Janni came out of the reception office and sat next to him, her notepad covered with telephone numbers. There was something strange about the way she was looking at him.
“Cole, I did something crazy,” she said, her tone confessional. “I talked Protective Services into letting us take her . . . temporarily, I mean, until they find a foster home.”
“Are you nuts? What are we going to do with a fourteen-year-old kid?”
“We’re going to make her feel welcome and safe, that’s what.” She took off her glasses and leaned toward him, her bangs grazing the bridge of her nose, and he knew he was in for one of her lectures.
“The county social worker called her mother, who hadn’t even notified the police that her daughter was missing. And you know what she said? She said, ‘can you keep her somewhere for a while? I’m going on vacation.’ Apparently they lived with Rennie’s grandmother, who died in June—she was sort of Rennie’s protector, I guess—and things have fallen apart since then. Plus, she’s got old bruises on her. Stuff from her mother’s boyfriend. He’s beaten her a few times, and she ran away ’cause he was telling her he’d sneak into her room at night. So tell me, sweets, would you really want to see a girl like that stuck in the Children’s Center with all the rowdy kids they’ve got there?”
“Did you check this idea out with Jay?”
“He’ll say yes.”
Of course he would. Cole shook his head, thinking that Janni would be delighted if she could fill all ten bedrooms in the Chapel House. “You’re one of a kind, Jance,” he said.
Rennie’s injuries were worse than he’d imagined. Kit came out of the treatment room, glassy-eyed. “They brutalized her,” she said.
“Why was she bleeding?”
“A tear. Barb had to stitch it. She has a cracked rib. Plus, one of them sodomized her.”
He winced, happier than ever that he’d turned this one over to Barb.
“I don’t think she should be coming home with us,” Kit said. “She’s afraid of men. She’s afraid of you.”
That bothered him, and he was suddenly glad she would be at the Chapel House. He wanted to win this kid over.
23.
“I’ve never seen a bedroom this big.” Rennie stood at the window that looked out toward the ocean. She had the largest of the spare rooms, at the end of the hall next to Janni and Jay’s bedroom. The wallpaper was a bold floral pattern that Kit imagined looked better in this muted, faded state than it had long ago when it was new. But she liked the twin iron beds and huge chest of drawers. She wondered about the history of the room. What self-confident woman in Janni’s ancestry had selected this wallpaper?
Rennie moved from window to window, one hand spread flat against her cracked rib. “The only view I ever had at home was of the dumpster in the Safeway parking lot.”
Kit sat on the extra bed watching her with a smile, glad now that they hadn’t let her go to the Children’s Center.
“Do I have to talk to the police tomorrow?” Rennie asked.
“Yes.” The police were sending a detective in the morning. “It’ll be okay.”
“I’m afraid they’ll make me go home.”
Kit shook her head. “No one is planning on sending you home.” Imagine being fourteen and so afraid to go home that you’d be willing to live with strangers.
Rennie sat down on the bed and stroked the flannel nightgown Kit had set there for her. Her eyes were on the open door. “Is there a key for that door?”
Kit looked at the empty keyhole. “I’m sure there’s one somewhere. I’ll ask Janni.”
“At home I pushed my dresser in front of my door every night, to keep Craig out.”
“Your mother’s boyfriend?”
Rennie nodded. “He told me he was going to . . . do things to me. I always slept with my clothes on.”
“You don’t have to do that here. No one in this house would hurt you.”
“Can I keep the closet light on?”
“Of course.”
Rennie looked at her. “Would Dr. Perelle have done the same things to me that Dr. Chrisman did?”
“You mean examined you and stitched you up?”
“Yes, and . . . everything.”
Kit nodded. “Probably exactly the same. He and Dr. Chrisman trained together. He . . .”
They turned at the sound of a knock on the door.
Cole stood in the doorway, holding a blue parka. “Is this your jacket, Rennie?”
“Yes.” Rennie looked surprised.
He handed the jacket to Rennie, and Kit smiled her thanks at him. She’d asked him to stop by the house where the attack had happened to see if he could find it. The men had stolen Rennie’s knapsack, and the police had taken her clothes for evidence. She was left only with the jeans and sweatshirt Janni’d dug up for her in the hospital’s emergency clothing supply. She had nothing of her own.
Rennie bundled the jacket to her chest, hugging it like a teddy bear. She looked up at Kit. “Could you ask him if he found anything else?”
“He’s right here, Rennie. You can ask him yourself.” She felt sorry for Cole. He was trying hard with her.
“You mean your knapsack?” he asked. “I didn’t see it.”
Rennie tightened her arms around the jacket. “There was . . . a special thing in it.”
“Like what? What would I look for?”
Rennie hesitated. “A plastic box. Just . . . don’t open it, please, but bring it to me if you find it.”
24.
Cole stayed home with Kit and Rennie the next day, waiting for the detective. Rennie avoided him. She clung to Kit, following her everywhere in the house like a puppy.
He’d spent a half-hour at the boarded-up house just after sunrise, looking for her knapsack. But there was nothing in the yard except melting snow and brittle sea grass.
