TWENTY-TWO
I laugh as Jess lays out an assortment of candies on the coffee table before us. She arranges M&Ms, jelly babies, snakes, caramel melts, and my favourite, strawberries and cream, in little bowls as I lean on the arm of the sofa with my legs tucked up, watching her.
“Really, Jess? Do we need this much?”
She smiles, dusting her hands off as she admires her colourful masterpiece. “Probably not, but we’ve got to have a bit of everything, right?”
I pick up Briar’s discarded jumper and toss it over on the spare chair so Jess can get settled beside me.
She nestles back into the cushions with a fistful of jelly babies, and sighs. “Plus, heavy topics require something to keep your energy up.”
That they do.
“It feels weird doing this,” I admit. “I’ve never told anyone about my past before.”
She shrugs, popping a lolly in her mouth. “You don’t know much about mine, either. Sometimes it’s just one of those things that doesn’t need to come up, you know?”
“Yeah.”
Her eyes widen. “I didn’t mean it like that. Like, I’m not saying I don’t want to hear what you have to say.” She sighs, exasperated. “Ugh. I meant, mine’s boring, you know? I’ve got no reason to share the inane details of my past with you, but you’ve got history that’s obviously troubling you, so it makes sense to share.” She closes her eyes and frowns. “I’m rambling, aren’t I?”
“It’s okay.” I chuckle. “I know what you’re trying to say.”
“Good. Because I really had no idea how to salvage that if you didn’t.” She chuckles, and then jams the rest of the babies in her gob in one go, chewing with her cheeks puffed out like a squirrel.
The silence hangs between us, and I contemplate picking up the bowl of strawberries and cream lollies for a distraction. But if I do that, I’ll end up eating them in one sitting and not saying a thing.
Damn, this shit is hard.
I hate sharing my past. Not because I’m ashamed of what happened to me, but I’m embarrassed about how it turned out in the end. I’m embarrassed that I chose to walk away like a coward. I’m embarrassed that I let a spiteful, abusive arsehole ruin my life. And I guess perhaps I am ashamed a little. Ashamed that he played me so effortlessly, that he managed to manipulate and destroy me without the least bit of resistance.
Everyone always knows best, passing judgement with their “If I were you…” comments. But unless you were actually there, in that situation, you just don’t know for sure what would have happened.
Physical abuse is one thing, but mental manipulation is an entirely different kettle of fish.
By the time you realise what you’ve gotten yourself into, the roots of the lies have grown so deep you find yourself being the one who twists everything in the abuser’s favour, telling yourself that your fears are unjustified, that your concerns are invalid.
By the time you wake up in the war, the enemy’s already won.
“When I was fifteen, my sister, Kath, started dating this guy who was older than her. He’d left school early, but he was like twenty or something when she hooked up with him.” I take a deep breath, staring down at the strip of carpet between the sofa and the table.
Jess reaches out for another handful of lollies, relaxing sideways into her seat to hear me out.
“He saw me being bullied one day—which happened a lot—and stepped in. Took me home, and then told Kath he’d pick us both up from school every day so I wouldn’t get harassed again.” I laugh bitterly, thinking about how easily he manipulated us from the start. “Mum and Dad thought it was a great idea too; they’d seen how affected I was by the bullying, and anything that dragged me out of it was an option for them.”
“I bet Kath thought he was sweet for doing it, too.”
“Yeah.” I nod. “She thought he was totally misunderstood. He was a bit of an outcast, one of the rougher guys in the community. He’d been in and out of juvie and narrowly missed prison already. Had people convinced it was all a misunderstanding, but that was just him, great at making people think what he wanted them to.”
“Classic bad boy.”
“Yeah.” I reach out and snag a handful of sweets. “He picked us up without any issues for a while, waiting a few months before he made his first pass at me.”
“Creep.” She chomps extra hard on the jelly baby, as though it’s Tristan.
“I knew something wasn’t right, but I’d never had a guy interested in me so I just convinced myself it was all in my head.”
“Oh, babe.”
I accept her outstretched hand with my free one and continue. “He started with mind games, convincing me Kath had said one thing, when she’d really said another. Telling me people were doing things they weren’t. In hindsight, I think it was how he gauged how easy I’d be to manipulate as a target.”
