by Laney Wylde
After I showered and shaved all those gross hairs into oblivion, I put on and fastened my favorite violet bra I’d saved from mutilation. It didn’t fit. Was I not a D-cup anymore? Was I a sad little C? I hadn’t been a C since I was fourteen. I tightened every strap and made the best of it. My jeans were a little loose, and my shirt hung shapeless from my shoulders. Hospital food hadn’t kept me curvy, and sulking in bed for months wasted away my athletic shape.
I blow-dried my hair and smoothed it with the flat iron, so I wouldn’t have to deal with it in the morning. I already had plenty to deal with.
I picked at my pizza at the kitchen bar, my mom on my left and Cash on my right. “You ready for tomorrow, Sawyer?” my mom asked. “You know you don’t have to do this. Maybe I could read it for you? Or the lawyer?”
“I got it,” I muttered. I took a bite of pepperoni and cheese just to have an excuse not to talk.
There was a chance Jeff would only spend a lousy fifteen years in prison, pay some fines, and be out by the age of fifty-three. The maximum was life. I was here to convince the judge that Jeff needed to die in prison. I knew this was the only way I could do right by Simone, do right by me.
That didn’t make it easy to sleep that night, especially on the living room couch with Third Street watching me through the sheer curtains of the front door. I even tried Jake’s TV-to-sleep method, letting my eyes glaze over and dry out to reruns of Friends. I was still awake when Cash got up to pee at one AM. Did he have the tiniest bladder in the world?
He saw me on the couch, the muted blue light flashing over my face. “Can’t sleep?” he asked as he pushed his hand through his hair.
I shook my head. After he went to the bathroom, he sat down on the floor, his back against the couch in front of my chest. “I love this one,” he said about the episode of Friends now on.
My fingers wandered to his curls, looping through a few of them, pulling them straight, then letting them bounce back. “I’m scared,” I whispered.
He rotated toward me, sweeping the backs of his fingers across my forehead to return a few flyaways where they belonged. “I know.” His lips curved into that sad, compassionate way he smiled and ran his hand down my back. “Do you want to pray about it?”
Oh, funny story. That morning in the hospital after I put myself into hemorrhagic shock, Cash told me that watching Jeff burn in hell wasn’t a legitimate reason to go there, that believing I was damned because my pedophile stepfather/Sunday school pastor told me so was illogical. He’d said, Aren’t you a math major? Don’t you like logic?
When I told him I was having too much fun to deal with Jesus and all his rules, he did the highest eyebrow-raise I had ever seen before pointedly staring at my taped-up arm. He’d said, This is fun? And rules? You don’t get it, do you? Then he told me he loved me, that he had been and would always be there for me no matter what I did even when it hurt him. Oh, and, by the way, Sawyer, this is excruciating. That was how God wanted me. Only he had endured more pain than Cash ever could for me. And so I gave in, swollen eyelids, dry throat, and sliced wrist, to Cash and his God.
I know. I was shocked, too.
And I knew Cash said I just needed a friend for now, but after that day, there was a shift between us, like the timer started ticking down until we got back together. It was in the way his eyes flickered when he saw me, how his hands lingered in mine, the speed at which his heart beat when my ear pressed against it. But since he broke it off, he would have to ask me out again. I had been brave enough lately.
Cash fell asleep on the couch behind me, my back against his chest, his arm over my waist. With him so close, I was able to get a few hours of sleep, too.
* * *
The court was small and sparse and had a chilled scent of mold. I barely smelled it because I couldn’t breathe. That eight-year-old I couldn’t exorcise was squeezing my lungs and kicking at my heart in protest. I could almost hear her screaming, What the hell are we doing here?
Jeff’s mom and dad were seated in the benches on the left, Simone’s exhausted and anxious parents and brother on the right. I nodded down toward them, sick with the knowledge I was about to confess to killing their daughter.
