Gin Palace 01 - The Poisoned Rose

became weak, Jean-Marc…changed. He showed no compassion at all for the man who’d given him everything. He became ruthless. Even the way he talked to our father was different. It was like Jekyll and Hyde. After Jean-Marc started showing his real self, that’s when my father told me to run and hide. I think he was afraid Jean-Marc might have me killed so he could have all the money and the power for himself. He didn’t know the real reason why I was in so much danger. He didn’t have a clue.”
    “So you went into hiding.”
    She nodded. “I cut all ties. I started going by different names, and not just so I’d be safe. I didn’t want anyone to know who I was. I was hoping that after a while I’d start to forget what my real name was.”
    “What was it that Jean-Marc did, Marie?”
    She stared at me for a long time before finally speaking. I could hear the buzz of the neon lights beyond her windows.
    “I was fifteen. I was pretty mixed up, running around with a thirty-four-year-old man, a bartender from a club in Westhampton Beach I used to get into with a fake ID. Of course nobody in my family knew about it. You learn to keep secrets well in that house. He was my boyfriend, or so I thought. He used to sneak onto our property at night and I’d meet him down by the water and let him do things to me. Then one night while he and I were together, I realized that my brother was standing just a few feet from us. My boyfriend was on top of me, and I look over and there’s my brother with this angry look on his face. More anger than I’d ever seen. Time just stopped. The next thing I was aware of was a sound. It came up so sudden. It was the sound of a baseball bat slamming into my boyfriend’s skull. That started time going again. My boyfriend slumped over, then kind of rolled off. It was like he’d fallen asleep. Jean-Marc just kept hitting him. He hit him in the head maybe a dozen times. He just kept hitting him till there was no way he couldn’t be dead. He kept hitting him till the bat finally cracked. It was terrible. Jean-Marc was enraged. He was jealous. He dragged me back to the house by my hair and locked me in his room. He wouldn’t even let me get dressed. I was naked, covered with dirt and blood. Our father was gone for the weekend, the help had gone home, we were all alone. My brother nailed his door shut and then went away. Later on I heard something outside and went to the window. I saw him and another man down by the water. I knew who the other man was. I’d seem him around before, he was a family friend. Together they wrapped the body in a plastic sheet and dumped it into a row boat, then got in and rowed across the creek to the refuge. The other man rowed, my brother just sat there. They had shovels with them, flashlights. When they came back an hour later it was just the two of them. They had buried the body somewhere in the refuge. They dropped the shovels in the water. Then the other man left and my brother stood alone in the backyard, looking out over the water. Eventually he turned and looked up at me. After a few minutes he started toward the house. I heard him coming up the stairs. I could almost feel myself losing my mind, that’s how scared I was. I could almost feel my sanity begin to crack.”
    She stopped there. I waited, then said, “Tell me the rest, Marie.”
    “He kept me prisoner in his room for three days. No food, no water, nothing. I was covered in dirt and blood the whole time. He was outside the door nearly every minute, threatening me, swearing me to secrecy, working on me. It was like he was brainwashing me. Sometimes he’d eat something and tell me all about it, what he was eating and what it was like. But he wouldn’t ever give me any. Sometimes he’d pour water onto the floor so I could hear it, just to torment me. He hated me for being with someone else. He told me no one would ever touch me again. He let me out just before our father came home. He let me clean up, told me to look pretty for Father. I was exhausted. I couldn’t stop crying. It was about a week after that that I was hospitalized for the first time. My father had no idea what was wrong with me. But our mother had suffered bouts of depression, and her mother, too, so there it was, the family curse, manifesting itself in me. Jean-Marc visited me in the hospital two weeks later. He tipped an orderly to give us privacy for an hour. I knew when I saw the money exchange hands what he wanted.