by J. D. Mason
“Where you are, Daneen?” Cristina asked. “I live in Austin.”
“Corpus,” she said.
“Would you be interested in meeting me somewhere, halfway perhaps?”
After another long pause, Daneen finally agreed. “There’s a diner off highway thirty-five in San Marcos called ToadStools,” she offered. “I can meet you there tomorrow at around noon?”
“I can be there,” Cristina quickly said. “I’m looking forward to meeting you, Daneen.”
“I’ll see you then,” she said, and then hung up.
* * *
Daneen Madison was a petite, curvy woman with long, blond hair that hung past her shoulders, and big, sapphire-blue eyes that looked absolutely unnatural. She wore jeans, six-inch-high wedge sandals, and a white top that flared just about her hips. On her shoulder was a tattoo of a butterfly lighting on what looked like a daffodil.
“My kids love coming to this place,” she said sheepishly. “They make great milkshakes.”
“How many kids do you have?”
“Two,” she said proudly. “Eva who’s six, and Ivan who’s four.”
Cristina smiled. “Nice. And your husband? What does he do?”
“He’s a handyman. Runs his own business.”
“Very nice.”
“Yeah.” She smiled. “He’s really good at it, and just likes not having to answer to somebody else bossing him around. Except me, of course.” Her blue eyes lit up.
Cristina laughed. “Of course.”
“So, Ellis is doing really good for himself.”
“He is. People love his paintings. I don’t think he really understands how much, though.”
She smiled. “I’m not surprised. Ellis never did take himself too seriously.”
“When did you two first meet?” she asked casually. The key to approaching any interview was to make it conversational so that the other person felt comfortable enough to open up.
“We actually met in first grade.” She laughed. “In a town as small as Blink, most people pretty much grow up together. Everybody knows everybody, or somebody knows somebody who knows you,” she explained. “The degrees of separation are pretty minute.”
Cristina nodded.
“He was the typical boy. Always pulling my hair or teasing me mercilessly until he had me in tears. Later on he told me that it was because he was in love with me, and didn’t know how to just come out and say it.” She laughed.
Cristina could almost see the two of them running around on the playground as children.
“When did you start dating?”
Daneen thought for a moment. “Not until twenty-two, maybe twenty-three,” she said, reflectively. “And from that point on, we were inseparable. I mean, we spent every day and every night together.”
Drew had said that they’d fought a lot.
“Was the relationship good?”
She nodded and then she shrugged. “Mostly. I mean, we fought like couples fight, but neither of us ever stayed mad for long.” She smiled all of a sudden. “Ellis had a way of making me forget why I’d ever gotten mad at him in the first place. He’d do silly things like shoot me with a water gun to make me chase him, or fill the whole apartment with sunflowers by the time I came home from work, because he knew I loved sunflowers.”
In the short time Cristina had known Ellis, she knew exactly what Daneen was talking about. He had a great talent for changing the subject, no matter how tense the moment and it always worked.
“We were going to get married.” She blinked and then tears appeared. She blinked again and they went away. “I’d started planning the wedding and everything.”
That was the signal for Cristina to get down to the nitty-gritty of this interview.
“Is that when the rape occurred?”
Cristina wasn’t even sure that Daneen had been raped. After what she’d learned from Drew about Daneen telling the police that she didn’t know who raped her, Cristina had her doubts.
Daneen nodded. “Everything changed after that,” she said solemnly, lowering her gaze to her hands folded in her lap.
There was no delicate way to ask the question, but it needed to be asked. And not for the sake of the article Cristina was writing, but for her own enlightenment.
“Did Vince really rape you, Daneen?”
She stared wide-eyed up at Cristina and once again looked as if she was going to cry. Daneen took a deep breath, held it, and let it out slowly. “No.”
