Resilience

by Tymber Dalton

  Tom didn’t know what to say. When they got home, Zoey raced inside without waiting for them, and when Tom tried to go talk to her, she’d already locked herself in the bathroom and was taking a shower.

  Exhausted and in physical agony, in addition to his emotional pain, he limped into their bedroom and sat on the bed as he tried to unbutton his shirt.

  Nevvie walked in and closed the door behind her. “You want to say it now or later?”

  “What?”

  “See, I told you so. Go ahead. I’m sure you’re dying to. See, we told you they shouldn’t have gone to that party.” She ripped off her shirt and flung it in the hamper.

  Tom froze, staring, feeling the ice starting to give way beneath him and hoping he could ease himself off the weak spot without either him or her breaking through.

  “Nev.” He held out his hands to her, waiting.

  She paced across the bedroom, in slacks and a bra. “I shouldn’t have fucking let them go, but goddamn, the boy’s parents were fucking there! And where the hell were they while that little fucker was doing that to her!”

  “Nev.”

  “I let her go with her sister and their older brother. You’d think that’d be safe, but hell, didn’t fucking matter, did it! I was wrong to think they should have gone, and—”

  “Nev!” She pulled up short as he barked it, fear in her eyes. “Baby girl,” he whispered, hands still held out to her. “Come here. Now.”

  She blinked a few times, her eyes going bright and he knew the storm was imminent. By the time she’d finally crawled into his lap, the tears were rolling down her cheeks and she pressed her face against his shoulder to muffle her sobs as he held her.

  * * * *

  Tyler was waiting for Zoey when she emerged from the bathroom. When he held his arms out to her, she went, letting him fold her into his embrace and lead her into her room. He sat with her on her bed as she cried again, and he wished there was something he could do other than feeling utterly helpless.

  He hadn’t felt this helpless in decades, since the attack that put Nevvie in the hospital, when Tom had blamed him and they’d barely been able to hold things together for her.

  “I promise you, sweetheart, we’ll make him pay. We’ll get a conviction, we’ll sue his bloody arse, I don’t care what we have to do or how much we have to spend, he will pay.”

  “I wish I’d listened to Willow and Mikey,” she said. “Steven, too. He tried to tell me Cole was a jerk. That night at the party, now I know why Steven tried to stay with me. He must have worried Cole would try something.”

  Mikey had already told them Cole had a reputation as someone who went through a lot of girls, and who liked to brag, but most of the kids just thought he was mouthing off, not being literal.

  Mikey hadn’t heard of any stories of girls being raped by him.

  Once she’d cried herself to sleep, he left her door standing open and headed downstairs to make sure the house was locked and the alarm set. On his way down the stairs, he encountered Adam, who wore a mirror image to the grim, stony expression he knew he displayed.

  “Locked and alarm on, Dad,” he quietly said. “Is she okay?”

  Tyler shook his head. “Asleep.” He reached out and gripped Adam’s shoulder tightly. “Promise me,” he said. “Promise me you won’t do anything rash. Uncle Bob will be here in the morning and he’ll take over for us with the police.”

  Adam finally nodded, and Tyler gave him a hug before allowing him to continue on to his room.

  Bloody hell.

  Tyler headed downstairs and, realizing he really didn’t have anything to do down there, headed up again. In their bedroom, Nevvie lay softly sobbing in Tom’s arms on their bed. Feeling helpless in this way, too, Tyler climbed into bed with them and held her between them and hoped that he had the strength to get them all through this.

  And the strength not to think about using some of Augustine’s methods on Cole Johnson.

  * * * *

  Bob called before he rolled into their driveway at eight Thursday morning. Zoey was still asleep, and Tyler, Tom, and Nevvie locked themselves in Tom’s office to bring him up to speed.

  “You need to call Elliot and get ahead of this,” Bob said.

  “Why?” Nevvie’s ragged tone, combined with her red, puffy eyes, was the physical embodiment of Tyler’s emotions at that moment. “What’s he going to do?”

