by Linde Lean
Only later, I realized that he had it all planned because despite being drunk, he was still sober enough to use the condom he had the foresight to have with him.
At first, when he kissed me, it felt good, but then he pushed me down onto the grass, and I was so naïve that I did not realize what he was doing with the slip of voile he had in his hand.” Closing her eyes, to hide her shame from Ryan, she went on.
“I was not ready for him, all I felt was pain.”
Turning her face from him, Jenny continued, unable to hide her pain. “I must have cried out, but he just placed his hand over my mouth, muffling my cries.”
Ryan watched her chest heave, as she recounted what happened.
“My tears streamed down my face, he felt them and heard me, but he just carried on. I battled to breath. I can still remember how hard his hand was over my mouth! I moaned my pain, but still he just carried on grunting his satisfaction in my ears! Later I was further humiliated, when the other boys at the orphanage sniggered that ‘Miss Prim and proper got what she had coming to her.’
Swallowing the lump that had formed in her throat and fighting her tears, Jenny took a deep breath, “He left the orphanage, and I so hoped that I was wrong, that the boys were wrong, that he would make contact with me, wanting to believe somehow that would make the whole sordid ordeal okay. He never did.
All I ever wanted to do was forget the whole thing, and I thought I had. Talking to you about it was the last thing on my mind. To me you are my first.”
Ryan leaned towards Jenny, his remorse knew no bounds. He whispered, “Honey, he raped you, you should have said something, gotten someone to help you.” Ryan rasped out, angry with himself as much as the young boy who had hurt her emotionally and physically.
“Later I realized, what he did, but all the while it was happening, I never said no, I did not resist, how could I go screaming rape?”
The anguish in her voice tore into him.
Slowly she turned over onto her side, away from him. “I am tired, tomorrow is going to be a long day.”
“Honey, please look at me,” leaning over her he felt her shrink from him.
“Not now…”
Ryan heard her say as if to herself.
“Anyone who can touch you can hurt you.”
Ryan knew she meant that in the physical as well as the emotional sense, anyone could hurt you if you let them close enough.
He wanted to ask if she still had contact with this Perry guy, to test her reaction, when she realized that he knew of Perry’s connect to her and Derrick. But something held him back. Was it cowardice of what he might learn, or his own inability to cause her further misery at this time?
He’d kept this information from the police and he had told Paul that under no circumstances could this be revealed to the police. This, his attempt to protect her in some small measure. But what the Defense had come up with, he had no way of knowing.
Raking his hand through his hair, he sighed, he had really made such a mess of everything. He had tried the past weeks to reach out to her, but she’d kept on rejecting him, refusing to address the issues they had, and avoiding him whenever she could. He should have pressed harder.
His timing tonight before the conclusion of the trail was way off. He would have preferred to sort through all of this with her before she had to face the ordeal again in court.
Leaving Jenny, who appeared to have fallen asleep, he went to his study. It was late but Paul immediately picked up the phone, he sounded a little sleepy, and gave a throaty laugh when he heard who it was.
“Your timing is off, my friend, my wife and I want to get an early night,” his implied connotation quite clear, to Ryan.
“Tell me about it! Sorry, but I am sure Lindy won’t hold it against me, have you found out anything further on the case?”
“Everything I have on the kidnapping, your attorneys has, on the assault on Jenny, well I have been promised a copy of the file tomorrow. Ryan, how serious was Jenny injuries when she came home?
“Paul, the only injuries I could see were the bruising on her cheek, and around her neck where Derrick had chocked her. This is rather personal, but Jenny has the habit of undressing and dressing in her en-suite, it comes from a lifetime living in the orphanage. I teased her about it but she persists in doing it, so in all honesty what other injuries she had, I am ashamed to say, I do not know. Though she did go to her own doctor a few times for a checkup, she flatly refused to go to our family doctor.
Paul, man I messed up royally, with the shock of Andy’s kidnapping I did not give her the support she needed, on top of what you dug up on Perry and Derrick I found myself swinging between protecting my child and giving Jenny the benefit of the doubt.
Even now, for the most I cannot believe she was involved with Derrick but how can I be sure? Especially as we never gave the police all the information we have.
On top of that Jenny does what she is good at, she has kept to herself, and tried to fade into the background these past months. Not even my mother or Mary can reach her. She refused to come down and join us for supper, and takes all her meals in her room. I get the distinct impression if I force the issue she would rather starve than join us.”
Ryan did not add that his shock in finding out she was not a virgin was also a factor. For Ryan it was not so much that he wanted Jenny to be a virgin, than that he had just assumed she was, and then when he discovered that she was not, he felt betrayed.
Paul knew that Ryan must really be very upset, if he was this talkative, and settled into a comfortable position, with his beautiful, wife nestled on his chest. Paul patiently listened to his friend, well into the night, as Ryan tried to make sense of what had gone so wrong in his life.
