Warnings: Trigger warning for abuse, especially in the first chapter.
Disclaimer: All characters and environments belong to Michael MacLennan and Adrienne Mitchell/Shaw Media.
Kate's father doesn't look the way Betty imagined. He is tall and stern and imposing, but not brutish-looking. He looks like a neatly dressed, grey-haired man in his fifties, the same as anybody else's father. There's even a family resemblance between him and Kate; their eyes are almost exactly the same shade of blue. Betty wasn't expecting that. She's never asked Kate what her birth name is, so his addressing her as Marion makes the experience even more unsettling.
Something about the click of the door as Kate shuts them into her bedroom makes Betty lurch to life. "He didn't hit you, did he?" Betty takes both of Kate's hands, the better to peer at her arms, looking for bruises.
"I'm fine, I promise." Kate pulls away. When Betty walked in, she was cowering in a corner, her face screwed up as though anticipating a blow. Now, mere moments later, Kate is pale and subdued, but otherwise almost eerily calm and collected. Her composure wrong-foots Betty. She always thought that if Kate ever saw her father again, she'd be inconsolable. Looking at her now, Betty would never guess that Kate just came face to face with the man who left those scars all over her back.
Betty has never been more thankful that she is the way she is. If she liked men, she would be at the movies with Susan, Dolores and Phyllis, swooning over Johnny Weissmuller. She would have returned to find Kate gone, dragged off by that sick bastard who calls himself her father. As it happens, she likes women, so the only excursion she's taken tonight was a quick jaunt to buy cigarettes.
God, if she had returned just a few minutes later...
"I'm sorry," she says. Those aren't words Betty says very often, even to Kate (her apology after their first real argument consisted entirely of the words, "I'm a clod."), but right now, she feels them right down to her bones. "Are you sure you're not hurt?"
Kate shakes her head. "Nothing happened. Would you sit with me for a little while?"
It is such an abrupt segue into such a bizarrely simple request that Betty isn't sure she heard correctly. At Kate's questioning look, she answers, "'Course. Anything you want."
Kate sits down on the bed. Betty has no idea what to do or say. She wants to take Kate in her arms and hold her, wants to rage at Kate's father for doing this to her, for walking back into their lives when they've been so happy. The most harmless of the many thoughts chasing each other through her head is that Kate really ought to towel her hair off properly if she doesn't want to catch a chill. But perhaps it would be insensitive to point that out.
"It's dark out," says Kate vaguely.
Betty stares at her. It's getting on for ten at night, and it's December. Even in the city, it doesn't get much darker than this.
"I was never really frightened of the dark, growing up. Isn't that funny? Most children are," says Kate conversationally. "When I was about six, we had a wicker basket where we kept clean towels and sheets. I used to crawl inside it and close the lid on top of me. I liked it in there. I liked the way it smelled." Kate pauses. "Do you mind if we turn the light off now? Not to go to sleep. Just to sit, for a little bit."
"In the dark?"
"Yeah."
"Kate, are you sure -"
"Yes. Just sit with me, would you, please?"
Betty clambers onto the bed beside Kate. For once, Kate doesn't have to ask her to remove her shoes. "Kate, how did he find you?" Betty asks.
"Father saw the photos Chet took. He tracked him down and paid him for my address," says Kate, without emotion.
"Was he angry?" Betty wants to smack herself in the forehead as soon as the words leave her mouth. Why is she so spectacularly bad at this?
"He wasn't all that surprised." Kate casts her gaze toward the closed bedroom door. "Could you turn out the overhead light, please?"
Wordlessly, Betty crosses the room and switches out the light, plunging them into darkness. She sits down next to Kate. Their shoulders touch lightly for a moment, before Kate leans back against the headboard, breaking that tiny contact.
Kate begins to speak. "My father's always said he could see something wrong inside me. Even if I hadn't done anything yet, he could see that I wanted to. He said I had to keep praying for guidance until I stopped wanting it. Women aren't supposed to, after all."
"S'posed to what?"
"To ... do things. With men." Kate swallows. "He said he could see I wanted to – to give myself to every man I saw. He could tell it from the way I stood, the way I looked at people, even the way I sang. That's why I wasn't allowed to go to pictures or dances. Even if I didn't find someone, it would just give me ideas."
Betty wants to cry out in revulsion, in anger, at the very idea of someone saying these things to Kate. She remains quiet. She knows from experience that there are some confessions where you don't want someone chiming in with an opinion.
