The Word of a Child (9 page)

"You're mostly counting on her making a mistake, aren't
you?"

"Or confessing all to a friend who has more conscience
than she has."

Mariah didn't like that. "What if it's the truth?"

"Then my guess is we find that Tracy Mitchell isn't his
first victim." Connor's voice hardened. "I'll be talking to his
former colleagues, students, neighbors… You name it. If he's a pedophile, he'll
have offended before.
And
found he liked it, which would explain his taking a job where
he'd be working with all these young girls."

"Oh." Her eyes were huge and alarmed, making him
wonder how feral his expression had become.

He rose to his feet. Time to get out of here and do his job,
not hang around wishing for the impossible.

"If I have more questions, I'll be in touch, Ms.
Stavig. Thank you for your help."

"You're welcome." She almost sounded as if she
meant it. He felt her gaze on his back as he left her classroom.

He headed for the office, where the principal would have
students called to talk to him one at a time, starting with Lucy Carlson, the
girl who had suggested Tracy tell all to Mariah in the first place. He wasn't
halfway when it occurred to Connor that he'd committed more than foolishness in
lusting after a woman who hated him.

He'd committed a sin. He had to have lusted after her three
years ago, when she was married and he was investigating her husband. Why else
would he have remembered her face so well? Noticed her gloriously long legs in
snug jeans to the point where he could still close his eyes and picture her
walking away from him?

He might not have acknowledged his attraction, but what if
it had affected his judgment, his objectivity? Looking back, he knew it had
increased his abhorrence and animosity for Simon Stavig. Question was, had his
peripheral but powerful awareness of Stavig's beautiful, puzzled, hurt wife
changed the way he'd conducted the investigation? Had he done something
differently, because he'd disliked the son of a bitch for wounding his wife? He
growled in his throat.

Did it matter what he'd felt for Simon Stavig, when lately
he'd begun to wonder whether his reasons for going into this line of work in
the first place had prejudiced him beyond hope? Hell, wasn't he already afraid
he'd become a sort of avenger rather than a dispassionate investigator?

What was one more small sin added to the weight on his
conscience?

Shoving through the double doors to let himself outside,
Connor told himself it was time he found another job.

One that let him sleep at night.

Chapter
4

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^
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Z
ipping the small
pink-and-purple suitcase, Mariah called, "Zofie, Daddy
will be here any minute. Are you ready?"

Her six-year-old daughter appeared in the bedroom doorway,
her small face set in a pout. "Do I hafta go?"

Mariah felt a familiar mix of potent emotions. Petty
exultation—
she loves me best—
swirled with fear—
is she
afraid of him?—
and finally a parent's
familiar impatience.

"You know you do." She hesitated and added
carefully, "You can always talk to me about Daddy and anything he says or
does when you're with him. Sometimes there are reasons kids
can't
visit
their parents, but as long as you don't have a special reason besides missing
Renee's birthday party, you do have to go. Your dad loves you and wants to
spend time with you, too."

Her daughter hung her head. "It's not just Renee's
party. It's … sometimes Daddy…"

Mariah's heart jerked as if she'd touched a live wire. She
fought to keep her voice calm. "Sometimes what?"

"Sometimes he's
boring."
The first-grader sighed heavily. "He
doesn't
do
stuff with me."

Mariah sagged. Of course Zofie would have told her if Simon
had touched her like that. She had to quit scaring herself by reading something
into nothing!

"I can't always do stuff with you, either," she
pointed out, her voice only slightly shaky.

"Yeah, but then I can go to a friend's house or
something," Zofie argued. "Or I have my toys."

"I know perfectly well you have toys at his house,
too." Mariah raised her eyebrows and nodded at the bag in the hall.
"Not to mention everything you just packed."

Zofie squirmed. "Yeah, but…" She flung herself at
her mother and hugged her hard. "I like being with you!"

Mariah dropped to her knees on the throw rug in front of her
daughter's bed and hugged back. Tears stinging her eyes, she said, "Oh,
sweetie, you know I like being with you, too."

Zofie sniffed and nodded hard. "But Dad loves me,
too," she mumbled.

"That's right." Mariah hoped and prayed Simon did,
that he would always put the child they shared first.

One more sniff, and her petite daughter straightened, lifted
her chin and said with resolution, "I'm okay."

Mariah smiled, hoping her tears didn't show.
"Good."

Zofie cocked her head. "Is that Daddy? Did you hear a
knock?"

"No, but let's go see." Mariah grabbed the child's
suitcase from the bed and hurried with Zofie to the front door.

Opening it, her daughter cried, "Daddy!" with
complete delight, as if she hadn't just been bemoaning the necessity of seeing
him.

Mariah stood back watching as he bent and lifted Zofie into
his arms, a grin warming his saturnine face. For a moment he was the handsome
man she had married, his dark hair tousled, his thin nose and wonderful
cheekbones making him movie-star handsome. She had the jarring sensation of a
temporal shift, as if this was once-upon-a-time, and he was just coming home
from work, and he'd be looking up and smiling at her any minute…

Instead, over Zofie's dark curls, his cold gaze met hers.
"I take it she's ready?"

Mariah forced a smile. "Yup. Zofie's all packed."