When Jenny woke up, she felt no joy or pleasure, knowing that so much had happened in such a short time. From the moment she came to this wonderful home, and family everything had been so right for her. Then just like that, all of it was gone. The joy, the laughter and the love were lost, in a wink of an eye.
Andy was the only constant thing in her life at the moment. She was perhaps not being completely fair to Ryan’s parents, or to Mike and Mary, they were trying very hard to bring order and normality to a world gone mad. But their loyalties were torn. Given an ultimatum, there would be no contest. The Barnard’s would always stick together and support their own.
Well that is, after all, what she always thought families were supposed to do. She did not want to drive a wedge between Ryan and his family anyway, and that is why she kept to herself where possible and said as little as possible. But this did drive home to her again how fragile her relationship with them were and again punctuated just how easy, it was to loose something very dear. Something she’d chosen to forget since leaving the orphanage, to her detriment.
Looking at herself in the bathroom mirror, she acknowledge she looked a wreck, her hair had lost its natural luster, and the dark rings under her eyes made her look even more haunted.
Taking a deep breath she walked out of the bathroom, dressed, in a cream knit jersey pants, and coral cotton knitted top. Her hair braded into a French braid down her erect and slender back.
She suddenly stopped, when she saw Ryan sitting in the bedroom armchair, how long had he been waiting?
“Morning, I came in to check if you were ready, I see you still change in the bathroom, rather than in your room?”
Feeling, gauche Jenny could feel a blush steeling into her face.
“Jen, Honey I am only joking.” Coming up from the chair he walked to her and placed his arm around her, and led her from the room.
She was not sure where this concern for her was coming from or why, but she accepted it complacently, for now.
Their drive to the Court House was completed in almost in silence, Ryan tried to make light conversation but Jenny’s stilted replies had him also lapsing into silence as they drove.
Jenny watch his hands as he competently handled the powerful car, flashe
s of what those well cared for strong hands had done to her and the pleasure they had brought her, well remembered despite her effort to erase them.
She dropped her gaze to his legs, this was worse, fascinated at the display of his thigh muscles under the tailored black pants, as he engaged his driving skills, reminded her of the image of his legs locked intimately with hers.
Looking up, she encountered his intense look, meeting his smoldering, eyes, she quickly looked away and made as if she was engrossed in the view outside the car. She felt the light touch of his thumb on the side of her face as he gave her a loving caress.
“Jen, Honey, we will get through this, trust me.”
Jenny closed her eyes and swallowed back the tears, his words, ‘trust me’ rang in her ears. Could they recapture what they had, could she dare trust him again?
Jenny recalled how she used to stand at her window and watch him leave in the Bentley in the evenings, wondering who the lucky lady was, that he was spending his time with. But then that changed, and he stopped staying out overnight. Surely he would not have done that for her, if he did not love her?
More and more, she became part of his family, and she came to enjoy a lifestyle she was unaccustomed to. But that was not the greatest gift she received, it was the love and family that came with it, treasured things that now it would be appear, was lost forever.
The trial today was something she did not even want to think about. Old wounds were going to be reopened, and she would have to relive everything that had happened to her. She felt so humiliated, would her shame never end? The closer they got to the Court House the tenser she became.
Ryan could feel her tension and he could feel her slipping even further away from him. The more he tried to reach her the more she was withdrawing from him.
On their arrival, his parents, and Mike and Mary were there to greet them, Mary and Susan gave Jenny a warm and loving hug, Reed and Mike tried to make light conversation with her, but she hardly acknowledged them.
Jenny felt as if she was sinking deeper and deeper into a black void, and she did not know how to reach out to the caring people around her. Her self-preservation was now paramount.
Ryan and his family exchanged concern looks when they saw her reaction.
The proceedings were about to commence, when Jenny excused herself and said she was just going to the cloakroom. Ryan, and then Susan and Mary offered to go with her, but she firmly declined saying she preferred to go on her own.
Ryan waited for her to come back he kept a lookout for her return, his watch indicated she’d been gone for an unusually long time.
He turned around again as he heard the courtroom door open, but it was only a journalist, just as he was about to get up to see what was keeping her, he saw her. Jenny had taken up a seat in the back row of the courtroom. When he looked at her, she dropped her head, and he then knew that leaving to go to the cloakroom was just an excuse, she did not want to sit with him or his family!
Damn, the situation was getting worse and deteriorating faster than he knew how to fix. This was far worse than he thought it was. She was mentally and physical withdrawing from them and the proceedings.
Jenny had to put distance between her and the man she loved and the family she had grown to love. She felt so worthless and what ever was going to come out in the proceedings today may make her look even more guilty than that awful night, when the police took her away from Ryan, and he had made no attempt to stop them.
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Chapter Thirteen
The Court proceedings were going well, on the charges of kidnapping, Derrick and his accomplices were going to be put away for a very, very long time.
Then the State started to present their case, on the charges, of grievous bodily harm. Ryan looked back at Jenny, but she was just staring down at the floor in front of her. She was not looking at anyone or making any eye contact. He wanted to get up and sit with her, but then he would have to ask the person sitting next to her to move, and he was not sure she would not just get up and run out.
