Chapter 14
Snowflakes swirled over the Datsun's hood. The air was invigorating, awakening. Jack cracked the window and swung one arm around Sherrie's shoulders and kissed her hair.
"I still can't believe Daddy could have involved himself with that loathsome Southworth . . . criminal, murder, analist.'" The past week had been agonizing. Everything she'd believed stable and enduring had been inverted, converted . . . everything from faith in parentage to love for her husband. And her sexuality.
The doctor had warned of extreme fluctuations in mood and, seeing his wife tremble with emotion, Jack hugged her close as they headed south to Chicago.
"Don't worry about your father, honey. He'll probably turn state's evidence on Southworth and whatever that lesbian's name was and get off." No sympathy chimed in his voice. Just to turn the screw deeper, he started to inform his wife that he'd been partially responsible for finding her, but changed his mind.
"You really think so?" she sniffled. "I still don't understand why they arrested him."
"For conspiring with a public official to falsify state records. Clever guy, your Daddy," snickered Jack bitterly. "He and the county coroner had a deal worked out so that death certificates were issued on every poor bitch who turned up at the Crackerbox."
"You mean I could have been declared dead?
He nodded. "Sure. No body, no evidence . . . out of state. . . . "
"But if you love somebody and they disappear," she interrupted, "wouldn't most people dig deeper? I mean it's all so apathetic . . . so horrible!"
"The county coroner had that one wrapped up too. He presumably had the bodies buried in the state owned cemeteries and it takes years to get permission to exhume a body . . . by that time seven years had elapsed and insurance companies are satisfied with that."
"But how many women did he murder."
"Who knows? Most of them were suicides, according to the cops." He hugged her close. "Don't worry . . . even Anna was supposedly declared dead, but she's working at Harvey's cafe now."
"I.. . I want to forget it and concentrate on life for awhile."
"That's right. From now on I pay the mortgage, not Daddy . . . and when you need a new dishwasher, you come to your husband." Tempting it was to drive home the loathsome point that in a sense her father had held her captive and raped her. "You're going to have to learn to trust me. I know it upset you that your father fired me . . . but he did that because I was getting suspicious, not because I was too stupid to sell cars."
"Maybe you don't want me, after I . . . with those men," she confessed in a small voice.
He squeezed her shoulders and kissed her hair that tumbled over her flushed cheeks. Sherrie began to sob openly and cuddled against his strength.
"I.. . I haven't been giving you enough credit, have I? I always thought Daddy was right."
"It's going to be all right. A man has to be a male before he can be a husband, and that's what I intend to do. No more favors from anybody . . . except one," he amended.
Liquidy green eyes studied the strong profile, one hundred percent male and handsome as the day she'd met him.
"How about spending the night in a motel with a bottle of champagne and a nice dinner. . . ? " Jack tried to pry his mind loose of the vision that haunted him for the three days of Sherrie's recovery in the hospital. Sherrie, strewn naked on the bed with cunt hungry men pawing at her vulnerable curves. Only by replacing himself at dominator could he eradicate that nightmare. "And no TV," she retorted crisply. "No TV."
This is what it took, Sherrie began to understand, to stop judging Jack so harshly. Foolishly, she'd prayed for the day when Jack could afford to buy her the luxuries her father had showered upon her. What she didn't realize was that in the end, she'd paid for it dearly.