The Revenge of the Radioactive Lady - Elizabeth Stuckey-French [56]
It was easy enough figuring out the best way to mess with each member of that family. She hadn’t spent twenty-five years as a high school English teacher for nothing. She was good at sizing people up, at displaying a kind of false cheeriness that made them feel comfortable with her, and she had an instinct about what people really needed—which usually wasn’t what they thought they needed. The only hitch was that she didn’t purely hate them, the way she did Wilson. These mixed feelings made it a little more difficult to plan and carry out a single-minded campaign to destroy them. But she would do her very best for Helen’s sake.
Suzi was a shining light, and for this reason she was a bit of a tough case, because although Marylou resented Suzi for being the sort of girl Helen would have been, for living the kind of life that Helen would’ve lived—Helen, who was bright and beautiful and wise and kind—she also liked Suzi for those very reasons. Right away, Marylou saw that Suzi was tired of striving to be perfect. There was no religious training in that household, and Suzi could use some. Marylou saw great religious potential in Suzi, and Suzi’s becoming a rabid Christian would have the added bonus of upsetting her liberal parents. Suzi already considered herself a Christian, but she’d been attending a Presbyterian Church, which was almost as bad as Unitarian. However, for Suzi to simply become a Southern Baptist, like Marylou, while that would be horrible for her parents, would not go far enough. Suzi needed exposure to one of those giant churches that met in buildings that resembled a Walmart. She needed to become the kind of Christian who quoted Bible verses irresponsibly and judged other people and scared them away. It seemed like a true gift from God that Marylou just happened to move across from a minister at the Genesis Church, a church that she’d hoped would fit the bill in every way. When she actually went to Genesis Church, though, she discovered that most of the people there weren’t scary or judgmental, but were just like the people at First Baptist in Memphis. Surprise! She actually liked Genesis Church, even if the minister did sling too many metaphors around in one sermon. It felt good just to be going to church again. She’d missed First Baptist more than she’d thought she would.
Six months ago when she first came up with the idea to kill Wilson, back when she was living in Memphis, she’d started going to church again. Since she was spending so much time thinking about sinister things, the least she could do, she reasoned, was to think about God and his love twice a week at church so that she wouldn’t become a total sociopath. And rather than kill other people who were stand-ins for the person she really wanted to kill, like serial killers did, she’d be kind and generous to others and hone in on the one who deserved to die. And her plan had worked extremely well. Since she’d started planning to kill Wilson, and then decided to destroy his family instead, she felt no animosity toward anyone but him. Almost none at all!
The first Sunday she’d lured Suzi into Genesis Church she’d gotten drunk with power. Thank God she’d gotten scared out of her wits and left her at Dunkin’ Donuts, unable to proceed with her impulsive plan to take Suzi out to Lake Jackson, propose a canoe ride, and then brain her with an oar. That didn’t pan out. Now she was back on track with her goal: creating Jesus freak Suzi.
At the same time she was seeing to Suzi, she was mounting her campaign on all fronts. Otis and Ava. There was something anxious and vulnerable and permanently innocent