“What was that like, coming home finally?”

“Difficult. I hadn’t been here in five years. I’d only seen my father four or five times since being sent to England. I hadn’t seen Elizabeth at all.”

“Claire said your dad abused Elizabeth.”

“Abuse is an understatement. He raped her the first time when she was eight years old. Not a week passed without him sneaking in her bedroom at night. My father had threatened to kill her mother if she told anyone. So she stopped speaking altogether.”

“How did her mom not know all this was happening?”

Søren turned his head and gazed into a dark corner of the room. He seemed to be remembering something, something bad.

“The power of self-delusion is one of the greatest forces of the universe. My father’s wife worshipped respectability and status. My father was a respected, even feared, businessman with an impressive pedigree. Divorce was not an option, so instead she convinced herself that the marriage was perfect. Eventually even she couldn’t deny the cracks in the facade.”

“What happened? Or do I not want to know?” For the first time she realized how right Søren had been. For over two years she’d begged to know the truth about him and he’d put her off. Now she understood why he’d kept his secrets.

“You don’t want to know. But you need to know. You see, I hadn’t seen Elizabeth in five years. We were strangers to each other. I tried to befriend her and after a few months back in this house, she started to speak to me a little.”

He paused and closed his eyes. Eleanor feared what he would say next but she knew she had to hear it.

“My father had to leave the country on an extended business trip. His wife decided to go with him—a second honeymoon. She demanded the children be left behind. I think she sensed his unnatural interest in their daughter. Whatever the reason, it set a series of events in motion that have brought me to this place. And that brings us back to question eight. No, I’m not a virgin.”

“When was your first time?”

“I’ll tell you, and I only hope you can stomach the answer. At some point Elizabeth had overheard my father telling her mother about what happened when I was at school—about the boy who’d touched me in my sleep and how I’d killed him. Elizabeth wanted to die. You can’t blame her. I certainly never have blamed her for what she did. Our parents left us alone in the house with only a few servants, and on the first night they were gone, Elizabeth came into my room. I was asleep, sound asleep. I didn’t hear her open the door. I didn’t hear her close it. I didn’t feel her pulling the sheets down. I didn’t even wake up until it was too late. When I did wake up, I was already inside her.”

Eleanor clapped a hand over her mouth.

“It happens, you see. Boys get erections in their sleep. I can’t blame her….” he said again. “She wanted me to kill her. She wanted to instigate an attack like what happened at my school. But she wasn’t an older boy I already loathed. She was my own sister, and I loved her.”

He closed his eyes as if to hide from something.

“So I didn’t kill her. Sometimes I wonder if she still wishes I had. I don’t remember much from that night. I know she ended up on her back. I know I left bruises on her. And I know …”

“What?” Eleanor barely heard herself asking the question.

“I know we liked it. Because the next night and every night after that for two months, we did it again.”

She didn’t know what to do, what to say, how to react. All she could do was take his hand in hers and twine their fingers together. His past reared up before them like a beast or demon. She wouldn’t turn away from it, wouldn’t run. They would face it and they would face it together.

“Eleanor, you cannot imagine what I did to my sister, or what she did to me. It’s beyond what even your powers of imagination can conjure. I never want you to imagine. Know only this—there is no act of depravity we did not try at least once that long summer. It’s a miracle we both survived each other. Please never imagine it.”

“I won’t. I promise.” She made the promise easily and knew she would keep it. She shoved away the images that attempted to enter her mind. Shoved them away, pushed them down and stabbed them through the heart.

“There is no room in this house we did not defile. But our favorite room to play in was the library.”

“Why the library?”

“Sometimes we would read to each other. It made us feel normal, I suppose.” Søren smiled then, a smile so pained it hurt to even see. She closed her eyes and buried her face against his leg. Every muscle in his body had gone tense. “But all horrible things must come to an end. At the end of the summer, we knew our father would be returning again. Elizabeth sometimes shook in my arms from the terror of knowing what would happen to her once Father returned. I told her we had to leave the house. We had to run away. I ordered her to pack, to call her grandparents, to find all the money she could so we could get as far away from this house as possible. She didn’t obey me. She thought he would find us wherever we went. She should have …” Søren’s voice trailed off a moment. “She should have obeyed me.”

“Why?”

“Because our father came home early. And he found us together.”

“Jesus Christ …” Eleanor breathed.

“We were lost children by then,” Søren said. “We knew what we did was wrong but were powerless to stop ourselves. Despair brought us to depravity and we couldn’t find a way out again.”