The detective was a woman, Grace Kelleher. She was dressed in gray slacks and a gray sweater and had silver hair, cut to her chin. A wonderful blend of grandmother and cop.
“I’m glad you’re a woman,” he said, taking her coat.
“I’m glad I was available.”
He led her to the dining room, and the four of them sat at one end of the table. Grace introduced herself and switched on a tape recorder. Rennie glued her eyes to it as if she’d never seen one before.
“Just tell me in your own words what happened,” Grace said softly.
It suddenly occurred to him that he shouldn’t be there, but Rennie had already begun.
“Well, I was walking down the street by the beach, looking for a place that was, you know, protected a little—like the porch of one of those closed-up houses—where I could spend the night. I was walking past this one house when I saw these two men walking toward me on the sidewalk. I felt nervous ’cause they didn’t look like the kind of people who live in a neighborhood like that—like this. They walked right past me. Then all of a sudden one of them grabbed me around the shoulders and I could feel something cold . . . I figured out later it was a knife, against . . .”
“Did you see the knife?” Grace asked.
“Yes. Well. Later I did.”
“Go on.”
“He said, ‘Don’t scream or I’ll slit your throat.’ I don’t think I could have screamed, I was so scared.” She glanced up at Grace and returned her gaze to the recorder.
“Can you describe the men?”
Rennie hesitated. “It was dark.”
“Any information will be helpful. How tall were they?”
“Pretty tall, I think, and more skinny than fat.”
“White? Black?”
“White.”
“Hair color?”
“I don’t know. They both had on, you know, ski caps.” Rennie lifted her hands to her head in a halfhearted parody of putting on a ski cap.
“Can you remember their eyes?”
Rennie shook her head. “It was dark and I didn’t look at them long. I tried to, though, ’cause I heard once t
hat if you try to make them see you as a human being then it might make them change their minds. But I couldn’t look at them long enough for it to work.”
He could imagine her desperately trying to lock eyes with those pigs when she could barely hold the gaze of people who cared about her for more than a second or two.
“What happened after he told you not to scream?”
“The one with the knife dragged me behind that house. He told me to take my jacket off, and I did.” Rennie looked at Grace, then at Kit. “Do you think if I’d kept it on they would have just left me alone?”
“I don’t think that would have made any difference,” said Grace.
“I keep wondering if maybe I might have looked at them when they walked past me or something. And maybe they thought I, you know, wanted them to do it.”
Kit was angry. “Rennie, no matter how you looked at them, it’s no excuse for what they did. You didn’t ask to be raped.”
Grace put a hand on Kit’s arm. “Please, Kit, let’s let Rennie finish her story.”
He wished he was sitting next to Kit so he could take her hand under the table. But it was probably better this way; touching her always seemed to be a mistake.
“I took my jacket off,” Rennie said, “and then real fast he grabbed the neck of my sweater and like, bent me back over the wall.”
For the first time Cole noticed the purple marks on her throat. Wendy’s throat. And the way she tilted her head when she asked a question—didn’t Becky do that? The muscles in his hands contracted almost painfully. He could kill right then. No problem, no regrets.
He looked at Kit. Her eyes were on him and he wondered what she’d seen in his face.
“The other guy held me back over the wall while the first one, the one in the Army jacket, um . . . did it.” She looked directly at Grace. “It hurt,” she said in a bewildered voice.
Shit. He looked out the window at the house next door. Salt was eating away at the paint; it was curled and puckered here and there. From the corner of his eye he saw Grace nodding sympathetically.
“Go on, Rennie,” she said.
“I don’t know what else to say.”
Grace waited a few seconds before she spoke. “The exam showed that you were sodomized,” she said gently.
Rennie looked at Kit, her eyes questioning. “She means anal sex,” Kit said and Rennie looked quickly back at the recorder, blushing to the roots of her hair.
He had no right to be witnessing this. “Would it help if I left, Rennie?” His voice sounded deep and loud to him. She nodded without looking up. “Excuse me,” he said to Grace as he rose from his chair.
He picked up his jacket from one of the chairs in the kitchen and walked out the back door. He didn’t stop until he reached the far edge of the beach heather. He squinted into the sun. The water was blue-violet, no boats for as far as he could see. Odd for a Saturday with the sea as smooth as glass. He blew on his hands. The icy wind made his eyes tear, but he didn’t want to go back inside. It occurred to him how much of his life was spent avoiding anything that could cause him pain. So that was normal, wasn’t it? And anyhow, he’d left for Rennie’s sake, not his own.
Rennie had looked frightened two days later when he told her the drive to Corinne’s would take an hour. He wanted to tell her not to worry. He was harmless. Yet he said nothing. He’d have to show her. Prove it to her. She’d been lied to before.
Now she sat as close to the car door as she could get. Her hand was actually on the handle, which made him nervous. Sixty miles an hour on the parkway and she accidentally pulls back on the handle and then . . . Don’t think about it. And don’t tell her to let go of it, either.
Conversation was strained, at best. She was pretending to be mesmerized by mile after mile of bare trees and snow. She hadn’t looked at him since they’d gotten into the car. He tried asking her questions about herself but never got more than a yes or no, whispered against the glass of the window. Poor kid. When he told her he was taking his nieces ice skating, why didn’t she come along, she’d looked too scared to object. He loaded her into the car without giving her a chance to say no.
