“Jesus Christ, I thought you were past all this,” Dad continued to shout at me. “You know right from wrong, Elizabeth, so why can’t you just behave yourself? You’re six years old, for Christ’s sake. You’re too big in the tooth to be throwing tantrums. Why can’t you just be normal, huh? It’s not that fucking hard—”
“That’s enough, Michael,” Mam warned, cutting him off. “Lower your voice.”
“Lower myvoice?” He turned his head to glare at my mother before driving through the enormous gates of my sister’s school. “You’d want to wake up, Catherine. The way that young one carries on isn’t normal. She’s old enough to be in first class, but instead she’s in junior infants and miles behind the rest, all because she can’t fucking control herself.”
“I said that’s enough,” Mam snapped, sounding just as cross now. “You’ve had your say, as has the principal. Now let it be.”
“She deserves a lot more than a few hard truths, but of course, that won’t happen because you’re blinded by your soft spot for her.” Shaking his head, Dad pulled the car into one ofthe parking spots and flicked the button to make the wipers go faster. “I thought the doctors said the new medicine would be working by now?”
“Itis.”
“Well, tell that to the poor lad with teeth marks on the side of his face,” Daddy shouted again. “I knew it was a bad idea taking her out of St. Anthony’s. I fucking knew it. She had all the help she needed up there, with teachers equipped to handle the likes of her. But oh no, you had to have your way again, didn’t ya? Because this is the Catherine and Elizabeth show, isn’t it? Never mind what the rest of the family want—”
“Michael!” Mam snapped back, voice rising. “Now is not the time for this conversation.”
“I never should’ve listened to you or those fucking doctors,” he grumbled. “I’m so sick of living like this, Catherine, really I am.”
Covering my ears, I clenched my eyes shut and tried to swallow my voice down, while I tried to pushhersout.
Come back to me.
I’m waiting.
I’ll find you.
Don’t fight it.
“Oh my God, it’s lashing down out there,” Caoimhe’s declared loudly, yanking the door wide-open. The sound of my sister’s voice madehergo quiet in my head.
Breathing fast, I kept my eyes shut, too afraid to open them in case I sawheragain—the scary lady, with the claws, the one with the voice that crawled inside my head at bedtime. Or when I got mad. She crawled out of the water, dripping wet, with her hair in clumps and her long claws. She was the lady I saw from my window sometimes. The one the doctors said wasn’t there. The one my family said was a figment of my imagination. I wasn’t supposed to see her.But I did.
“Elizabeth!” Dad said and the warning tone in his voice had my eyes snapping open.
I didn’t see the scary lady’s face, but I did see my dad’s. I was good at reading faces. It was my special power. And right now, my daddy was telling me with his eyes tobehave.
“Scoot into the middle, Liz,” Caoimhe instructed, tossing her schoolbag onto the floor beneath my feet before climbing in beside me. “Mark’s coming home with us, remember?”
Yeah, I remembered.
“How’s it going, munchkin?” Mark’s familiar voice pulled me from my memories, and I turned to see him climb into the back seat of my dad’s Jeep, next to me. He smiled at me when he fastened his seat belt and ruffled my hair before turning his attention to my parents.
I covered my mouth with my hand to hide my giggle.
Mark always called memunchkin, and I liked it.
Dad started the car back up and I listened as the four of them chatted the whole way home. Nobody talked to me, but I didn’t mind. I was used to it.
When Mark draped his arm over my lap to hold my sister’s hand, I shivered all over. He noticed and gave me the special wink. The secret one he saved just for me. For when he was fixing me. It made me feel special, and I beamed back at him.
COERCION IN THE KITCHEN
Hugh
OCTOBER 27, 1994
“HOW ARE MY FAVORITE MEN?” MAM ASKED WHEN SHE WALKED INTO THE KITCHENon Thursday night.
“All the better for seeing you,” Dad replied with a wink. He leaned back on his chair at the table and gave Mam his full attention. “How was work, love?”
