House of Steel (4 page)

It had been rainy that night back in April
when she was just fourteen. She had stayed late at the after-school
art group held weekly in the basement at St. Luke’s, the Catholic
Church just six blocks from her house. Mr. Rowan, the
thirty-something, exceedingly religious group leader with a pitted
face and the spotty hair of a sixty-year-old, had insisted that she
finish her most recent painting of Saint Agnes. He had brought
Delaney a picture of the saint just a few weeks before, declaring
that the statuesque woman was the most beautiful and worthy of them
all. Delaney had adored the small lamb that the woman saint had
coddled in her arms so she had happily obliged to paint the
portrait. The rest of the small group of ten students had gone home
around five, meeting their families for dinner, but Mr. Rowan had
contended he would give her a ride and explain her tardiness to her
parents.

As she had finished rounding the slightest
glint on the lamb’s eye, she had sensed the presence of Mr. Rowan
leaning in behind her. She had stepped forward, closer to the
painting, before she had felt the weight of his hand on her hip.
Delaney had jerked forward as he shushed her and wrapped his entire
arm around her waist, grabbing to pull her into him. She had let
out a gasp before he had covered her mouth with a piece of duct
tape. He had shook his head in disapproval as his eyes hardened
deep inside his blemished face. Those eyes. She could still see
those eyes.

Delaney had squirmed beneath his arms as he
pinned her down, her small frame not matching his robust physical
strength. He had reached for a votive candle that had been burning
in a rack near them, setting the small glass jar next to her hair
that fanned across the concrete floor. She had screamed again to no
avail, the tape stifling any sound her throat willed her to
produce. She had kicked her legs, trying to wiggle her way free
when he had tilted the flame to the end of her hair. Delaney had
smelled her hair burning before he had snuffed it out with his
hand. Her hair. What would Ann Jones say about her hair?

“Kick again, and I won’t put the fire out.”
His words had broken the fight. The smell of menthol had permeated
her nostrils as the cough drop clanked against his teeth. He had
unbuckled his pants, pulling them down before Delaney had realized
what was about to happen. She had caught a glimpse of the tattoo
inked on his neck, 1 John 1:9, before she had closed her eyes. Her
body had recoiled as she felt his calloused hands fondle her
developed chest. She had squeezed her eyes tighter.
Let me go
home. Let me go home.
He had poked and prodded her before she
felt the searing pain below her waist as he raped her. The tears
had poured down her shut eyes, wetting her hair next to her
temples. She had waited until he stopped moving back and forth to
open her eyes.

“Now that wasn’t so bad, was it?” he asked
as he had stood up, buckling his pants. She had lain on the cool
slab, immoveable as her body bled while he merely handed her a
paper towel, indicating that she should clean herself up. Her mind
had screamed to her to run. Her body disobeyed.

“And my precious, Delaney,” he had continued
in a low and steady voice as he kneeled next to her, “If you even
make a whisper about this, your family and friends will discover
that you are just a little whore. That you begged for sex in
church. You wouldn’t want that, would you?” He had run his fingers
along her face before he had stood up before the rack of votive
candles. He had lit another candle and bowed his head in
prayer.

Delaney’s body had trembled as she
surrendered to his orders. She had climbed out of his car after a
silent six blocks and bit her lip raw as she walked the painful
steps to the front porch. Ann Jones had met her on the porch,
returning the wave to a smiling Mr. Rowan before he had driven off.
Later that night, with eyes steadied on her reflection in her
bedroom mirror, Delaney had chopped six inches from her flowing
locks much to her mother’s dismay. Ann Jones simply shrugged it off
to the rebellious teenage years. She was her first and only
daughter after all.

In the following weeks, Delaney had made
every excuse to miss Mr. Rowan’s art classes that she had once
reveled in. She’d treaded cautiously every moment for three weeks,
only going to school and back home again with the guardianship of
her brothers, until the Tuesday morning she had seen his pitted
face on the news. The smells churned deep inside her. He had been
captured and charged with sexual assault and narcotics possession.
As she had gazed at the profile of her father watching the segment,
she knew she could never find the words to tell him or anyone what
had happened. She had gotten her period two days later.

