“They kicked you out and sent you back to your parents.”
“I was glad to go. I didn’t think it could get any worse.”
“But it did.”
“Yes,” she whispered. “My father … was interested. It wasn’t like before when I was just a curiosity. He thought that I might be … He wanted to see if he could use me.”
“Your mother?”
“She said I should do whatever my father said. She said this time we had to keep it a big secret just between the two of them and me. She made me go to this fancy Dr. Kramer on Fifth Avenue. He was a psychiatrist. He told my mother and father that he didn’t believe in what the school was telling him, but he’d investigate and let them know.” She said hoarsely, “I hated it. He kept asking me questions. Over and over. He wanted to know how I knew when I was making contact with someone’s memory. I told him that it was like being sucked into a dark tunnel, and I was suddenly just there. He told me to stop making up stories. He’d use big words like ‘hippocampus’ and ‘frontal cortex’. He’d tape wires and stuff on my head. He’d bring in strangers and try to trick me into saying the wrong things about what they were remembering. It went on and on…”
“But then he found out you weren’t making up the stories.”
“Yes, all those tests showed that my brain appeared to make contact with the amygdala segment of the brain of anyone with whom I came in close contact. Those are the cells that harbor memory. He told mother that there was evidence of stimulation in both brains. He said that my sensation of being pulled into a tunnel was my mind focusing, making adjustments.”
“That tunnel signal interests me,” Mandak said. “It may indicate you’re struggling for control.”
“Control? Are you crazy? I have no control. I just have to accept. My mother was excited. But she told me that I wasn’t to go back to see Dr. Kramer. He wanted to write an article for some medical journal, and that was making my father angry. He didn’t want anyone to know about what I could do.”
“Exit Dr. Kramer. What happened to him?”
“I don’t know. My mother said that he was going to Europe to study for some degree.”
“How convenient.”
Though she had accepted what her mother said at the time, that’s what Teresa had thought in the years that followed. People who displeased her father often just went away never to be seen again. “I was glad at the time. I hated going to his office.”
“But you hated more what happened when your father and mother believed his report.”
“Yes,” she said jerkily.
“And what did your father make you do?”
She didn’t answer for a moment. She didn’t know why she had already told him as much as she had. Secrets … Her mother had told her that she mustn’t tell anyone, that it was a secret. But she was alone now, and this man might have saved her life. And just telling someone about those years made her feel less vulnerable.
“They’d sit me down in the library with my father and whoever he chose to bring home with him,” she said haltingly. “Sometimes it was one of his men, sometimes a politician, sometimes it was someone from another mob. He’d ignore me, but he’d laugh and joke with them. I guess that they thought it was a little weird to have me there, but maybe they felt safer and more at ease having a kid in the room. After they’d left, I had to tell my father what memories had surfaced in their minds during the visit.” She closed her eyes. “So ugly. Mean and cruel and ugly. Memories are never anything like what’s on the surface. They’re almost always selfish, and the reasons why anyone does something are usually based on what they remember as being good or pleasant for them in the past. But often what those men thought pleasant was cruel and bloody and—” Her eyes opened, and she stopped as those memories began to come alive for her again. “Sometimes I wanted to throw up. I begged my father not to make me do it. He wouldn’t listen. My mother said that it was my duty and that I mustn’t say anything that might upset him.”
“Did it continue until he was killed?”
“No.” She drew a shaky breath. “Until about six months ago. I knew what my father was by that time. At first, I was numb and scared and just did what he told me to do. Then I began to wonder what effect my telling my father about those memories was having on those people he had me read. One night Ned Jokman came to see my father. He had worked with him for years. His memories were … bad. Death. Cheating. Bribes … After I gave my father the report, he seemed angry. He stormed out of the house. I followed him. He went to the guesthouse, where Jokman was staying. My father’s men dragged Jokman out into the woods and made him kneel.” She shuddered. “My father shot him in the head.”
Blood and bits of skull and brains flying everywhere.
“I screamed. I kept on screaming. My father hit me and hit me again. I deserved it. It was my fault.” She swallowed. “My fault. My fault.”
“No, it wasn’t.”
“Don’t tell me that,” she said fiercely. “I told my father what Jokman remembered doing, and he dragged him out into the woods and killed him. It wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t told him. It wouldn’t have happened if I’d shut away those memories and blocked them.”
His eyes narrowed on her face. “Can you do that?”
She was silent. “Sometimes.”
“Not often.”
“But I can pretend,” she said quickly. “I can make people think I’m not able to do it any longer.”
“Is that how you kept your father from forcing you to tap into anyone’s memories after he killed Jokman?”
She was silent.
“It would be the only way to do it,” he said. “He wouldn’t give up such a prize advantage, and he obviously didn’t give a damn about you. Did he make it rough on you?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
The regular beatings with the belt. The ropes. Isolation, verbal and physical abuse.
“It doesn’t matter. It’s over.”
“Your mother didn’t interfere?”
He didn’t understand about Gina. Nothing bad ever touched her. Beautiful butterflies never interfered in anything ugly. But she had come to Teresa after every punishment and held her in her arms and dried her tears.
“I know, baby,” Gina had whispered as she held her close and stroked her hair. “I grew up with beatings, too. You just have to do whatever you have to do to survive. Give him what he wants, if you can. Just remember that I’m always here for you.”
“Teresa?”
She didn’t answer.
“You fooled him?”
“I had to make him believe me,” she said jerkily. “I couldn’t do what he wanted any longer. It helped that I couldn’t stop crying for days after it happened. He thought maybe I was going crazy.”
“Yes, I can see how that would help convince the son of a bitch,” Mandak said harshly. “A raving maniac wouldn’t be of much use to him.” He was silent. “Did you try to get away from him?”
“Once. He caught me and locked me up. Then, two weeks later, he was killed, and I thought that I’d be free.”