I kept on, passing through the hip-high door to the table where the prosecutor sat. He was a thin old man with deep wrinkles engraved in olive skin. He looked into my eyes with his gentle ones when he shook my hand. “It’s an honor to finally meet you, Ms. de la Cruz.” An honor. It didn’t make sense to me. Still, the words stung my eyes as I let go of his hand.
“Thank you,” I whispered as I sat in the chair he motioned toward. I couldn’t speak any louder. I was terrified. How was I going to read this letter? I shifted in my seat to see Cash and my mom seated in the bench behind me. Cash placed his hand palm-up on the bar between us, like he had on my thigh that morning in church—an offering. I placed my hand in his, the warmth sending a calm up my arm that spread through my chest where the nerves threatened to strangle me.
“You’ve got this.” He smiled. For a second, I believed I did.
A door opened at the front of the court. I snapped my head forward to see a petite woman decked in charcoal grey from shoulders to ankles, her hair curled and teased in excess, as if this was the 1980s. Her heels click-clacked over the wood floors as she approached the defense’s table. Her client was behind her, ushered by the bailiff.
The familiar stomp of Jeff’s feet I had heard approaching my room a hundred times stopped my heart. I thought for sure that eight-year-old inside had punctured my ventricles, letting the blood spill out while the cardiac muscle spasmed in vain, because my vision started clouding at the sight of Jeff’s pale blue eyes, his blond hair starting to thin, and his sturdy, tall frame that had crushed me too many times. Those pasty eyes met mine, and he suddenly appeared small, inconsequential. This time, his fate was in my hands. I felt peace, strong like I never had before. I took a deep breath, more exhilarated than scared.
“You okay?”
I glanced back at Cash and nodded.
Past his shoulder, the courtroom door opened and another body slipped in. Oh, shit. Oh, shit. I was not okay. What the hell was Jake doing here? I can’t do this. I can’t do this. I can’t say any of this in front of him.
Jake caught my eye. For a moment, my whole body hurt. He watched me as he sat down on the bench along the back wall. No smiles, no nods, no mouthed words exchanged between us. Just an unbreaking stare. I had to wonder if his heart stopped like mine did. Of course not. He knew I’d be here. But why was he here?
“Really?” Cash interrupted my gaze. I jerked, staring at his tilted head as he squeezed my hand. “Because you look like you’re going to pass out.”
“Just nerves.” I fought through a shaky smile before turning forward.
We all stood for the judge like we were supposed to. After we sat, that big-haired attorney started her statement about why the judge should go easy on Jeff.
“He was let out of prison six months early for good behavior, hasn’t violated his parole, and is in excellent standing with his parole officer…
“Furthermore, he has committed no such illicit acts since his release last year and shows deep remorse for his crime.”
It was so hard not to cackle at this. I started to, but then covered it with a cough when the prosecutor shot me a cutting glance and put his hand over mine.
“Since this reincarceration of my client is interrupting his successful reentry into society, we ask that you allow him to serve the sentences for production of child pornography and the two counts of first degree sexual abuse concurrently, giving him the minimum of fifteen years. We also ask for the possibility of parole after eight, since he has already served seven years.”
What? I leaned to the prosecutor’s ear. “Can they do that?”
“It’s not going to happen,” he said. He pointed subtly with his hand on the table toward the judge, whose face was twisted in an Are you fucking kidding me? expression.
> I sighed in relief. Not that the feeling lasted long. It was my turn.
The prosecutor stood. “Your Honor, this is Sawyer de la Cruz, whom you may recognize as the surviving victim of Mr. Lindley’s abuse. She has prepared a statement.”
“Proceed, Ms. de la Cruz.”
I pushed off the table with my hands, and then picked up the typed letter. It shook between my fingers.
“I’m eight,” I started softly, stopping to clear my throat, “in my bed, hearing footsteps approach my door. I know they’re not my mom’s. By now, I know what’s going to happen next. I know if I say ‘no’ when he takes off my clothes and sets up his camera, Jeff will tell me the Jesus I love, the God who comforted me when my dad died, will send me to hell. I know that it will hurt. I know that I have to pretend with noises and words that I don’t understand. And I know I can’t tell anyone.
