Tim was awake when I opened my eyes. “Hey, sleepyhead.” He kissed the top of my head. “Last night was…amazing.” He stretched his arms above his head and placed me in another hug. “I’m not just saying that. It sounds kind of lame, but I mean it.”
I hugged him tighter and kissed his chest. “No, I agree. It was amazing.”
“What are your plans for today?”
“I don’t have any. How about you?”
“Nothing. Too cold to do anything outside. Do you want to do something, or are you sick of me yet?”
“I’d love to spend the day with you. I have an idea.” I sat up and pulled the sheet up to cover my bare chest. “I want to see if I can find out if my grandma is still alive.” I paused as I realized how crass that probably sounded. “When I left home, I never looked back. I stopped all contact with everyone. I didn’t want my mom or stepfather to find me, and I knew my grandma wouldn’t have been able to keep my secret.”
“That’s incredibly sad. I’m sorry your life has been so hard, Val.” He sat up, his feet on the floor. “I’d love to help you. If you tell me her name, we can try to look her up on the computer system at the barracks.”
“Won’t you get in trouble for that?”
“It’s Lawrenceville, Val, do you even think they'll notice?" As he stood, he arched his back as he stretched and pulled on his boxers. "Besides, my uncle is the Chief, no one cares what I do, or at least they don't say anything."
"Thank you. That would be helpful. I tried my hand at Facebook stalking, but she's old." I laughed at the thought of my gram scrolling through the X-rated memes and teenage drama. I got dressed while Tim was in the bathroom and started a pot of coffee. Gabriel met me in the kitchen, meowing for his breakfast. I bent down to scratch under his chin and scooped him up. I hugged him against my chest and kissed his head. "You're such a good boy, Gabriel. I know, I know, breakfast is late this morning." I placed him back on the floor and poured his food into his dish.
I opened the refrigerator to look for something to make for breakfast, but the shelves were empty. I took out the creamer and set it on the counter. “Looks like I need to go shopping, buddy.”
“I’m not a big breakfast guy, coffee is all I need.” Tim’s voice surprised me. “Whoa, sorry to scare you.”
“Oh, it’s not you, just that pesky startle reflex years of trauma leaves behind.”
“I hate that you’ve had such a shitty life. It gives me all the more reason to make sure you have the best rest of your life.”
“Corny. I didn’t know you work for Hallmark.” I laughed as I handed him a yellow smiley face mug.
“Says the lady that owns this mug?” He shook the empty cup in the air.
“Fair enough.” I smiled as I took out my favorite blue ceramic mug. “I really do love that you want to protect me. It’s hard to believe you mean what you say, but I’ll try my best.”
We took our coffee into the living room and sat together on the couch, Gabriel between us.
"What's your gram's name?"
"Marianne Cooper. I think she's eighty-seven now. She's what I've missed the most since I left my old life behind." I rubbed my blue mug between my hands. "She actually gave me this the last Christmas I was home. This and an assortment of tea." I took a sip of coffee as memories came back. "She had no idea what happened to me. My mom told me we couldn't tell her because she would have been disappointed in me. She said I was an embarrassment to the family."
“Jesus, Val, your mom sounds like a real bitch.”
“Yeah, she’s worse than that. She’s evil. You only know part of the story.” I looked up at him to see if he was ready to hear my truth. “There’s so much more I’ve never told anyone. My mom is the only one who knows, but she wouldn’t believe me.”
"You can tell me if you want, Val. I'll believe you." He put his coffee down and put his hand on my knee.
“Are you sure? I mean, it’s early and this is…disturbing.”
“I’m sure. Wouldn’t it be nice to get it out? I know when I talk about something, I feel better about it. One of my counselors once told me that once you let it out, either write it or speak it, you’re free from its power. I think that is some of the best advice I was ever given.”
“You’ve been to counselors? As in plural?”
"Yeah, after my mom and dad got divorced, I had a tough time. They fought so much, I felt guilty for pretty much everything. Do you see one?"