"Last winter, we took rooms in a boarding house in Spruce Grove, when the weather got too cold to stay in our trailer. I've always liked settling down for the winter. We couldn't ever afford to stay anywhere really nice, but it didn't matter. For the coldest weeks of the year, we'd have hot baths, and quiet evenings reading the gospels while it snowed outside, and Christmas as a family. Father would room with the boys, to supervise them, and I'd share with my mother. She and I would sit up together knitting and talking, and she'd tell me stories about when she was a girl. By last winter, I'd heard most of the stories, but I liked hearing them anyway. They made me feel like I was little again, back before so many things went wrong."
They sit in silence for a few minutes. Kate's breathing slows, and Betty wonders whether she's fallen asleep. "Kate?" she whispers.
Kate begins speaking again, as if the pause hadn't happened. "A few weeks before we took lodgings, Father found me doing something I shouldn't. I don't want to tell you what it was, so don't ask. I've put it behind me.
"He was so angry, but it was different to before. Usually, he'd get angry, but he'd be all right again the next day. This time, he didn't speak to me for days. Even when he started talking to me again, it was as if he'd given up on me, like he couldn't be bothered with me any more. I tried to be as good as I've ever been in my life, but he wouldn't forget. Nothing I could do could make him forget.
"I just wanted him to love me again. He used to read to me when I was little. I had a book, Bible Stories for Girls. It was a Sunday school prize. It had such lovely pictures. I used to sit and talk to the pictures for hours, tell them all my secrets. First time I ever saw Gladys, I thought she looked like the picture of Esther, out of that book. Tall and beautiful, with all that dark hair. Just like Esther." She lets out a ragged breath. "Father was so proud of me for winning that prize. He didn't like to say so, he didn't want to give me a swelled head, but he'd never say no, not once, when I asked for a story out of Bible Stories for Girls. He didn't used to hurt me, not back then.
"At the boarding house, I plucked up my courage, and I took him aside and said, 'Father, I know I did wrong. Please tell me how I can make it right again.' He looked at me for a long time, and he said he believed me. He said that he would come get me that night, and we'd pray together for me to be forgiven.
"Mother was asleep when he finally showed. He stood in the doorway and said, 'Come along, Marion. It's time to wash away your sins.' I went with him. I trusted him, of course. He's my father. He led me down the hallway, to one of the bathrooms, where he'd filled a bath for me. I thought maybe he was going to baptise me. He baptised all of us, Richie and Walt and I, when we were babies, so why shouldn't he do it again? I trusted him," she repeats, before falling silent.
Betty is filled with dread. Much as she wants it to come as a complete shock, she can see where this story is going. She hopes to God that she's wrong. She doesn't want anything as awful as what she's imagining to happen to Kate, not in the past, the present or the future.
"I got into the bath and he -" Kate gives a little gasp and has to steady herself. "He pushed me down under the water. I didn't have time to take a breath before he did it. He held me down, around my neck. I blacked out."
"Kate..." Horror-struck, as if this scene is happening before her eyes and not a year in the past, Betty gropes for Kate's hand, holding it in both of hers. Kate doesn't respond.
Dispassionately, she continues her story. "When he let me out, I started shrieking and yelling at him. I cursed him, said the most awful words. I didn't even know I knew words like that. They were so much worse than anything you've ever said," says Kate, acknowledging Betty for the first time in minutes. "He never hit me in the face before that, but he h-hit me, and ... I wouldn't be quiet. I could hear myself, but I couldn't make myself stop. My mother and brothers woke up, and the hall porter came running. Father said I'd slipped and hit my head getting ready to take a bath, but Walt was the only one who seemed to believe him.
"We had to leave that boarding house at first light, and move back into the trailer. We couldn't get rooms anywhere else. That was such a cold, cold winter. My mother fell ill. It wasn't the worst she'd ever been, but it was my fault that she was sick. If I hadn't done that terrible thing – I wish I could take it back."
Betty hears the faint metallic sound of Kate pulling her mother's locket out from the neckline of her nightgown, winding the chain through her fingers.
"When Father started beating me again … it was awful, but in a way, it was almost a relief. At least it showed he hadn't given up on me," says Kate. "Afterwards, every time, he would apologise for getting so carried away. He'd say, 'God's will, not my own.' What was worse was that every time Mother and I were alone together, she'd start talking about how I had to leave. 'Marion, you have to run away, change your name, try and get a different life for yourself before it's too late.' I thought she didn't love me any more. I wanted to die."
Kate is crying a little. They both are. It is easier, in the dark.
And then Kate says the most wonderful thing. "It was wrong. I know that now. I always thought it was because I was bad, but that doesn't matter. It doesn't matter how bad I was. It's not for us to judge other people. We're not supposed to punish them. If you or my mother or my brothers did the worst, most unspeakable things, if you killed someone, if you killed a hundred people, I wouldn't take it upon myself to punish you. I would try to understand. I'd feel sorry for the people you hurt. I'd pray for you, try to help you, but I wouldn't punish you. That's right, isn't it?"
