Chapter Twenty-Six
Gentry
Krystina’s thrashing and inaudible words woke me in the middle of the night. By the time I registered her nightmare, she was screaming my name. I jolted up right and flipped on the bedside lamp. “Krys! Krystina! It’s just a nightmare. It’s just a dream. I’m here Krys. Right here baby,” I gathered her in my arms and she pulled against me, trying to escape a man who was just in the back of her consciousness. I held her tight to my chest, smoothing her hair and kissing her face until her sobs subsided and she opened her eyes.
“I’m sorry I woke you,” she whispered cordially a few moments later.
“Krys there is nothing to be sorry for,” I assured her.
She shook her head. “I’m a grown ass woman. Things a thousand times worse have happened to millions of women all over the world, still I panic at this.”
“It shouldn’t happen to any of them and it shouldn’t have happened to you either. You were sixteen. Your mother should have protected you. She should have chosen you.”
Krys and I were both nude from last nights activities and I could feel the cold sweat on her skin as I rubbed her back. “Do you want something to drink? I can get you water? Warm milk? Personally, I think it’s disgusting but they say it helps,” I babbled.
“No, I’m fine. Just hold me Gentry.”
I lie us both back in bed. Rolling the quilt around her body fixing her to my side. She buried her face in my chest. I didn’t know what nightmares she had about the incident we never spoke of as it came in a few different parts. I didn’t know if she had them over the years or if seeing me again had somehow triggered a relapse. All I know is that she had them and that made me hate her mother – and by extension and to a degree my parents – even more.
Looking back in the calm light of day it’s easy to reason with my parents and their way of thinking. What Gloria and I had begged of them hadn’t been exactly legal anyhow. When I found Krys running in just jeans, a ripped t-shirt and no shoes, completely barefoot down the street a block from our house I panicked for just a second. I saw the tears streaming rivers down her face and the fear that coated her body.
That second passed quickly and in the next I knew I would do whatever it took to protect her, to make whatever was wrong right again. I would die for Krystina DeLouch if I had to and I was ready to kill for her too.
She collapsed into my arms. Her skin cold from the few blocks she had run in the thirty – degree weather that had left snow hanging around in some spots that March. My parents were playing cards with some friends but Gloria was home when I carried Krys inside. I sat Krys on the couch in the living room and wrapped a throw blanket around her.
I shattered a lamp against the wall when she told us. Ready to storm out and kill Daryl. But Kry’s firmly shout ‘NO!’ pulled me back.
Our parents came home straight away when Gloria called. Krys hung her head in shame and embarrassment, refusing to contact police or the Department of Child and Family Services. She apologized for the intrusion on our night, said she had just gotten scared but it was no big deal. Daryl would sober up in the morning and he was bound to be passed out by now.
Police would cause more problems than solutions. There wasn’t enough evidence to remove her from her mother’s custody. Teffy DeLouch was a horrible woman but she held tight to the daughter she couldn’t care for or barely love.
Gloria and I begged our parents to send her to Ed’s. I offered to take her myself, leaving out the part where I wouldn’t be returning. But that would have been kidnapping or aiding a runaway. Krystina was always welcome in my parents’ home but their hands were tied.
Krys crashed in Gloria’s room that night and my relationship with my parents was never the same.