When she faced Gabe again, her eyes were wet.
“He used to come into my room when I was thirteen,” she said.
The words entered the kitchen and changed the air in it.
Gabe did not move. He was suddenly aware of the refrigerator humming, of a moth beating itself against the porch light outside, of his own pulse in his throat.
“What?” he whispered.
She let out a sound that was not quite a laugh and not quite a sob.
“See?” she said. “Even now it sounds impossible. Because he was so respectable. Because he carried a Bible. Because he knew every deacon in three counties.” Her face crumpled. “Because monsters are never ugly in the beginning.”
Gabe gripped the back of a chair to keep steady.
“How long?” he asked.
She looked down. “Until I married your father.”
He felt nauseous. “Did Dad know?”
“He knew enough to know I didn’t want to be alone with him. He never asked why.”
