A quick glance into the open doorway of what must have been the master bedroom showed even more toys. Even at fifteen, Faith had known not to let Jeremy have every room of the house. It was no wonder parents looked exhausted all of the time. There was no space in their homes that belonged completely to them.

"Hello?" Mary called.

Faith followed the voice, walking down a long hallway that led to the back of the house. Mary Clark was standing at the sink, her back to the window. She held a cup of coffee in her hand. Her strawberry blond hair was down around her shoulders. She was wearing jeans and a large, ill-fitting T-shirt that must have belonged to her husband. Her face was blotchy, her eyes red-rimmed.

Faith said, "Do you want to talk about it?"

"Do I have a choice?"

Faith sat down at the table, a 1950s metal and laminate set with matching chairs. The kitchen was cozy, far from modern. The sink was mounted onto a one-piece unit that had been painted a pastel green. All of the cabinets were the original metal. There was no dishwasher, and the stove tilted to the side. Matching pencil marks on either side of the doorway celebrated each growth spurt Mary's twins had experienced.

Mary tossed her coffee into the sink, put the cup on the counter. "Tim said that I should stay out of this."

Faith gave her back her earlier comment. "Do you have a choice?"

They both stared at each other for a moment. Faith knew the way people acted when they had something to hide, just as she knew how to spot the cues that they wanted to talk. Mary Clark showed none of the familiar traits. If Faith had to guess, she would say the woman was ashamed.

Faith clasped her hands in front of her, waiting for the woman to speak.

"I guess I'm fired?"

"You'll have to talk to McFaden about that."

"They don't really fire teachers anymore. They just give them the shittiest classes until they quit or kill themselves."

Faith did not respond.

"I saw them take Evan out of the school in handcuffs."

"He admitted to having sex with Kayla Alexander."

"Did he take Emma?"

"We're building a case against him," Faith told her. "I can't tell you details."

"He was my teacher at Crim thirteen years ago."

"That's a pretty bad neighborhood."

"I was a pretty bad girl." Her sarcasm was loud and clear, but there was pain underneath the boast, and Faith waited her out, figuring the best way to find the truth was to have Mary lead her there.

The woman slowly walked over to the table and pulled out a chair. She sat down with a heavy sigh, and Faith caught a whiff of alcohol on her breath. "Evan was the only bright spot," Mary told her. "He's the reason I wanted to be a teacher."

Faith was not surprised. Mary Clark, with her pretty blond hair, her piercing blue eyes, was exactly Evan Bernard's type. "He molested you?"

"I was sixteen. I knew what I was doing."

Faith wouldn't let her get away with that. "Did you really?"

Tears came into the woman's eyes. She looked around for a tissue, and Faith got up to get her a paper towel off the roll.

"Thank you," she said, blowing her nose.

Faith gave her a few seconds before asking, "What happened?"

"He seduced me," she said. "Or maybe I seduced him. I don't know how it happened."

"Did you have a crush on him?"

"Oh, yeah." She laughed. "Home wasn't exactly nice for me. My father left when I was little. My mother worked two jobs." She tried to smile. "I'm just another one of those stupid women with a father fixation, right?"

"You were sixteen," Faith reminded her. "You weren't a woman."

She wiped her nose. "I was a handful. Smoking, drinking. Skipping school."

Just like Kayla, Faith thought. "Where did he take you?"

"His house. We hung out there all the time. He was cool, you know? The cool teacher who let us drink at his place." She shook her head. "All we had to do was worship him."

"Did you?"

"I did everything he wanted me to do." Mary shot her a searing look. "Everything."

Faith could see how easily Mary had probably played into Bernard's hands. He had given her safe harbor, but he was also the person who could bring it all to an end with one phone call to her parents.

"How long did it last?"

"Too long. Not long enough." She said, "He had this special room. He kept the door locked. No one was allowed in there."

"No one?" Faith asked, because obviously, Mary Clark had seen it.

"It was all done up like a little girl's room. I thought it was so pretty. White furniture, pink walls. It was the kind of room I thought all the rich girls had."

The man certainly was a creature of habit.

"He was sweet at first. We talked about my dad leaving us, how I felt abandoned. He was nice about it. He just listened. But then he wanted to do other things."

Faith thought of the handcuffs, the vibrator they had found in Bernard's special room. "Did he force you?"

"I don't know," Mary admitted. "He's very good at making you think that you want to do something."

"What kinds of things?"

"He hurt me. He..." She went very quiet. Faith gave her space, not pressing the woman, knowing that she was fragile. Slowly, Mary pulled down the collar of the baggy T-shirt. Faith saw the raised crescent of a scar just above her left breast. She had been bitten hard enough to draw blood. Evan Bernard had left his mark.

Faith let out a long breath of air. How close had she come as a kid to being just like Mary Clark? It was luck of the draw that the older man in her life had been a teenage boy instead of a sadistic pederast. "Did he handcuff you?"

Mary put her hand over her mouth, only trusting herself to nod.

"Were you ever afraid for your life?"

Mary did not answer, but Faith could see it in the woman's eyes. She had been terrified, trapped. "It was all a game for him," she said. "We would be together one day, and then the next, he would break it off with me. I lived in constant fear that he would finally leave me, and I would be all alone."

"What happened?"

"He quit in the middle of the year," Mary told her. "I didn't see him again until my first day at Westfield. I just stood there like a gawking teenager, like it was thirteen years ago and he was my teacher. I felt all these things for him, things that I shouldn't feel. I know it's sick, but he was the first man I loved." She looked up at Faith, almost begging her to understand. "All the things he did to me, all the humiliation and the pain and the grief...I don't know why I can't break this connection I have with him." She was crying again. "How sick is that, that I still have feelings for the man who raped me?"

Faith looked at her hands, not trusting herself to answer. "Why did Evan leave your school?"

"There was another girl. I don't remember her name. She was hurt really badly—raped, beaten. She said that Evan did it to her."

"He wasn't arrested?"

"She was a troublemaker. Like me. Another kid stood up for him, gave him an alibi. Bernard could always get kids to lie for him, but he still quit anyway. I think he knew they were on to him."