Jess squeezes my hand at the same time as Briar cries out from upstairs. Broken from the trance I’d had myself in, reliving the past, I drop my sweets on the table and head up to check on him.
“Be right back.”
He’s sitting upright, sobbing quietly. The moment he sees me at the head of the stairs, he reaches out for me. This kid … I’d walk over a bed of glass to bring him comfort.
“Hey, buddy.” I seat myself on the side of his bed and pull him against my side. “What’s the matter?”
“I had a bad dream.” Distressed hums come from him as he tucks himself tighter.
“Shh, it’s okay now.” I stroke his hair, soothing him, reminding him that it was just a dream and listing a bunch of nice things he could think about instead. “Think of something good that always makes you happy when you try to go to sleep again, okay?”
He nods, crawling away from me to settle himself in bed again. “Like my picture I drew today?”
“What picture’s that?” He never showed it to me.
Briar points to his school bag propped in the corner of the room. I cross over and pick it up, bringing it back to the nightlight so I can see what I’m doing. Sure enough, folded at the bottom under his spare change of clothes is a picture.
“Mrs Pedders told us to draw our family.”
I unfold it, smoothing it out on my leg before holding it under the light.
He wriggles to the side of his bed, leaning over the edge to point out what each curvy shape is. “That’s me, and that’s Mummy.” He skims his finger from the left side of the page, past the obvious trees, to the right. “And that’s you, and Officer Evan.”
“Why aren’t we all standing together?” I ask, touched that he’s included everyone.
“Because when Mummy comes back to get me, you and Officer Evan will be happy together.”
Fucking kids and their observations. I flare my nostrils, sucking my lips into my mouth in an effort not to cry.
He still doesn’t get it; Kath isn’t coming back. And I don’t have it in me to explain that to him when I want him to go to sleep happy.
“It’s lovely,” I say instead. “Can I put it on the fridge?”
“Yeah.” He nods vigorously.
“I’ll go do that right now then.” I stand, grabbing his covers with my free hand. “Lie down so I can tuck you in, buddy.”
He scoots into a ball, snuggling his lion to his chest, and I cover him.
“I love you, Aunty.”
Placing a kiss to his head, I whisper, “I love you too, Briar.”
I turn for the door and step out into the hallway, suppressing a startled cry when I find Jess lurking in the shadows. She shakes her head and jogs downstairs ahead of me, dropping onto the sofa as I set down the picture and gather up my lollies again.
“You’re really good with him,” she says, a soft look in her eyes. “You wouldn’t pick that you guys barely know each other.”
“It’s easy,” I dismiss. “He’s a good kid, and he deserves to be loved and so much more.”
“It really sucks, hey?”
“Massively.” Wherever you are, sis, you did good with him. I only wish I could have told Kath in person.
I load up my taste buds with a handful of sweets as a gentle knock sounds at the door. Jess and I exchange looks, each as wide eyed as the other, before I shrug.
“I’m not expecting anyone else.”
“Are you going to answer it?”
I’ve got no reason not to. For all I know, it could be a friend of Kath’s that didn’t get the bad news.
I hurriedly scoff the remainder of my handful of goodies as I climb off the sofa and head for the front door. Considering I initially put Briar to bed at seven, it has to be well after eight by now. Bit late for a random house call, really.
I press my eye to the peephole, but all I can see is the back of somebody’s grey hoodie. They’ve got their face turned away, standing right up close to the door. Yet who could blame them with the frequent downpours we’ve been having.
My palm sweats as I reach for the handle, my gut saying it’s okay, but my head replaying every B grade horror movie I’ve seen where the naïve young woman ignores all the warning signs in situations like this.
Fuck it. I swing the door open, startling the visitor on the other side, who spins and … kisses me?
Evan.
I was getting wound up about bloody Evan.
“Hey you,” I say when he breaks away to grace me with a smile. “That was unexpected. You do that at every house you visit?”
He chuckles, a lazy hand still lingering on my hip where he steadied me during his assault. “Wouldn’t you like to know?”
I pointedly flick my eyes toward the living room. “I’ve got company. Want to join us?”