Betty must speak. Betty cannot speak. If she speaks, she'll start sobbing, and then Kate will feel she has to comfort her.
"Isn't it?" Kate presses, sounding desperate.
Betty turns to her. "Kate, you're not bad. You're not. You know that, don't you?"
"I don't feel bad when I'm with you. That's why I love … being with you so much."
"Well, good. You should feel like you're good all the time, not just when you're with me." God, all her words sound so paltry. So feeble.
"I'm trying my best." Kate's voice is so faint, like she's slipping away. "But when I saw him-"
"Never mind what he thinks! Nobody could ask for a better daughter than you. He's crazy if he thinks there's anything wrong with you. Forget him, Kate. Forget all about him."
"He didn't always beat me. Not like this, not so it left scars. How'd it all go so wrong?"
"He's wrong. And you're good, and I-" She steels herself. "I care about you."
The silence that follows is different to the ones that came before. There's no possibility that Kate has drifted off; Betty can almost hear Kate's brain whirring at high speed. She's afraid she's said too much.
Suddenly, Kate is hugging Betty harder than anyone's ever hugged her in her life. "Stay here with me," says Kate in a rush. "I need you."
It's depraved and wrong, but something about the phrase, about Kate's tone when she says it, about being hugged so tightly on Kate's bed in the dark, makes Betty think of things she shouldn't. She feels so dishonest, like she's conning Kate into something despicable. If Kate knew what she was, there's no way she'd want them to sleep in the same bed.
Kate seems to take Betty's lack of a response as reluctance. "Don't leave, please." Kate leans over and switches on her bedside lamp. Betty blinks at the sudden light, but Kate doesn't seem to notice. She jumps lightly to her feet and goes to the wardrobe in the corner. "You can wear my other nightgown." She takes out the nightgown and offers it to Betty, her outstretched arm trembling visibly. "I can't be alone. I need you."
McRae, you selfish cow, thinks Betty. This isn't about you or the way you feel about her. She's scared, and she's wondering why in God's name you're not doing the decent thing and saying you'll stay.
"Of course I'll stay," Betty says. "I'll stay. It's not even a question."
Betty changes quickly into the nightgown. Usually, when they change clothes in front of each other, Kate will stare out the window, or over Betty's shoulder, or at her own feet. Now, Kate sits on the bed, hugging her knees, not taking her eyes off Betty. There's nothing lustful in her gaze – she looks lost, more than anything else – but Betty still feels distinctly weird, being visually devoured like this. She's not used to being on the receiving end of a look.
Kate beckons her into the bed, pulling the blanket over the two of them, and turns out the lamp. They lie uneasily side by side, covered by darkness again. After a minute or two, Kate remarks, "Your feet are cold."
"Sorry," grunts Betty, moving them away.
There is a pause. Kate turns over, wraps her arm around Betty's waist, and pulls her close. Betty is so shocked that she forgets to breathe. Whenever they've shared a bed, they've always slept back to back, the way Betty used to with her girl cousins long ago. She used to hate sleepovers with her cousins, Lillie and Mavis and Nora. Whichever cousin Betty was sharing with, they would always sleep as far from her as they possibly could, as if being an oddball and a tomboy were somehow catching.
She's often wondered how on earth she can fancy other women, considering she's never really gotten on with them. It's only in the past year that she's made platonic female friends for the first time. Outside of Toronto and Vic Mu, most women seem to sense there's something funny about Betty. They tend to keep their distance from her. She's always supposed it was just a case of wanting what she couldn't have.
Betty's always felt like a vampire who could only come out after dark. The idea of drifting off to sleep curled around a woman was laughable, even more ridiculous than publicly holding hands or dancing together – both of which, she realises now, she's done with Kate. Both of which, Kate initiated.
Honestly, she can't even feel dirty about enjoying this. Part of her wants to cry at this, at all of it; about how good it feels, how long she's waited without even realising she was waiting. The rest just wants to melt like a snowflake on a warm window pane. If this were my last moment, I could die happy, she thinks.
"This is nice," murmurs Kate, almost to herself. Her voice is a little stronger when she says, "It's all right, I'm here. Go to sleep."
It should feel odd, being soothed to sleep, being assured that she's safe, when Kate is the one who's received such a terrible shock tonight. Yet there is something comforting about being reassured that Kate is not going anywhere. The thing they've both been dreading happened, and they survived it. Kate stood strong. She stood strong...
