“Thank you. I appreciate it.”
“You need anything else?” Grady asks as he stands in the entryway of Grant’s house.
“No. Here’s to hoping I don’t burn the house down.” I laugh, knowing my attempt to cook anything could end up in a dire situation.
“At least you know a firefighter to call,” he says before tossing me a wink.
“True.”
“Well, I have to get back.”
“’Kay.”
He turns to walk out the door. “Hey, Em?”
“Yeah?” I look up from where I’m unloading groceries onto Grant’s kitchen counter and hope I look somewhat competent.
“This is a really cool thing you’re doing.”
“I wouldn’t say that yet. My post-interview, celebratory dinner hasn’t even been started, so let’s not jinx me. Cooking is not my strong suit.”
“No, I mean it,” he says, looking outside and then back toward me. “You mean a lot to him . . . and the fact that you’re taking the time to do this is pretty cool.”
I smile as he gives me one last nod and then closes the door behind him, leaving me to do this all by myself.
Sort of.
As soon as I know Grady has driven away, I FaceTime Desi.
“Are you sure you don’t want me to come over there and help?” she greets me.
“No. I’m capable and competent.” There is far more gusto in that statement than I feel. Inside, I’m secretly wishing she would. She may have written down step-by-step instructions, but even that isn’t foolproof when it comes to me.
“He better appreciate the fact that you’re risking life and limb to do this for him.”
“It’s cooking, Desi.”
“Exactly. For you, that means life and limb.”
“Hardy, har, har.”
Oddly enough, the house actually smells delicious. And not the delicious that’s really a cinnamon scented candle I lit so I could pretend I’d been baking desserts, but like real, honest-to-goodness, meat-and-potatoes type of food.
And despite how great the aroma is, I’m suddenly nervous. It sounds stupid that I’ve let the man see me naked, strip me bare, but letting him eat my cooking makes me anxious. Most likely because I half expect him to keel over and die because I screwed it up so badly.
So, I busy myself with straightening the stacks of case files on the coffee table. Then I shift the plant sitting in front of the window so the opposite side grows stronger toward the light. I wipe the counters down for the umpteenth time. I fiddle with the place settings on the table and debate over whether that seems too stuffy, but decide the candle I put in the middle negates that.
I pace the room a few times and then decide to fluff the couch pillows when I’ve never even fluffed my own. I’m putting a pillow back and pulling a throw blanket off the corner to fold it when the green of a case file catches my eye, and I smile. Considering how many times I have caught him nodding off amid reviewing stacks of them, I’m not surprised one has fallen into cushion oblivion.
But it’s only when I dislodge it and go to set it on the table where the other stacks are that my heart stops. I shake my head to reject what I’m seeing.
It can’t be . . .
My heart races, and my mind tries to comprehend what my eyes are seeing.
Closed File #713920: Emerson Reeves – Sexual Abuse – 10/23/1997
But I know what it is.
This is me. The old me. The little girl I was and don’t want to be. It’s the past I don’t want to be reminded of, and yet, my file is sitting here—in Grant’s family room—hidden in plain sight so I wouldn’t see it.
These are the answers that could simultaneously cure all the doubt that plagues me and knock me so far down the rabbit hole I might not be able to find my way back.
Fuck having ownership of memories should they come. This is proof. Proof in ways I can’t comprehend. There is no ownership of it now. There is only falling victim to it when I’ve been a victim enough in my life and . . . Oh. My. God.
Shock burns its way into anger. The fuse is so short it’s combustible.
My hands tremble as I throw it down on the table like it’s burning my skin. It hits the wooden edge and falls to the floor, causing a few items to dislodge.
Every part of me screams to turn around and run out of the house while my feet remain rooted. A little voice in my subconscious tells me, “Look at them.”
Trepidation courses through me as I take the dare and bend over to pick up the piece of paper that taunts me.
What am I doing?
I turn it over, and it takes me a few seconds to have the nerve to open my eyes and look. What I see has a sob falling from my mouth as I sink to the floor.
The top of the page is labeled “Child Assessment – Emerson Reeves – Age Eight.” Memories ghost through my mind of when I drew this—the light blue room that was cold, the nice lady with the gentle voice who asked me to draw a picture to show her what happened, my tears hot on my cheeks as I looked around for my mom.
The drawing depicts what I saw through my innocence. Now, I look at it with the knowledge of an adult. Tears well as I take it all in. There is a bed where two stick figures lie, one bigger like an adult with short brown hair and the other smaller with red hair. The red-haired figure, me, has blue dots falling from her eyes and making a puddle on the floor. The brown-haired man, my dad, has his hand over where the legs on my rendition meet. There’s a black L-shaped thing on the top of the bed, a gun, and words line the left side of the page: No, stop, hurt, all my heart, I love you, daddy.
It hurts too much. This hurts too much.
I want to cover my ears and squeeze my eyes shut and block this all out so I can forget that I remember that day.
In haste and with a scattered mind determined to get the drawing out of my sight, I shove the piece of paper under the file’s cover where it is on the floor. I pick it up to put it on the table, and when I do, I see the Polaroid beneath it.
I forget every intention I just had when I’m met with a picture of myself in a hospital gown. There is no smile on my lips. There is no happiness that every eight-year-old should have. Everything about me—my posture, my expression, my eyes—look defeated and scared.
I stare at the little girl in the photo and tell myself I am not her anymore. I will never be her again. But every part of me feels like her right now. Lost. Withdrawn. Petrified.
Betrayed.
A tear drops on the picture, and I realize for the first time that I’m crying. Tear after tear tracks down my cheeks as parts inside me I thought were whole again slowly crumble to rubble.
I tell myself to close the folder because I don’t need to see this. I don’t need to know more details. Don’t I already know them somewhere in my mind?