The Wicked Read online

  Kate felt her own emotions darken like a sunny day spoiled by approaching thunderclouds. Why, God? Why does he have to be like this? Doesn’t he realize that I know...

  David avoided her eyes as he took her hand again and led her to the front door of their new home, more interested in his shoes now than anything before them.

  In her belly, Kate felt more movement. Hello, Mommy...just letting you know I’m in here, those gentle flutters seemed to say. I’ll see you soon, okay?

  But the joy she wanted to feel would not come this time.

  Why does Daddy not want me, Mommy? the baby seemed to ask, and this new thought transformed Kate’s tears of joy into tears conjured from anything but bliss.

  Why does he not love me?

  “I’m sorry,” Kate whispered, sniffling. Though she spoke to the child inside of her, David reached for her, trying to make peace. Too late. Kate walked on ahead of him, ignoring his offer to help her up the steps onto the porch. She refused to look at him.

  “Come on, Becca,” David said, clomping across the porch, shoulders slumped, in that sulking way of his that Kate loathed. Like a child admonished for running in the house—that’s what he always reminded her of when he acted like this.

  David’s voice echoed hollowly in her head as it entwined with Kate’s own troubled thoughts. “Hear me, Becca? In the house. You can play later.”

  God, how Kate wanted David to share her joy, to feel this soul within her as it made its presence known. How she wanted to share those intimate moments with him, to hold his head to her belly—like he had so many times when she carried Becca—as he listened for his child’s gentle movements inside of her and they felt like three blissful souls merged as one.

  But that was not to be. She knew that already.

  David didn’t want this child, would never accept this child.

  “Becca!” David said again. Louder, this time. “Now. It’s cold out. Don’t make me tell you again, hon.”

  Kate said nothing, just sniffled softly as they made their way inside.

  CHAPTER 2

  Their first meal inside the house consisted of burgers from McDonald’s. A far cry from Brunhill’s, but by the time the Little family was settled in for the night it hardly mattered. They were all famished.

  “I could eat a horse,” David joked, mere minutes before his mood darkened for the second time that evening.

  “Ewww, Daddy. That’s grrr-oh-dee.”

  “Not if you put lots of ketchup on it. A touch of mayonnaise. In fact, it’s quite tasty.”

  “Whatever, Daddy,” Becca admonished him. “But I still think you’re full of it.”

  “Becca!” Kate scolded. “Where did you ever hear such a thing?”

  The child’s only reply was a tiny finger pointed David’s way.

  “Uh-oh,” David said beneath Kate’s glare. “Thanks a lot, short-stuff.”

  All was fine until after dinner. Becca had devoured nearly all of her Happy Meal by the time her parents started eating, and moved on to play in the living room amidst the labyrinth of cardboard moving boxes. After their daughter left the dining room, Kate and David ate in awkward silence at the table. At one point, for a few minutes at least, David’s mood did seem to brighten a bit as he gazed upon their new home, and he reminded Kate of an excited little boy as he boasted of his plans to turn the extra bedroom at the rear of the house into a studio. Kate opted not to remind him that the room would soon require conversion into a nursery. Following that, they’d discussed the possibility of getting out the next day to meet their neighbors. David had met most of them the last time he came down, but now it was Kate’s turn. Guy next door was a retired Marine who made peashooters that were detailed replicas of real guns. Fellow in the next house over was Randall Simms, the Chief of Morganville’s Fire Department. At the mouth of the cul-de-sac lived James and Jenna Robinson, a middle-aged couple whose son Larry had recently recorded a country album in Nashville. Plenty of other nice families on the block, too, from what David had heard, kids with whom Becca could play and attend school if they ever decided she could return to public.

  As always, though, the subject soon turned to darker things. A topic neither of them wished to discuss, but one they could not avoid these days.

  May 3. And the ramifications thereof.

  “Kate, I know we’ve been through this hundreds of times. But I can’t stop thinking...what if? What if the baby’s not...?”

  He trailed off, biting at his lower lip, though Kate understood what he meant. She always did, and every time their arguments grew more bitter.

  Here we go again.

  “What’s that?” Kate pretended to be oblivious to the direction in which their conversation had veered. Her attempts at imitating David’s own clueless expression at times like these, however, made her feel stupid for even trying.

  Please, God, give me the strength to handle this, she silently prayed. Why does doing the right thing so often make you feel as if you’ve done the complete opposite?

  “I really think we should discuss this some more,” David said. “Please?”

  Kate shook her head. “There’s nothing to discuss.” Instantly, an invisible wall seemed to erect itself around her. Shutting David out. Shutting everything out. Just like always.

  “You know that’s not true, Kate. There’s plenty to discuss. We can’t go on ignoring this. What if you’re wrong? What do we do if things don’t turn out like you think?”

  She turned away from him, but David never gave up easily. She knew he was right—they did need to talk about it. But that didn’t mean she had to like it. She began to fondle her crucifix pendant, rubbing at it so furiously David suspected the thing would erode away into nothingness right there between her fingertips.

  “Kate, come on. Let’s talk about this, sweetheart. Please.”

