The Good Daughter (The Good Daughter #1) - Karin Slaughter Page 0,194

pressed her back to the chair. Judith seemed to be getting angrier with each word.

“So, I did what any obedient wife would do. I turned around. I went home. I prepared dinner. Doug came home. He told me he got hung up with a parent. We watched TV together and I seethed. I seethed all night.”

“When did you start tutoring Kelly?”

“When she started dressing like a witch again.” Judith braced the heels of her hands on the counter. “That’s what she did the last time. She started wearing black, like the Goths, to hide her belly. I knew the moment I saw her in the hall that she was pregnant again.”

“Did you confront Doug?”

“Why would I do that? I’m just the wife. I’m just the woman who cooks his meals and irons his clothes and bleaches the stains out of his underwear.” Her voice had a grinding undertone, like a clock being overwound. “Do you know what it’s like to not matter? To live in the same house with a man for almost your entire adult life and feel like you’re nothing? That your wishes, your desires, your plans, are irrelevant? That any burden, no matter how great, can be thrown at you and because you’re a good woman, a God-fearing, Christian woman, and you’ll just take it with a smile because your husband, the man who is supposed to be your protector, is the master of the house?”

Judith had clasped her hands together so hard that the knuckles were white. She told Charlie, “Of course you don’t. You’ve been coddled, you’ve been cherished, all of your life. Even losing your mother, your sister almost dying, your father being reviled by everyone in the state, made people love you more.”

Charlie’s heart pounded in her throat. She did not realize that she had stood up from the chair until she felt her back against the wall.

Judith didn’t seem to notice the effect she was having. “You can talk Kelly into anything, did you know that?”

Charlie did not move.

“She’s so sweet. And fragile. And tiny. She’s like a child. She really is. But the more time I spent with her, the more I hated her.” She shook her head. Her hair was coming unpinned. Her eyes had a wild look. “Do you know how that feels, to hate an innocent kid? To focus all of your rage on someone who doesn’t know what they’re doing, what’s happening to them, because you realize that you can see your own stupidity reflected in their behavior? That you see how your husband controls them, cheats on them, uses them, abuses them, the same way that he does with you?”

Charlie scanned the room. She saw the knives in the wooden block, the drawers full of utensils, the cabinet that likely still had Mr. Heller’s rifle on top.

“I’m sorry,” Judith said, visibly working to calm herself. She followed Charlie’s gaze to the top of the cabinet. “I thought I was going to have to make up a story about how Kelly had stolen it. Or give her the money and pray that she could follow the instructions to buy one.”

Charlie said, “Her dad kept a revolver in his car.”

“She told me he used it to shoot squirrels. Holler people eat them sometimes.”

“It’s greasy,” Charlie said, trying to keep her calm. “I have a client who cooks it in stew.”

Judith gripped the back of the chair. Her knuckles were white. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

Charlie forced out a laugh. “Isn’t that what people say before they hurt someone?”

Judith pushed away from the chair. She leaned against the counter again. She was still angry, but she kept working to control it. “I shouldn’t have said that about your tragedy. I apologize.”

“It’s all right.”

“You’re saying that because you want me to keep talking.”

Charlie shrugged her shoulder. “Is it working?”

Her laugh was filled with disgust.

Ben had said that Judith Pinkman had been hysterical when the paramedics had taken her out the middle-school doors. They’d had to sedate her to get her into the ambulance. She had stayed at the hospital all night. She had gone on camera to plead for Kelly’s life. Even now, her eyes were swollen from crying. Her face was haggard with grief. She was telling Charlie the truth, the brutal, unvarnished truth, though she knew that she was being recorded.

She wasn’t bargaining, she wasn’t pleading, she wasn’t trying to make some kind of trade. This was how a person behaved when they felt true remorse for