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.
All she could do.
“No.” His voice rose, tears spilling onto her face as he choked her hard and fast and ugly. “Come back!” He leaned into it. “Elizabeth! Please!” He squeezed Elizabeth’s throat until her eyes filled with blood, and she went deep in the black. After that, even when she returned, she was barely there. She sensed his anguish, and the light that dimmed in the church. Everything else was vague. His hands. The pain. “Please let me see her.” Elizabeth’s head lolled; he caught and held it. “Why are you keeping her from me? Do you hate me so very much?”
Elizabeth forced a whisper. “You’re sick. Let me help you.”
“I’m not sick.”
She blinked.
“Don’t you know this place? Can’t you feel it? The place where we spoke of life and the future, of God’s plans and all that we meant to each other? I was your father, here. You loved me.”
“I did.” The barest whisper. “I did love you.”
“And now?”
“Now I think you’re sick.”
“Don’t say that.”
But in all her life she’d only lied to him once, so she held his eyes and let him see the truth. That he was a killer. That she could never love him as she once had.
“Elizabeth—”
“Let me go. Let Channing go.”
He tightened his grip; her eyes fluttered. “I want the daughter I knew before the abortion and the lies. You took her from me when all you had to do was listen and do as I said. Our family would have survived, our church.” He let her breathe.
Elizabeth choked out a rasping sound. “I didn’t take her. You killed her.”
“I would never.”
“Here. At this altar.” He didn’t understand, and maybe he couldn’t. It wasn’t the rape or the abortion that destroyed the girl she’d been. It was him, right here. His betrayal. That was the irony. He’d killed the child he loved, then murdered a dozen women trying to get her back.
“Are you laughing?”
She was. She was dying, and she was. Maybe her brain was starved of oxygen. Maybe, at the end, this is what she proved to be, helpless even before herself. It didn’t matter. His face was perfect: the disbelief and wounded pride, the impotence before a dying daughter’s last, imperfect act.
“Don’t laugh at me.”
She laughed harder.
“Don’t,” he said. “But it was beyond her, now. “Elizabeth, please—”
She sucked deep and pushed it out, a high wheeze that sounded nothing like joy. But it was what she had, and she rode it even as his hands came down, and he rose again to his toes. The laughter ended with her breath, but she felt it inside, bright for a spell, then dim and dying, as was she.
35
Gideon woke to the sound of wind and the warmth of a blood-soaked shirt. He felt weak, but the truth was all around him.