Full Dark, No Stars

“No.” Tess thought of how sweet the night air had smel ed as she sat in the truck with the short barrel of the Lemon Squeezer in her mouth. “No, I’m good.”

“Then it’s time for you to leave. I’l sit here a little longer.”

Tess started to get off the bench, then sat down again. “There’s something I need to know. You’re making yourself an accessory after the fact. Why would you do that for a woman you don’t even

know? A woman you only met once?”

“Would you believe because my gran loves your books and would be very disappointed if you went to jail for a triple murder?”

“Not a bit,” Tess said.

Betsy said nothing for a moment. She picked up her can of Dr. Brown’s, then put it back down again. “Lots of women get raped, wouldn’t you say? I mean, you’re not unique in that respect, are you?”

No, Tess knew she was not unique in that respect, but knowing it did not make the pain and shame any less. Nor would it help with her nerves while she waited for the results of the AIDS test she’d

soon be taking.

Betsy smiled. There was nothing pleasant about it. Or pretty. “Women al over the world are being raped as we speak. Girls, too. Some who undoubtedly have favorite stuffed toys. Some are kil ed,

and some survive. Of the survivors, how many do you think report what happened to them?”

Tess shook her head.

“I don’t know, either,” Betsy said, “but I know what the National Crime Victimization Survey says, because I googled it. Sixty per cent of rapes go unreported, according to them. Three in every five. I think that might be low, but who can say for sure? Outside of math classes, it’s hard to prove a negative. Impossible, real y.”

“Who raped you?” Tess asked.

“My stepfather. I was twelve. He held a butter knife to my face while he did it. I kept stil —I was scared—but the knife slipped when he came. Probably not on purpose, but who can say?”

Betsy pul ed down the lower lid of her left eye with her left hand. The right she cupped beneath it, and the glass eye rol ed neatly into that palm. The empty socket was mildly red and uptilted, seeming to stare out at the world with surprise.

“The pain was… wel , there’s no way to describe pain like that, not real y. It seemed like the end of the world to me. There was blood, too. Lots. My mother took me to the doctor. She said I was to tel him I was running in my stocking feet and slipped on the kitchen linoleum because she’d just waxed it. That I pitched forward and put out my eye on the corner of the kitchen counter. She said the doctor would want to speak to me alone, and she was depending on me. ‘I know he did a terrible thing to you,’ she said, ‘but if people find out, they’l blame me. Please, baby, do this one thing for me and I’l make sure nothing bad ever happens to you again.’ So that’s what I did.”

“And did it happen again?”

“Three or four more times. And I always kept stil , because I only had one eye left to donate to the cause. Listen, are we done here or not?”

Tess moved to embrace her, but Betsy cringed back— like a vampire who sees a crucifix, Tess thought.

“Don’t do that,” Betsy said.

“But—”

“I know, I know, mucho thanks, solidarity, sisterhood forever, blah-blah-blah. I don’t like to be hugged, that’s al . Are we done here, or not?”

“We’re done.”

“Then go. And I’d throw that gun of yours in the river on your way back home. Did you burn the confession?”

“Yes. You bet.”

Betsy nodded. “And I’l erase the message you left on my answering machine.”

Tess walked away. She looked back once. Betsy Neal was stil sitting on the bench. She had put her eye back in.

- 48 -

In her Expedition, Tess realized it might be an extremely good idea to delete her last few journeys from her GPS. She pushed the power button, and the screen brightened. Tom said: “Hel o, Tess. I

see we’re taking a trip.”

Tess finished making her deletions, then turned the GPS unit off again. No trip, not real y; she was only going home. And she thought she could find the way by herself.

FAIR

EXTENSION

Streeter only saw the sign because he had to pul over and puke. He puked a lot now, and there was very little warning—sometimes a flutter of nausea, sometimes a brassy taste in the back of his

mouth, and sometimes nothing at al ; just urk and out it came, howdy-do. It made driving a risky proposition, yet he also drove a lot now, partly because he wouldn’t be able to by late fal and partly because he had a lot to think about. He had always done his best thinking behind the wheel.

He was out on the Harris Avenue Extension, a broad thoroughfare that ran for two miles beside the Derry County Airport and the attendant businesses: mostly motels and warehouses. The Extension