The last secret_ a novel - Mary McGarry Morris [122]
“Shut up. Just shut up!” he yells over her screaming demand that he let Lyra out of the car. She didn't do anything. Why is he doing this to an innocent child? Sobbing, the little bitch stands behind her mother, arms locked around her neck, a stranglehold that impedes Robin's flailing attempts to grab the keys from the ignition. He's not going to hurt them, he yells. All he wants is to talk, that's all. “Shut up! Just shut the fuck up!” he barks at Lyra, batting his hand over the back of the seat, a tap really, but she shrieks and that's when he sees Robin's cell phone, grabs it out of her hand. “Jesus Christ!” he yells, peeling out of the busy lot.
As he drives, he keeps trying to explain. He just wants to know what happened. What did he do wrong? One day they're so close and the next, she's ordering him out of her house. Did he ever once do anything to hurt her or her kids? That's what he wants to know.
“I was good to you! I was always so fucking good to you!” he bellows over the steady whack of the wipers and the rain beating on the roof Her silence frustrates him. A good slap, that'd get her talking. From the corner of his eye he sees something glint. The diamond heart hanging from her thin neck, a gift from Hammond, he thinks, so seized with resentment he can barely see the road. “Is that what I did wrong? I was too good? Too fucking good? Is that it? It is, isn't it? You want to be messed with, don't you? You like it. You like being shit on, right? Knocked around, right? Is that it? That what hubby and the boyfriend do?” He snaps his hand out, just missing her beautiful scared face. She flinches and the little bitch screams. He laughs, can't help it. Frantic as it all seems, their terror is the perfectly clear lens through which he can now see. It magnifies everything, expanding his mind so that he's a calm, lethal force. Now they respect him. He enjoys their bloodless pallor, their shriveled nerves, their inarticulate dread. This is the power he wields over these docile, groveling lambs. “Hey, Mommy likes it,” he tells the little bitch through the mirror. “Keeps her on her toes, doesn't it? Maybe that's what I shoulda done. Want me to? Want me to start slapping you around like them? Well, do you? Do you?” he screams at Robin whose hands clasp Lyra's clenched arms. “Do you?”
“No,” she says, finally settling down, more reasonable, taking deep breaths as she looks over at him now. “Of course not. I just want you to let us go. I'm sorry you're upset. It's been a bad time, that's all. Everything's been so crazy, if I hurt your feelings, I didn't mean to, really, believe me, I'd never do that.”
“Well, you did! You damn well fucking did!”
“I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. And you're right, you were good to us. You were, and I appreciate it. You don't know how much I appreciate it. It just got hard, that's all, I mean, knowing why you were there. It was like … like you were spying on me and then running back to her. Everything I said, you—”
“Running back to who?”
“Nora. And once I found out, of course I was upset. I mean, to think she'd actually do that, pay someone, pay you to investigate me.”
With a burst of laughter, he reaches out, aching to touch her, but she cringes against the door, which only enrages him, to think that's what happened, that snippy cunt Nora Hammond, trying to poison the well, dump him and the mistress at the same time. He wasn't investigating her or anyone else, he insists. He just liked her, that's all. And the better he got to know her, the more he cared about her. Still does, maybe more than he's ever cared about another human being. His heart swells with the tender truth of this stunning pronouncement and he grins at her. She's confused. Someday they'll have a good laugh about this. Yes. Someday: the word amazes him.
“So, will you let us out now. Please?” she begs as he stops at the light. Just then