"Wait!" She wriggled in his arms. "I've got
stuff to play with. I left it in the hall."

"Run and get it." He let her down and bent to pick
up her suitcase.

The silence felt uncomfortable. Trying to sound friendly,
Mariah asked, "Do you have any plans this weekend?"

Simon straightened to stare at her with an emotion near
hate. "Are you asking whether this is the weekend I'm going to molest my
daughter?"

She closed her eyes for a moment. "You know that's not
what I meant. I was just making conversation."

"Yeah." His mouth curled. "Sure you
were."

"Really…"

From the rear of the apartment, Zofie called, "I'm
going to get something else, Daddy! I'll hurry."

If he heard, he didn't show it. His glittering eyes never
left Mariah's. "Let's not play games. I know what you think about me. I'm
not going to let you steal my kid from me, too. She'll be spending every other
weekend with me for the next thirteen years. So get over it."

Mariah gritted her teeth, anger saving her from shame.
"'Get over it?'" she echoed in a low, furious voice. "I'm to
quit worrying about my child? Don't you
want
me to
worry about our daughter?"

"When she's with me, she's mine. Not ours." His
dark eyes now held satisfaction and, perhaps, pain.

Mariah's fingernails bit into her palms. "Simon,
please," she begged. "This isn't a competition. Can't we do our best
together to raise Zofie?"

"Together?" He took a step forward, familiar fury
twisting his face. "If you wanted us to raise her together, why are we
divorced? It's because you didn't want to raise her with me at all. Did you? So
now I have to take what I can get—two days out of every fourteen." His
voice was a whip. "And, no, we're not raising Zofie together." He
looked past her. "Ready to go, kiddo?"

"Sure." Zofie paused to hug her mom briefly.
"Bye."

How badly Mariah wanted to hold on and not let go! Reluctantly
she lifted her hand from her daughter's fragile shoulder, touched her soft hair
and forced a smile and light tone. "See you Sunday, sweetie."

They were gone with a slam of the door and the sound of
Zofie's high chatter receding. Mariah stood just inside, her hands knotted at
her side, trembling all over.

In the early years, she'd been afraid every minute when
Zofie was with Simon. But she'd talked to Zofie often about inappropriate
touching, emphasizing it could come from anyone, asking her to promise to tell
no matter what if anything like that ever happened. And now three years had
passed, and Zofie had never even hinted that her daddy was anything but a
regular daddy.

As time passed, Mariah felt relief. Surely if Simon had
abused three-year-old Lily, he wouldn't have been able to resist Zofie. So her
safe passage into elementary school must mean he
hadn't
been
the one to do those terrible things to Lily Thalberg. That meant Mariah didn't
have to worry. He loved his daughter. He would take good care of her when she
was with him.

But shame followed on the heels of relief, because that must
mean Simon was innocent all along when she, Mariah, had doubted him, her own
husband. She'd left him so that he couldn't hurt their daughter, a terrible
insult to a man she had promised to cherish and obey for as long as they both
shall live.

He was always angry now, and she didn't blame him. Wasn't
the whole foundation of marriage trust? A husband saw his wife without makeup
and in childbirth and complaining about her mother and her best friend, and she
trusted him not to betray her and to respect and love her despite her petty
weaknesses. Just as she knew that he had fears he would never confess to his
friends, and that his hot, brief anger meant nothing, and that he was
embarrassed by his father's crude manners, but she would never tell. A husband
knew you, as no one else ever had or would, just as a wife knew him. She should
know, on a deep, instinctive level, whether he would ever have committed such a
crime.

Only Mariah hadn't known, not with the certainty she should
have felt. At first, she'd told herself it was Simon's fault; if only he had
talked to her, she never would have wavered. But why had she needed the words,
I
didn't do it?
Why hadn't she loved him enough to trust him?

Mariah still couldn't answer that and was ashamed every
other weekend when she saw in Simon's eyes what her doubt had done to him.

Worse yet, she was still afraid every minute when Simon had
Zofie. Not
as
afraid; she could shop, clean house, go out with friends,
without fear tearing at her nonstop. But the worry was there, a nagging, quiet
ache that never left her until Zofie came running in the front door, singing,
"I'm home!"

This weekend, the anxiety was more acute. Meeting that
police detective again had brought it all back. She saw the way he frowned and
said in consternation, "He gets unsupervised visitation?" And when
she asked whether he had believed Simon to be guilty, he said, "Yes,"
without even a heartbeat of hesitation.

Once again, his certainty worked at eroding her confidence
in what she should believe unshakably to be true: that Simon would never molest
his own child.

And so she stood and shook until she heard Simon's car drive
away, and she faced the fact that she would be alone in this apartment for
almost forty-eight hours. She couldn't race after him and demand Zofie back, or
shadow them and lurk under the windows of his rented house peering in windows.

She could only endure the weekend, as she had endured so
many others, and try to convince herself that Zofie was safe, her daddy loved
her, that he was angry because he felt betrayed and not because he also felt
guilty.

On a breath that hitched in her throat and might almost have
been a sob, Mariah turned away from the door that had closed behind a cheerful
Zofie going off with Daddy, and went to the kitchen to make a dinner she didn't
want to eat.