Slaughterhouse High Part 41

The movement of Pill's hand matched precisely Delia's gesture on the couch, right before the little girl had fainted.

Trilby Donner, once more in shock and torn umpteen ways, listened as the questions confirmed what all this had been leading to.

Delia Gaskin, Brest's hush-hush lover and her own, had, by dint of d.a.m.ning evidence, just been convicted of multiple deaths: Zane Fronemeyer and his wives, Sheriff Blackburn, Jiminy Jones, a slew of seniors in the midst of a night of terror, and then, to redirect the finger of accusation, poor innocent Gerber Waddell, a feeb falsely futtered, his reputation forever besmirched.

Trilby felt shame.

And violation.

How could a person seem so decent, mouth all the words of love one could ever hope to hear, yet beneath that facade be monstrous?

She and Brest were still deep in grief over Bix's death.

Now, their relationship had once again been ripped raw. A betrayer had wrapped herself about their ailing hearts, a snake whose hooded guile had penetrated deep to the soul.

Trilby's hand went to her mouth.

Her eyes teared up.

Keep it together, keep it together.

Focus on Pill.

Focus on her beautiful innocent girl, nodding to this or that question from the gathered adults, her words pure and carefully chosen.

Pill was not the easiest child to raise. She tested for boundaries. She gave guff. She pushed back.

But always, Trilby sensed her child's secret delight in being reined in, in knowing where the limits were.

Trilby had feared, coming off the prom, a shattering. She had seen Pill move this way and that in new psychic s.p.a.ce, struggling to keep her balance in a world rearranged, a world from which her father had been violently ripped.

But now, here in Claude Versailles' living room (how she wished Brest could witness it), Pill was taking confident steps onto solid ground. In this precious eight-year-old girl, her childlike honesty in full display, Trilby had her first glimpse of the proud woman her daughter would become.

This vision anch.o.r.ed her.

These were her friends and colleagues, their eyes afire with appalled awe at the deception and temerity of Delia Gaskin. But primarily their eyes brimmed with wonder at the emergence of Pill, her Pill, her lovely daughter, getting near to being gangly of limb, a slim barely-there little girl in bib overalls and close-skulled brown hair.

Her friends could not save Trilby from the madness of the moment, but Pill could. For all her quiet frailty, Pill would pull her mother through; Trilby sensed it deep in her heart.

So too would it be with Brest.

Somehow they would survive this time, keeping a dread secret from the monster in their lives, as would Pill (her innocence wily enough not to tell Delia a thing), until this close-knit community took its proper revenge upon her.

That revenge would not be long in coming.

Already, as the final questions to Pill were asked and answered, Trilby saw wheels turning.

In Futzy b.u.t.tweiler.

In Jonquil Brindisi.

In Claude Versailles.

Retribution would be swift and sure.

She and Brest, newly wounded and raw, would be seen after.

More important, Pill would see her father's murderer dealt with. She would forgive her mommies for their bad choice, rectified at once and explained when she was much older. And she would find firm footing in this marvelous society in the greatest country on the face of the planet.

From the midst of torment, a new seed of hope and solidarity would sprout.

Trilby had never loved her daughter more than she did at this moment. That's what her tears, freely flowing now, announced to all who cared to observe them.

Hope was justified, she thought, even when life seemed most hopeless.

25. Piecing Together What Was Torn Asunder.

Bray looked up at the sound of Claude's front door opening. In walked Brest Donner from having dropped Delia Gaskin home.

Brest was a hard woman, he thought. Beauty edged with greed, an inturned nature. Before too many years had pa.s.sed, her great-eagle sweep and flare would droop into something vulturish.

Bray considered the abomination this woman had instigated: a female threesome.

He couldn't help but be judgmental about such a perverted combination of partners. Despite his years as an outcast and the prejudicial treatment he had suffered, there were certain personal choices that struck him as simply wrong. Three women in a s.e.xual entanglement was one of them. Didn't the Bible have a few prohibitions against that sort of thing? He believed it did.

"Okay, what's up?" said Brest. "A surprise party?"

Everyone spoke at once. While the confusion was sorting itself out, Bray whispered to Winnie, "They'll slap us in jail."

She goggled at him. "Jeepers, Bray, now what's your problem?"

"We were heroes, weren't we? You and me, the two social pariahs, especially. We did the media circuit and the world changed, a tiny bit anyway."

"So?"

"So now the story will turn way the f.u.c.k around: We made a mistake, we got fooled, we f.u.c.ked up. They'll take everything back, they'll try us for Gerber's murder, they'll demonize us, it'll be Notorious for sure."

Claude leaned to Winnie. "Is our handsome yummy-nums lapsing into Bray-mode again?"

"He sure is," Winnie said.

"Be not dismayed, hubby ours," Claude said. "Everyone in this room, without exception, was Delia's dupe."

That was true. Claude had a way of cutting to the heart. He was also a mean flogger when the mood struck him.