  “This will get out,” he said. “It’s not a matter of if, but when. That new Netflix mini-series based on the Augustine series drops, what, in four months? This is going to get crazy fast.”

  “She’s a minor,” Tyler said. “They can’t name her. She’s a victim of a…” He coughed, realizing his own head wasn’t in the game and he needed to watch not only how he talked about this around Zoey, but around Nevvie as well.

  Maybe too many years of writing about a serial killer as a hero has dulled my empathy.

  “Leaks happen, Ty. Maybe not immediately, but once it gets to trial status, if he doesn’t plead it down she’s going to have to testify. I know damn well none of you will remain home, even under threat of death. One of you will be spotted, and that’s all it’ll take for someone to run with it. If not that, one of her friends will let it out once the police start questioning people.”

  “Jesus Christ,” Tommy muttered. “He’s right. Call Crystal.”

  “Who’s Crystal?”

  “Girl in Elliot’s PR shop who’s handling my account with him,” Tyler said. “Nevvie’s been working with her.”

  “I’ll call her,” Nevvie said, standing. “I’ll call her right now. Maybe she’ll have some…” The heavy sigh rolled out of her, created a hole in the floor, and burrowed to the center of the earth.

  She left the office.

  Bob slowly shook his head after watching her leave. “Okay. So…for starters, let me guess. You never got Nevvie into counseling over what Alex did to her, or what happened to her as a kid, did you?”

  Tyler and Tom shook their heads.

  “Fuck.” He scrubbed at his face with his hands. “All right. So mission one is trying to keep Nevvie from ripping the guy’s nuts off on live TV. Mission two is trying to find every bit of goddamned dirt we can on this kid and leaking it or passing it on to the cops. If there are other victims out there, if one has come forward, maybe that’ll help others find the nerve to speak out. If so, that helps Zoey’s case, and—”

  A soft knock on the door interrupted them.

  “What?” Tom said.

  Mikey opened the door, a sick look on his face. He held out his phone. “You need to see this.”

  It was a Facebook posting from fifteen minutes earlier, which had already received several responses.

  OMG, cops just came to talk to me bout a party I was at. I think Cole J raped someone!!

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Nevvie hoped she wasn’t waking Crystal up. She took her phone out to the lanai and sat by the pool. From there, no way the kids could hear her talking in their rooms.

  Crystal sounded bright and bubbly. “Good morning, Nevvie!”

  Nevvie closed her eyes and started to talk, then choked up. “Hey.”

  “Is everything okay? What’s wrong?”

  “No, it’s not…”

  It sounded like Crystal was crying, too by the time Nevvie finished telling her the story and that Bob was there. “Oh, my god, I’m so sorry. I…I know how you feel.” Her voice hitched. “I was raped when I was in college.”

  Hell of a club to be a member of. “I was eighteen,” Nevvie admitted.

  “Look, I can be there by this afternoon. I’ll book a hotel room and we can talk once I get there. You need to take care of you and Zoey right now. I’ll coordinate with Mr. Campbell when I get there and we’ll take point on this. Don’t give any media statements. I’ll take care of calling Mr. Paterno for you, you leave that to me.”

  “Not a hotel. You can stay here.”

  “I really appreciate that, but righ
t now, Zoey needs space and privacy, and I’ll be okay at a hotel. Maybe another time, but let’s take care of your family first.”

  More tears, that Crystal was even thinking more clearly than she herself was right now. “Okay, thank you.”

  “You call me if you need me before I get there. I’ll text you once I’m about an hour out. And tell Mr. Campbell, please, if he needs me to call me.”

  “Wait…how’d you know Bob’s last name?”

  “It’s in Mr. Paulson’s file.”

  “Oh, duh, of course. I keep forgetting they’ve all known Tyler even longer than me and Tommy.”

  She returned to the office, her one small positive ray shattered when Tom, Tyler, Bob, and Mikey all looked at her.

  “What?”

  Bob took point. “Sit down, Nev.”

  Her heart chilled. “What is it? Just fucking tell me!”

