Chapter Thirty-Nine - Bric
“Shit,” I mutter under my breath. “Let’s go back inside.” I grab Chella by the shoulder, but she turns on me. Turns on me.
“Don’t,” she seethes. “This is over, Bric. I’m not going back inside. I’m not talking to any of you ever again. And I’m not—”
“Marcella,” Senator Walcott says, grabbing her by the arm and spinning her around.
“Why are you following me again?” she asks, her voice high and loud. “You got what you wanted, right? You got your brand-spanking new family. Shiny new baby on the way. Wife younger than me. I hate you,” she screams. “I hate you so much!”
And then she starts sobbing uncontrollably.
I look at Smith and he’s dying right now. Right before my eyes.
I look at Quin and he’s already dead.
“He didn’t stop her,” Chella says, pulling on my suit coat. “Do you hear me, Bric? He never stopped her.”
“Marcella,” the senator says. “Get in the car.” We all look at the long black car across the street. “We can discuss this in private.”
But Chella is still tugging on my coat, looking up at me with her big blue eyes, begging me to listen. “He let her take me all over the world, Bric. All over to these awful places.”
“Why, Chella?” I ask. “What happened?”
“Marcella,” her father roars. “I said—”
“You shut the fuck up,” Smith interjects. “Right now! Just shut the fuck up!”
“You don’t even know her,” the senator barks back at Smith. “You have no idea who she really is.”
“Well, I’ve only known her a month,” Smith spits through his teeth. “What’s your fucking excuse?”
“Do you know how it ended?” Chella asks me, pulling me back to her. She is tugging on my suit coat so hard, I have to bend down.
But then she whirls and looks at her father. “They came for me,” she sobs. “She brought them to me. They had a knife and they held me down. They said—”
“Chella,” I say, taking her in my arms. “What’s going on? What happened to you?”
“They were gonna cut me, Bric. Cut me here,” she sobs, pointing between her legs. “We were in Sudan for a mission with the church and I got a boyfriend when I was seventeen. But I had already lived through hell. My mother used to tie my hands to my bed when I was a kid so I couldn’t touch myself. She called me a whore when I was nine. When I was ten she started taking me on missions. All over the world. To try to control me. She told me I was dirty. And if she caught me doing anything even remotely sexual—like climbing a fucking tree!” She screams this at her father—“she’d tie me up.”
“Jesus fucking Christ,” Smith says, rubbing her arm. Even Quin is back, holding onto Chella’s shoulder.
“When I was just a little girl she used to put splints on my arms so I couldn’t reach between my legs. And that day… that day in Sudan… she gathered up all the old women and they came for me. She begged them, Bric! She told them I needed to be saved and only they could do it. They held me down, Bric! They were going to mutilate me!”
She whirls around to face her father again. “And do you want to know how I escaped that fate?” She spits on him. Right in his face. “That boyfriend went and got his father and uncles and they had to threaten them. They told those old women I was the president’s daughter and if they touched me the whole village would be bombed in retaliation.”
She turns back to me, sobbing so hard I can barely understand her words. “They took me to the US Embassy and I got sent home. And then I ran away—”
But she can’t take it anymore. She crumples, Smith catching her in his arms as she buckles over.
I swallow hard and look at her father. “You need to leave. Right now.”
“I hope you die,” Chella mumbles. She pushes Smith off her and stand to look at her father. “I want you to feel the way I feel. I want you to be held down and—”
A horn honks as a silver BMW pulls up alongside us.
“Get in, Chella,” a woman says. The passenger side window is down. Chella looks at the car, then starts crying again as she runs for the curb, throws the door open, and gets in.
We watch in silence as she is driven away.
And then we turn back to deal with the senator, but he’s already making for his car. Maybe to follow her? Maybe to escape the truth he was just handed by his very broken daughter?
No one cares.
“Why the fuck,” Smith says, “did Lucinda Chatwell just drive up and take Chella away?”
“Because Lucinda is Chella’s sex therapist.” I sigh, just now putting all the pieces together. “She and Rochelle were seeing the same therapist. That’s how all this happened.”
“You knew about this,” Quin says, his anger back. “Just like you knew why Rochelle left.”
“I didn’t,” I say, pinching the bridge of my nose as I walk back towards the Club. “I didn’t know any of that. And I didn’t know that she got an abortion, Quin. I was just giving her options.”
“Options,” Quin seethes. “And you decided I didn’t get to know about it? That was one of the options?”
“I didn’t know,” I say.
But I should’ve.