No Safe Secret (18 page)

He wasn't going to sit on the information Holden had revealed another minute. Everyone in Goldenhills knew the pink taxicab company. It was known by the not-so-original name of Pinky's.

T
he boy with the golden eyes. Molly looked at the man in the wheelchair. “Do you know who I am?” she asked, her voice a whisper.

He looked at her, up and down, an evil grin lifting the corners of his mouth. “Should I?”

Dear God, he was as sick now as he'd been as a teenager.

“Marcus, look at me.”

He rolled his eyes but did as she asked. Her skin crawled as his gaze traveled the length of her body, stopping at the V between her legs, then her breasts. “Turn around. I always remember a nice ass.” He laughed, the sound hoarse. He began to cough, hacking so loud that Ace stretched his neck in order to see where the noise was coming from. When he stopped, he hocked and sent a glob of mucus flying across the porch. Molly couldn't help but look. Piles of slimy gunk were all over the porch. She wanted to throw up.

“I'm going to ask you one more time. Look at me. And I don't mean look at my . . . private parts, you pervert. Look in my eyes, you filthy son of a bitch!” She couldn't help it. Twenty-one years of rage were erupting, and she couldn't stop.

“You nasty, filthy piece of trash! Don't you recognize me?” She screamed so loud that she startled Ace again, and he was no longer resting peacefully in her arms.

Marcus wheeled the chair around so that he could look more closely. He inched as near as he could without knocking her backward. Molly almost gagged at the odor. Urine, feces, and something else she couldn't put a name to. She took a step back.

At that moment she truly understood the meaning of hate.

“Did I screw you back in the day?” he asked, then laughed. “Is that how you know my name?” His teeth, what was left of them, were brown and rotten, each tooth no more than a sliver.

This was the odor she couldn't identify. Rotted teeth. The thought flashed through her head: Tanner would have had his work cut out for him.

If she'd had a weapon, she would've used it. This man was vile, gross, and repulsive. She couldn't come up with enough adjectives to describe his foulness.

“It's me, you perverted son of a bitch! Maddy. Your twin sister. Remember prom night? You took money from those low-life sons of bitches who were your friends so they could look at my body! Do you remember, Marcus?” She screamed so loud, a woman in the next trailer came out and stood on her porch, watching.

She saw his reaction as recognition dawned on him.

He looked at her again, only this time he squinted those golden eyes that their mother had been so proud of. “Well, I'll be a son of a bitch, it
is
you!” He struggled to get a full breath of air. “You fucking whore, you did this to me! You ruined my life. Why you comin' home now? You knocked up? Got one of them sexually transmitted diseases? You killed Mom, you bitch! When you left, ya killed her!”

“Screw you, Marcus.” God, it felt good to say that after so long. “I hate your guts, and you know what? I think it's hysterical you're in that pissy-smelling wheelchair. I bet you can't even get it up anymore! Well, can you, you nasty piece of garbage?

“I only wish you'd died that night. I've prayed for it all these years. And something else, you nasty piece of work. I am glad that our mother is dead. I hated her, almost as much as I hate you. I ought to do the world a favor and put you out of your misery this very second!” Rage burned deep in her gut, and she wanted to hurt this worthless piece of humanity—no, that was too good a word for him, this worthless piece of whale crap.

“You came back thinkin' you're gonna get my disability check! Ain't no way, whore. It's deposited directly in my account every single month.” He smiled at her as though he had just offered her Donald Trump's wealth.

“Disability? You think that's why I came back to this godforsaken hole? You're out of your mind. Apparently, you're not getting enough of that oxygen to your brain, but wait, do you actually have a brain?”

She pulsed with an anger so deep, it shocked her. Words she'd never thought she knew came out of her mouth. “Did you ever learn to read anything besides
Hustler
? Oh wait, you didn't need to read
Hustler
, you just looked at the pictures!” She couldn't hold back any longer. She leaned forward and spat in his face, then kicked the wheelchair so hard it rolled across to the opposite side of the porch. But she wasn't finished. Not caring that she'd have to touch his filthy skin, she gripped Ace in her left hand as tight as she could; then, with her right hand, she swung as hard as she could, her fist landing on his filthy mouth.

