched. “Don’t you feel like you’re walking over their bodies or something?”

“Their bodies are in the cemetery,” Ani said by rote.

This was what she told herself every single time she passed that space. Of course it bothered her, but she didn’t want to acknowledge that. It was something she was used to, a chronic condition. Every time she passed that spot, she held her breath because an invisible pick, cold as ice and sharp enough to rend her in two, buried itself right in her gut and another hit her straight in the heart. Every single time. If she could have justified burning the house to the ground, she would have. But that was melodramatic and irrational.

She drummed her fingers on the table. “I’ll make you a deal,” she said after a long moment. “I want to know everything that happened to you in the foster homes, and I want to know who the father of the baby is.”

“What the hell?” Tori scoffed. “What the heck are you going to give me for that?”

“I’ll sell the house.”

Tori’s eyes were so wide, she looked much younger than she was. “You’re shitting me. That’s stupid. Who does that?”

“That’s what I’ve been saying.” Ani’s tone was dry. She took a deep breath. “But I do want you to be comfortable, and I’m not attached to this house.” Not anymore at least. “And I want to help you. I can’t help you if you don’t tell me.”

“You don’t want to help me. If you wanted to help me, you wouldn’t have left me there.”

Ani’s heart ached, and she looked down at the table, aggravated at her sister and at the constant guilt she carried over what she’d done. Part of taking responsibility for her actions so many years ago was accepting Tori had a right to be angry. Still, Ani was getting very tired of apologizing.

“If I tell you what you want to know, you sell the house
and
you answer my questions,” Tori said.

She should have known selling her home wouldn’t be enough. Jerking her head, Ani nodded. It was the last thing she wanted to do, but so be it. If she could get through it once, maybe they could agree not to talk about it again. “Fine.”

Ani got up and went to the fridge. She poured a glass of wine for herself and made chocolate milk for Tori.

“Really?” her sister said when she set the drink down in front of her.

“You used to like it.”

“When I was three.” But even as she said it, Tori reached for the milk.

Sitting across from her, Ani took a long drag of her wine. “You start.”

Chapter 13: Hell

T
hroughout her story, Tori’s voice was flat and perfunctory. The emotional toll she’d paid was only hinted at in the lulls in her speech. She stared straight ahead, mindlessly stirring and stirring and stirring her chocolate milk.

Ani could only listen in abject horror.

The Welches were nice. Tori remembered them well. She remembered them better than her real parents, which, given the circumstances, made her feel like crap from time to time. Sometimes she thought losing them was a punishment. She would have been happy. They would have been her only momma and daddy, and maybe that was too much. Maybe the universe knew their eldest daughter would try to forget Eric and Chelsea Kane as soon as she could, so it wouldn’t let Tori go, couldn’t let her be happy.

So though the Welches had been trying for children for five years, without success, it was only after they decided to adopt Tori that they became unexpectedly pregnant. Tori promised she would be a good girl. She wanted to be a big sister. She vowed to help with the new baby. None of it mattered. The Welches were done with foster children and over the idea of adoption, and so Tori was shifted on to the next surrogate parents.

After the Welches came Maria Veracruz. She was a nice woman who gave a home to two girls and a little boy in her three-bedroom house. Though she was with the woman for a year and a half, Tori barely remembered her. She had vague memories of the boyfriend Maria had let stay over at the house for what may have been days or may have been weeks. At five years old, time wasn’t very concrete to Tori. Either way, since the boyfriend wasn’t sanctioned by the foster agency, Maria had lost her foster care license, and the three kids in her home had been relocated.

From six to eight, she lived with Barbara and Stephen Bui. When they divorced, they stopped fostering children. They were strict and all but impossible to please, allowing very few luxuries and even less in the way of affection.

Her next foster family was where she lived the longest—nearly four years. It had its moments. She wasn’t miserable. She wasn’t happy. She just was.

Until Zachary Rocklin came into the home. He was twelve, like her. None of the kids knew why he was in the system, and he didn’t talk about it. He was silent, withdrawn, and always angry. He yelled at everyone.

Except Tori.

Who knew why. There wasn’t usually a logical reason for these things. Tori was a child. She didn’t know why their social worker—the one she had before Shane—was so pleased when she heard they got along. Tori didn’t get along with all the kids, but it wasn’t
that
rare.

Everyone encouraged their friendship. It was good for him, they all said. She was doing a good thing. They said she was helping him.

He started to hug her a lot, and while she was a little shocked about it, everyone liked hugs. She let it happen.

But then he started to try to touch her.

At twelve, growing up in the system as she had, Tori knew all about bad touch. She knew what was appropriate, and she knew that even if she were going to participate in inappropriate behavior, she should at least be comfortable with the person touching her. She wasn’t. She grabbed his wandering hands and pushed them away.

She didn’t tell. Telling was the opposite of helpful. Telling wouldn’t help him at all. If she told, there would be problems for him, and she wouldn’t be able to help him anymore. They wouldn’t let her be his friend.

Besides, he said he was sorry. He didn’t mean it. He loved her.

He told her that over and over.
I love you, Vicky
.

I just want to hold you.

Holding wasn’t bad. Hugging wasn’t bad. She believed him when he said he loved her. It was okay.

Until it wasn’t.

Until he was saying, “Shh, shh,” in her ear as he used his body to pin hers down. He wasn’t hurting her, but he wasn’t letting her get away either. She was whimpering, “Please, please, please,” like water coming to boil until she was frenzied. But it all happened so quickly. And he was so soothing. And she ached, but his touch was so gentle. He petted her hair and her face.

“You’re so good. So pretty. And I love you,” he’d said as he cuddled her. “I love you, Vicky.”

Tori hadn’t said anything. She just lay there quietly crying, wondering how much trouble she would be in if anyone found out. Her thoughts were thick and slow. Not very many of them made sense.

The thing was Zachary truly meant what he said. He thought he loved Tori. For most of his life, a man, his father, had come into his room at night and held him close just the way he held her. He’d cuddled him and kissed his hair and touched him, all the while telling him the exact same thing. “You’re so good, Zach. So precious. So pretty. And I love you.”

Zachary never meant to hurt her. He was just expressing his emotion the only way he knew how.

The aftermath was a whirlwind. Zachary was taken away, and Tori was angry and confused. She got mixed up as to whom she was supposed to be yelling at. They moved her to what her new social worker, Shane, called a therapeutic foster home. There was only one other girl there—a girl whose stepfather had let his friends use her as they pleased one night. Tori was especially pissed off because Shane was a stupid asshole for putting her in the same league as that girl.

Shanna and Greta Wood were the couple, her foster parents, during that time.

But eventually, Tori figured out how to play the game. She shared at group, and told the therapists what they wanted to hear. She curbed her aggressive manner so she would be allowed to play with the regular fucked-up kids.

After that, she spent two years with Justin and Tina Davis, a clueless pair if ever she’d met one, before she got into one too many shouting matches with them. They seven-dayed her, and she ended up with the Everetts.