“You told her about Fritzie?”
“I guess a mean part of me wanted her to feel guilty about leaving us with her so much. But mostly I needed to know if I had a case.”
“As in, a court case.”
“Yeah. The statute of limitations has run out for me.”
I grunted.
“What?” he said.
“Too bad there isn’t a statute of limitations on pain.”
He swallowed. It looked like it was hard to do. “But she’s still working as a nanny, right?”
My mouth went dry as I nodded. “Why didn’t I think about that?”
“I didn’t either before—and this is weird . . .”
“What is?”
“Evelyn came to me and pretty much held me hostage until I told her everything. She said she saw . . . something. She told me she was terrified of . . . I can’t even say her name anymore.”
I felt Seth’s face pinch in the darkness.
“I get that,” I said.
“And since I didn’t protect her the way Kellen always did you, she hated me.”
I swiveled under the seat belt to face him. “You’re not the reason she’s so wrecked, Seth. You know that, right?”
“Yeah, I do. But that’s why I have to try to stop this from going on. Before any more kids get messed up the way we did.”
“What does Randi say about the legalities?”
“She’s working on it.” Seth did dimple this time. “She thinks if we can get the cooperation of more recent families we can nail this woman.”
“Is that a direct quote?”
“Oh yeah.”
The dimple disappeared and an anxious silence seemed to grip him again.
“That’s not the part you’re worried about,” I said. “In facing Fritzie, I mean.”
“No. It isn’t.” His fingers jittered on the wheel. “I probably should have figured out how to actually confront her. I guess I’m hoping it’ll just come out.”
“Huh.”
“What?”
“I used to do that.”
“Do what?”
“Make up possible scripts in my head for how a conversation was going to go.” I tried on a laugh that didn’t quite fit. “That probably came from watching so many movies . . . wanting to make movies.”
Seth took his eyes off the road just long enough to glance at me, and then his profile returned, sharp and handsome as ever against the darkness.
“You wanted to make movies?” he said. “I never knew that.”
That struck me like a chord I didn’t really want to hear. There was a lot we never knew about each other. But I couldn’t say that to him now, not with his hands gripping the steering wheel so tight his knuckles looked blue in the lights from the dash.
“Anyway,” I said, “I just realized, I don’t make up scripts in my head anymore.”
“Why not?”
“Because. They never quite turn out the way I write them.”
“Yeah,” Seth said in an almost-whisper, “I bet they don’t.”
I rested my head back and closed my eyes and wondered how long it would be before everything stopped stirring up guilt in him like silt from the bottom of a pond.
Suddenly something occurred to me. I blurted it out before I could second-guess it.
“Have you prayed about this?”
The surprise that jumped to his face sent a pang through me.
“So you knew I wasn’t the praying wife you pretended you were getting,” I said. “I’ve learned since this all went down. I know it means everything.”
“I was going to teach you,” Seth said. “How twisted is that?”
We didn’t say anything else until we got to Jesup.
Every light in Fritzie’s bungalow was on when we pulled up to the curb across the street. It hadn’t occurred to me that she might have company.
“If she’s got people there, all bets are off,” Seth said.
“Understood,” I said.
We sat there for a minute, watching the house. No figures passed the windows. And come to think of it, no cars were parked on the street or in the driveway except Fritzie’s rusting once-blue Nissan.
“I feel like we’re on a stakeout,” Seth said.
“I don’t think there’s anybody else there. I could go check it out and if she’s alone I could signal you—”
“No. Let’s just go.” I watched his Adam’s apple bob in his throat. Above his beard, his skin was porridge-colored. “I’m serious, Tar, if you leave me for a second I’m not sure I can do this.”
“You could,” I said. “This just makes it easier. You ready?”
“No.”
Once more I turned sideways in the seat to face him. “If you’re not, you shouldn’t, Seth. You know Fritzie. She rolls right over people and you don’t need that right now. So if you don’t feel like you can stand up to her, we can do this another time.”
“I thought I could, but Tar, there’s so much . . . much stuff in this. She didn’t just molest me, she humiliated me in ways you don’t even want to know.”
“That’s it right there.”
He looked at me miserably.
“I’ve been where you are,” I said. “The one who’s been hurt. The one who didn’t do anything to deserve the horror that’s become your life. You are the victim this time. You don’t have anything to be afraid of because you haven’t done anything wrong.”
He was shrinking again. I wanted to grab him and hold on before he disappeared altogether.
“Look at me, Seth.”
He didn’t. I took his chin and turned his face toward me.
“I know what this feels like and the only way out of it is to do the next true thing. And this is it. I’m going to be there to protect you because nobody else ever did. Okay?”
He tried to pull away but I held on.
“Okay?”
“Okay,” he said. “Okay.”
To say that Fritzie was surprised to see us at her door would be more than an understatement. It would be a flat-out lie. Her eyes shifted from one of us to the other, and her mouth fell open, quadrupling her already doubling chins. And that was all before she got it together enough to say to me, “Tell me you aren’t getting back together with him.”