“Get off my property before I call the cops. They hear you're in town, they'll be coming after you like flies on shit,
sissy
!”

She gritted her teeth so hard that it hurt. “Call them now! Go on, do it! I want you to call them. Tell them what your damned sick friends did to me on prom night!
CALL THEM NOW!”

“Get outta here, you whore!”

“Is that all you can do is call me a whore? You must have me mistaken for
our mother
! She was the whore! Or don't you remember? You sicken me. When I leave here, I am calling the police! I'm going to report the crime that I should have reported twenty-one years ago!” She turned to leave but decided she wasn't finished yet.

She walked the few steps to where he sat. She reached inside his filthy shirt pocket, took his cigarettes and lighter out, and smashed them in his face. “I hope you die and go to hell, and choke on our mother's ashes, which I am sure are still smoldering in the pits of hell!”

She looked at the rage on his face and slapped him as hard as she could. “That's for ruining my life!”

He screamed at her then, but she ran down the ramp and to her car so fast, she had no memory when she looked up and saw she'd arrived at the church. Her hands shook so badly, she wished for a drink to calm them. Ace was in his bed, sleeping, and she had no memory of placing him there, either.

The church. Her second-to-last stop before she left.

Pastor Royer.

According to the sign out front, the one that announced the times for Sunday service, he was still the pastor.

Good, she thought, as she kicked open the Mustang's door. She grabbed Ace and headed for the entrance. If the present was anything like the past, and she felt sure that it was, the good pastor would be in his office planning this Sunday's sermon.

She practically ran down the sidewalk leading to the church entrance. Father Wink would not approve of the thoughts she was having. She'd have to say so many Hail Marys, she would die before she finished. Never in her thirty-eight years had she felt such rage, even when Tanner hit her. She'd been afraid of him but hadn't felt rage, only hatred and resignation.

She had been afraid her entire life. Today she was putting those fears to rest, burying them, and she made a promise to herself: she would
never
allow another human being to mistreat her again.

“Can I help you?” a female voice called out from behind the piano.

“No, Bobbie Lou, you can't. What you can do is find Pastor Royer for me.”

“Why, he's busy plannin' the Sunday sermon and can't be disturbed. Who are you, anyway? And how do you know my name?”

Molly felt the woman stare at her from behind the piano. The woman could see her, but Molly couldn't see the woman, though she recognized Bobbie Lou's nasally voice. She wanted to holler and cuss but had enough respect not to do so in a church.

“Go. Get. Pastor. Royer. Now. Do. Not. Say. Another. Word. GO!” she screamed, putting emphasis on her last word. Bobbie Lou saw her and raced down the aisle. She would've laughed had the situation not been so revolting.

Seconds later, Pastor Royer, with a shaking Bobbie Lou cowering behind him, walked down the long aisle.

“You have scared my pianist, young lady. I'm asking you to leave peacefully. If not, I will have to call the authorities.” He sounded just like he used to. His high-pitched voice sounded like that of a female. She remembered the Sundays when she would help clean up and replace the hymnals, and a few times she would hear some of the well-known church ladies making fun of his voice. One had said she suspected he was homosexual. Well, she thought, they could put that thought to rest because she was here in the flesh, and somehow, she just knew she wasn't created by immaculate conception. More like no
contraception.

“Call them,” she said in a voice so commanding she surprised herself. “And when you do, I want you to explain to them why the pastor of their church, the
only
church in Blossom City, is a phony and a pervert. Tell them all about your private life,
Pastor.
”

He looked at Bobbie Lou, his beady little eyes reminding her of a rat's. “Bobbie Lou, give us a moment.”

