MacKinnon took a deep breath and let it out. She adjusted herself in the chair. “My father. He believed . . . daughters belong to their fathers. Do you understand?”
Sometimes, euphemisms and other vague references could help a reluctant victim give a statement. This time, Livia sensed brutal truth would be the better tool. “Your father believed fathers should be able to fuck their daughters.”
MacKinnon winced. “He believed a daughter’s body was her father’s right. Until she was married, when her body would belong to her husband. And he believed . . . that brothers, also . . .”
“He believed brothers should be able to fuck their sisters.”
MacKinnon sobbed. “Please don’t make me talk about this,” she whispered.
“Your father. Your brothers. They were abusing Ophelia, weren’t they?”
MacKinnon got up and tore off a length of paper towels from a rack on the counter. She wiped her eyes, blew her nose, wadded up the towel, and threw it into a garbage container under the sink. Then she grabbed another length and came back to the table.
“My father started abusing Ophelia when she was thirteen.”
She paused for a moment, as though collecting herself.
“Your mother?” Livia said, already knowing the answer from having worked too many cases of fathers raping their daughters and stepdaughters.
MacKinnon shook her head. “She was terrified of my father. And she blamed Ophelia for what was happening.”
She paused again, then said, “When Ezra turned thirteen, my father made Ophelia service him, too. And when Fred turned thirteen, it was the same. All three of them.” Her voice cracked. “Using her. Whenever they wanted. However they liked. Her father. And her brothers.”
She wiped her eyes. “Then, when I turned thirteen, it was my turn to be put to use. And . . .”
Her voice cracked again, and she broke down for a moment, her face downcast, her shoulders shaking. Then she took several deep breaths and wiped her eyes again. “And Ophelia . . . she wouldn’t let them.”
“Your sister tried to protect you,” Livia said, and for a moment, she wasn’t sure who she was referring to, herself or Ophelia. Both, maybe. Despite all the years of professional reserve, she felt her own eyes well up.
MacKinnon nodded. “She fought them,” she whispered.
Livia could imagine her little bird so clearly. The blood between her legs. Her thumb in her mouth. Her vacant eyes. Her unresponsive body as Livia held her and cried.
“But they did it anyway,” Livia said.
MacKinnon looked at her, her face twisted. “They made her watch,” she said, and her voice cracked again.
Livia made no attempt to hide her own tears. “I’m sorry, Becky.”
“And then they made me watch. My father said, ‘You see, boys? This is what we do to disobedient girls.’”
Livia remembered Fred Lone’s fixation on her own “disobedience.” She forced away her disgust.
MacKinnon wiped her eyes again. “So. Now you know about my family.”
There was a long pause while they both collected themselves. Then Livia said, “I think your brothers, at considerable risk and expense, arranged for my sister and me to be shipped to Llewellyn from our village in Thailand. Could what you’ve been telling me be why they wanted sisters? I was thirteen. Nason was eleven. Could your brothers have wanted to . . . I don’t know, recreate what they were doing to you and Ophelia when you were a similar age?”
MacKinnon looked like she might be sick. “Oh, my God,” she said. “I’m sorry.”
It made sense. It fit. And as horrible as it was, there was satisfaction in piecing it all together.
She thought of how she had felt after what Skull Face and his men had done to Nason. How she had wanted to die. How the only thing that had made her keep eating, made her keep herself alive, was that Nason might need her. Looking back, she was amazed she hadn’t succumbed to her longing for oblivion. For Ophelia Lone, it seemed, the sirens of oblivion had sung louder.
“Is that when Ophelia jumped from the window?” she said.
MacKinnon looked at her, her face slowly contorting. “That’s a lie,” she hissed.
Livia blinked. “What?”
“They told everyone she jumped. But she never would have. Never.”
Livia stared at her for a moment, feeling like she’d been hit by a throw she hadn’t seen coming and slammed into the tatami. She had been remembering her own despair, her own longing for death, and had projected it onto another tormented teenage girl. And the projection had blinded her to another, even more horrifying possibility.
She would never have made a mistake like that as a cop. But this, she realized . . . this was too close to her. It was interfering with her judgment.
She shook her head, as though doing so might clear it. “You think your father—”
“I think it was Ezra. But”—her voice cracked again—“she was the only one who loved me. She would never have left me alone to them. Not for anything.”