“We need to talk to you,” Seth said.
Fritzie recovered the bravado she always relied on. “Tara I have time for. You, not so much.”
“Both of us,” I said. “You need to hear this.”
Seth glanced at me, and I didn’t blame him for the questions in his eyes. But her standing there, already trying to villainize him . . . I knew exactly what my lines were going to be in this scene.
But first Seth needed to say his.
“So can we talk or not?” he said.
“Fine,” she said. “But you’re not coming in my house.”
She grabbed a shawl that looked as if it should be used to scrub a floor and came out from behind the screen door. She passed between us and parked herself on the top step so that we had to practically climb over her to get to a place where we could face her. I sat on the bottom step. Seth stood with one foot on the second one.
“So,” Fritzie said, “talk. No, wait.”
She looked at Seth for the first time, with eyes so self-righteous I wanted to pluck them out. Or at the very least, chop down her family tree.
“I do have a few things to say to you.”
She went into a tirade about the sins of pornography, punctuated with proclamations of her own disgust. This was exactly what I didn’t want her to do to Seth, and I tried to stop her twice, but both times he shook his head at me. Come on, I wanted to cry to him. You know all this. You don’t deserve to hear it from her.
And then she said the one thing I realized he’d been waiting for, the opening he needed.
“I practically raised you, Seth Grissom,” she said. “And I can’t believe you turned out this way.”
“You can’t?” His voice
teetered toward its upper range but it was somehow still strong. “Why can’t you believe it? You’re the one who twisted me into the monster I am when I’m in front of that screen.”
“Excuse me?” Fritzie’s torso rose in indignation, but I could already see the oncoming panic in her eyes. “I twisted you?”
“When I was only ten years old. And it went on for two years. Two of the worst years of my life.” Seth leaned over his thigh. His hands were talking with him, slicing the air. “You didn’t raise me. You molested me. And now I’m paying the price.”
“You’re blaming me for what you are? I touched you before you even hit puberty and it’s my fault you lost everything?”
“Hey, Seth,” I said. “That sounds like an admission of guilt, doesn’t it?”
“Sure does. But I don’t care if she admits it or not, I know. I made my own choices after that and I take responsibility for them.” He squinted at Fritzie. “But you? You’re just sick.”
Perfect segue, Seth. That was my cue to take my turn.
“While we’re on the topic of responsibility,” I said. “What you did to Seth was a crime. You’re a sex offender.”
The panic was full-blown all over Fritzie’s face, but she still laughed as she shook her head, vehemently, about six times.
“You can’t take me to court for this. There’s a statute of limitations—”
“You’re still working as a nanny, right?”
Seth sent me a thank-you with his eyes. His energy was spent for the moment.
“You’ve been doing that for, what?” I went on. “Eighteen more years since you left us. Is that about right?”
“Give it up, Tara,” Fritzie said. She stood up, flapping her arms as if she were trying to take flight. “I haven’t touched a kid since this one.”
The lie was so obvious I almost screamed, but I kept my cool. For Seth.
“I hope not,” I said. “But still, it seems like your current employer should know about your history. Don’t you think, Seth?”
He had pulled himself out of his sag and his eyes were steely. “No question. And all the other families she’s worked for. In case any of their kids are starting to act like—what did she call me? Monsters?” His voice was calm now, and it bit. He was, after all, Randi Grissom’s son.
“Randi’s already on it,” I said.
“No,” Fritzie said. “No Randi.”
Neither of us said anything. We just watched her grope for the upper hand again.
“No, you know what?” she said, voice shrill. “Sic Randi on me. She’ll never make this stick. Do you know how hard it is to convict somebody as a pedophile?”
“That’s the word I was looking for,” I said. And then all sarcasm, all of my own bravado fell away, and I looked Fritzie hard in the face, true me to whoever she was. “You have to take responsibility for your part in this. Just like the rest of us have.”
She flattened her eyes at me, but her body shook. “What does that even mean?”
“It means you quit the nannying job you have right now,” Seth said.
“The Mary Poppins gig,” I put in.
“Then you get out of the business for good. And you apologize to every family whose kids you ever touched.”
Go, Seth. I folded my arms and watched.
“That way the DA might go easier on you after I expose you and the families you’ve turned inside out decide to press charges. Either you tell them or I will.” Seth leaned in. “But they will know.”
Fritzie attempted a laugh that fell so hard I thought I heard it crack on the concrete. Still, the outright fear sharpened every part of her to a point. I knew the feeling. Only . . . this woman I’d loved and trusted and told my secrets to . . . she deserved it. Because she showed no remorse.
“What are you going to do, Seth?” she said. “Hire a private investigator to follow me around and make sure I do it?”
Seth’s eyebrows came completely together. “Have you met my mother? And we’re putting a time limit on it. You have one week.”
“Don’t do that, man,” she said. “Don’t even try it.”
“Or . . .?” Seth said.
