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the table, so she remained still, frozen between her need to be comforted, to be loved, and her repulsion. She said he looked like a wild animal who had caught its prey. Exactly—the impala and the wolf. He bit her earlobe, hard, and reached his hand inside her pants and between her legs. He leaned her back until they were lying together on the sofa. She could feel his erect penis against her thigh. His finger went inside her. It felt good, like nothing she had ever experienced before. Charlotte had not yet kissed a boy.
    You’re wet, he said, laughing. You’re wet, you little whore.
    He seemed then to have the strength of two men and the arms of an octopus as he reached for her hair and slid off her pants, so quickly, like he had superhuman abilities. His knees were between hers. His erection on her stomach. And then, slowly, he teased her thighs apart and slid down, his erection running along the inside of her thigh. She remembered the “ahhhhh.” His hip bones pressed into hers as he penetrated her. And when it was over (apparently in a matter of seconds), he pulled out of her and positioned his body so she was up against the back of the couch. He kissed her neck and moaned. Then he manipulated her clitoris with his fingers until she had an orgasm, which happened even through the repulsion. The body is a machine. We forget that sometimes.
    They became secret “lovers.” The need in Charlotte that was filled by these encounters eclipsed her conscience, her morality, her will. Greg bought her gifts and took her to the movies. They exchanged looks at dinner and “made love” on the sofa when Ruthanne was working the night shift. Charlotte knew it was wrong, and she was still, in many ways, disgusted by Greg. But, as she explains it, she could not stop herself.
    I am ashamed of this. But it’s the truth. Feeling a human body that close to me. Feeling skin against my skin. Being kissed and hugged and held. And then there was the sexual pleasure, which I could not control. I don’t know. Maybe it was about the sex. Maybe I was a little whore. But at the time, it felt like love.
    It took about six months for Ruthanne to admit to herself what she was seeing and feeling when she was in their company. By that time, Greg was fully unemployed and reliant on his wife. I imagine there was never any doubt about what would happen, though to Charlotte, it felt like her heart had been torn from her chest.
    Ruthanne sent her daughter to live with Aunt Peg in Hartford. Peg was older than Ruthanne by six years and had managed to land a husband in the insurance business. They had three children, all away at boarding school, and they reluctantly agreed to do the same for their niece. Charlotte never went home again.
    Tom did not know about her life with her mother and Greg.
    You can understand now Charlotte’s need to repair her house. I imagine there are those of you thinking more of this, that perhaps Charlotte’s insistence on giving Jenny the treatment was because she had something in her past that was sexually perverse. But you would be wrong. Charlotte saw that night on the sofa as a seduction, an act of desire and the beginning of a love affair. Still, she understood that her relationship with her stepfather was “unconventional” and “morally questionable.” It is for those reasons that she did not share this story with anyone—not even her husband.
    But this is not the secret that Charlotte feared her mother-in law could see.

 
    Chapter Six
    Getting back to Jenny and the night she sat on her bed—
    Tom’s employer was Bob Sullivan. Bob owned twelve car dealerships throughout the state of Connecticut and had a net worth of over twenty million dollars. His face could be seen on any number of billboards on I-95 from Stamford to Mystic, and throughout every town that still allowed them. You would remember seeing him up there, his full head of black hair,