I slammed the chairs into line then scooted them across the floor so they were even. “I don’t know. Trina is capable of many things normal people wouldn’t do.”
He was quiet for several moments. I knew he watched me as I fiddled with the plastic blinds, trying to create a perfect horizontal line across the bottom. “Okay,” he said finally. “Is there anything I can do?”
“Nope.”
“Rowan?”
“What?” I demanded.
“Do you really think Trina would make this up? I mean, isn’t it possible that this guy she’s accusing actually did rape her?”
I kicked a chair across the floor. “I gotta go.” I darted for my backpack. “That okay with you?”
He hesitated. I’d been bailing out on work a lot this week. “Sure, Rowan. You have a lot going on.”
“Hmpf.”
“Rowan?”
“Hmm?” I focused on finding my keys.
“Rowan?”
I looked up. My keys dangled from my forefinger.
“Are you okay?” There was something in Dan’s expression that aggravated me. He cared too much, maybe. I don’t know what it was; only that it made my skin crawl when I met his gaze.
“I’m fine. Just like always.” I pushed through the door.
I HAD to check on Scout and Levi. No one else fed or gave Levi water and now with Scout, there was no way I could stay away that long. I drove home and pulled into the driveway, easing past Dad’s truck and parking beside the house.
Light filtered through the heavy curtained windows, but the house still looked closed-off, resistant somehow. I didn’t hear shouting but that didn’t mean the mood inside was a good one. Levi greeted me and I bent to my knees to pet him.
The world lay quiet around us, deceptively peaceful and serene. Chills spread across my skin, even though it was warm out. The back of my neck prickled and my muscles were tense and uncomfortable. I was stretching just as a car pulled into the driveway.
It wasn’t a car I recognized; an old sedan that looked straight out of a seventies cop movie. But I did recognize the driver. It was Christian Dalton.
Levi whimpered and I loosened my grip around his neck, not even realizing how tightly I was holding onto him. Christian didn’t see me in the shadows, but I watched him shut the car door and walk toward our house. His hands were shoved low in his jeans’ pockets. His hair was closely cropped, perfect for showing off his angular face.
My phone dinged a new text message, but I didn’t bother to check it. Lights were on in my parents’ room, which sat closest to the side of the house where I huddled with Levi. Trina’s room was just down the hall from there, and her lights were also on. Further down the hall was my room, the only bedroom window at the front of the house. That window was black.
Christian rang the doorbell. No one answered the door for several moments but then Dad’s voice said, “Can I help you?”
I could only see the porch from the side and Dad didn’t come out of the door. What was the expression on his face? Anger? Feigned curiosity? Barely veiled impatience?
He would be civil, polite to Christian. That is, until he found out he was the father of Trina’s baby. There would be no civility then.
“Sir,” I heard Christian say. “My name is Christian Dalton. Can I speak to Trina?”
“Why do you want to speak to my daughter?” Dad’s voice was deep, gruff.
“Sir, Trina is a friend of mine. I’d just like to talk to her a moment.”
“Trina!” Dad boomed. “There’s a boy named Christian here to see you!”
I could see it now. Trina would slowly make her way toward the door, eyes downcast. She wouldn’t want to come, but even she wouldn’t push back at Dad. And Dad, he would stay by the door, arms crossed, looking every bit the fearsome prison guard. If Christian was smart, he would turn around and leave.
BUT HE didn’t. “Trina, can I talk to you outside?” Christian asked into the house.
“You can speak to her right here.” Dad’s voice was full of concrete walls and razor wire.
There was a pause, one of those and time stood still moments. Trina was still huddled inside the house and I could only see Dad’s shadow. Christian, who was almost as tall as Dad, dropped his hands to his sides. His shoulders fell forward.
“Trina,” Christian said. “Leave Mike out of this. He doesn’t deserve to be dragged into this.”
“Mike?” Dad asked. “Mike, the boy you say raped you?”