Fritzie didn’t answer. She struggled to get her cumbersome self off the step and turned with a frenzy of shawl and hair and terror and opened and slammed doors until she was inside her house. I heard the unmistakable sound of pottery hitting a wall.
I jerked my head toward the car. “Let’s get out of here before she takes aim at us,” I said.
We were quiet half the way back to Savannah. As our mossy, shaded city drew nearer, the muscles in Seth’s face softened and his death grip on the wheel loosened.
“How you doin’?” I said.
“Better than I thought I would.”
“You were awesome.”
“She really is sick, isn’t she?”
“Beyond.”
“I am too.”
“It’s a different kind of sick,” I said.
“How?”
“You know you’re sick and you’re getting help. You don’t want to live the way you were living anymore. That’s right, isn’t it?”
“Right” he said. His voice was thready.
We were entering the city limits and the live oaks seemed to be holding their arms out to us. I sighed at them.
“What?” he said.
“This is a healing place, y’know? We both got hurt here, but it’s also the place to get better. Don’t you think?”
Just when I thought he had used up all his words for the night—and I wouldn’t have blamed him—he said, “I’m getting help.”
“Good.”
“I’m still working the Denver program. I’ll go back in a couple of weeks for a check-in. And I found a guy here to talk to.”
“A counselor?”
“No. He’s a priest, actually, and, I guess I can tell you this . . . he’s been through this stuff too. So it’s not just ‘pray and God will make you better.’ If that were the case I would’ve recovered a long time ago. It’s ‘God’s with you, but you have to do the work too. You have to find out what’s true and be true to it.’ ”
“He sounds like the perfect guy, then.” I turned my face to the side window so he wouldn’t see the smile I had to smile.
Seth pulled up to the curb in front of the apartment. My new home. Not Gaston Street. Not the dream of Jones Street, but here. Everything had changed, and I had a moment of longing for what wasn’t anymore and what could have been. But it passed into something I knew for the first time.
“What are you going to do now?” I said. “Besides work on recovery.”
“I got a job at a bank in Brunswick. It’s a little bit of a commute, but I couldn’t get anything here. I’m persona non grata right now.”
“That’ll fade,” I said.
“I hope. I’m moving into an apartment next week.”
“In Brunswick?”
“No. Here in town. I want to be near Ne—the priest—and my parents. I think I can help them get what happened with Evelyn. I need to be in Savannah.”
“And I want you to be. I meant what I said. If you want my help, I’m here. Especially when all this legal stuff starts happening.”
“I do want your help. But we have to give that time.” Seth looked at me and then turned his face away. “It’s still hard for me to be with you and not think about what we could’ve had.”
“Then maybe this will help,” I said. It was a night for perfect segues. “There’s this one last thing I want to tell you.”
“I don’t know if I can take it.”
“No, this is totally about me.” I picked the words with the tips of my fingers. “I know now that I wasn’t ready for marriage. I was ready to get married. Nobody’s wedding was ever better planned. But I wouldn’t have been a good wife to you. I had no idea who I was. I did what I was supposed to do but not what my soul wanted to do.” His eyes looked hurt but I shook my head. “I didn’t think I was supposed to marry you. I wan
ted to with what I thought I knew about life. What I’m trying to say is, it isn’t just because you’re healing from an addiction that I won’t marry you. It’s because I’m healing.”
“From me? From what I did to you?”
“From a whole life of not realizing I even had a self. I guess you could say I’m in recovery too.”
Seth was quiet then, and I let him be.
“Do you think it was God?” he said finally.
“Do I think what was God?”
“That you walked in on me that night?”
“I don’t know. Why would you think that?”
“Because that moment saved both our lives, Tar.”
“Maybe so,” I said.
The silence fell again. It was soft this time.
“I should go in,” I said. “When you’re ready?”
“I’ll call you,” he said. “When I’m ready.”
I got out of the car and watched him drive off, a little too fast for a wet Savannah street, but I got that. He would probably go cry, and I got that too.
But as I went up the brick walkway to our haint-blue front door, I didn’t feel like crying. That scene with Fritzie, that really was the last layer, the last thing to be opened and debrided and left to heal. The last thing to let go of.
I put my hand on the doorknob and pressed my forehead to the door.
And now it was time for the first things.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
We’ve been told by those we trust that some people actually do read the “who helped” section, and we hope you’re among them. This book in particular could not have been written without some serious help from some generous people.
Special thanks from Rebecca to:
Amanda Bostic and the team at Thomas Nelson. Thank you for believing in the message of this book and in Nancy and me!
David Smallbone, Jonas Applegate, and Amanda Jilek at Smallbone Management, for your support of One Last Thing and also Sarah’s Choice and The Merciful Scar! Dad, thanks for seeing this project before it was. You are a true visionary.
Andrea Heineke, for believing in me and for being such an incredible friend. So grateful for you!
Nancy . . . thank you for being a precious, kind, and incredibly talented partner! You are a joy, and I’m honored to call you friend and sister.
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