He brought his attention back to the proceedings the bastards must get their just deserts. First up, was the video footage shot in the house, Derrick had kept the surveillance on the whole time and ironically these tapes were going to be used as evidence against them.
The State Attorney confirmed that though there was no sound and the angle of the camera made it impossible for the lip-readers to qualify what was being said, it was clear that Ms. Smith was putting up a tremendous fight and that she was not a willing participant.
The Defense Attorney, took a pointer, and indicated on the video to the jury where Jenny was laughing with the kidnappers. The Court was deadly quite, a person could hear a pin drop.
Jenny felt herself sink deeper and deeper into the black hole. Her humiliation was complete. After this Ryan, his family and everyone here will think that she is a whore.
Placing her hands over her eyes, she pressed her fingers against her eyes, willing the tears away. Not now, not yet.
The State then went on, and played the tape the police Child Psychologist had taped when Andy was interviewed. Ryan was so proud of his son, who spoke clearly and told everyone that his Jenna, shared her food with him, she kept him safe when the men tried to hurt him, but then they hurt her instead.
Then his little face puckered up and became very serious, he had the same mannerism as his father, and lifting his little brow, he said that Jenna had told him that they were in the Jones’s house, and that as he knew the garden very well, he could go home if he wanted to.
Of course he wanted to, so Jenna told him she would go and play with the men to keep them busy, as soon as he heard Jenny laugh, he was to go out via the kitchen door and run down the side boundary fence and not down the driveway.
He was to stick to the trees, just like a soldier. When he reached the fence, he was to climb on the low wall, and creep through between the iron rungs of the metal fence and run for his house. He knew he could fit between the rungs, as he often walked on the wall, and wove in and out between the iron rungs when he went with Jenna on her walk. Well that is what he did, and then he pressed the intercom and his Dad came for him.
Ryan rose from the bench to go to Jenny, the whole courtroom was in a buzz. Everyone realized what Jenny had been willing to do, to protect her young charge and to aid his escape.
But at that moment Paul came into the Court Room and headed straight for Ryan. As he reached Ryan he discreetly went onto his haunches and handed Ryan an envelope. Paul placed his hand on Ryan’s shoulder indicating that he should sit.
Ryan was just about to tell him that he would look at the contents in a moment, but the next words from Paul had him sitting down.
“My friend, you better be seated when you look at these photographs. These are the photographs the State is presenting to the court, of what was done to Jenny. Hell, how she could have hidden this from you, I do not know. She should’ve been in hospital, never mind in your house or in her room!” He looked at Ryan accusingly.
Mike leaned closer and heard everything.
Jenny saw Paul when he entered the Court Room and watched as Paul placed his hand on Ryan’s shoulder to keep him from getting up and then their urgent conversation.
She noted Mike’s concern as he listened as well. Jenny could no longer take any more recriminations. She had to get away. If the State needed her as a witness, well too bad, there was just no way she was going to go up there and tell everyone, that she invited to be raped by three men.
Getting up, Jenny rushed out of the Court Room.
Ryan at that moment was looking with horrified eyes at the photographs that the State Doctor had taken. His report substantiating that she had been severely beaten, her ribs cracked, she had concussion and she was in severe shock.
His report stated that the injuries and her mental condition were definitely not indicative of her being a willing participant in what happened to her. He did n
ot agreed with the allegations that it had just been rough sex. His report concluded that in his opinion she had devised this plan to get the child away from the kidnappers.
Ryan looked at the photographs, which clearly depicted her badly bruised body, horrible welts laying across her ribs, inner thighs and across her tender breasts.
These horrific photographs told their own story.
The last photograph Ryan looked at was of Jenny laying in the infirmary, a white sheet pulled up over her and tears running down her face.
Ryan closed his eyes, in pain—when she needed him the most he had not been there for her. Instead he’d allowed his pride and what he discovered the night when they made love, to cloud his judgment and common sense.
Her explanation last night about Perry was more than enough for him, to know this was not planned and she was not involved. How Perry and Derrick fitted into the matter he would still find out and his own method of justice will serve if Perry was involved in the kidnapping in some way. He would not put her through anymore trauma. As far as he was concerned he could now put that aside.
He also did not need, Mike’s indrawn breath, and that of his Mother and Mary, nor his Father’s silent but bright eyes, as they looked at the photographs, to know he had messed up.
His family also felt guilty, they too had let her down, and she had gone through this all alone these past months.
Turning anguished eyes to look at Jenny he found her seat empty. He felt the shock hit his abdomen like a vicious blow. He asked his father to keep the fort, and, he commanded Mike and Paul to follow him, he had to find Jenny!
The three men exited the courtroom and scanned the busy corridors, but there was no sign of her.
Ryan saw the ladies cloakroom and rushed to it, but in his gut he knew that, this was not the reason why she was no longer in the Court Room. She had taken all she could take. She was at the end of her tether.