A frown draws his eyebrows together as he steps inside, barely waiting for me to shut the door before he marches through to find Jess staring back at him.
“Uh, hi?”
Evan’s shoulders noticeably relax. “Hi.”
“Evan, this is my friend, Jess.” I position myself between them, unsure what exactly had him on edge. “Jess, this is Evan. He was the officer who picked up Briar the day of the accident.” I give her a wink on the sly; he has no idea I’ve told her about him.
“Nice to meet you.” Jess slides off the sofa, shaking his hand before she gathers a handful of lollies and repositions herself on the single armchair.
Obvious much?
I settle at the far end of the sofa, leaning into the rolled arm to avoid seeming as though I want to be hanging all over Evan. I mean, sure, I do, but I don’t want to be that obvious. He drops onto the other cushion, his weight causing me to lean into him slightly all the same.
“Did I interrupt something?” He nods towards the mountain of sugar between us all.
“Girls’ night in,” Jess answers.
“I thought that involved wine and romantic movies,” he replies, narrowing his eyes. “Or have I been lied to my entire life?”
I shrug. “You know I’m not the romantic movie type.”
“And the wine’s in the fridge,” Jess adds.
We giggle, gaining an amused smirk from Evan.
“Don’t let me hold you up from the important stuff then.”
Jess’s eyes flick my way, and I know exactly what she’s wondering: how do we continue what we were talking about with our new company?
Evan glances between the two of us, the pregnant silence flashing a neon sign at him. “Should I go?”
“No,” Jess and I say in unison.
“It’s just….” I sigh, glancing at Jess. “We were talking about old times. I’ve never told Jess about what happened to me in school.”
His entire body tenses; the sofa vibrates underneath us. “Oh.”
“We don’t have to talk about it,” Jess dismisses with a wave of her hand. “We can carry on another time.”
I glance to Evan, who eyes me with an intensity I can’t place. He doesn’t seem alarmed, or worried, kind of apprehensive? “I don’t mind if you don’t?”
His Adam’s apple bobs, and he sucks in a huge breath that makes his thick chest rise and fall, slow and measured. “It’s your call.”
He knows.
He was there in one capacity or another at the time. And like he said, news travelled fast in our small town, and unlike the usual result when whispers spread through dozens of people, the stories in our small neck of the woods didn’t stray far from the truth.
Everybody knew that the Harris girl got raped by the oldest daughter’s boyfriend. Everybody knew I was laid up in hospital for a week before being discharged to be cared for by family.
He’s heard it all—just not from me. It’s the little details that only I know. Like how Mum used to come home from the shops with her mascara ever so slightly smeared and the eyeliner she’d applied that morning gone. It tore at her pride to accept charity, but at the same time she knew people had our best intentions at heart when they would see her at the supermarket and buy me a magazine to read, or throw a chocolate bar in her shopping bag for me.
That’s what stung me the most about the whole ordeal: everybody knew it was wrong, and yet nobody stood up and petitioned the decision when Tristan was discharged without conviction.
We were the only two people there, Tristan and I. It was my word against his, and hindsight is a fantastic thing when you realise your selfish behaviour and actions in the weeks prior did nothing to uphold your character as a reliable complainant.
“Should I get the wine?”
Jess’ question snaps me out my reverie, and I slouch into the sofa further, edging toward Evan in the process. “Why not.”
I roll my head on the back of the seat and take in the stoic man beside me. He stares down at his hands, fidgeting with a titanium ring on his middle finger. His brow is drawn, and he grinds his jaw left to right.
“Are you sure you’re okay with this?” I ask again, unsure if I should be airing things after all.
He shrugs, extending a hand to my ankle. His thumb rubs soft circles as he answers. “I’m just worried about how hard it is for you to rehash the past.”
I love him a little more in that moment. “It’s the past. I can’t change it, and there’s no need to let it own my future.”
“I guess.”
Jess returns with the bottle and three short glasses. “I don’t think there’s anything more manly for you to drink,” she says to Evan, setting them down amongst the sweets and uncapping the bottle. “So I hope you don’t mind being one of the girls.”
“If it’s wet, I like it.”
