had used her in more ways than one on that day.
Jessie expected a flood of negative emotions at this sorry realization; she had, after all, been played for a sucker by the man whose primary jobs had been to love and protect her. No such flood came. Perhaps this was partly because she was still flying on endorphins, but she had an idea it had more to do with relief: no matter how rotten that business had been, she had finally been able to get outside it. Her chief emotions were amazement that she had held onto the secret for as long as she had, and a kind of uneasy perplexity. How many of the choices she had made since that day had been directly or indirectly influenced by what had happened during the final minute or so she had spent on her Daddy's lap, looking at a vast round mole in the sky through two or three pieces of smoked glass? And was her current situation a result of what had happened during the eclipse?
Oh, that's too much, she thought. If he'd raped me, maybe it would be different. But what happened on the deck that day was really just another accident, and not a very serious one, at that-if you want to know what a serious accident is, Jess, look at the situation you're in here. I might as well blame old Mrs Gilette for slapping my hand at that lawn-party, the summer I was four. Or a thought I had coming down the birth-canal. Or sins from some past life that still needed expiation. Besides, what be did to me on the deck wasn't anything compared to what he did to me in the bedroom.
And there was no need to dream that part of it; it was right there, perfectly clear and perfectly accessible.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
When she looked up and saw her father standing in the bedroom doorway, her first, instinctive gesture had been to cross her arms over her breasts. Then she saw the sad and guilty look on his face and dropped them again, although she felt heat rising in her cheeks and knew that her own face was turning the unlovely, patchy red that was her version of a maidenly blush. She had nothing to show up there (well, almost nothing), but she still felt more naked than naked, and so embarrassed she could almost swear she felt her skin sizzling. She thought: Suppose the others come back early? Suppose she walked in right now and saw me like this, with my shirt off?
Embarrassment became shame, shame became terror, and still, as she shrugged into the blouse and began to button it, she felt another emotion underlying these. That feeling was anger, and it was not much different from the drilling anger she would feel years later when she realized that Gerald knew she meant what she was saying but was pretending he didn't. She was angry because she didn't deserve to feel ashamed and terrified. After all, he was the grownup, he was the one who had left that funny-smelling crud on the back of her underpants, he was the one who was supposed to be ashamed, and that wasn't the way it was working. That wasn't the way it was working at all.
By the time her blouse was buttoned and tucked into her shorts, the anger was gone, or-same difference-banished back to its cave. And what she kept seeing in her mind was her mother coming back early. It wouldn't matter that she was fully dressed again. The fact that something bad had happened was on their faces, just hanging out there, big as life and twice as ugly. She could see it on his face and feel it on her own.
"Are you all right, Jessie?" he asked quietly. "Not feeling faint, or anything?"
"No." She tried to smile, but this time she couldn't quite manage it. She felt a tear slip down one cheek and wiped it away quickly, guiltily, with the heel of her hand.
"I'm sorry." His voice was trembling, and she was horrified to see tears standing in his eyes-oh, this just got worse and worse and worse. "I'm so sorry." He turned abruptly, ducked into the bathroom, grabbed a towel off the rack, and wiped his face with it. While he did this, Jessie thought fast and hard.
"Daddy?"
He looked at her over the towel. The tears in his eyes were gone. If she hadn't known better, she would have sworn