  Bob handed Mikey’s phone to her and she barely swallowed back the scream in her throat as she read the posting. Tyler had to pry the phone out of her hands and return it to Mikey.

  “Nev, listen to me,” Bob said. “I’m going to head to the station now and talk to this Detective Cash and rip her a few new bodily orifices. Under no circumstances whatsoever are you to get on social media and reply. Nothing. Radio silence. Do you understand me?”

  Nevvie closed her eyes and nodded.

  “That goes for you, too, son,” Bob said. “The best way to help your sister get justice is to keep our mouths shut and not do anything to jeopardize the investigation. Turn off the notifications on your phone, and if anyone texts you or calls you about it, don’t talk to them, don’t respond, nothing. Let every call go to voice mail for now, unless it’s one of your family or me. Got it?”

  “Yes, Uncle Bob.”

  Tom winced as he changed position in his chair. “Why don’t you and Adam and Willow go on over to Grandpa Andy’s and help out with the cleanup and unboarding his house? And Colin’s. Don’t forget to check Grandpa John and Grandma Kelly, too.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Nevvie hadn’t even gotten that far yet. From his years in the Air Force, her father was pretty self-reliant. Other than checking in once the storm had started, but before the shit had hit the fan with Zoey’s revelation, Nevvie hadn’t even told them all of this yet.

  “I need to go talk to Mom and Dad.” She forced herself to her feet, feeling…

  She didn’t know how she felt.

  She hadn’t even put on decent clothes yet, still wore one of Tom’s old T-shirts and a pair of pj bottoms. She slipped on a pair of Crocs at the front door, grabbed her car keys, and drove down their driveway, across the road, and up again.

  Her dad was already outside, working on cleaning up a few limbs that had come down. Their house, like their own and Andrew’s, had the automatic roll-up shutters, so that task was already completed.

  “Nev? What’s going on?” He walked over to hug her, and she found herself once again sobbing and crying, until he got her inside and sat down on the couch with Kelly.

  That’s when Nevvie finally choked the story out.

  The whole story.

  Not just Zoey, but herself as well, what had happened to her.

  She’d never wanted to burden them with that, because they’d been teenagers when they’d had her and given her up for adoption under pressure from both sets of parents. She’d never wanted them to know what had happened to her, because it wasn’t their fault.

  An hour later, she lay with her head in her mom’s lap, cried out. For now.

  Her dad looked murderous.

  “John,” Kelly said. “You aren’t going to hunt that boy down, either.”

  “Make a bet?”

  “No,” Nevvie said, her throat raw. “Please, let the cops handle it.”

  “Since the cops have done nothing but louse things up so far, why shouldn’t I get a chance to at least make the kid feel some fucking fear?”

  “No, John,” Kelly firmly said. “I mean it.”

  “Besides,” Nevvie sniffled, “while you and Tommy were arguing about who got to hit him first, I’d be going in and killing him myself.”

  She finally headed back home. Zoey was taking a shower, and Tom, Ty, and Bob were huddled around the coffeemaker in the kitchen.

  “I talked to Mom and Dad,” she said, letting Tom pull her in for a hug. “So now they know, and Dad wants to kill Cole Johnson, too.”

  “Keep those kinds of comments confined to this house,” Bob warned. “I’m not even kidding.”

  “I think I want to keep me confined to this house,” Nevvie said. “And I’m not even kidding.”

  * * * *

  By the time Crystal made it to Savannah, Tyler had told Andrew and Colin what was going on, which was a good thing, because Steven had also been interviewed by the detective. With school still on hold due to the hurricane’s aftermath, law enforcement had been able to locate most of the kids they’d needed to talk to quickly and easily.

  One problem—the kids being out of school and able to flood social media meant by Thursday night the news had spread like wildfire.

  And someone at the party had attached Zoey’s name to it as well.

  With none of their kids active on social media that day, supposition was high. Nevvie knew she’d have an earful for the detective the next morning, at a meeting the detective had called them at eight that night to schedule.