Her eyes go as wide as saucers as she stares at him in shock, the bottle frozen over the first glass. I stifle a laugh, snorting as it dawns on him what the innuendo of that sentence could be.
“You girls have dirty fucking minds.”
Don’t you know it.
“Evan likes it wet. Noted.” I giggle as he reaches across and shunts me on the shoulder playfully.
“You would know.”
“What?” Jess frowns, handing Evan his drink.
“Nothing,” we say together.
“So, anyway,” I stall, trying to draw the focus back to anything but what went down the other night. “I guess I’ll crack on and get this over and done with so we can get toasted on wine and sugar, huh?” I take my glass from Jess and waste no time having the first taste.
“Sounds like a plan.” Half of Evan’s glass disappears in one gulp.
“Where were we at?” I ask.
Jess folds herself onto the armchair and twists her lips to the side. “You said about how he would give you a ride home all the time, and that he started playing mind games.”
“Yeah. So, that carried on for a while until one day he didn’t take me home. He took me to his house. Said he had something to help me relax.”
“And you were happy to go along with it?” Evan frowns.
We’ve never discussed the details of how it started before. Tristan started preying on me before Evan and I hooked up. It was what it was, something we never acknowledged until much later. He didn’t even know what the sick fuck was doing to his girlfriend for the first six months.
I shake my head. “No way. I tried walking out the gate, hell-bent on going home instead, but he slapped me in the side of the head and picked me up, dragged me back in his house.”
“What did you do?” Jess asks. “Like, did you try to get away again? Call anyone?”
“My shitty prepaid phone was in my school bag—which he threw next to his car on the way past—and I didn’t see the point in trying to fight someone who was clearly stronger than me and angry.” I look to Evan, suddenly embarrassed to say it out loud. Even after all these years I can’t shake the feeling that what Tristan did makes me so … filthy. “He … that was the first day he forced … stuff on me.”
The silence is palpable. I guzzle two-thirds of my wine, searching for the Dutch courage to carry on.
“It went on for at least a year after that.”
“I never understood why you didn’t report him,” Evan states quietly.
His seemingly calm demeanour scares the shit out of me. “Because he told me he’d kill my sister if I did.”
“I haven’t forgotten,” Evan snaps.
Jess glances between us, clearly concerned.
“Just …” He sighs. “What made you think he wasn’t just bluffing?”
The first tears build behind my eyes at the memory of the one incident that hurt me more than any physical pain Tristan inflicted. “The precursor to violence against people is animal cruelty, right?”
“Mimi…,” Jess whispers, daring me to be leading her on, daring me to be wrong.
Evan closes his eyes briefly and nods. “Yeah.” He doesn’t know this. I’ve never told anyone what he did until now.
“The second month of our ‘home visits,’ as I liked to call them in my head, there was an Internet company salesman doing door-to-door canvassing. We’d seen him a few houses down when we turned into the street, but Tristan thought he wouldn’t show up at his place because he had a Doberman that he kept tied up near the gate.” My chin dimples, and I pinch the bridge of my tingling nose. “The sales guy made it to the door. He didn’t stay long after Tristan got abusive, though.” My throat closes; acid swirling in my stomach. “The dog didn’t see another sunset.”
“He killed it? Because it didn’t keep the guy away?” Jess asks, clearly shocked.
“Yeah.” My shoulders stiffen as the memory of the dog’s screams send a chill through my bones. It’s a sound I’ll never forget. Ever. “What was worse, he didn’t bury it or anything. The body lay there in the sun, stinking, rotting. I had to walk past it every day after that.”
I lose the battle of wills. Fat tears spill over as I think about that poor fucking animal and what he did to it. A thousand times I’ve wished I could go back to that day, just to try again, to do more to stop him when I realised what was about to go down. I would have gladly taken a knife to my gut to save the suffering he put that dog through.
“Fucking hell, Amelia,” Evan mutters. “Come here.”
He reaches out, loops his arm over my shoulders, and pulls me in. I nestle into his side, his heartbeat a soothing rhythm under my palm.
“Everyone knew that guy was unhinged,” he says with definite bite to his words. “Everyone.”
“And nobody did anything about it.”
