Benevolent

by Leddy Harper

  “Dane. One thing at a time, please. Let’s start with the first since I barely heard anything after that. Why are you splitting your company with me? I don’t need you to do that.”

  I smiled and let out a small laugh as I thought back to when I had hired her. Thinking about her words as she talked about taking over my company. I had told her to let me know when to show up for the vows. I should’ve known then, but I didn’t.

  “I am going to share my life with you, Eden. Every single bit of it. And that includes Kauffmann Investments.”

  “I don’t want it, Dane. That’s your company, not mine.”

  I held her face in my hands and made her look right at me as I explained. “When you left, you broke me. Not only was half of me missing, but so was half of my company. It’s not the same without you. You are amazing at what you do, but I don’t want you as my assistant. I want you as my partner. My partner in life, and in business. I can’t do anything without you.”

  “It’s all so—”

  I cut her off. “It’s not rushed. What did I tell you last night? We may be going at a faster pace than most, but that doesn’t mean anything is rushed. I finally have you back; I’m not slowing down for shit. If you don’t want to help out in the company, that’s fine. But the front of the building says Kauffmann Investments, and you are going to be a Kauffmann. So either way, it’s going to be yours.”

  She nodded and kissed me. “Okay. Fine. You win. Now on to the other things you said. When is it that you would want to get married?”

  “Right now. But that can’t really happen since we have to have a marriage license first. And your parents aren’t here. But the second all of that happens, that’s when I’ll marry you.”

  “You’re crazy. And as for getting all of my stuff here, it already is. I came here preparing to never go back. I don’t have much, but I brought it all with me. Janette kind of helped me with all of that.”

  “Janette. What happened with that?”

  “You told her who I was.”

  I rolled my eyes. “I know that. And I didn’t mean to. She told me something very personal and things just kind of slipped into place. I didn’t mean to blurt it out. I’m so sorry. I know you had said you didn’t want her to know, and she had said that knowing would only keep her tied to the incident. I’m so sorry.”

  “I’m not. I knew a long time ago that I was a product of rape, my mother told me before I left for college. That’s why she didn’t want me knowing who my birth parents were. But once I found her, I just wanted to know her. After I met her, I found out what really happened, the whole thing. And that’s when I decided she could never know who I was. But I’m glad you told her. She contacted me and we talked, a lot. She said knowing about me made things easier for her. She had long ago let go of the hatred and pain from that night, but what never left her was the pain of not knowing anything about her child. She said she often thought about me, wondering if I was okay, if I was happy. She never tried to find me because she feared I would be like whoever it was that fathered me.”

  “How long have you been talking to her for?”

  “About a month. Every day. She called me every single day and we talked. Really talked. I finally got up the nerve to ask about you and that’s when she told me everything.”

  “I told you everything. I left message after message.”

  “It’s different coming from you, Dane. I felt betrayed by you and a part of me didn’t want to believe what you were saying. I thought you were just saying those things to get me back. I thought you were only telling me things I wanted to hear. I told you. I was angry and hurt and upset.”

  “So what changed your mind?”

  “I don’t know. I was talking to Janette last week and she told me you asked about me.”

  “She said she hadn’t heard from you.”

  She smiled. “I know. She told me that. I asked why she told you that and she said it was because you were already hurting enough and she didn’t want to hurt you even more by telling you the truth. But none of that matters. I’m here now. I have the love of my life, the man of my dreams, and I have two mothers that love me unconditionally. I couldn’t ask for more.”

  “God, I love you,” I whispered as I bent down to kiss her.

  We started the ball rolling on adding her name to the company. It wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be. But the marriage license was a bitch. We had to wait three days after getting it before we could even get married. That ended up turning out to be fine, though. It allowed her parents time to come to Florida. They packed and I bought them plane tickets. I anticipated a fight when Eden called to tell them, but there was none. When I asked her why they didn’t object to her marrying me so soon, she explained that she had told them everything after going home. Apparently, they were kind of expecting it after she came back to me. She told me that as she was saying goodbye to them, her dad made her promise to not get married without him there to give her away. I wanted to know what she had told them for them to be so calm about it, but she wouldn’t tell me. She said it didn’t matter.

  We didn’t even have to think very long about a venue to be married in. We knew it would be a small wedding—her parents, Janette, and a few people from the office. My parents were out of the country and congratulated me over the phone. They asked me to send them pictures, but that was about it. It didn’t bother me; I wasn’t expecting them to be there anyway.

  Exactly three days after getting our marriage license, I stood on the pier at the beach in a suit and watched as Eden walked down in a simple white dress on her father’s arm. It was the place Eden and I had jumped into the water that night, so we both saw it fit to be the place we jumped together into forever.

  Janette was a notary of the public and performed the ceremony for us. We exchanged vows as we exchanged rings. I placed my grandmother’s wedding band on her finger next to the matching diamond she had worn all her life, and Eden placed my grandfather’s ring on mine. It was quick, just like us. Some people may have called it rushing, but when Eden was at the finish line, there was no way in hell I was going to take my time. I had spent my life doing what others wanted me to do, and I wouldn’t make that mistake again. I wanted Eden, and I wanted her for the rest of my life. I did something for myself and went after her, and I would be damned if I wasted another second of my life waiting.