"All of us made a mistake," continued Claude, "which we simply must, with all deliberate speed, rectify. If we visit right retribution upon our wayward school nurse, they'll make us heroes all over again. The public loves seeing justice meted out. Calm down, Bray, sweetie. Let come what may."

Claude sat back, not waiting to see if Bray followed his advice. Claude knew he would. His confidence, Bray thought, was irritating, but it wasn't misplaced. Claude knew him.

Claude knew them both.

Had s.e.xy Jonquil Brindisi not been so deeply bigoted, it would have been sweet and savory for them to have tripled up with her. But Claude, the more he and Winnie got to know him, was a pretty decent companion. He treated them well, he was fun to listen to, and he cooked a mean omelette.

"I just don't like it," Bray muttered, but only for form's sake.

Winnie's look said, I love you, you doofus, despite your fretting and moaning.

Meanwhile, Brest had clearly been struggling to make sense of the babble. As everyone spoke up, fitting in this or that piece of the puzzle for her, Trilby held her hand.

Pill leaned against her mother and listened, looking tired but otherwise like any other eight-year-old up past her bedtime.

Bray twiddled his fingers at her, a spastic b.u.t.terfly caught chest high. Pill gave a wisp of a smile and twiddled back.

The plan for dealing with Delia Gaskin came in part from Futzy b.u.t.tweiler and in parta"indeed the killer parta"from Jenna Megrim.

Bray listened in fascination as their plan gathered shape and momentum. Carrying it out, he sensed, would provide the healing for which they had come together. As one part of the plan meshed with another, their conspiratorial circle took on centripetal force. Heads angled in like sharpened stakes in a concealed pit.

Only Jonquil held back, sipping her drink.

Bray gave her a brief look of wistful l.u.s.t, to which Jonquil dutifully shot back an intolerant glare full of fire and f.u.c.k-you.

Still, her compact, killer, curvaceous legs, crossed just so, boggled Bray's brain. He longed to uncross them, to shred those dark stockings, to dip down into the warm moist fire of her loins and tongue up the juices that sizzled there.

Right, he thought. Not in this lifetime.

Winnie elbowed him. Listen up, Bray, her look commanded him.

Bray listened.

Dex sat on the floor against an overstuffed armchair, intent on the grown-ups' conversation.

Tweed sat huggably close on his right, her sister Jenna's head on his left thigh.

Despite Dex's graduation the previous spring and his coming-up-on six months at First National, clerking away as if he'd done it forever, he still felt very much a kid.

The terrors of the prom had indeed aged him. And this evening's revelations went even further toward drawing his youth to a close. But maturity wasn't something you snapped on like a toolbelt.

It was strange being a boy.

Boys were expected to show strength. Not to cry, or only on special occasions.

But really the girls were in charge.

With decent boys anyway.

He had heard of the rougher sort of guys, who threw their rage around and made things nasty for the women in their lives. They were just wacked-out dudes, far as he was concerned.

But among normal people, the women held sway and everybody knew it.

There were even jokes about it.

Now he had learned that it wasn't sick-guy Gerber Waddell, but sick-girl Delia Gaskin, who had been the prom killer.

Poor Gerber, a kind r.e.t.a.r.d with a nasty past and a brain pruned back to cut out his nastiness, they had futtered by mistake.

And Miss Gaskin walked about, bold as bra.s.s, wearing a mask of innocence, even trysting on the sly with the widows of the same Bix Donner whose life she herself had ended.

She had to be insane.

To think that he had visited the nurse's office, what, at least half a dozen times during his four-year stint at Corundum High. She could have sliced him up, fed him poison pills, or G.o.d knows what-all.

She could have done that to anyone.

Maybe she had.

No doubt there would be an investigation. Odd incidents at the school. Rumors of excess pain, of prolonged illnesses, the examination of pill bottles in medicine chests.

Dex didn't think anyone had died, but maybe he was wrong. Probably though, what with all the ribbing the nurse took, she had simply snapped.

On his left, Jenna stirred.

Tweed cuddled against him, almost hiding her head beneath his arm. Perhaps she was reliving those awful moments at the prom, and the death of her father. Dex would have to soothe her tonight, to a.s.sure her that she was safe in his arms and adored to the max.

But Tweed's kid sister squirmed in a most delightful fashion at his thigh. As he watched her take in each speaker in the room, Dex could feel the tension in her body.

Jenna was a pert thing, a little more compact than Tweed but otherwise a knock-off of her.

And a knock-out.

Dex mused.

Sister-wives were not unheard of.

Jenna was currently nursing a crush on the sprightly Pish Balthasar and on Bo Meacham, a hot-shot quarterback with nothing but brawn and looks to recommend him.

Maybe after her prom, she would wise up and gaze upon her brother-in-law in a new way.

Dex hoped so.

But he thought it best to let that unfold on its own. It was inconceivable to bring it up with her. Maybe he could plant a seed in Tweed's ear, letting sisterly magic weave its gossamer web.