“I’m nine, and I can’t tell my friend that she shouldn’t come over to play after school, that when Jeff says he wants us to play ‘dress-up’ and ‘models’ with him, it’s not as fun as it sounds. Now she’s crying and scared and hurts, too.
“I’m fifteen, and so is my friend, when four junior boys at school start to flirt with us. And we’re flattered because they’re popular and play basketball and we’re just freshman. But now we’re afraid again, because they have a video of our least favorite game with Jeff. Now we’re humiliated because if they have it, who else does? And now four juniors are gang-raping us, and we’re doing our best to comply so no one in school will see the video. Simone is broken from the silence I’ve bullied her into. Now Simone is dead.
“I’m eighteen, dizzy and drunk after a party in the front seat of Jeff’s car. Now I’m in my bed, and my pants are gone. I feel the shooting, tearing pain as Jeff tells me who is really in control.
“I’m eighteen and pregnant, terrified that I might have Jeff’s baby. And with my choice to abort, I lose my fiancé and my future.”
My vision glazed over the paper twitching in my hands. That was the end of the story as far as Jake knew. My eyes wandered up to the judge, down my right arm to the prosecutor with anxious eyes imploring me to continue. My voice was paralyzed in that moment with Jake’s listening ears pressed against me. I couldn’t go on. I slipped my index finger in the crease, and I let the paper fold over it.
A hand caught my arm, gentle but firm. The prosecutor’s voice in my ear was the same. “This is your chance. Take it.”
My gaze met his before continuing over my right shoulder to Jake. His elbows were on his knees, his fingers intertwined at his chin, his attention wrapped around me. Then he nodded, one careful movement of his head that loosened a ribbon of hair from where he had combed it back—a nod that I should go on.
I had nothing to lose. Jake and I had closed the door of our relationship over a year ago. Might as well lock it, deadbolt it, and weld it shut. I returned to the paper and unfolded it. “I’m eighteen,” I swallowed, though my throat was dry, “working as a stripper when a man offers me cash to ‘fuck Delilah.’ And I take it, because I always do, because that’s what I’m best at.
“I’m eighteen, when a client at the strip club pays for sex with Delilah. I tell him ‘no,’ because I can’t. I can’t do it anymore. He tries to rape me, and I’m arrested for smashing his head in because my mind has disconnected and I’m terrified he’s Jeff.
“I’m nineteen, in mandatory psychiatric treatment for severe PTSD and attempted suicide. My nights are filled with dreams where I’m chased and hunted, and I scream but no one hears me. My days are filled with fear and guilt for what I’ve done to my child and my ex-fiancé and Simone.
“Your Honor, please, I entreat you to give this man the maximum sentence of life. His abuse cost Simone her life. It will haunt me for all of mine.”
I looked at the next line of my letter. It was for Jeff. I folded it up and dropped it on the table. “Jeff…” I sighed. “Honestly, I’d love to stand here and say, ‘Fuck you, I hope you get raped every day in prison and then burn in hell.’ But, I think they’d hold me in contempt of court.” I glanced over at the judge. “Right?”
Cash let out a soft exhale behind me, and I knew he was rubbing the embarrassment I should have felt from his forehead. Then I heard a snicker from the back of the room. Jake. Closing my eyes, I bit my bottom lip to hold in a smile.
The judge gave me a wary look and nodded.
“Okay, so, I’ll just say this—Jeff, I haven’t forgiven you. But I’m going to, and not just because God forgave me, but because you don’t get to have that power over me anymore. You don’t have any power over me anymore.”
Raising my head toward the judge, I said, “Thank you, Your Honor.”
After I sat down and the prosecutor said his short piece, which I didn’t hear a word of, the judge announced, “In light of the severity of the abuse, the prevalence of the images, and the protracted consequences for the victims, I am sentencing Jeff Lindley to fifty years in Oregon State Penitentiary.”
Yeah, I’d call that a win.
I bolted up and turned to Cash, who was already on his feet. His hands out, he asked, “You okay with that?”
