One Door From Heaven

you…"
        Listening as though to the voice of another, Micky was surprised to hear herself speaking of these things. Before Leilani, revelation had been impossible. Now it was merely excruciating. "It wasn't just one bastard. Mom drew the type… not all of them, but more than one… and they could always smell the opportunity."
        Geneva leaned forward on the edge of the bed, shoulders hunched, as though she were on a pew, seeking a bench for her knees.
        "They just looked at me," Micky said, "and smelled the chance. If I saw this certain smile, then I knew they knew what the situation was. Me scared and Mama willing not to see. The smile… not a wicked smile, either, like you might expect, but a half-sad smile, as if it was going to be too easy and they preferred when it wasn't easy."
        "She couldn't have known," Geneva said, but those four words were more of a question than they were a confident assessment.
        "I told her more than once. She punished me for lying. But she knew it was all true."
        Fingertips steepled toward the bridge of her nose, Geneva half hid her face in a prayer clasp, as if the shadows didn't provide enough concealment, as if she were whispering a confession into the private chapel of her cupped hands.
        Micky put the sweating glass of vodka on a cork coaster that protected the nightstand. "She valued her men more than she valued me. She always got tired of them sooner or later, and she always knew she would, sooner or later. Yet right up until the minute she decided she needed a change, until she threw each of the bastards out, she cared about me less than him, and me less than the new bastard who was coming in."
        "When did it stop-or did it ever?" Geneva asked. Her softly spoken question reverberated hollowly through the serried arches of her steepled fingers.
        "When I wasn't scared anymore. When I was big enough and angry enough to make it stop." Micky's hands were cold and moist from the condensation on the glass. She blotted her palms against the sheets. "I was almost twelve when it ended."
        "I never realized," Geneva said miserably. "Never. I never suspected."
        "I know you didn't, Aunt Gen. I know."
        Geneva's voice wavered on God and broke on fool: "Oh, God, what a blind stupid worthless fool I was."
        Micky swung her legs over the side of the bed, slid next to her aunt, and put an arm around her shoulders. "No, honey. Never you, none of that. You were just a good woman, too good and far too kind to imagine such a thing."
        "Being naive is no damn excuse." Geneva trembled. She lowered her hands from her face, wringing them so hard that in a spirit of repentance, she must have wanted to fire up the pain in her arthritic knuckles. "Maybe I was stupid because I wanted to be stupid."
        "Listen, Aunt Gen, one of the things that kept me from going nuts all those years was you, just the way you are." "Not me, not bat-blind Geneva."
        "Because of you, I knew there were decent people in the world, not just the garbage my mother hung with." Micky tried to keep her wetter emotions bottled in the cellar of her heart, safe storage that she'd successfully maintained until recently, but now the cork was pulled and apparently lost. Her vision blurred, and she heard vintage feeling wash through her words. "I could hope… one day I might be decent, too. Decent like you."
        Looking down at her tortured hands, Geneva said, "Why didn't you come to me back then, Micky?"
        "Fear. Shame. I felt dirty."
        "And all these years of silence since then."
        "Not fear anymore. But… most days I still don't feel clean."
        "Sweetie, you're a victim, you've nothing to be ashamed about."
        "But it's there, just the same. And I think maybe… I was afraid if I ever talked about it, I might let go of the anger. Anger's kept me going all my life, Aunt Gen. If I let it go, what do I have then?"
        "Peace," said Geneva. She raised her head and at last made eye contact. "Peace, and God knows you deserve it."
        Micky closed her eyes against the sight of her aunt's perfect and unconditional love, which brought her to a high cliff of emotion so steep that it scared her, and a sea of long-forbidden sentiments breaking below.
        Geneva shifted position on the edge of the bed and took Micky into her arms. The great warmth of her voice was even more consoling than