In the back of her mind, Cristina had begun to spin her own version of what really happened. Maybe Daneen wasn’t getting enough attention from Ellis. Maybe she’d gotten pissed at Vince for some reason. But Cristina had begun to suspect that Daneen had lied after speaking with Drew.
“So, you lied,” she said carefully.
Daneen turned introspective for a moment. “I did. I lied to Ellis and he went ballistic.” She pressed her lips together. “He stormed out of the apartment like a bull on a rampage. I tried to stop him, but he wouldn’t listen. I grabbed him, but he jerked away from me, got in his car, and drove off looking for Vince. The next thing I knew…” Finally, the tears did fall. “It was all my fault,” she confessed. “What happened to Ellis. What happened to Vince. It was all because of me.”
Cristina leaned forward and stared deeply into Daneen’s eyes, struggling to hide how appalled she was by her. She’d ruined lives with her lie. Two men had forever been changed because of her.
“Why would you lie about something like that?” Cristina challenged. Forget the fact that she was a reporter. This was a woman thing. For a woman like Cristina, who had actually been assaulted, living in the aftermath of rape, sitting across from Daneen Madison was pure torture and it took everything in her to stay in her seat.
“I didn’t mean to,” Daneen said defensively.
“Are you serious?” she asked incredulously. “You didn’t mean to lie about being raped? You didn’t mean for Ellis to beat a man nearly to death or for an innocent man to end up in a wheelchair for the rest of his life?” She was beyond livid.
“I didn’t mean to accuse Vince,” she shot back, trying to keep her voice down.
“Bottom line is that you weren’t raped.”
“I was raped,” she said defensively. “I didn’t lie about that.”
Cristina was suddenly speechless. None of this made any sense.
“Drew raped me,” she finally said, staring hard back at Cristina, and clenching her jaw.
“Drew Jones?” she asked in disbelief.
Daneen’s lips quivered. “Both my parents worked for his father. He told me that if I ever told that he’d see to it that my parents lost their jobs, which would’ve destroyed my family.”
Drew raped her? Cristina sat back in her chair, numb and at a complete and total loss for words.
“Ellis kept asking me what was wrong. He kept asking. Over and over, he just wouldn’t stop.” All the color washed from Daneen’s cheeks. “I don’t know why I did what I did.” Her voice trailed off. “He and Vince weren’t close anymore. I didn’t know that things would go that far. I didn’t think that…”
“Dear God,” Cristina murmured. “All this time, Ellis believed he’d done the right thing. He went to prison thinking he’d done the right thing.”
Daneen swallowed. “Vince didn’t deserve what happened to him.”
This woman did not just say that.
“It was my fault. And I’ll never forgive myself for it.”
Cristina glared at her. She had destroyed the lives of two men to save her parents’ jobs? Cristina was appalled, disgusted by this woman, but then she shone that light back onto herself. How many lives had Cristina ruined by not reporting her own rape? How many other women had endured what she’d endured because all she wanted to do was to let it go and move on with her life? Were she and Daneen all that different?
“You’re right. You should never forgive yourself, Daneen.”
CHAPTER 15
I
t didn’t happen often, but in a town the size of Blink, it was bound to happen sometime. Ellis was coming out of the hardware store when he spotted Lucinda Henderson coming out of the drugstore across the street. She’d been their housekeeper when he was a kid, and mothered him the same way she’d mothered Vince and Drew. If she spanked one of them, she spanked them all. If she hugged one, well … She stopped and stared back at him too, and then continued walking to her car, got in, and drove off.
Some regrets were deeper than others. She was one of those.
“Ellis!” He turned and saw Drew coming toward him.
“Yeah, hey,” Ellis said indifferently. Drew’s opinions in Cristina’s article didn’t sit well with Ellis, but he saw no reason to bring them up now. Opinions. Assholes. Same difference.
Drew extended his hand to Ellis. “Good seeing you again.”
Ellis shook his hand and nodded.
“So, some of us are going out to Bernard’s tonight to play pool. Wanna come?”