“What could they do?” he asks. “Unless they had something on the guy that was guaranteed to send him away, poking a stick in the hornets’ nest wasn’t exactly a smart thing to do. It would have just put you at more risk.” He swallows hard, and I know what’s coming next. “You saw what he did to me.”
Jess glances down at her hands, lost.
“I guess.” Evan’s right. Antagonising the situation would have only made Tristan worse.
“What did he do?” Jess asks quietly, her mouth turned down at the corners as she looks across to the two of us.
I sit up, pulling out of Evan’s hold so I can look him in the eye while I answer her question. “I lied to Evan for ages. He didn’t know what was happening until I had marks I couldn’t explain.”
His crisp blues hold me captive as he sighs. A curt nod is all the encouragement I need to carry on.
“I was bruised,” I explain, looking to Jess, “in places you couldn’t explain away with clumsiness.”
She nods, indicating she gets what I’m dancing around.
“I couldn’t lie any longer. I told Evan everything.” I look back at the man who’s so a part of me that his absence has left me feeling incomplete this past decade. “I wish I hadn’t.”
“I don’t,” he says, taking my hand. “Never.”
Taking a moment to collect myself, I stare at the ceiling, wishing the memories of that day away. “Evan confronted Tristan about what he was doing.” Jess visibly stiffens, holding her breath. “He lied, of course. Dismissed it.”
“I thought he’d leave it at that,” Evan explains. “I planned on finding a way to prove it, get Amelia a watertight case against the asshole.”
“But Tristan wasn’t the kind of guy to let things go,” I say. Me included. “He and two of his low-life mates cornered Evan three days later on his way home from footy practice.” My vision blurs as I look across at his handsome face, remembering how brutal it looked when he turned up on my doorstep. “They beat the shit out of him.” I lift a hand, pointing out the injuries as I recite them. “Cracked his cheekbone, split his eye open, and broke two ribs.”
Jess groans, dropping her head into the palm of her hand. “Shit, guys.”
“I missed the rest of that season,” Evan says. “Never actually played again after that.”
“Surely that was the end of it,” she asks. “How could he talk his way out of that one?”
“I left a few months later. As far as anyone knew, I’d been jumped by some street kids. I kept the whole thing a secret because when we finally outed him for the stuff he did to Amelia, I didn’t want him passing it off as lies to get back at him for my attack.” He scoffs. “Never managed to prove what he did to her, though.”
“It’s not your fault,” I reassure him. “You did the best you could. Shit, we were young, Evan. What chance did we stand, really?”
“What finally stopped the guy?” Jess whispers.
“Tristan saw a guy from school talking to me as I walked out to the car one day. Got jealous. Went crazy.”
“She turned up to school the next day with a split lip and some bullshit excuse about tripping over,” Evan fills in.
“And still nobody twigged?”
“How could they?” I shrug. “Mum and Dad worked until five. They wouldn’t get home until six some nights, so Kath and I were left to fend for ourselves after school. As far as they knew, I was just hanging with friends.”
“But what did you tell them when you came home with split lip?”
Evan tilts his head to see me better, waiting on my answer.
“I said I got in a fight with a girl over a lie that was going around about me.”
“And they bought it?”
I nod in answer to Jess’s question. “Yeah. All the lies I gave them about where I was, who I was seeing, they thought I was a typical delinquent, off the rails and out of control. In their eyes I was the bad kid, misbehaving for attention.”
“That’s whacked.”
“It’s more common than you’d realise,” Evan says. “I see it a lot: parents who don’t realise what their children are up to because the kid has concealed it so well.”
“So he left you alone after that?” Jess asks.
“Not quite.” I glance at Evan, aware this is the part he’s only heard about through gossip.
He gives my hand a squeeze, leaning over to place a chaste kiss to my lips. “It’s okay.”
Jess cocks her head to the side, her wine glass pressed against her bottom lip as she frowns.
“I didn’t see Tristan for two weeks,” I continue. “Thought he’d given himself a fright when he marked my face, scared himself by thinking it might have given the game away. But he’d just been out of town. Kath told me after the first week; she was mad he’d left without saying anything.”
“So what, he was still dating your sister the whole time too?”
“Yeah. Kath had a job after school five days a week. We always dropped her off first, and then he took me back to his.”
