Grown up? Miranda at about the same age had lost her own father, and there were parts of her that would never grow up.
“I kept mumbling ‘bastard,’ over and over, so I guess I did say something. Bastard, bastard.” She seemed almost amused. “I didn’t know if I meant him or meant me. He asked if I wanted to see his fish.”
“His fish!”
“I think I screamed. He brought me into the cellar. He didn’t drag me, but he made me walk through the big door.”
“Into the old part?”
“Yeah, in through there.” She got up and thrust out her trembling hand to Miranda. “Come with me.”
They pulled the huge door open and entered what seemed even more than previously like a vast and intricate crypt. Jill’s grip was as dry as soot, but her forehead glistened. They walked slowly, purposefully, the girl feeling her way into the past. “Here,” she said, stopping in front of the wine cellar.
“Here?” Miranda was puzzled and apprehensive. “It’s locked.”
The girl reached overhead into the deep shadows of the joists above one of the dangling light bulbs and took down a key. “He didn’t care if I saw where he kept it. It didn’t make any difference.”
When the thick thermal door swung open, revealing on the other side a dented sheet-metal panel, the looming darkness was palpable. Miranda hesitated, then reached for the external light switch, but it flicked against her finger with no effect.
“Here,” said Jill, “let me do it. It’s tricky.”
The girl fiddled with the switch, a loose connection made contact, and an austere vault gaped radiantly behind the shower curtain with the wine cellar motif. Miranda stepped forward, pulled the curtain aside, and gasped with a sharp intake of breath that for a moment wouldn’t release so that she felt asphyxiated. The chamber contained no racks of fine wine but, instead, a bed, larger than a cot but not full-size, made up with a pillow, flannel sheets, and a blanket. A wooden chair, a small table, and a stainless-steel bedpan on the floor by the table were also in the room. Two bright lights were recessed into the ceiling. It was a cell.
Miranda turned to look behind her at Jill. The girl was fingering the shower curtain.
“This is the privacy barrier,” Jill said. “He didn’t care if you ripped it down, but you didn’t. It was all you had.”
“Jill, what do you mean ‘you’? I need you to explain. Were you a prisoner here?”
“Yes.”
Horrified, Miranda stared at her. The girl’s face was expressionless. They sat side by side on the edge of the bed, then Miranda stood, moved over to the chair, and took a seat facing Jill.
“Is this where he …” She wanted to avoid the brutality of a certain word.
“Is this where he …” The word rape was hard and trite and ominous. “Is this where he did things … to you?”
“Yes.”
“He made you bleed?”
Jill looked into Miranda’s eyes.
“He fucked me.” Miranda reached out to her, but the girl didn’t respond. “He kept you prisoner here?”
“Yes.”
“For how long?”
“Until my mother came.”
“How long was that?”
“Maybe three days. I slept a lot. I slept when he wasn’t here, and I read.”
“Did he come back? Did he do it more than once?”
“Yes.”
“How many times, Jill?”
“I don’t know. Three times, five times? He let me go in and take showers. One time he watched. The next time he left me alone, but I couldn’t leave. The exit doors were locked. He had the key, so I came back to my room.”
“Here?”
“Yes.”
“Jill, did you make the bed like this?”
“Yes.”
“Before your mother came?”
“No, after.”
“Where was Griffin when she came?”
“He was dead.”
“How do you mean?”
“You know, not breathing. Lying very still. Dead.”
“Where?”
“In the den.”
“In the den?”
“She came and got me out. I tried to shout where the key was through the door. She couldn’t hear me, but she knew where it was, and she unlocked the door and got me out.”
“And he was in the den and he was dead?”
“He called me Shiromuji. He said it’s a kind of fish. He said I wasn’t his real daughter. That things didn’t work like that. He told me he fucked my mother. I tried to scratch him. He said she was a girl like me, only she was better. She was only a girl. He said he liked her better, but I was okay. He said Shiromuji means you’re only okay. I was too young, he said. I wasn’t purebred, he said. I said, ‘That’s because you’re my father.’ He laughed at me. We both laughed. He called me his Shiromuji girl. I think he liked me. He just didn’t want to say it. He didn’t know what to say. He didn’t have the right words.”
“Jill, when you went out into the study, where was he?”
“He was lying on the floor, on the carpet.”
“On the carpet that’s out there now?”
“No, on the thick one with all the colours.”
“The rug at your place by the front door?”
“Yes.”
“Why did you take it home?”
“Because … it had blood on it, just little specks, and they came off. But my mom didn’t want to leave it, just in case.”
“In case what?”
“Well, she killed him.”
“She killed him?”
“We couldn’t just leave him lying there.”
“He didn’t die from a blow, Jill, not from bleeding.”
“No. He died from sleep apnea, my mother said. Only Molly Bray helped him along. When he died, he slipped off his chair and bumped his head a little. There wasn’t much blood, but my mom’s fastidious.”
“Yes,” said Miranda, enjoying the girl’s vocabulary in spite of the gravity of their conversation.
“Can you die from sleep apnea?”
“You can,” said Miranda.
“Especially since he took Valium and he wasn’t used to it. It would relax his throat muscles. It’s possible if he already had problems. Yes, he could die that way.”
“Sitting up in his chair?”
“Possibly.”
“She said she held a pillow over his face. He didn’t struggle or anything. He just, you know, expired.”
Miranda thought it was more likely that Griffin had been stretched out on the sofa, possibly with his legs up over one end and his head low on the cushions. If he had truly suffered from apnea, he probably didn’t need help dying.