“Sir,” started Christian, but he didn’t finish his sentence.
I could see part of Dad’s body now, straddling the doorway. He was looking inside the house. Christian didn’t move away and I really wished he would.
“Trina, answer the question.”
Trina’s cries wafted out into the night. I stepped around the corner.
“Why is this boy here?”
No answer.
“Why is this boy here?” Dad thundered and I jumped. Trina’s crying grew louder. “Why is he here?” Waves of icy chills spread over my skin. Christian eased down the steps until he stood on the grass.
“I’m here, sir,” he said, “to ask your daughter to tell the truth.”
“Yeah? And what truth is that?”
Christian straightened his spine, as if pulling to his full height brought with it the courage of Achilles. He was almost as tall as Dad, but missed the mark in weight by at least thirty pounds.
“The truth is that Mike did not rape her. And the father of her baby is me. And not by rape. I promise you, it was consensual.”
Trina whimpered somewhere just inside the door.
“What did you say?” my dad seethed. Though I couldn’t see his face clearly, I could picture it in my mind’s eyes. His teeth were clenched; his lips pulled back like a feral lion.
Christian cleared his throat. “Sir, I am the father of your daughter’s baby. Not Mike Anderson.” He projected his voice; like the louder he spoke, the more credible he sounded.
“Get off my property!” Dad shouted.
Christian didn’t move.
“I said to get off my property before I grab my shotgun. There is no law against me defending my property!”
Christian backed toward his car. He didn’t run, which I would’ve done. He didn’t even walk fast. He opened his car door, but just before he slid inside, yelled, “Trina, tell the truth!”
“Get off my property!” Dad roared.
Christian got into his car and peeled out of the driveway. It was dark now, everything cast in black; everything that the lights from the house didn’t reach. Even the moon was hiding. I wished I could’ve been up there with it.
“What was that boy saying, Trina?” The screen door slammed shut behind him. “Did you screw that kid? Is he your baby’s father?” Dad’s voice was full of fire and volcanos and hurricanes and tsunamis. “Trina!” he yelled again. “Is he the father?”
Trina’s sobs carried through the screen door and rolled out into the yard. Then she screamed and something hit the floor. My eyes shut against the sound but nothing could keep the echo away.
“Amy! Your daughter got knocked up by some black kid! Did you know that, Amy? Can’t you do any better by your daughters than to raise a slut? A no-good whore who will screw anything she sees?”
Something crashed. It sounded like a table falling over, a lamp smashing into the floor.
“Jack, please.” Mom’s voice pierced the night air.
“Don’t Jack, please me! The apple didn’t fall far from the tree, did it?” His tone was full of hate and disdain. “Whoring around in high school, getting knocked-up. Do you think she was trying to trap that Anderson boy like you trapped me?”
Something else crashed. “Trina! Do you think the Andersons wouldn’t notice that baby looked nothing like their son?”
My ears vibrated with his fury. I stepped toward the porch, ignoring the voice inside my head that told me to run.
Get away from there.
/>
Go to Dan’s.
Go to Gran’s.
Go to Mike’s.
But I couldn’t do any of those things. My feet would only take me toward the light, the door, the catastrophe unfolding behind it. At the bottom step, I stopped.
“You’re nothing but a no good whore. Just like your mother.”
“Daddy, please!” Trina cried. I heard what sounded like a smack. Trina screamed again.
Where was my mom?
“I’m leaving and I want you out of this house before I get back!” He tore through the door and was on the porch before I could move out of sight.
“Daddy!” Trina stumbled out behind him.
He faced the door, his hands clenched by his sides. “I never want to see you or your bastard baby ever again.”
He stormed to his truck and slammed on the gas. The truck skidded out of the driveway.
“Daddy!” Trina screamed.
But he was gone. I took one step, then another, easing toward her. I felt like I was in a trance. Like what had just happened was in a different time mode. If a switch was flipped and time returned to normal, would it wipe out everything that had just happened?