  Nevvie didn’t know what she’d expected when Crystal arrived, but Nevvie found herself liking the young woman even more than she had over the phone. Oddly, Nevvie got the feeling Andrew wasn’t very fond of her for some reason. Nothing concrete, but he certainly seemed more formal with her than she was used to seeing him act.

  Tomorrow’s plan was for Crystal to meet with them and Bob after the next consultation with the cops to see what, if anything, they needed to do next.

  Meanwhile, Crystal, who was now friended on Tom, Tyler, Nevvie, and the kids’ social media accounts, so she could hopefully see at least some of the posts the others were being tagged in, would do her best to gather as much information online as she could. If she found anything that looked like it might be evidence in the case, she’d contact them immediately to turn it over to the cops.

  With Crystal handling that for them, it took a weight off Nevvie’s shoulders. She knew, rationally, she shouldn’t be on social media at all right now, because the temptation to wade in on her daughter’s behalf was too damn great, and even she’d admit it.

  She couldn’t handle this.

  Once they got Zoey through this, she knew she needed to deal with her own issues.

  But my kids come first.

  * * * *

  Tom hadn’t been sure what to expect with Crystal, but the young woman certainly didn’t act like a pushy honey badger. If anything, the way Nevvie had clung to her in a tearful hug when she first arrived told him more than anything that maybe Crystal needed to be there with them, in the thick of things. If nothing else, to give Nevvie a safe, neutral outlet.

  “Mr. Kinsey, it’s nice to finally get to meet you.”

  He shook with her. “You can call me Tom.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Hello, Crystal.”

  “Hello, Mr. Paulson. I’m really sorry about your friend. And I’m sorry I’m here under…these circumstances.”

  “It’s all right if you wish to call me Tyler.”

  “I appreciate that, Mr. Paulson, but you’re my client. Maybe after a few years, but right now, I’d prefer it this way.”

  “Very well.”

  Tom had almost expected to feel a hint the girl wanted to get more familiar with Tyler, from the way Tyler had talked about her. But as he listened to her talk to Nevvie and Bob about what was going on and she got up to speed, he had to admit the girl seemed to have a certain…focus.

  Like a lightsaber.

  Meanwhile, Zoey had mostly stayed in her room all day. They’d taken her phone and given her one of Nevvie’s Kindle Fires
so she could watch movies or read, but even Zoey admitted she didn’t want her phone right now.

  Especially once she started getting text messages from friends asking what was going on.

  Nevvie monitored it, keeping an eye out for anything they might need to alert the cops to.

  But by the time they all collapsed in bed around midnight, Tom’s emotional and physical reserves were used up.

  And he damn well knew he couldn’t take a pain pill, or no way in hell would he be up early enough in the morning to get to the station.

  “This is going to be crazy, isn’t it?” Nevvie whispered.

  “I’m afraid so, love,” Tyler said.

  She lay in the middle tonight. As they both cuddled her between them, Tom wished there was a way their money and success could just fix all this mess. Not only for Zoey—but for Nevvie as well.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Tyler felt heartsick that he couldn’t fix this, for any of them. Friday morning, as they headed to the sheriff’s station, Tyler driving, Tom riding shotgun, and Nevvie sitting in back with Zoey, Tyler struggled against the building rage he felt at the bastard who’d done this to their daughter.

  Tom’s angry silence next to him did little to alleviate his own nerves. He also hated himself for wishing they could have kept Nevvie home, or foisted her off on Crystal. This would no doubt be one more massive trigger for her, but he couldn’t demand she stay behind.

  Not that she would have even if he’d ordered her to.

  He only hoped she kept her calm, reined in her anger, and didn’t alienate the detectives and prosecutor over her own past issues.

  Unfortunately, Bob wouldn’t be there yet, but he’d already told Tyler over the phone they could interview Zoey again and he didn’t have any objections to that as her attorney, unless the cops started asking questions that made it look like Zoey had consented to what Cole did to her. He’d been held up at his hotel, on a conference bridge call with his Orlando and Tampa offices about a large class-action case, and would be unavoidably delayed. Tyler had hoped for Bob’s calming presence to help keep Nevvie in check.