Ellis shook his head, and smiled, amused. “Nah.”
“C’mon, man. It’ll be fun. Like the old days.”
“Those days were fun to you?” Ellis asked sarcastically.
Drew laughed. “Ha. Ha. Yes, they were, as a matter of fact. I’ll buy you a beer.”
“No, really, Drew. I’m good.”
“Hanging out with that reporter friend of yours?” he asked, not so casually. The question caught Ellis off guard.
“Excuse me?”
“Don’t play coy with me.” He winked. “With a hottie like that, I know it’s not all about interviews. She’s been in and out of town several times, if my sources are correct.”
Fucking small-town nosiness. There was nothing like it.
“I also hear she’s been trying to track down Daneen.”
Now that was news to Ellis. “Where’d you hear that?”
“Ran into a cousin of hers the other day,” he explained. “Said some reporter was trying to track her down, and gave her her phone number to give to Daneen.”
It was bad enough that Cristina had spoken to his father. And it sucked that she’d even pinned Drew down to answer a few probing questions about Ellis, but two people were off-limits, and he’d made that clear to her from the beginning.
“You can have your interview, but don’t write about Daneen Conner or Vince Henderson. Is that clear?”
And she’d agreed.
“Did she find her?” Drew asked.
Ellis shrugged. “Don’t know.”
“Is she still in town? Your friend?”
“Why?” Ellis asked impatiently.
“Just curious. Maybe you can bring her along when you come to Bernard’s tonight,” he said, starting to walk away. “Seven, man. And don’t tell me you’re not coming. I won’t take no for an answer.” Drew climbed into his BMW and drove away.
As soon as Ellis got home, he dialed Cristina’s number.
“Hi, Ellis,” she said.
“I thought we had an agreement,” he said abruptly.
She cleared her throat. “What do you mean?”
“I told you that Vince and Daneen were off-limits in this article.”
“I remember.”
“But you don’t give a shit.”
She didn’t respond.
“Look, I’ll give your editor back her money, and then some, but this—this bullshit article’s not going to happen, Cristina.”
“Ellis—”
“Nah. It’s not about my work, Cristina. You’re digging up shit that’s nobody’s business. It was supposed to be about me. That’s it. Not about anybody else.”
“We need to talk about this.”
“No, we don’t. You keep Daneen’s name out of that article or I’ll sue the hell out of you and Jules’ fucking magazine.”
“Why is she off-limits?” she asked angrily. “Why are you protecting her?”
“Are you serious?” Ellis raked his hand down his face. “After what you told me the other night, you really don’t get it? Daneen is a victim in all this, Cristina. Dredging this shit up again is only going to make her have to relive that shit all over again. Same with Vince. Or do you really not give a shit?”
Again, she was too damn quiet.
“You found her. Didn’t you?”
“Yes,” she said softly.
“This is fucking bullshit. You know it.”
“I do know it.”
“Don’t put her in that article,” he warned her.
“Like I said, you and I need to sit down and talk this through.”
“You and I have nothing else to talk about, Cristina.” He shook his head in disbelief. “Look, I know that you’re wounded. I get that. And I wish that there was something I could do about it, but—”
“You can’t.”
“Right. I can’t. But don’t—don’t turn your pain on other people. Don’t put her on blast like this. She doesn’t deserve it. You know she doesn’t. After what happened to you, I’d think you’d get that.”
“It’s not what you think.”
“Of course it is,” he argued.
“Ellis, it’s really not.”
“People hurt you. I get it. She was hurt too. It is the same thing, Cristina. It’s exactly the same.”
“If you’d just listen to me,” she said.
He paused, and an image of Lucinda Henderson came to mind. “Nah, you listen. Daneen’s built a new life for herself. I’ve moved on and she’s moved on and you need to leave that part of my life alone. I mean it.”
“It amazes me how protective you are of Daneen, Ellis.”
“I loved her,” he admitted.