The young Delaney had attempted to suppress
the deep wounds, abandoning painting and any sexual encounters with
men for five years. Church, on the other hand, was abandoned
indefinitely.

6

DAY 2: Friday, December 19 – 9:00 a.m.

The gray sedan backed out of the long,
winding driveway and onto the road. V watched as her employer left
his seven thousand square foot mansion. She had never caught a look
inside the stuccoed fortress. It was disgustingly beautiful, she
was sure. V would have enough time - and space - to finish her
preparation. She gave one final gaze to the house before she swung
her own gray sedan in reverse. She had never been good enough for
him, and she had stopped trying, without him knowing, a long time
ago.

V laid her foot on the accelerator, watching
the three-story house disappear in the rearview mirror. The past
few years had been particularly agonizing, waiting and preparing
for the right moment to seek her revenge. Her knuckles, the
physical proof of that time, were raw and swollen between the
joints as they gripped the wheel. The boxing instructor had
vehemently denied V’s demands to fight without gloves the first
three weeks. But she was unyielding, punching the bags until her
knuckles spit blood. He liked her tenacity, so he let her stay,
never letting his eye off her during her biweekly visits. She was
smart about the time in the ring, ensuring that her employer never
knew about them. The yoga studio next door was her alibi in order
for her subsequently lean and toned body not to draw questions. She
was a quick study. Agile - powerful force in a tiny package as long
as she controlled the rage. With over a thousand sessions, she felt
ready, but her employer had made it difficult with the thugs that
periodically visited the house in the middle of the night. He was
the master of illusions; a monster that reared its ugly head only
occasionally. So she waited.

She sped back to her apartment to finish the
research she had started. It wouldn’t be long before Gunnar made a
move, but she needed to be one step ahead of him. Always. She
hadn’t been the first time they’d met. V needed to know more about
Theron Olson, and she needed to finish packing her bag that was
already stashed with cash and her .9 millimeter.

7

DAY 2: Friday, December 19 –10:00 a.m.

Delaney gripped the wheel tighter, her long
fingers white, as a pickup truck flew passed her, kicking a flurry
of powder onto her windshield.
I knew there was a reason why the
streets were quiet when I left – a blizzard.
Her small car had
served her well at college for the past ten years in the cramped
space of downtown Madison, but the flat, empty terrain of the
freeway made a wind tunnel of blowing snow and torrential gusts.
The winds tugged and whipped the tiny car as snow piled onto the
road. She leaned forward to look closer at the road. When she had
accepted the job at Leighton, her father had tried to convince
Delaney to buy a SUV for the “trips back home.” She had smiled at
him, knowing her father had wanted her to stay in Milwaukee, but
urged him she would be fine in her Civic. She had purchased the car
on her own; she was going to hang on to it as long as she could.
Michael Jones was right again.
Yet another time that her
father’s annoying habit of being right had presented itself.

Delaney surveyed the road ahead of her. The
visibility had diminished to mere feet as the snow pummeled her
windshield. Glancing at the clock, she debated taking the next exit
ramp to wait out the storm.
Plenty of time before the rehearsal
dinner at six.
She had wanted to spend the afternoon with her
mother, though. Delaney shifted her hand to the volume on her
radio, stifling the low hum of the music. It needed to be silent.
As her eyes moved back to the road, bright red illuminated in front
of her before brake lights appeared only a few feet ahead. Her foot
slammed the brake, locking her back tires into a fishtail. She
jerked the steering wheel in the opposite direction of the spin
dutifully, but the wheels refused to grip the slick surface. Within
seconds, the car slid onto the other side of the freeway, crossed
passed an empty lane of oncoming traffic, and slammed down into the
ditch below, skidding twenty feet further down the road. The car
slammed to a stop as Delaney’s head thrust forward, along with her
open bag on the seat next to her. She sat frozen in her seat, both
her hands now trembling from the grip on the wheel. After a moment,
she slammed her hands against the wheel and screamed into the
silence.

