The Most Dangerous Thing - Laura Lippman [135]
Gwen asks: “Why? Why did you do it?”
Although it is Gwen who is pressing her, she addresses herself to Sean. “I didn’t think it was wrong. I wanted to be with you, but you chose Gwen. So I chose Go-Go.”
Tim says: “If you had wanted to fool around with one of Sean’s brothers, I would have been glad to oblige.”
If he meant the joke to distill the tension in the room, he has failed. Not even Tim seems amused by this brief return of his lummox self.
Sean asks: “Is Gwen right, Mickey? About the boys? Did you do that to Go-Go?”
“Hockey mask,” Tim says. “It’s in the attic, too.” Sean nods. Gwen has no idea what they’re talking about.
Mickey shakes her head. “I gave him that. I got the money out of my stepdad, telling him it was for school stuff.” She looks small, sitting on her sofa. Gwen remembers the girl she met almost thirty-five years ago. So pretty, so scruffy, so lacking in things that the others, even the Halloran boys, took for granted. A girl who would be your best friend for a drawer full of candy.
“You know something?” Gwen is speaking to the Halloran brothers. “Go-Go never said anything about Mickey. Even to Father Andrew, whom he told about the high school boys. He lied about Chicken George to protect her. All these years, he’s protected Mickey, for whatever reason.”
“Because they’re responsible for a man’s death,” Sean says.
Mickey—and she is undeniably Mickey again to all of them, so young and vulnerable she reminds Gwen of Annabelle after being caught at something, miserable not at being caught but about being bad, which no one ever really wants to be—picks at the lush, embroidered flora of her gown, which is riotous with green tendrils and scarlet blossoms. Pretty, Gwen thinks again of the silk robe. Not the gown of a femme fatale, but of someone who wants love and romance. She is repelled by what Mickey did but can’t disavow her.
Yet it is Tim, the father of three girls, who goes to sit next to her. “Talk to us, Mickey. Tell us everything that happened. We won’t turn our backs on you.”
“But you did,” she says. “You all did. Except Go-Go. You left me.”
“We’re here now.”
She takes a sip of bourbon—from Gwen’s glass. “For all these years—for all these years—we felt responsible. Chicken George grabbed me, and I pushed him to get away. He fell. It was our fault, even if we didn’t mean to do it. Then this priest comes along and Go-Go wants to tell everything. Everything. For his own sake, not caring what will happen to me. I told him it was too risky to talk at all. We were responsible for Chicken George’s death and that’s something that never goes away.”
“Not legally,” Tim says.
“Not in any way,” Mickey says.
“What about the high school boys?” asks Tim. “The ones that Go-Go told Father Andrew about?”
“I met some guys when I went to the new school. Seniors. They wanted to mess around, and I was cool with it. Go-Go wanted to play, too. You know how he was. He always wanted to do what we were doing. So he wanted to do this, too.”
“No,” Sean says. “That I don’t believe. You forced him.”
“He didn’t know enough to know he shouldn’t like it,” Mickey says. “And, yeah, they gave him money sometimes. Gifts. Bribed him, I guess, so no one would tell. But they were more interested in watching Go-Go and me do things together than in doing things to him. They laughed at us.”
“But they did do things.” Not a question on Tim’s part.
“Nothing—nothing invasive. I mean, you can probably guess. Then they got bored. It was no more than three, four times. And, okay, it fucked Go-Go up a little. But he managed. He kept going, more or less—until your mom told him what your dad did. That’s when he went off the rails. Yes, I went to AA to watch him, make sure he didn’t break down and confess. Mr. Halloran was dead and had nothing to lose. If Go-Go started telling people about what happened—I wasn’t sure where it would lead. I didn’t know what to do.”
“Here,” Gwen says. “We ended up here.”
Tim puts an