“And you didn’t say anything to her because of his threat to kill her?”
I nod.
“Shit, Amelia.”
“Right?” I laugh to save from crying again. It’s so screwed up in retrospect, but living it was like fighting to survive with tunnel vision—I couldn’t see the end, only a path that seemed to extend forever. “When he came back, all hell broke loose.”
Evan slips his hand to my shoulder, rubbing up and down slowly as he no doubt prepares for what he’s heard comes next.
Only he doesn’t know all of it.
Nobody in the town did.
“Two days before Tristan showed up at the school again, I’d been to see the family planning nurse.”
“To get tested?” Jess asks. “For STDs?”
“Pregnancy.”
Evan’s hand stills. The hesitation hurts worse than any memory I could retell.
“I was seven weeks gone. I thought my period was late because of stress. It’d been really erratic since he started raping me, so at first I didn’t think much of it.” I turn to look up at Evan, my heart in my throat. What if I disgust him now? “Nobody knew that except our family.”
“That’s why he beat you,” he murmurs, realisation dawning in his features.
“Yeah.” I look across at the ashen face of my best friend, and all I feel is ashamed. For something that wasn’t my fault. How twisted is that? “He wondered why I started pushing back, why I didn’t want him to be too rough with me. It didn’t take long for him to put two and two together.”
“So he forced you to abort?”
“He did more than that. He made sure I could never have my own kids again.” I twitch involuntarily, the recollection of how he achieved that sending memory pains through my abdomen. “He quite literally tore me up.” A violent shudder rips the length of me. “I’m sorry. I … I can’t say any more.”
I lean forward and pour myself another drink, my hand shaking so badly I have to rest the neck of the bottle against the lip of the tumbler to ensure I don’t spill it.
“Amelia left his house that afternoon and tried to walk home,” Evan explains to Jess, reciting what he’s heard. “Her house was on the opposite side of town to his.”
The hot asphalt.
“She made it to the end of the main street before she passed out from blood loss.”
The bench seat.
“A shop owner called an ambulance and got two locals to help carry her somewhere more private.”
The buzz of the refrigerator.
“Her heartbeat dropped so low she was almost declared DOA.”
The lights.
“Her parents were advised to prepare for the worst.”
The crying. All the fucking crying.
“And yet he never got charged?” Jess asks.
Evan’s nostrils flare, his face contorting with anger before he stands abruptly and paces to the other side of the room. I shrink into my seat while he runs his hand over his head. “He had some shady alibi. Swore Amelia threatened to hurt herself if he didn’t break up with Kath for her. Made out she’d done the damage as a cry for attention.”
“What a goddamn maniac.”
“At the very least, yeah.” I chuckle awkwardly, my hands still shaking, my stomach still hurting as though it were yesterday. “He convinced my sister that he was telling the truth, told her I’d begged him for the money to pay for a private clinic, and when he refused, lost the plot. She believed him, because in her mind, I would want to abort to hide the fact I’d been fucking her boyfriend behind her back.”
“Oh my God.” Jess looks between Evan and me, as though hoping somebody’s about to twist this tale for the better.
But we can’t. There is no happy ending.
“He walked. I was looked down on by half the town as some crazy delinquent whore, and pitied by the rest. Life was hell, so I left, and then a few years later is when you met me.”
“No wonder you and your sister never spoke.” She gets off the armchair, gathering a handful of my favourite lollies on her way over to the sofa.
I chuckle as she drops down beside me and offers them up in her palm. “Thanks, hon.”
“The only thing I don’t fully understand though, is, other than the fact you didn’t get to clear the air with your sister, why you’re thinking about this again?” She frowns. “Is that it? You feel bad because things never got straightened out?”
“I wish.” I sigh, watching Evan as he rubs his palms over his face. “The guy, Tristan…”
Jess frowns, eyeing me intently in my periphery while I continue to watch Evan, locking my gaze with his clear blue eyes after he drops his hands.
“…is Briar’s father.”
The storm wins, his eyes turning as black as my heart when the truth hits home.
Life has spun full circle.
I lost the baby my rapist gave me, only to gain the care of the child he created with the person he stole from me.
Yeah.
Amelia Harris … this is your life….