The windshield, covered with white chunks,
stood in better condition than her front end that was now buried in
a foot of snow. Delaney looked up the freeway to her right, no cars
passing in sight and the car that had been in front of her was long
gone.
How had it come up so fast on me?
Everyone else
knew the storm was coming.

Since she could remember, Michael and Ann
Jones had watched the weather segment on TMJ4’s local news
broadcast every morning before heading to work - her mother as a
secretary at the
Journal Sentinel,
Milwaukee’s largest
circulating newspaper, and her father at Miller in the brewery. As
a teenager, Delaney had asked her father once about their obsession
detailing the weather mid-breakfast before her short walk to
school. He had stared at the TV, as if the weatherman would answer
her question, before turning to her and responding that, “Old
habits die hard, Delaney. Real hard.” He had then walked over to
the garbage, scraping his half-eaten pancakes with his fork into
the garbage, and placed his dishes into the sink without another
word. She had locked eyes with Ben, who shrugged his shoulders in
his adolescent indifference, and watched as her father walked out
the door.

It was seven years later when Delaney
finally understood what her father had meant that day. It was when
she was dating a guy named Titus, who she’d fervidly denied several
dates just because of his name. Titus had grown up on a farm, and
his fascination with keeping tabs on the weather had eventually led
Delaney to the discovery of her father’s deeply embedded roots.
Titus had commented that the upcoming rain would prevent his father
from taking off the crop. His father’s life, and subsequently his
family’s life, had always been dictated by the weather. “Farmers
live and die by the hand of God and the Heavens,” he had said.
Michael Jones had been a farmer prior to living in Milwaukee; his
old habit of watching the weather still lingered despite his new,
urban life. Delaney ended up leaving Titus a few weeks later. Titus
couldn’t get passed that she wouldn’t set foot in a church, and she
couldn’t get passed his name.

Delaney picked up her phone to see a small
envelope icon on the top of her screen.
Too busy heeding the
storm to hear my phone.
She groaned as she dialed into her
voicemail to hear her father’s voice warn her about the snowstorm,
urging her to skip the rehearsal dinner and head to Milwaukee the
following morning.
Perfect timing for spotty reception.
She
threw the phone on the passenger seat next to her.

The snow accumulated on the windshield,
piling up until she could barely see out of it. She grabbed the
mittens from her console, another Michael Jones’s reminder, and
rubbed her hands together as she calculated what to do next. She
would wait to call her parents until she was at least out of the
ditch because the last thing she needed was Michael Jones plowing
up here in his pickup truck. She still had plenty of time before
the dinner.

Delaney scooped her phone back up from the
passenger seat and searched for ‘tow services’ in her web browser;
her iPhone populated a list of five locations within a forty mile
radius. She started from the top, dialing Lomira Towing. A young
girl answered and told her that it would be one hour until they
could get to her. All of the trucks were already out. Delaney had
politely declined through clenched teeth and moved on to the next
business on the list, Joe’s Towing. No answer. Just as she finished
dialing the number for the third location, her phone beeped twice.
She looked at the red flashing battery icon on the top of her
phone.
Low battery.
She waited for someone to answer at
Phil’s Towing.
Maybe Joe and Phil are brothers.
She grumbled
at the less than innovative names that plagued the towing services
in the middle of nowhere.

“Yeah,” a voice answered on the other
end.

“Is this Phil’s Towing?” The phone beeped
again.

“Yeah.”

“Great, can you send a tow truck? I’m in the
ditch on Highway forty-one heading south. Not sure where exactly,
one hour north of Milwaukee?”

“More details, little lady,” he said.

“I don’t have any, but my phone is almost
dead and it’s freezing,” she urged.
Come on.

“Well, probably about two hours out. That is
if I can find you,” he replied.