  “What’s to talk about?” A single tear spilled down her cheek. “It’s too late for what you’ve wanted all along anyway, right? You would’ve been perfectly happy murdering this baby, without even knowing for sure—”

  “I never said anything about that, and you know it.”

  “Oh, but don’t tell me you never thought about it.”

  “Kate, please—”

  “I know how your mind works.”

  David ignored that. He reached for her hand, covered it with his own. “There are other options. And I think we need to talk about those options in case you’re wrong.”

  Her hand lay stiff beneath his. “I’m not wrong.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Why do you do this to me, David? It’s not healthy. For me or the baby.”

  “I’m scared, Kate. I can feel it. In here.” He removed his hand from atop hers, placed it on his chest. “Things aren’t going to turn out the way we want. It’s going to be his, not mine. And what will we do then?”

  When she did not answer, he said: “I just want you to tell me, before it’s too late, that adoption isn’t out of the question. That’s all.”

  “And what would Becca think, David? Your daughter is looking forward to being a big sister in a couple months. What are you planning to tell her? ‘Oops sorry, sweetie, we changed our minds, decided to give it away.’”

  David didn’t know how to answer that one. He stared at a crumb on the floor, started biting nervously at his bottom lip again.

  Kate stood, trembling. “No matter what happens, you will refuse to love this child, won’t you? Because you’ve already made up your mind how things are going to turn out, when the baby’s not even here yet! You think you know everything, but I wish you could trust my instincts just this once.”

  With that, she stormed from the room, the scent of her perfume trailing behind her like the scent of rain after a heavy summer storm.

  “Godammit.” David said it out of spite because he knew how she felt about such language—using the Lord’s Name in vain was especially frowned upon—but even before the curse was out of his mouth he cringed, hoping
she was far enough from the kitchen that she would not hear.

  No need to make things worse than they already fucking were.

  CHAPTER 3

  David Little had always considered his family a happy one, for the most part. Their problems were few, and what qualms he did have with his marriage were petty. He made good if not spectacular money, got along well with his wife, and had a beautiful healthy daughter. Sure, he and Kate bickered now and then, but that constituted a happier marriage as far as David was concerned. Couples who never argued kept everything bottled up inside and, like a boiler running hot, one day it would all explode, destroying everything within its vicinity.

  After what happened on the night of May 3, though, David Little found himself wondering more and more if his family would survive. That evening had irrevocably changed their lives, and he knew they would never be the same even if their marriage made it through this ordeal intact.

  While he had not wanted to move to North Carolina—or anywhere else, for that matter—David knew that their decision to sever old ties, to buy this place down south, was for the best. If it offered Kate peace of mind, David would give his wife anything she wanted.

  Even if it did mean moving to Bumfuck, Egypt, leaving his favorite city behind like a jilted lover.

  David sighed as he sat at the kitchen table. Rubbed his temples. Listened to his wife trying her damnedest to laugh and play with little Becca in the other room as if nothing had happened between Mommy and Daddy in the kitchen. On the television, in the background, Oscar the Grouch was grouching away about something or other on Sesame Street.

  If David had been a praying man, now would be his turn to offer up prayers to God, to ask for help in dealing with this terrible problem before them. He felt utterly helpless, swallowed by a black hole that had opened up in his perfect universe on that terrible night in May...

  Two months from now, David Little’s wife might bear a child fathered by someone else.

  Seven months later, David still blamed himself. He always would, he feared. For the rest of his life.

  On the evening of May 3 they had planned to meet for dinner at Marianne’s Italian Bistro, as Brunhill’s had been closed for renovations that week. David had been contracted to design several new dust-jackets (for pulp horror novels with names like Lilith’s Spawn and Warlock Moon, work he had gladly taken for the easy cash), so he and Kate had found little time for one another during those last few months. While this had not been entirely unusual, things were twice as hectic in those late spring days due to Kate’s new schedule conflicting with David’s workload. Kate had begun a series of classes at a local community college, claiming that she wouldn’t mind one day getting a job as a kindergarten teacher when Becca was older. Where such a goal originated, David hadn’t been sure—after all, his salary was more than enough for the family to survive—but he always supported his wife in whatever she chose to do.

  That night, David had stayed too long at a bar with some friends after an important meeting. He had downed a few too many beers, and was over an hour late for his date with Kate. After waiting at Marianne’s until well past nine o’clock, after calling home several times in hopes that David had merely forgotten her and might be back at the apartment sacked out on the sofa, Kate paid for the glass of wine she had ordered and left in a huff, wondering what had happened to her husband.

  Everything would have been fine—the argument that would have ensued when David arrived home notwithstanding, of course—if he had taken care of the Saab they owned back then. Darn thing had been making funny noises for a month or so, but David could never find time in his busy schedule to take it in for repairs. No big surprise then, after Kate left Marianne’s, that the Saab would not start. The car’s only reply when she turned the key was a sick grinding sound, like an ornery old man wheezing his last breath. A couple of clicks, the vehicle’s final death rattle, followed by...nothing.

  Once Kate realized there was no hope for the family lemon, she decided to walk back to their apartment, since it was only three or four blocks from the restaurant.