“Then I’m sorry for you.”
“Don’t be sorry for me, Cristina,” he said dismally. “At least I know love. I know sacrifice in the name of it. And I don’t regret it. I feel sorry for you, though. And I wonder if you’ll ever get past what happened to you so that you can know love too, instead of just wallowing in what happened to you for a lifetime, and not even notice it when it’s right here in front of you.”
After several moments, Cristina sighed. “I’ll leave her out of the article,” she finally said.
“Thank you.”
Cristina hung up without saying another word.
CHAPTER 16
She’d come back to Blink to tell Ellis about the conversation she’d had with Daneen yesterday, but after speaking with him on the phone earlier, Cristina couldn’t justify having that conversation with him anymore. The damage was done. Ellis had gone to prison. Vince would never get up out of that wheelchair, and Daneen would have to live with the guilt of what she’d done for the rest of her life. Knowing the truth would be hell for Ellis.
She’d keep her promise, though. Cristina would leave Daneen’s story out of the article. The revelation from Daneen had really left and impact on her her, though. How could she lie and implicate an innocent man for raping her? And why Vince? Cristina had asked her these questions, and that same dumbfounded expression filled Daneen’s eyes every time.
“He kept asking me who’d done it,” she told Cristina.
“But why Vince, Cristina? Why didn’t you just say you didn’t know?”
“I don’t know,” she said, her voice quivering. “A name came into my head. Just a name. And I’d barely said it before Ellis shot out of the door. I don’t even think I meant to say Vince’s name, but … But I did.”
It made no sense, not to Cristina and not even to Daneen. Cristina thought back to her own experience and about how she’d have rather choked on the words “I’ve been raped” before telling a soul. Daneen was afraid. Cristina could relate to that. She was confused, and she no doubt blamed herself on some level for what Drew had done to her. Lump all of that in with the responsibility she felt for saving her parents’ jobs, and yeah. The pressure she must’ve been under was tremendous. It wasn’t fair. To have another human being feel that he had the right to violate you so personally, so intimately was so fuckin
g unfair.
“I thought that was you.”
Cristina looked up from her glass of wine and into the face of Drew Jones, leaning over with his hands on her table. Her heart jumped into her chest, and without realizing it, she held her breath. This was not happening.
He smiled. “I was under the impression that you’d left.”
All of a sudden she was afraid, and Brian’s face flashed in her mind.
“You all right?” he asked.
She quickly composed herself. “Yeah,” she lied.
“Drew raped me.” Daneen’s words came back to haunt Cristina.
“You look a little stressed,” he said, coolly.
His expression was menacing. Drew’s tone was cordial, but there was an underlying hint of a threat there. Or was it just her imagination?
“I’m tired,” she said, forcing a smile. “Getting ready to head home soon.”
“Home?” He turned his head to the side and squinted. “San Antonio?”
“Yes,” she lied again.
Every alarm in her body shrilled to deafening levels.
“Some of us are in the back playing pool.” He motioned his head in that direction. “You should join us.”
“No, thanks,” she said, trying to keep her voice steady. “I was just about to leave.”
“You sure?” The smile was gone. Drew’s dark gaze bore into her like he knew that she’d discovered the truth about him.
“Positive.” She swallowed, her heart racing. “But have fun.”
Drew straightened up and stared down at her for several beats. “Take it easy, Cristina,” he said, coolly. “Hopefully, I’ll see you again.”
Merciful God! Hopefully not.
As soon as he walked away, Cristina immediately picked up her purse, rushed out of the door, and headed straight for her car, keys in hand.
“Cristina?”
She turned to the sound of her name, and everything went dark.
* * *
“Don’t fight, Cristina.” He laughed. “It’ll be easier if you don’t fight me.”
“Turn her over.”
“Not yet. She’s got a lovely ass.”
“Yeah, but those titties.” He smacked his lips and tore at her blouse.”