As soon as she was out of earshot, Molly spoke. “Pastor, I have a question—”

“May the blessings of—”

“Shut up! I neither want nor need your blessing. Especially not
your
blessing. You have already given me more than enough.

“Now, I said I have a question, and I want an answer when I am through speaking. I don't want to hear a word out of that hypocritical mouth of yours until I finish what I came here to say.”

His mouth opened, and Molly walked toward him, her right hand raised. “Don't speak until I tell you to!”

His mouth moved up and down like a puppet's, minus the voice.

She sat down in one of the pews because her legs were shaking. “Pastor, please.” She waved her hand in front of her. He stared at her, but did nothing. “Sit!”

He dropped to the pew so fast, he stirred up a small breeze, causing a page in the hymnal to flutter.
Coward
, she thought.

She didn't say anything, but waited. She wanted him to feel the fear, to second-guess what was about to happen to him. Molly took a deep breath, and for show, she ran her hands up and down Ace's spine.

“Meow.”

“Good kitty,” she said, in a voice that was worthy of a starring role in a horror flick.

“I suppose you're wondering who I am and why I'm here,” she said in her horror-movie voice.

He shook his head up and down but didn't say anything. Good.

“Remember that little girl, Maddy Carmichael?” She watched for his reaction. His face turned as white as the wafers Father Wink offered up at Mass.

He nodded.

“She used to clean up after church services. Do you remember that?”

He nodded again.

“And you paid her twenty dollars. She tried to refuse, but you always insisted it would be stupid of her to refuse.”

She didn't speak for a few minutes. She watched him, never took her eyes from his. He turned away.

“Now listen to me. You're a deadbeat dad. You married my mother, who just so happened to be a whore”—she held her hand up to prevent him from interrupting—“and you married her. When she gave birth to twins, you divorced her, deciding you'd devote your life to a higher calling. Well,
Daddy
, I'm that higher calling, and I have a proposition for you. Actually, it's more of a demand, but either way, you have no choice. Just like I had no choice when I had to work three jobs, study, and hope for a better life, only to have all of my hopes and dreams destroyed by your son. My brother. My twin brother. The boy with the golden eyes.

“Mother loved him, never me, but the past is prologue. Now, to the future. You are going to resign as pastor of this church, effective immediately—”

“I can't do that—”

Molly pointed her finger at him. “Don't interrupt me when I'm speaking. You can and you will. I am not leaving this church until you've written a detailed account of your life. When I have that, I'll make sure it's published in every newspaper in the state of Florida. Then I want you to take all the money you've saved and donate it to a children's home. I also want to know about Marcus's accident.”

“He was in a car accident on the highway . . . a few months after graduation. His friends died.”

“Tell me their names.”

He looked at her as though she'd lost her mind. “Don't look at me that way,
Daddy
. I am Maddy Carmichael, or should I say Maddy
Royer.
And if need be, I'll insist upon a DNA test. It's not fun to be at my mercy, is it? Now go on, tell me the names.”

“Ricky Rourke, Dennis Wilderman, and Troy Bowers.” He hung his head.

Then she hadn't killed anyone! Nor had she been the cause of Marcus's accident. That lying bastard. It was another car accident that got them. It was as though fate was gunning for them, as they escaped that night only to be killed shortly thereafter. But there was still Dr. Kevin Marsden. She would see that he was prosecuted to the full extent of the law, that he would lose his license to practice medicine and end up in jail.

“It's time we head to your office, so we can get started on your memoir.”

Three hours later, she left the church with exactly what she had come for. As soon as she returned to Goldenhills, she would send his story to all the newspapers in the state, just as she had promised him she would do. She'd also made him sign an agreement stating he wished to donate all of his savings to an orphanage.

She had one more stop to make before she left town. It wasn't far from the church, and she was glad. She was so emotionally drained from the rage, she thought she would pass out. Maybe her life would have been different had she done this years ago, but it is what it is, and she was making changes that would affect her and Kristen for the rest of their lives.