He was smitten by her, by those wide, innocent blue eyes and pudgy little-girl cheeks. Her smile was so rare, so ephemeral that he found himself trying to prolong it. He would stand on his head if he thought it would work.
“How old did you say your nieces are?” She surprised him with the question, her first words spoken without prompting.
“Five,” he said. “In kindergarten. Do you like little kids?”
“Yes.”
“You don’t have any brothers or sisters of your own?”
“No.”
“Do you wish you did?”
“Sometimes.”
He tried to think of a question she couldn’t answer in one or two words. “When was the last time you went skating?”
“I never ice skated before. I roller skated, though.”
He had to strain his ears to hear her. “My sister and I used to skate on the lake I’m taking you to practically every weekend during the winter,” he said.
She didn’t answer. Her breath formed a cloud on the window.
They stopped at Corinne’s to pick up Wendy and Becky. The twins were bundled up so snugly they could barely move as he buckled them into the backseat.
“They are so cute,” Rennie said.
Seeing the three of them together surprised him. Rennie actually looked very little like his nieces. Wendy and Becky had delicate angular features, while Rennie’s face was as round as the sun. Their eyes were nothing at all alike. The twins’ eyes were greener. How had he ever seen a resemblance?
Rennie was a natural on skates, even with her sore rib. She held Becky’s hand while he held Wendy’s, and they glided around the lake, laughing more often than not. Rennie helped him corral the girls when they tried to go off on their own. Watching his nieces, he had to admit that they had no signs of Corinne’s craziness, at least not yet. Nothing scared them. If anything, he wished they were a little more fearful.
After a while, he pleaded exhaustion so he could sit on a bench and watch the three of them. The girls clung to Rennie, relishing her attention. She was good with them. More comfortable without him there, he thought. Certainly more child than woman. She took to their games as though she’d played them only yesterday. But when Wendy fell, landing with such force that he feared the ice would crack, Rennie wiped the little girl’s tears with a tissue. Even made her blow her nose. She kissed her cheek, and then Becky plowed between them to get a kiss of her own. He wondered what it was about Rennie that made you love her from the moment you set eyes on her.
They ate lunch at a tiny lakeside inn, which hadn’t changed since he’d eaten there as a child. It still smelled of wet wool and burning wood. They got a table in front of the fireplace, and Cole ordered Reubens for Rennie and himself and peanut butter and jelly for the girls.
“It’s hard to believe that was your first time on ice skates, Rennie,” he said.
She looked at the flames. “I didn’t think I did that good. I wish I could skate backward like you do.”
“I’ll teach you after lunch. Really, I think you have a natural feel for it.”
“Where’s my sandwich?” Becky leaned against him.
He put his arm around her. “We just ordered it, Beck. It takes a few minutes for them to make it.”
She pouted at him. “Shit,” she said.
Shit? Out of the mouth of a five-year-old? She was testing him.
“I don’t like that word, Becky,” he said.
“Neither does Mommy,” Wendy said. “And Becky says it anyway. All the time.”
“I do not.”
“Okay, enough. Please don’t use it anymore this afternoon.” He sent Rennie an aren’t-kids-something-else smile across the table, and she dropped her gaze to her silverware.
“Last time we were here ’Stell was with us,” said Wendy.
“That�
��s right,” he said “You have a good memory.”
“D’you know ’Stell?” Becky asked Rennie.
Rennie looked to him for the answer.
“Estelle was my girlfriend,” he said. “We split up and I haven’t figured out how to pass that information on to these two yet.”
She nodded.
The waitress set their sandwiches in front of them and the girls immediately lost interest in the conversation.
He had a sudden brainstorm, a way to get Rennie talking. “Do you have any suggestions?” he asked. “I mean on how I can break it to them about Estelle?”
She shook her head and picked at the sauerkraut spilling out of her sandwich.
He took a bite, washed it down with a swallow of Dr. Pepper. “Help me, okay? You’re closer to being five than I am. How can I tell them that she’ll no longer be a part of my life?”
She bit her lip. “Do they like her?”
“They love her.”
“Will they ever get to see her again?”
He shook his head. “Very doubtful.”
“Don’t tell them that. Tell them she’s gone away for a few months or something, and after a while they’ll forget about her.”
He didn’t like the answer, but it was not really good counsel he was after.
“I guess I could do that,” he said. “But I’d feel dishonest. Then if they ever figured out that I lied to them, they’d have a hard time trusting me again, don’t you think?”
She dropped her gaze, but not before he’d seen the tears in her eyes. What had he said to bring that on? Kit hadn’t wanted him to take Rennie with him at all today. Wait until he got home and told her he’d made the kid cry.
“What did I say that upset you?” he asked.
She shook her head, her eyes already dry. “Nothing.”
“I wasn’t criticizing your answer, Rennie. I was only trying to think it through.”
“It’s mean to tell a little kid she’ll never see someone she loves again,” she said.
Secrets at the Beach House Page 15