"No. I haven't been to a counselor since my time at the group home before they took my baby. That's actually part of the story you don't know."
“So, when you say you haven’t told anyone, you mean you haven’t told anyone?”
"Yeah, Gabriel knows, but who is he going to tell?" I scratched behind his ear as I focused on his shiny black fur. "When I was about thirteen, my mom brought me to see a counselor, psychologist, actually. She said I needed to work through my anger. I didn't think I had a problem; I mean, I was thirteen and my hormones were going crazy. Looking back, I think I was just a normal teenage girl. That ended shortly after I started seeing Dr. Ross.
"My mom didn't like it when I talked back to her or rolled my eyes. My dad hadn't been in the picture for years, but she started threatening to send me to go live with him. After a while, I told her that it didn't sound so bad. When I wanted to go, she told me he didn't want anything to do with me and I was stuck with her. She said I was lucky, at least she wanted me. I told her I didn't think that made me lucky, just cursed. She didn't like it when I started to fight back. That was when she said my anger was out of control and I needed to talk to someone. She made a point of finding someone with a Ph.D., because that made them professional and they'd be able to see through my bullshit."
“She does sound evil.”
"Yeah, well, it gets better." I took a drink from my now cold coffee. "I didn't like him the moment I met him. I told Mom I didn't want to go, but she wouldn't listen to me. She started going to see him when I was in school for parental meetings. The more time she spent with him, the worse my visits with him became."
"He told me he had a treatment that could fix me. He went on to tell me if I told anyone about this treatment, they wouldn’t believe me, and I would be put in a mental institution. This was after several visits where we talked about how awful mental institutions are, and how unsafe they are. So, I have this in the back of my head. This fear that left me open to anything."
His sigh filled the silence while I took another drink. "Things started slowly. First, he put his hand on my knee, then he moved it to my back, then to my chest. He told me he had to see my breasts to make sure I was developing correctly. When I questioned him, he reminded me he was the professional. When I took my shirt off, he removed my bra. The looking turned to touching. Each visit, we would start with him feeling my breasts, telling me if they had grown."
“Jesus.”
I cut him off before he could say anything else. "Things escalated to him showing me his penis. He sat on the couch next to me, his pants off, with it in his hand. He proceeded to masturbate and then put my hand on it, telling me to do what he had been doing. He said he would show me more next time."
Another heavy sigh escaped from Tim as I continued, holding the empty mug between my hands, trying not to make eye contact. "I begged my mom not to bring me back. I couldn't tell her why. She told me to stop being difficult and basically told me to shut up. The next visit, he told me to get naked. He skipped the small talk and took his clothes off, too. This time he finished the lesson by raping me. I didn't know what it was called then, I was just scared. I hadn't even had a boyfriend yet, hadn't even kissed a boy. And this grown man was shoving his dick in me. I had never experienced pain like that before. I cried the whole time he was on top of me. I closed my eyes as tight as I could and tried to imagine myself anywhere else but under him. When he was done, he said if I ever wanted to be anything, I had to know how to please a man. When he collapsed on top of me, he told me I had a l
ot of work to do, but not to worry, he would teach me."
“Oh my God, Val. I am so sorry.”
“This went on for the next couple of years. Not every visit, but every visit involved something gross.”
“Oh, Val.”
"No, wait, there's more." I took a deep breath, set my mug down, pushed my back against the couch, pulled my legs up to sit like a pretzel and continued. "All those parental visits must have turned into the same as mine, because before long we had a joint meeting at our house where they announced Mom was going to become Mrs. Dr. Chad Ross and we were going to move into his house." Years of pent up anger came crashing down on my shoulders. I sat up straight to hold the newfound weight. "Once we moved in with Chad, I had to change schools and get rid of most of our stuff. We moved away from my grandma and all of my friends, and then…the ‘treatments’ intensified. I never knew when he’d be in my bed, or if he would walk in on me when I was in the shower.”
