Page 127 of The Woman Who Couldn't Scream
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His cool, disinterested voice: “Katherine, what do you want?”
She burst out, “I want to say—I found the album and it’s… I’m so glad you loved Mama with all your heart.”
His already stern face froze into steely lines. “What are you talking about?”
“About this.” She pulled the photo out from behind her back and thrust it toward him.
He took it by the edges, never touching her fingers, and looked at it.
At first, she didn’t notice the way his angular face seemed to be carved of harsh stone, unbreathing, unmoving. She was too intent on babbling, “I know that beach where you took those pictures. Did Rainbow take them? She was in some of them, so I thought it had to be her. Uncle Bluster was in one, too. He’s dead now, Mama said he drank himself to death, but for a long time, he was like a father to me.”
Her real father lifted his heavy-lidded gaze from the photo and stared at her.
Perhaps she shouldn’t have said that. To cover up her faux pas, she rattled on. “You were picking up driftwood in one picture, and I recognize that piece. Mama always keeps it in her room on a shelf lined with shells. She said she used to like to collect shells but now she—”
“Where did you find this… picture?”
Something was wrong. He wasn’t pleased. “I told you. In the album.”
“Where is the album?”
“In the attic.”
“What were you doing in the attic?”
She swallowed.Hiding from my sister. Hiding from your wife. Hiding from the servants. Hiding from my loneliness.She couldn’t say any of that. “I don’t know.”
Her father put the photograph in the right-hand bottom drawer of his desk. “Don’t go up there again.”
“But—”
“Nothing up there is of any concern to you.”
“Pictures of you and my mom!”You do remember my mother, Mary Kwinault? You loved her once.
“They are none of your business.”
“I want that picture. Give me that picture!” She wanted to lunge at him, hit him, strangle him until he was dead.
At the same time she feared him, feared that icy control, those cold blue eyes, the cruelty that lurked beneath starched white shirts and in ruthless fingers that without remorse could—and did—tear a screaming child out of her mother’s arms and carry her away forever.
He picked up his pen. “Is there anything else?”
Kateri choked on bile, on hate, on impotent fury. “You’re the most awful father in the whole world. No one loves you. And I hate you!” Whirling, she stomped toward the door. Stomped, when she wanted to run, but she wouldn’t allow herself to show fear for that man who hurt her so casually.
His voice stopped her before she stepped over the threshold. “Katherine.”
“What!”
He didn’t answer.
She faced him. “What?”
“Put on your shoes before you return to my office.”
“I’ll never come here again.” She had never meant anything so much in her life.