  Everything happens for a reason.

  In the moment, you never know what it will be. You never know why things are happening. Bad things happen all the time, and sometimes the outcomes aren’t good. But even then, you just have to trust that there is a purpose to it. Sometimes you just have to take those bad things and make something good out of it. That was one of the hardest lessons I had to learn. I couldn’t just sit back and wait for the reason to be seen. I had to get up and make it happen. I had to find the light in all of the darkness. And that’s exactly what I did.

  After being raped, I believed that not all things had a purpose. What was the purpose in having to go through that pain for years? What good could have possibly come out of that? I no longer thought that there was a purpose to everything. I no longer believed that by doing good, good would come to you. I was a good person. I had always done the right thing. I followed the rules and used good manners. But bad things still happened.

  I had latched on to Dane. I wanted him to make me better. For a while, I thought he did. I thought that since bad things were no longer happening to me, that meant he was saving me. Sure, things still happened around me, but I wasn’t being physically hurt any longer. That was until the miscarriage.

  That was so painful to go through. Dane didn’t know, but I had blamed myself. I thought it was my fault because of what had happened before. I thought God was punishing me for what I had done to Sean—for making him suffer for a crime he never committed. But I couldn’t tell that to Dane. He had tried so hard to be there for me. He did everything he could to make me better. I had wanted to be better. I wanted to
make him happy and give him the life he always deserved.

  Dane was a good man, probably one of the best. Like me, he followed the rules and always did the right thing. But it took me years to realize it didn’t stop bad things from happening to him. They were just different than what happened to me. I was the bad thing that happened to him. I brought him down. I made him suffer. I took the light from his eyes and the smile from his face. No matter what I did, I couldn’t change that. I couldn’t give those things back to him. But Eden did. And it took me nearly dying to see that.

  All things happen for a reason.

  I lied and Dane left. I was lost in a sea of darkness and just wanted it all to end. So in a moment of self-deprivation, I tried to end it all. As much as I wish I could take that back, I’m glad it happened that way. The scars on my arms are a daily reminder of the lengths I had to go to in order to be whom I was meant to be. Without that one moment of utter darkness, I would have never gotten the help I so desperately needed.

  Dane had tried for years for me to get help. But I never would have gotten the help I truly needed until I confessed the horrible truth of what I had done to a man that never deserved it. Sean taking his own life in a moment of his own darkness, one I had forced upon him, forced me to open up about the guilt I had latched on to for a decade. He may have ended his life, but it saved mine.

  It led me to meet Kara. It led me to that clinic, the doctors that made me talk, and the realization of what I was meant to do. It took ten years, the suicide of an innocent man, two attempted suicides of my own, and years of self-loathing to finally see the reason behind what Todd had done to me. What my purpose was in life. And that was to help others who found themselves in the same place I was for all that time.

  It allowed me to know the kind of pain these other girls had been suffering through. Kara helped me see that sometimes it’s hard to open up to people that have never felt what I’ve felt, and that was what made it all so clear to me. If others knew how much I suffered, and could see how I had made it through it all, they could feel hopeful that they could do the same.

  Dane’s public relations representative, Janette, contacted me months after realizing this. She sat me down and wanted to talk. She cemented my theory by showing me that I could be successful and happy in the end. She was married with children after suffering through her own personal hell. She even discovered a daughter through it all. I wanted that. I wanted love in the end. Not to save me—I was the only one that could do that—but I wanted love to support me. And I found just that.

  I eventually started talking to my mother again. She wasn’t exactly someone that was in my life, but she was someone that I kept in contact with from time to time. I had forgiven her; I no longer wanted to feel that burden anymore. I let it go and moved on. I couldn’t pay the price for her actions any longer and had left that for her to do.

  I never knew what happened to Todd. I didn’t want to know. It no longer mattered to me how he felt about it. I had wanted him to be punished for so long after what he did. But I eventually learned that it wasn’t any of my concern. Wanting him to be punished was essentially punishing myself, and I couldn’t do that. He was the one that had to live with what he did. I would always smile knowing what Dane had done to him, but after that, I didn’t care. I could not allow it to consume my life any more than it already had, and I just had to put it all behind me. And that’s exactly what I did.

  After the condo sold and I had enough sessions with my therapist to make me feel okay, Kara and I moved four hours away. We began going to therapy there with a recommendation from our psychologist and immediately got started on our new venture. With the help of our new therapist, we started Reasons to Talk. It began with a hotline. It was just the two of us in our tiny apartment and two telephones. But soon, it grew into something bigger.

  After a year, we had an office full of volunteers to answer phones. We handpicked each and every one, making sure they had enough experience to help others. Kara and I went on to speaking arrangements and even met with girls one-on-one. It gave me a sense of peace knowing I was there to help as young women opened up about the horrific things that had happened to them. Nothing felt better than hearing from them later on, hearing them tell me how much we were able to help them.

