“Actually, I do.”
He shook the linen again and spread it with care across her body, folding it beneath her chin until the top edge lay just above her breasts. He adjusted it at the bottom and sides, smoothed the wrinkles until it was just so. All the while colored light hung on his face, the light of her childhood that, as a girl, she’d thought to be the light of God himself.
“Dad, please…” She was breaking; she felt it. Her father. The church. “So many women.”
“They died as children. Stripped of sin.”
“What does that mean?”
“Hush now.”
“Gideon’s mother? God. Allison Wilson?” She choked again, but it was more like a sob. “You killed them all?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
He stood by her side, both hands on the altar. “Does it truly matter?”
“Yes. God. Of course. Dad…” Her voice failed.
He nodded as if understanding her deeper need. “Gideon’s mother was the first,” he said. “I didn’t plan it that way, didn’t plan any of it. But I saw it in her eyes, right here: the pain and loss and hints of the child beneath. It began as simple consolation. She was distraught and confessed all that troubled her, the failed marriage and abuse and infidelity. It was an old story, yet as she wept, I came back to her eyes. They were so deep and unguarded and such a color as yours. When she leaned into me, I touched her cheek, her throat. After that it happened as if I were a passenger on some unstoppable vessel. Yet even at that remove I felt the presence of profounder truth, how we passed from the sway of time and mere things. I saw her, then. Truly saw her. That’s when I knew.”
“What?”
“Innocence. The path.”
“And the others?” Elizabeth asked. “Ramona Morgan? Lauren Lester?”
“All of them, yes. Children, at the end.”
“Even Adrian’s wife?”
“She was different. I would take that one back.”
“Why, for God’s sake? Why any of this?” Elizabeth was grasping, desperate. He leaned above her, his face scraped clean, the eyes deep and dark. He smoothed her hair, and she felt revulsion more profound than anything from the basement or the quarry. The sickness was too close. His eyes, like her eyes. The same eyes. Her father.
“Catherine Wall was a mistake. I was angry at her husband. He took you from me, so I took his wife and his house. I admit the sin of it and am ashamed. Her death served no purpose. The house should not have burned. Both acts were born of weakness and spite, and that’s not my purpose.”
“What possible purpose?”
“I told you before.” He smoothed her hair again. “It’s all about the love.”
“Let Channing go.” She was begging. “If you love me at all…”
“But, I don’t. How could I do that and still honor the child you were?”
“I don’t understand.”
“Let me show you.”
His hands settled on her neck, and she felt the pressure build. It was gentle at first, an even force that mounted as he leaned closer and the world began to fade. In the distance, she heard Channing kicking at pews, trying to scream. The world ended for a time, and when Elizabeth came back, the transition was from soft to hard: his fingers on her throat, the altar beneath her head. He waited for her to focus, then choked her again, but even slower, the pressure building with a smoothness made terrible by the knowledge of what was to come: the last seconds of light, the way his eyes bored into hers and his lips drew gently back.
“Where are you?” His voice was tender. Her mouth opened, but she couldn’t answer. She saw tears on his face, colored light, and then nothing. She came back coughing, with the taste of copper in her mouth. The third time was even worse. He brought her to the edge of blackness and held her there.
“Elizabeth. Please.”
After the tenth time, she lost count. Minutes. Hours. She had no idea. The world was his face and his breath and the hot, hard fingers that pushed her down again and again. He never lost his patience, and each time his stare went deeper, as if he could touch the soft place she guarded like a secret. She felt him there, the brush of a finger.
When she came back from that place, he was teary-eyed and nodding. “I see you.” He covered his mouth to stifle a sob. “My baby…”
“I’m not your baby.”
“You are, of course you are. You’re my lovely girl.”
He pressed his lips against her face, kissing her cheeks, her eyes. He was weeping joyfully even as Elizabeth choked and coughed and tasted her own bitter tears.
“No.”
“Don’t be silly. It’s Daddy. I’m here.”
“Get away from me.”
“Don’t say that.”
“You’re not my father. I don’t even know you.”
She closed her eyes and turned her head away.
It was all she had.