The Revenge of the Radioactive Lady - Elizabeth Stuckey-French [116]
“You should never have done that without our permission.” Her father was lecturing Nance in an angry voice about the photo session.
“I realize that,” Nance said. “I’m so sorry.”
“I’m over eighteen!” Ava said. “I don’t need your permission. God!”
Her mother wouldn’t let Ava take any blame. She addressed Nance. “You shouldn’t have let that creep take nude photos of her,” said her mother, who was sitting in her favorite red chair by the window. “Now they’re all over the Internet. What were you thinking?” Her mother looked spooky because of her short hair.
Nance kept worrying her hands in her lap. When was she going to start defending herself? What could she say? There really was no excuse for what Nance had done, Suzi thought. None. And she’d thought Nance was so sensible.
Vic sat back, folding his arms on his chest. “I’d like to strangle both of those fuckers with my bare hands.” He pinched his mouth together. She’d never heard her father talk this way, use this kind of language. “Should have killed that asshole while I had the chance,” he muttered. Buff had gotten a restraining order against her father.
“Just let the police handle it,” Suzi suggested. “Those creeps aren’t worth it.” This was a line she’d heard on a CSI, she realized as soon as she’d said it.
“Please don’t kill them, Daddy,” Ava said, her face screwing up like she was ready to cry. She thought he was really going to do it! Ava was so naive.
“When I think of what those men did, it’s all I can do to sit here.” The short haircut made her mother’s eyes look larger and angrier. She was rocking slowly back and forth. “I’d like to cut their balls off. They both deserve it.”
Suzi couldn’t believe that her parents were talking about wanting to kill people and mutilate their privates. Her parents!
Granddad appeared to be listening to all this and understanding it. “Come on now, you two,” he said. “You’re scaring the kids here. It’s not right, this ugly talk.”
Nance finally looked up and started talking, and what she said was so astounding that Suzi could barely believe it. She told them all that she’d been one of the women in Granddad’s radiation experiments in Memphis in the 1950s, and that she’d suffered health problems ever since and lost her eight-year-old daughter, Helen, to cancer, because she’d been tricked into drinking radiation for Granddad’s study.
What?
“I knew it,” Caroline crowed. “I told you, Vic!”
Nance went on talking, saying she’d testified in a government investigation during the Clinton era and had been financially compensated, but years later she’d found out that Granddad was living here in Tallahassee and had decided to come here and kill him. The way he’d killed Helen.
He’d killed Helen. Granddad killed Helen? And Nance was going to kill Granddad?
Suzi looked at Ava. Ava was staring at her with a frozen face, but Suzi could tell she was just as shocked as she was.
“My God,” Suzi’s mother said to Nance. “Are you kidding? You were planning to kill him?”
“She’s not kidding,” Suzi’s father said.
“I was never more serious about anything in my life,” Nance said.
Kill Granddad? He was the sweetest thing in the world, or at least he’d been five minutes ago, before she found out he’d killed Helen in his experiment. That was beyond what even Suzi could imagine. What was wrong with all the adults in this room, all former or wannabe murderers?
“Did you kill her daughter?” Ava asked Granddad.
“Of course not!”
“You did, Dad, indirectly,” her mother said. “You know you did.”
“He won’t admit it,” Nance said.
Granddad just shook his head.
“I guess you blame the U.S. go’ment,” her father said sarcastically.
So her mother and father already knew all about Granddad’s experiment. What else had they been hiding around here?
Nance spoke up again and added that when she realized that Granddad