Kill Switch Read Online Free Page A

something wrong.”
    â€œDid you tell anybody?”
    â€œShe said if I did, that she’d do worse, that she was a nurse and knew right where to hit me so nobody would ever know.”
    â€œAnd you didn’t think your father would protect you.”
    â€œHe was on the road eight months a year. I didn’t think he could. But I was wrong about that.”
    â€œSo he found out,” Claire said as she moved her chair closer to him.
    â€œWhen I was six. Walked in on her doing it to me. Harder than usual.”
    â€œYou’re smiling,” Claire observed.
    Quimby hadn’t felt the grin forming.
    â€œI was thinking about what Dad did to her.”
    â€œWhich was?” Claire asked, her eyes widening.
    â€œHe grabbed the flyswatter and hit her with it. ‘How do you like that?’ he said. Then he grabbed a rolling pin. ‘He’s just a boy,’ he said, and he beat the hell out of her. Whack, whack, whack ...”
    Claire hid her revulsion as he imitated the motion, the half-grin still on his face. A six-year-old enjoying the sight of his father beating his mother . How pathetic is that?
    â€œYou weren’t upset?” Claire asked, breaking eye contact with Quimby.
    â€œShe deserved it,” he said, tilting his head so that he could see Claire’s eyes again.
    He wants to tell me. Claire looked him straight in the eyes. “Was your mother hurt badly?”
    â€œShe was all black and blue. Threatened to call the cops on him. Dad said if she did, he’d tell them he beat her because she was a child molester. That the cops in Dubuque—that’s where we lived—would put her in jail and throw away the key.”
    â€œAnd that stopped her.”
    â€œFrom calling the cops. Not from packing a suitcase and leaving.”
    â€œWhere did she go?”
    â€œAppleton, Wisconsin, to her parents.”
    â€œBut she came back.”
    â€œThe next day. My grandfather told her she made her own bed and now she had to lie in it. Same thing he said to her when she got knocked up with me.”
    Claire paused, considering the implication of Quimby’s last comment. She abused her son because she resented him for ruining her life.
    â€œDid your mother tell you this?” she finally asked.
    â€œMy mother didn’t tell me shit. My father gave me the whole story.” Quimby leaned toward Claire, staring into her eyes. “I suppose you want to hear that too.”
    â€œWe said everything .”
    Quimby smiled again, now enjoying Claire’s attention. “One Saturday night, the carny’s in Appleton. Dad’s waiting for the crowd to leave so he can close the gate when this girl comes up to him. Asks what’s his favorite part of the carnival. He tells her the bumper cars. She giggles and says, ‘I heard that’s not the best ride here.’ Dad sees her two friends standing a few feet back, giggling like idiots. Realizes he laid one of them the night before. So he says, ‘Yeah, and which ride did she say was the best?’ She says, ‘Carnival Knowledge. Like the movie with Jack Nicholson.’ So Dad tells her he’ll take her on that ride if she sticks around after he closes up.”
    â€œAnd he did.”
    Quimby grinned. “Three times. Once on the bumper cars and two more times in his trailer.”
    Claire realized his pleasure came from her facial expression of disgust. This time, she made no effort to hide it.
    â€œYour father described to you how he had sex with your mother.”
    â€œHe told me everything he did to her. But I don’t wanna get into it. She was my mother, after all.”
    But the grin remained. He wants me to ask him for the details . No way.
    â€œWhen did she tell your father she was pregnant?”
    â€œShe didn’t. Three months later, when the carny was back in Wisconsin, my grandfather arrested him for raping his daughter.”
    â€œYour grandfather