Trina was leaning against the wall, her hands on her stomach. She hiccupped between sobs. I could see Mom’s shadow fall across the porch. She was at the door but she was not coming outside. She was not going to console her daughter.
Trina looked shrunken, helpless…lost. Her shoulders had grown thin and bony. Was it the baby? Too much cheerleading practice? She was starting to look more like me.
“Trina?” I stayed on the bottom step.
Her eyes were glassy and red. They hardened in their focus on me. “Did you tell Christian to do this?”
“Tell him to do what?” I stopped mid-step at the fire in her words.
She pushed off the wall and turned toward me. “Tell Christian to come here and say that he’s the baby’s father?” It sounded like she was struggling to speak; like it took extreme effort to form words and release them from her lips.
“What? Trina, what are you talking about? Of course not.”
“You couldn’t stand it, could you? Couldn’t just let this family live in peace for one single minute.”
I felt like we were on two different trajectories, speaking the same language but with vastly different meaning.
“Trina, I’m not the one who came home pregnant.” My words were soft.
The sound she made was a cross between a guffaw and a hiccup. Maybe a snort. It was an ugly sound and I cringed.
“What’s wrong with you?” I reached out a hand to her, not really wanting to touch her, but not able to keep my hands by my side. She moved out of my reach.
“There’s nothing wrong with me that can’t be traced back to you. There’s nothing wrong with this family that can’t be blamed on you.”
The air in my lungs evaporated like someone had hooked a vacuum up to my chest and flipped the switch on. I put my hands up. Don’t go there. Please don’t go there.
“You’re the one to blame for everything wrong with this family!” Her voice rose with each spoken word and her eyes darkened with unspoken meaning. “Dad would be happy.” She waved her hands through the air, slicing her palms with each word she spoke. “Mom wouldn’t be in bed all the time like a depressed whale!” Her tone was raspy, raw.
“Trina, please stop.” I tried to pull oxygen into my lungs.
“It changed everything, didn’t it?” She released her words in short spats. I could almost see them; like when they left her lips, they took on a physical form. Little balls of crusty blackness, their insides full of hidden, yet raging lava. And that lava shot out of the blackness as she spewed the words at me.
How could she blame me for Aidan’s death? How could Dad? Mom? How could I still blame myself?
Once Aidan died, the blame had washed over me wave after wave. It was a look, an attitude, a mood that grew like a weed in our family. But it was rarely spoken about, said out loud.
“Mom wouldn’t come out of her room,” I whispered. My hands and my knees shook like I was standing on a dryer.
No one ever said, Rowen, you killed your brother. Or, It’s your fault that he died. But the blame was there. It was as constant and as real as the trees that grew outside of our home. I was blamed for the demise of our family. And I had only been ten.
A feeling almost unfamiliar to me started deep in my gut. It started with a bubble, like water on the brink of a boil. Then it got stronger, hotter, and wouldn’t be contained. It was anger. Anger at my mother for being all but dead and not protecting us. Anger at my father for being a bully, enveloped in his sorrow and his rage. Anger at my sister, standing in front of me, her stomach still as flat and taut as the other fifteen-year-old girls at school. Anger at her for getting knocked-up and for now blaming me.
“I’m not the one who got pregnant, Trina.” My tone was full of the rage simmering in my blood. “I didn’t make the stupid decision to let myself get knocked-up. You can’t blame me for that.”
It felt good. The anger fueled me somehow, and it gave me energy. I balled my fists and leaned my chest forward.
I took another step. “So, you take yourself and your little baby and leave. Just like Dad said!”
She stumbled backward as my words got louder and louder.
“I’m going to make something of myself. I’m going to graduate high school. You’re going to be stuck at a girls’ home for young mothers. Then I’m going to go to college while you’re stuck bottle feeding a baby. Then,” I was shouting now, “I’m going to go to veterinary school. I’m going to become a veterinarian and I’m going to leave this shit town! And guess what, Trina. I’m never coming back!”
