This Secret Thing, стр. 76
“I left school after a girl told me that she knew that I’d been assaulted by a guy we both knew. He assaulted her, too. And she wanted us to go and report what had happened to the school officials. She wanted to make it public. She didn’t want him to do it to anyone else. She wanted us to stop him from hurting anyone else. She wanted . . .”
Inside of her, the shaking intensified. Her jaw began to quiver as she went on, making it hard to talk, but she forced herself to keep going. “She still wants justice. But I hadn’t allowed myself to think of what had happened in that way. I didn’t think of it as a crime. I’d been telling myself it was my fault. I dressed too slutty that night. I agreed to go alone with him to his apartment to get more beer. I told myself that going with him like that was the same as consent. I’d been drinking too much. I’d brought it on myself. And when it was happening, I froze. I didn’t fight back. I let it happen. So I told myself it wasn’t really an assault. I convinced myself it was no big deal. Just something that happened—that happens to a lot of girls in college who are stupid. Then they learn, and then they get smarter. I tried that the other day, with that guy. I tried to be smarter, to be in control.” She inhaled deeply, needing the oxygen.
As she did, Violet’s voice was quiet but clear. “And were you in control?”
Casey felt hot tears leaking from the corners of her eyes. She shook her head. “I’m starting to think there’s no way to control it. For anyone.”
“My mom tried,” Violet said with a sigh. “And it didn’t work for her.”
The two of them looked at each other, and for a few seconds, neither of them said a word.
Violet broke the silence. “Maybe the other girl has the right idea. Maybe justice is control.”
Casey slowly blinked. She’d considered this. It was certainly better than what she’d tried already. Hearing Violet say it out loud made it feel real, close. Possible. “I think—”
Violet threw up a hand to stop Casey, hearing an angry, unfamiliar male voice erupt from downstairs. “You’d have respected me like a good wife!”
Polly
She’d been so distracted by her conversation with Bess, so delighted to have someone to talk to after that disconcerting meeting with Norah, that she hadn’t locked the door behind Barney when she let him back in. Calvin just opened the door with the turn of a knob, strolling in like he lived there, with that shit-eating grin on his face and a gun in his hand. Barney, the dumb-ass dog, got up and went to greet Calvin, his long-lost master. With his free hand, Calvin reached down and scratched Barney’s ears as Barney wagged his tail. The traitor.
“Calvin, what are you doing here?” She yelled as if she were startled, but really it was so that Bess would hear her. Bess had just stepped into the bathroom, so Polly didn’t know if he realized anyone else was there. She hoped Bess heard her yell, hoped she knew not to show her face. She hoped it also alerted the two girls upstairs, and that they were smart enough to sense the danger and stay out of sight. She would handle this herself. She would keep everyone safe as best she could.
“I got tired of waiting for you to come home,” he said.
She thought of lying, but she figured if he was there, he knew the rest. She had banked on him never finding out she had a daughter. She wished she knew how he had found out, but she wasn’t going to ask and anger him further.
“I had to come here,” was all she said in response.
“Not with our money you didn’t,” he countered.
“You were spending it without my per—” No. Permission would be the wrong word choice. That would set him off. “Without my consent.” She swallowed. “It’s my money, too. We should be discussing where it’s going.”
“Then you should’ve stuck around and discussed it,” he sneered, punctuating the sentence by jabbing the air with the gun, like dotting an exclamation point.
“I had to leave in a hurry. I was needed here.”
He looked around at the setting, the sheer domesticity of it. The flowers on the table, the dinner heating in the oven. The plates on the counter. The two glasses of wine. Two. He knew someone else was here. “Where’s your friend?” He gestured to the wine, drawing a line in the air between the two wineglasses. “Is it a male friend, or a female one?” He sniffed the air as if to discern perfume or cologne in the air.
“Female. She had to leave.” Polly pointed toward the front door, insinuating that Bess had gone out the front as he had come in the back. “She had to take her daughter to soccer.” She hoped she looked believable. Thankfully Bess and Casey had walked the food down, and Polly had moved Norah’s car into the garage weeks ago, so there was no car in the drive to disprove her statement.
He gestured at the glasses of wine. “She shouldn’t drink and drive,” he said. As if he were the bastion of sound judgment and good decisions.
“It wasn’t much. She forgot, actually. She just ran out of here real quick as soon as she remembered.” She was still talking loudly, hoping the others in the house heard and figured out that someone was here. Someone dangerous.
But Calvin didn’t seem to be listening. Instead he moved out