  Everything happens for a reason.

  Five years after moving away and putting that tiny beach town and memories behind me, I received a phone call from Janette. She asked me if I could attend a dinner function for Kauffmann Investments. It was a charity function and they wanted to donate the proceeds to my organization. It felt like a full circle. I accepted, of course.

  My nerves ran high knowing I would be seeing Dane again after all that time, but I was eager to see him. I had kept up on him through the years and even sent him a card, congratulating him on the birth of his son, Adam. He was born only a year after I left, but since then, there had been no contact between us.

  I was dressed in a flowing black gown and fidgeted with my hands as I waited for him to show up. I didn’t know what to expect. I didn’t want it to be awkward, but had no idea how he would feel after five years apart.

  Michael grabbed my hand in his and smiled at me. “You’re playing with your rings again. It’s going to be fine, I promise. You need to stop worrying; it’s not good for you.” The love I saw in his eyes made everything inside of me settle down.

  I placed my hand on my extended belly and rubbed it, smiling at my amazing husband.

  “You look amazing by the way.”

  “So do you,” I responded and then kissed him.

  The sound of a throat being cleared startled me and I turned my head from Michael’s lips. In front of me stood Dane and Eden. They were an amazing looking couple. He was in a tuxedo and Eden was glowing in a green strapless gown. I couldn’t help the smile that spread across my face.

  “Dane, Eden, it’s so good to see you again.” I hugged them both. “This is my husband, Michael. Michael, this is Dane and his wife Eden. They are the Kauffmanns and are the ones putting this event on.” I wanted it to sound as if I hadn’t spoken of them before, which was a total lie. Michael knew exactly whom they were, and was very excited to meet them.

  After I met Michael, I told him everything. Every dirty truth about who I was and where I had been. That included Dane. He had never disliked him and had even told me once he was glad I had someone like Dane in my life. He commonly referred to Dane as his placeholder, keeping me single long enough for him to find me.

  “Very nice to meet you, Michael,” Dane said, shaking his hand. “And you are looking amazing, Gabi. Pregnancy and marriage seem to suit you well.”

  I smiled. “Being healthy helps with that, too.”

  “Of course. Thank you so much for agreeing to do this. We’ve followed your organization for a while and have wanted to do something for you for some time now. What you’re doing is amazing and I couldn’t be more proud of you.”

  We all talked a little more before sitting down together at the head table. Michael and Dane talked as Eden and I chatted about pregnancy and babies. She showed me pictures of Adam and told me all about him. He was four and had just started preschool. He sounded so smart, just like his daddy. He was a spitting image of Dane and I knew he was the apple of their eye. Not for long, though, since Eden was eight months pregnant with their second child. She was exactly four weeks ahead of me.

  “Do you know what you’re having?” she asked as she touched my stomach.

  “No. We want it to be a surprise. Very few things in life are these days, so we want to keep this one. Makes shopping and names hard, but it’s worth it in the end.”

  “I understand. I wanted to keep it a surprise with Adam, but Dane wanted to know. He found out and I told him not to tell me. We had names picked out for both even though he already knew what it would be. Dane woke me up one morning talking to my belly, calling him Adam. So the surprise was kind of ruined for me. But I was okay with it. I couldn’t have imag
ined a better way for the surprise to have been ruined.”

  I couldn’t help but laugh. I thought it would have been weird to hear a woman talk about all of the things I once wanted with her husband, but it wasn’t. Maybe it was because I no longer wanted or needed any of that with anyone other than Michael.

  “Do you know what you’re having?” I asked and rubbed her stomach as she had done mine.

  “A girl. Evelynn Rose.”

  “That’s beautiful. Congratulations again.”

  Michael interrupted by touching my stomach. He then bent over to kiss my lips.

  Everything happens for a reason. Sometimes you don’t know what that reason is, and sometimes you may never know. But regardless of what you see or what you don’t, there is a reason. You may not like it at first, you may not agree with it, and it may not even benefit you. But there’s always a reason.

  Acknowledgments

  First and foremost, of course, is my family. My amazing and supportive husband, Kevin; without him, I wouldn’t be able to live out my dream. My beautiful girls, who don’t quite understand why I’m in front of my computer so much. I only hope one day they’ll realize it and be proud of me. My parents, who do nothing but show me love and support. And my Mimi, who is one of the strongest people I know. I love you all.

  Amanda Ledford, my Biffel! I don’t think Eden would have been half the person she was without your influence. You truly are an amazing person with more to give than you ever give yourself credit for. You are my best friend and I couldn’t ask for anything more. I’m going to go ahead and thank Dan and Chelsea for starting an office romance. Without that, I wouldn’t have my biffel.

  Jettie Woodruff… Everything happens for a reason. That’s all I can say. I <9 you a hundred mill-i-ion times. I can’t wait for the day that we can do all of those things on our bucket list. I know they’ll be fun and exciting times. Leddy and Jettie all the way!