Tim moved closer to me and placed his hand on my back, his head hung low. “I’m so sorry.”
“Still more. But can you please stop saying you’re sorry? I’m okay now, and I’m not telling you this for pity.”
“I’m sorry…I mean…it’s just hard to hear about someone I love being hurt. I’ll just listen now.”
Someone he loves. His words pushed out some of the shame. “I started getting sick. I couldn’t keep anything down. My boobs started hurting. Funny thing is, I didn’t even notice when my period stopped coming. At fifteen, they hadn’t started being regular yet. My mom finally took me to the doctor’s after months of my complaining. They ran so many tests; everything came back negative…until the pregnancy test. When the doctor walked into the room and told my mom I was pregnant, the look she gave me probably hurt more than the years of being raped by her husband.
"On the way home, she lectured me about being a tramp, a whore…you name it, she called me it. Without thinking, I yelled at her to shut the hell up and told her if she could have kept her husband off of me, it never would have happened. She slapped me across the face and told me I was lying. When we got home, she ran straight to him and told him. He told my mom it would be best for me to go away, and before the weekend, they delivered me to Sawyer's Home for Unwed Girls.
"I didn't know the social worker was working with my mom behind my back, and no one told me they were stealing my baby from me until it was too late. The whole time I was pregnant, I thought about the kind of mom I wanted to be, and I promised my baby I would take care of it, no matter what, and they made me break my promise. They knew all along, but Chad must have told them to lie to me, play along because they all pretended I was going to be leaving with my baby.
"After I had Gabriel, my mom was waiting for me. She was there when they took him from me, and she signed all the papers to terminate my rights. She drove me home from the hospital. I didn't even have a chance to pack up my stuff. Some of the girls packed it for her and loaded it all into the car. The whole ride home she told me how lucky that little baby was that he didn't have to grow up with a whore of a mother. Chad was waiting for me at the house when we got there and gave me a list of rules. Mom took his side and assumed I was lying. He had a list of prescriptions waiting for me that one of his friends prescribed me. He told them I was psychotic and the drugs would help me with my hallucinations. I refused to take them, so they tried to sneak them into my food.
“Eventually, I just stopped eating, unless it was something I cooked myself. Chad never got in trouble for what he did to me. My mom never left him.”
“That’s a lot of shit to have to go through. I totally get why you don’t trust people and why you keep to yourself. I know you don’t want me to say I’m sorry, but I want to tell you how brave you are and… thank you for trusting me.” He picked up my hand a kissed the top of it.
“Not only do I trust you…but I lost my virginity to you last night.” My stab at sarcasm came a little too soon.
“Well, thank you for the beautiful gift.”
I couldn’t hold the laughter in. “I should have saved it for Christmas. Now I won’t know what to get you.”
“Jesus, Val, I was being heartfelt. You know how to kick a guy when he’s feeling vulnerable…but I wouldn’t mind a repeat of last night for Christmas…it just feels a little wrong to joke about it after hearing all that.”
“You’re a detective…you must hear horrific things all the time.”
“Yeah, but it’s never about the woman I love.”
And there it was again. “Love?”
“Yes, Val, I love you. I can’t pretend any longer. I’ve loved you for a long time, but last night just sealed the deal.” His dimples pushed through his day-old scruff. “You’re so hard to read, but I love that about you. You’re mysterious.”
“You have no idea how mysterious I can be.” I winked at him as I stood up to stretch.
“And…”
"And what? Oh, yeah, and I love you, too. Are you happy?"
“Incredibly so.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
When we pulled into the parking lot at Tim’s office, it was empty. There was no excuse for not doing what we came for. Tim pulled a chair up to his desk and pushed the button to turn his computer on. “Marianne Cooper, right?”
“You remembered, I’m impressed.”
"This is important to you. Of course, I remembered." He typed her name into the search bar and waited for the results to populate. "How old did you say she is? Eighty-seven?"
"Yeah, I think so. Did you find her?" I scooted my chair closer to try to see the screen.