  The chill in the air that night had seemed like something more than the weather, she would tell David the next morning from her hospital bed. He chalked it up to the drugs she was on, but she insisted that the icy breeze lapping at her face and arms had seemed like some malicious presence, a sentient awareness in the air around her. An omen that something bad was about to happen.

  She wrapped her scarf around her neck and began to whistle the first few chords of “Amazing Grace” as she made her way down the sidewalk. She remembered feeling little fear, if any, at the thought of walking alone late at night. It was only a couple blocks. She had walked this distance every day to and from her old job as a hostess at the Pancake House on 37th. Never in a million years did she expect anything bad to happen so close to home.

  She would later ask herself, countless times, how she could ever have been so stupid.

  Kate had barely walked far enough for the lights of Marianne’s to no longer be visible, for the carefree clink of wine glasses and the busy murmur of multiple conversations within the restaurant to audibly fade, when she was jumped from behind and pulled into a dark alley. Someone kicked her in the kidneys and knives of white-hot pain shot through her back and into her groin. Her lips and gums began to bleed instantly when her face struck the cold sidewalk, a coppery taste filling her mouth. She could taste the tangy bite of wine she drank earlier, mixed with her blood, and that taste would forever symbolize the taste of her own fear on that horrific night.

  “Get up!” a voice barked in her ear, and she could smell her attacker’s sour breath, a hint of cheap whiskey and boiled eggs. He jerked her to her feet, his grip so tight it would leave hateful bruises on her forearm in the shape of his fingertips for weeks to come.

  “Don’t you fuckin’ move, bitch,” said the skinny black man in the purple skullcap as he held to Kate’s throat the biggest knife she had ever seen. He kept it pressed tight to her jawline as he ripped at her clothes, tore down her panties and hiked up her skirt.

  God, no...please God, not that...

  He threw her to the ground, unzipped his fly and pulled himself free.

  His laugh was heartless, colder than the icy asphalt at her spine, as he pushed his way inside her. “You might just like it, white girl.”

  “David,” she wept the entire time, and continued to weep long after her rapist disappeared into the night. She could still see the ghostly afterimage of his wide, yellow junkie-eyes hovering in the air before her, could still smell for several long minutes after it was over the lingering odor of his breath, could feel the sweaty film from his hands upon her skin.

  “Oh, David...David, please,” Kate cried, as she lay in that trash-strewn alley.

  But her husband did not come. No one came. David would find her later, passed out in the bathtub as the showerhead doused her with its cleansing spray, the water so hot it brought blisters to her flesh. She would tell him what happened through a flood of tears, and even before the embraces, before the moist shoulders and the anguished apologies that continued into the morning, long after the sun had risen and masks of strained normalcy were worn by both of them to hide their pain from innocent Becca...David would leave the apartment, hunting in the night with the only gun he had ever owned, a .38 Special, looking for the goddamn sonofabitch who had done this to his wife.

  It had been one of those rare moments when she did not scold him for his profanity.

  All the same, David did not find him. Nor did the police.

  The only thing that remained of Kate’s attacker—if David’s fears were correct, and the baby was not his own—was the child that grew inside of her.

  In the weeks following Kate’s ordeal, David seriously began to doubt whether his wife was going to make it. Her entire existence seemed to consist of little more than lying around all day, crying. Always crying.

  Finally, though, he’d had enough. With the help of a frie
nd of a friend, one Father Eric Harding, David convinced Kate that she had to make it through this for her daughter. Becca needed her mother to be strong. The Catholic priest had not been of Kate’s chosen denomination, but she accepted the rosary he offered her like a life preserver, and held on to it every second of the day.

  After a month or so, it appeared things were going to work out. Kate’s depression lingered, but at last she started eating again. She stopped lying around their apartment in a perpetual, tear-soaked daze, sleeping for ten or twelve hours at a time. The color began to creep back into her pale, drawn face. She was going to make it.

  Or so David thought. Until, six weeks after the rape, they discovered she was pregnant.

  “Congratulations,” Dr. Melznick told them on that stormy July afternoon. “It appears as if Becca is going to be a big sister.”

  Kate had smiled at David, reached for his hand. So happy.

  But David just stared ahead, his numb gaze fixed upon a series of cheap Norman Rockwell knock-offs on the wall behind Melznick’s desk.

  “How...” David licked his lips. His throat was suddenly very dry, and his voice seemed very loud in the confines of Dr. Melznick’s modest office. “How far...along...is she?”

  The doctor glanced down at his files. “Six weeks. I’m setting February third as your due date. Again, congratulations, Kate. Mr. Little.” For some reason, Dr. Melznick had never warmed toward calling David by his first name. Not that David cared, or invited the doctor to do so. At that moment he wanted nothing less than to pound the guy’s face in. Sure, Melznick was only the bearer of bad news, certainly not the cause of what had happened, but David did not care. He wanted to see someone—anyone—bleed. He needed to see someone pay for this travesty.

  It wasn’t fucking fair.

  After all he and Kate had been through...and now this.

  Kate had been right about one thing. Though David never voiced the exact word to his wife, would not have dared, the subject of abortion lingered constantly in his mind those first couple months after the appointment with Dr. Melznick. It was all he could think about.