“That was smart.”
She nods reflexively. “Once we were out of the truck, he didn’t waste time. He walked out on that pier and said we ought to go swimming to relax.”
“Without clothes, I suppose?”
“Naturally.”
How many times did Jet and I do that out here?
“Apart from being scared,” she goes on, “all I could think about was his cell phone. If I could get hold of it, I’d have two choices: try to get away with it—which would give me a chance to try Sally’s passwords on it—or just throw it into the middle of the pool and at least destroy the video. Getting away with it didn’t seem very likely at that point.”
“I was watching by then, but it was hard to tell what was happening.”
“As soon as I got close to him out on the pier, he pulled me to him. He started talking shit and touching my breasts. He tried to get a hand up under my top. It was like junior high. I tried to play it off as him kidding around. Then he pressed my hand against his penis. I jerked my hand back, and that’s when he ripped my top.”
She shakes her head, obviously reliving each second. “Once it got that far, I knew he wasn’t going to stop. But I forced myself to relax, like I was going to submit. He pulled my hips against his. He was hard already, and I let him sort of dry-hump me standing up, until his eyes glazed over. Then I shoved him back and I broke for the truck.”
“I saw that happen.”
“Did you see how he just walked after me?” She shudders in her seat. “It felt like a damned monster movie. He knew he didn’t have to hurry up here. Motherfucker. For a second I thought about running out to the road or trying to hide in the woods. But I knew I couldn’t get away from him. Besides . . . I was just sick of it all, sick of him. So I picked up the hammer.”
“I saw that, too,” I tell her, my mind hanging on to something she said. “And I know I can’t possibly understand the full horror of what happened back there . . .”
“But?” she says. “I hear a ‘but’ coming.”
I should just let this go. But I’ve known Jet a long time, and something isn’t adding up. She’s twenty years younger than Max, and four months ago she was running half-marathons. Since she isn’t physically hurt, I figure she’d have had a better-than-even chance of escaping him on this hill.
“You said you knew you couldn’t get away from him,” I say gently. “So you turned around and picked up the hammer. Was it only the threat of rape tonight that made you do that?”
“What?” Her breathing has become a sort of frantic wheeze. “What are you doing? Playing prosecutor? Are you saying defending myself against rape isn’t self-defense?”
“I’m not saying that at all.”
“It sounds like you are!” Her answer is almost a snarl, like a blow intended to drive away something she can’t face.
“Jet, this is me. I love you. I came here to protect you. That’s all I want to do. But to do that, I need to know what’s really going on. Last night, you told me about a plan that could end in Max’s death. It could have been designed solely with that end in mind. And tonight you hit him in the head with a hammer.”
She looks away from me, expels another rush of air.
“I know you wanted his cell phone,” I press. “And I understand why. Max is an existential threat to us, no question. He’s threatened our lives. That video alone does.”
No response. Just when I think she’s shut down completely, she says, “Tonight wasn’t the first time he tried to rape me.”
The cold fist tightens around my heart. A hot wave of shame follows for doubting her initial story. “Will you tell me?”
“He tried it six weeks ago. I stabbed him.”
Stabbed him? Six weeks ago, she and I were making love every day. “Where did this happen?”
“My house. He claimed he’d come by to see Kevin, but he knew Kevin wasn’t going to be there. And he’d sent Paul on an errand to Jackson.”
“Jesus. What did you stab him with?”
“A steak knife.”
“Did anybody find out?”
She shakes her head. “He probably got Warren Lacey to sew him up. He saw it coming, and I caught him in the side. But it was enough to get him off me.”
I’m so dumbfounded by this story that it’s hard to know where to go from here. “Did you and I see each other that day?”
“No. I told you I had business in Tupelo.”
I remember that day now. “Last-minute trip,” I murmur. “You brought me back that Elvis guitar strap.”
A pained smile lights her face for a moment. “I couldn’t have seen you without telling you about it. And I just couldn’t get into it then. I wasn’t ready.”
“I understand. Look, I don’t want to push you . . .”
“Another ‘but’? Go ahead. We’re stuck here anyway.”
“I still feel like there’s something you’re not telling me. Maybe a lot.”
She looks into her lap, biting her lip like an anxious little girl. “What if it’s terrible? What if it’s something you can’t live with?”
I take her left hand and squeeze it. “There’s nothing about you I can’t live with. Nothing.”
She laughs bitterly in the dark. We’re sitting less than a foot apart, yet a gulf has yawned open between us. Can thirty-two years of love not bridge that divide? “Jet . . . a year from now, we’re going to be married. But to get there, we have to get through this, whatever it is. Just tell me. There’s nothing to fear.”
She nods, but her face is filled with torment, as though she’s fighting some invisible restraint. “Six weeks ago wasn’t the only other time,” she says.
I shift in my seat. “Okay. So he tried to rape you before that?”
“No.”
I blink in confusion, trying to understand. At first I don’t get her meaning. Then I do. The cold I felt earlier spreads through me like a numbing anesthetic. “You mean . . . Max didn’t just try to rape you? He succeeded?”
She sets her jaw and looks straight through the windshield. “Yes.”
I’ve clumsily driven my dull scalpel through thick scar tissue, exposing a necrotic cyst that threatens life itself. Max Matheson raped his daughter-in-law.
“Will you tell me how it happened?” I ask softly.
Jet sits silent in the moonlight falling through the windshield, looking out into the dark. She reminds me of crime victims I interviewed as a young reporter, people who had either suffered or witnessed violent acts and were struggling to maintain control. “It was about ten years ago,” she says in a monotone. “Sally was sick. She’d had colon surgery. I was helping take care of her. Tallulah and me. Tallulah was worn out, so I stayed up for a night and a day without sleep. I was exhausted. Paul was drunk, like he always was back then. He’d passed out in the den.”
“This was in Max and Sally’s house?”
She nods. “Max offered to spell me, so I could rest. I went to the guest room, but even though I was wiped out, I couldn’t fall asleep. I went into the kitchen for something to eat, and Max walked in. When I told him I couldn’t sleep, he gave me one of Sally’s pills. A Xanax. A big one. Then he went back in with Sally, and I went back to the guest room. The pill knocked me out.”