I heard the desperation in Justin’s voice and I knew I was finally getting somewhere. “Justin, you have to tell me. From whom were you protecting her?”
I felt him violently shake his head on my shoulder. “I…I can’t. I just can’t.”
Pulling away from our embrace, I pleaded with him. “Justin, please tell me.” I grabbed his hand quickly and it immediately came.
“What are you doing, father?” Justin regarded his father with scrutiny. He was scared of his dad. Always had been. He was a very unpredictable man who had occasional bouts of unwarranted anger. He was a violent man, but never hit Justin. His presence alone terrified the life out of him.
“You see that girl over there, son?” He pointed to a little girl out playing with her friends. She looked to be about nine-years-old and was pretty with long, extremely curly brown hair.
“Yes.” He watched as she skipped and hopped around the gravel.
“She’s been calling you all sorts of names. I can’t abide by that, Justin. No way in hell. She needs to be taught a lesson. Do you understand, son?”
The memory of Justin as a little boy came and went quickly, but then another caught me off-guard. Suddenly, I wasn’t Justin anymore. I was the little girl. Justin’s dad had his hands around my neck as he squeezed the life out of me. I could see the terror in Justin’s eyes as I pleaded with him to stop what his father was doing. I was choking. All the air in my lungs was seeping out and I knew my life would soon be over.
I was scared. I wanted to know why. I wanted to know what I could have possibly done to deserve what he was doing to me. I felt lonely, petrified, and desperately wanted my mother.
Justin suddenly pulled his hand away as I was clinging to my neck, choking. I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t get the air back into my lungs. My throat and my chest burned, and I thought I might explode.
In shock, Justin pulled back from me, hands in the air. “I didn’t touch her! I swear I didn’t touch her!”
Jack threw his arms around me to steady me, and I could see his panic, too. “I’ll call an ambulance.”
Grabbing him, I shook my head. “No,” I managed to croak. “I’m okay.”
Pulling my gaze from Jack, I found Justin’s frightened eyes. “Why did you let him do it, Justin? Why did you let him get away with it for so long?”
Justin’s eyes grew wide. I could see he couldn’t quite understand how I knew, but he knew I did.
“I had to,” he said, panicked. “I had to protect Molly. I had to make her safe.”
Calming my breathing, I sat back down in the chair. “She was going to be next, wasn’t she? Your dad was going after Molly next.”
I felt Jack stiffen beside me. When I looked up, his face it said it all…shock, horror, distress, you name it.
Justin sagged back in the chair with another sob. With his eyes fixed on the floor, he sighed. “He was watching her. I followed him. Even after all this time, I knew he was still doing it. It was almost like a compulsion. He would kill, which would calm him for a while, but then the need to do it would come back again. I knew I had to stop him. I just wanted to keep them all safe. I wanted to keep Molly safe, so I struck before he could. He didn’t know I did it. One day, I found him out looking for her. I could see the confusion in his face as he looked at the police cars around her house. I think that frightened him because he seemed to stop then.”
I edged closer to him as I watched the tears fall. Holding his arm, I tugged at him to look at me. He didn’t move. He eyes were still intent on looking at the floor.
“Why didn’t you tell someone, Justin? Why didn’t you say anything?”
Justin gripped his eyes shut and shook his head. “I was scared. My father scared the shit out of me.” He looked up at me. “I was only a little boy, Cassie. A little boy.”
I nodded. “I know, Justin. I realise that. What you witnessed as a child was beyond terrifying—beyond reasoning. But you’re not a little boy anymore, Justin. You weren’t a little boy when you took Molly.”
Justin took a huge breath and exhaled with a loud sigh. “My father was always nice to me. As long as I was good and did as I was told, he would be a brilliant father. He scared me, yes, but he also had a nice side to him that I loved. He would say over and over again that I couldn’t breathe a word of this to anyone. That if I did, it would break the family apart and everyone would know and drive us away. He said people would hurt our family if they knew—that our lives would be in danger. He asked if I really wanted to do that to our family, to my mother. I couldn’t put my mother in danger, Cassie. I couldn’t do that to her.”