The Bone House - Brian Freeman [79]
Hoffman heard the engine of a vehicle. He didn't see it, but he heard it. It was loud but got quieter as it disappeared down Juice Mill Lane with a roar of thunder on the gravel. When he reached the gate, where his own car was parked, he saw nothing but a trail of dust billowing out of the dirt road. The car had come and gone in the time he'd been inside the woods.
Someone had been watching him. Following him.
It didn't matter. He didn't care about the consequences for himself or anyone else. He knew what he had to do.
It had happened when Delia was sixteen. The same age as Glory.
The boy's name was Palmer Ford. That was the kind of name your parents gave you when money was your birthright, when every school you would attend in your life was private and privileged. He was from Kenilworth, one of those rich Chicago enclaves with the gilded estates and the lakeside lots. He was the same age as Delia. That summer, his parents rented a house on Mansion Row in Fish Creek for the last two weeks of July. Palmer had his own car; he was on his own while his parents shopped for art and antiques.
He did what rich boys do in places like Door County. He went to the local kids to buy drugs. Delia met him at a Friday night party on Clark Lake, where stoned teenagers lashed fishing boats together and lay on their backs and watched the stars. Delia and Palmer wound up next to each other, mixing beer and pot and dangling their feet in the cool water. They talked. They laughed. They kissed.
He was tall and handsome, with tight black curly hair, a hooked nose, and a muscular physique. An athlete. He played high school football, and college scouts were already jotting down his name in their rosters. He dressed well, in Izod shirts, khakis, and boat shoes without socks. He threw money around. It was impossible not to like someone who always picked up the check for everyone else. That was what fibs did; they floated in and out of town, skimming the cream, making friends with kids who wouldn't fit in back home.
After that first night, Palmer and Delia spent every evening together. They played miniature golf. They got ice cream. They kissed more, and she let him inside her blouse, where he rubbed her nipples with chapped hands. Delia wasn't a virgin. She'd done it before with a couple boys, one a year since she was fourteen. Later, the lawyers made it out like she was a slut who threw it around, but that was a lie. Most of her friends went from boy to boy all summer. Not Delia.
Palmer was a gentleman. That was what she thought. He didn't push her; he stopped when she told him to stop, even though she could feel his erection through his pants like steel against her thigh. On the last night, the night before he would leave her forever and go back to Chicago - which was always how those relationships went - she figured she would give in. Spread her legs, give him his prize for all the money he'd spent on her. She didn't have any illusions that he loved her or that he'd invite her back to Mansion Row to meet his parents. She was summer candy. You unwrapped it, you ate it, and it was gone. That was OK. She didn't expect more.
Delia never got the chance to wait until the last night. Palmer ran out of patience with her. Four nights before the end of his vacation, he pulled on to a deserted side road as he was taking her home at one in the morning. He wasn't satisfied with feeling her breasts; he pushed up her T-shirt and exposed them. His fingers went for the buckle on her jeans, then the zipper. It should have felt right, but it was all wrong, and Delia found herself feeling terrified and claustrophobic as the weight of his athlete's body held her down. She told him to stop. He didn't.
Twenty-five years later, she could still close her eyes and feel it. The pressure of his chest, making it hard to breathe. His tight hands locked around her wrists, leaving bruises. Her head wedged sideways between the leather seat