“There is one that looks like it might be her in Windsor. Is that close to where she was living before?”
“Yeah, pretty close. Does it give an address?”
“Um…445 Bluebird Lane. Let me try to pull that up…something called The Nest; it looks like it may be a senior housing complex. That would make sense.”
“I’m not surprised Mom would dump her there. Can you tell how long she’s lived there?”
“Well, at least a year, but I can’t tell. Sometimes they don’t update this system as often as they should, especially the non-criminal side of things.”
“Can you look up Chad Ross? And see if there is anything on him?”
“Yeah, sure…hold on…um…it looks like he’s clean.”
“Hmmm…so either he’s never done it again, or some other girl has been bullied into staying quiet.” I pushed my chair back and stood up. “That really pisses me off…he never got in trouble…and he probably never will. It’s too late for me to do anything to him now.”
“Val, it’s not too late to charge him with the sexual assault. You were a minor…that means you don’t have a time limit to report.”
"I don't know…I mean, they probably wouldn't believe me anyway." Memories of that time came rushing back. My mom's red face took over the room. I could feel her hot breath in my face as she called me a whore. She wouldn't even listen to what I had to say. She was under Chad's spell. I stopped trying to explain what happened because it didn't matter.
Tim’s hand on my shoulder broke me out of the memories. “Val, I believe you.”
“I hadn’t even considered you didn’t. Huh…that’s strange, isn’t it? I held all of it in for all these years, because I didn’t trust anyone, and just like that, I pour it all out for you. I didn’t even feel like I had to prove anything to you.” Our eyes made contact. “I do trust you. Thank you…for believing me…and for loving me.”
“I do love you, Val. I’m so glad you trust me. I really want to help you make the bastard pay for what he did to you.”
“I’m not sure I’m ready for that yet. I don’t think I’m in a good enough place to face him or my mom yet…I’m not sure I ever will be.”
“I get it. That’s a lot to think about. I’ll be here whenever you are ready, even if you never are.”
“It’s kind of a joke that Jeanine asked me to start that trauma support group. I
mean, me? What the hell do I know about trauma?”
“Um…probably more than most people do. You lived through some horrific shit; I think that’s what makes you so easy to talk to. You get it. Not many people have that gift.”
“Gift? I always thought of it as a curse.” I picked up the broken heart pendant around my neck and rubbed it. “But maybe you’re right. I do understand the pain of losing people I love. That’s what landed me the awesome title of deceased patient coordinator. Most people want to run away from sadness, but I want to wrap myself up in it. When other people are in pain, it helps me feel normal. That’s kind of twisted, isn’t it?”
“Not at all. I’m a detective for the same kind of reason. When my dad left, he would disappear for weeks at a time. I never knew when he would show back up, or if he ever would. When I meet with families in crisis, I know what they are going through. It’s not just a job to me.”
"You're pretty amazing, Detective Phillips. I never knew this soft side of you."
“Same.” He laughed as he pulled me into a hug. “All that sarcasm had me fooled.”
“Ha-ha, you’re so funny.”
“And there it is.” He pulled me in tighter before he kissed the top of my head. “Do you want to go see if we can find The Nest today?”
My heart dropped to the bottom of my stomach. “I don’t know. I don’t know if I’m ready to visit my old life yet.”
“We don’t have to visit anyone; we can just take a drive and have a look around.”
“I guess it’s a nice day for a drive.”
We stopped to get coffee and filled the car up with gas. Tim entered the address into his GPS and we hit the road. Windsor was about two hours away from Lawrenceville and about an hour from Benton, where my mom and Chad lived. The trees had lost most of their leaves, leaving the countryside brown and dreary. The clouds filled the sky, leaving no room for the sun to peek through. The day matched my feelings about the trip; melancholy. I always loved that word because, like me, it had more depth to it than just letters on the paper. On the surface, it appeared to be more than it was, but under the layers of it, the truth was revealed.
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