“Hell yeah!” I hugged him tight, feeling him press his lips against the top of my head.
When Cash let go, I caught a glimpse of the doors at the back open and Jake leave with his leather jacket over his shoulder. My lungs deflated with relief, but that pain in every inch of me remained. Of course he would leave. I knew he would. It was over. It had to be.
“Sawyer?” I snapped out of my stare at the closed double doors to follow the shaky feminine voice. It was Simone’s mom.
I nodded, speechless.
Before I knew what was happening, I was in her arms with her wet face against my shoulder. “Thank you,” she sobbed. “It’s okay, sweetie. It’s okay.”
“Thank you,” I whispered. I wished that meant more to me, but it didn’t. She wasn’t Simone. That was who I wanted to apologize to. But her mom’s words stabbed deep, then made me feel lighter, like they’d cut into a bag of sand sitting inside me and now that sand was spilling out. Maybe I wouldn’t have to feel the full weight of it anymore.
* * *
“Sawyer, are you sure you don’t want to stay a few extra days?” my mom asked while I collected my clothes and pushed them into my suitcase. “You don’t have to leave tonight.”
“I can’t, Mom.” What was I going to do here? Stay locked inside while everyone gossiped about the cheerleader who went to LA to whore her way through college?
“You haven’t even been to the beach yet. You don’t have to leave for four more hours. At least take a quick walk down there, like you and your dad used to.”
“Fine.” Anything to not hear her voice anymore. I grabbed A Farewell to Arms, the book I was reading on the plane, and searched the house for Cash. I spotted him through the window on the phone, so I poked my head through the back door. “Want to walk to the beach?”
“Hang on,” he said as he covered the phone. “It’s Jo. She’s having boy problems and freaking out because June’s having pregnancy issues and is on bedrest. I gotta call her next.”
“Tell her hi. I’ll be back in a bit, okay?”
He nodded and smiled. I heard him say, “Sawyer says hi,” as I closed the door.
I took the walk down the street to the beach, finding that massive fallen tree that my dad and I used to sit against on the shore. I balanced heel-to-toe across it until it met the mountainous rock at its end.
It was bright and overcast and cool like most summer days here. I took off my flip-flops and buried my feet in the warm sand, keeping them sheltered from the breeze. Snuggled in my navy Bruins hoodie with my knees to my chest, I leaned my back against the smooth wood. When I flipped open my book, a page of Cash’s letter fell into my lap. I had been using pages of it as bookmarks so I could have it handy all the time. After unfolding the lined notebook page, one from the middle of the letter, I started reading the black
script at the first complete sentence.
I want you to know that this break in our relationship is not because I love you less because you are in pain. I don’t love you less. Nothing could make me love you less. We met at probably the most desperate time of your life, and I want you to be a little more whole, feel a little safer, before we move forward. I think all the time about our first date—how you didn’t want me to pay for your meal because you weren’t “putting out.” I want you to have me, just me without fear of obligation or owing me. If you can get to that point and find that you love me, too, I’m yours.
“I knew you wouldn’t leave town without saying goodbye to your dad.”
My heart tripped and then thumped in my ears when I heard his voice behind me. I held my breath and not on purpose. He wasn’t really here. I turned around to make sure I was just hallucinating, maybe a post-traumatic stress delusion. That was a thing, right?
I wasn’t.
Jake was standing on the fallen tree. Now that he was three feet from me, I recognized his shirt as the grey thermal I wore the morning after Jeff assaulted me. His leather jacket was draped over his arm. I stared at him a moment to remember what he had just said. “Am I that predictable?”
He let a soft laugh escape his nose as he dropped his feet to the sand to sit beside me. “I wish.” He reached into his jacket pocket. “Swiss Roll?”
It startled a smile from me. “Please.” I folded the letter and closed it in my book. “I’ve barely eaten anything the past three days.”
He tore through the plastic and handed me a pastry. “Can I take you to get some real food?”
Why would he want to do that? Did he not listen to anything I said an hour ago?
I shook my head. “I’m fine. I was just nervous about today.”