I pushed past Mom who was standing just inside the house. I didn’t even acknowledge her or the tears that streamed down her face. I scooped up Scout in my room, and ran back out of the house. I left Mom crying in the family room, likely already on her way to the bed where she would spend the next several days. I left Trina crying on the porch. I left the guilt and blame that had hovered over me since I was ten years old.
Screw this family.
I couldn’t wait for graduation to get out of here. I couldn’t wait for Mike.
And I saw my future clearly for the first time ever. Dan was the answer. Dan was the only one who could get me out of my life. Once I turned eighteen, there was nothing anyone could say.
I LOADED Levi and Scout into the car. I had just shut the passenger side door when headlights illuminated the driveway. Squeezing my eyes shut, I tried not to look up. There would be no one coming to the house that I wanted to see.
The engine died. The car door opened. It slammed shut.
“Amy!” Dad bellowed.
I squeezed my eyes even tighter.
“Amy! Get out here!”
His words were full of rage. Any anger I’d tasted earlier was gone, squashed in the overwhelming fury of his.
Trina, whimpering, eased off the porch and slid down the side of the house. Her eyes were large, watery, the terror not veiled at all. I stood frozen by my car, watching him stomp toward the house. He stumbled over his own boots but righted himself.
“Amy!”
Then he saw me. He stopped on the bottom stair, turning first his head toward me, then, as if remembering there was more, his body. Trina stopped too, pressing herself flush against the house. If I didn’t know she was there, I wouldn’t have been able to see her in the darkness.
I gripped the car door, trying to steady my wobbling knees. Dad’s eyes were black, dark; focused like a wolf.
“Come here,” he commanded.
I couldn’t move. Trina whimpered but he didn’t seem to hear.
“Now!”
I let my fingers slide off the cool metal. One footstep. Then another. He had me locked in the forward motion, even though I knew that moving toward him was the last thing I should do. But I couldn’t help it. In his stare was my sentence. In his co
mmand was my action. I was powerless.
He didn’t move to meet me. My feet were like lead but mobile, moving me toward those eyes. The light of the porch lit his face, making his skin look pale, sallow. There were pink etches across the apples of his cheeks.
Then I couldn’t help it. My feet stopped. I was almost to the bottom step but couldn’t continue forward.
“Rowan,” he said, his voice lethal.
My knees buckled but I pressed a hand against the house. I steadied myself just enough to remain upright.
“Rowan.”
It was a command even my shivering legs couldn’t ignore. So I stepped forward. I felt the palm of his hand against my cheek before I realized he had even moved. I stumbled back, but I didn’t fall.
Two steps and he was before me. My hand covered my cheek. He whipped his hand in an arc across his chest, then hit me with the back of his hand. I slammed into the dirt. I landed hard. My dad was a strong man. Trina’s cries grew louder, or maybe it was the ringing in my ears.
“Get up.”
No. If I got up, he’d hit me again. No. I wouldn’t get up.
“Jack! Stop!”
Mom ran out of the house and grabbed his arm. Dad shoved her off. I didn’t look up at him but I felt his eyes burning their rage into me.
“Jack!” she said again. “Don’t do this.”
“Don’t do what, Amy? Discipline my own daughter? After this one,” he waved his hand at me, “I’ll teach that other girl what happens when she gets pregnant.”
Trina wailed and disappeared completely. Dad heard her, though. “Stop right there, Trina. I’m going to teach both of you girls a lesson you’ll never forget. So the two of you don’t turn out like your good-for-nothing mother here.”
I scampered back. “What did I do?” I shrieked. The sting across my cheeks emboldened me. “I’m not the one who is pregnant!” I struggled to make my eyes focus.
He lunged forward, slamming his fist into my face. Black colored my vision. Like looking through a shadow, I could just make out his outline, standing over me. Stabbing pain throbbed in my head.
A Life, Redefined (A Rowan Slone Novel Book 1) Page 10