by Dawn Mattox
Almost everyone has a highlight in their career, and I was blessed to have had many. There was the time my testimony persuaded the judge to increase a sentence from one hundred and eleven years to one hundred and thirty-six years against the man who had kidnapped his girlfriend and kept her tied up in his trailer while injecting her with drugs. Another where I located and persuaded additional victims in a perpetrator’s past to testify on behalf of the current one—a twenty-three-year-old blind girl who was engaged to be married and then raped by the best man on the night of the bachelor party. Ah yes, but those were triumphs of service.
NOVA was a different kind of highlight, and there was no more prestigious honor for an advocate than to be invited to speak at the National Organization for Victim Assistance. After all of my years as an advocate and expert witness on the topic of domestic violence and sexual assault, it was ludicrous that I was invited to speak on ritual abuse. However, turning down an invitation from NOVA is like turning down an invitation to the Academy Awards.
It was a crapshoot, but I was determined not waste the opportunity. I would make my presentation the best, most comprehensive training ever compiled on the subject. Spotlighted, I would either restore national awareness or become an object of derision. The realization made me wonder if this was how historic figures felt when going public—when they expressed such radical ideas as the earth was round, hygiene helps prevent disease, and people have a right to freedom and equality—radical stuff back in the day.
Bonita stopped by my office to talk about a pending domestic violence case, and we started talking about the upcoming conference. “Ever been to Florida?” she asked.
“No, I haven’t.” Florida was my NOVA conference destination. “Any advice?”
“Sí. Two major tips: take sunblock and leave hairspray at home. The humidity will leave your hair as sticky as a spider’s web. And speaking of spider webs, any new surprises in your inbox? I noticed you’re picking up your mail before the secretaries arrive.”
I leaned back in my chair and eyed her curiously. “Are you spying on me?”
Bonita tipped her head and smiled her reply. “Absolutamente.”
“Good. I don’t need everyone freaking out again if another monster hatches in my inbox. Did you see Jack last time? I thought he was going to have the ‘big one’ right in front of us.”
“It’s true, chica,” Bonita speculated. “You could be the death of him. But to be honest, Jack didn’t exactly ask me to watch you. He asked me to watch out for you. So how’s the presentation going?”
I sighed and returned to my burgeoning PowerPoint presentation. “I decided to expand on the one I already had—a little something for everyone—using national cases this time to illustrate my points. It’s a real pain. I thought I’d begin by introducing myself and why I can speak on this topic. Then throw in some disclaimers to kep liberals from building a bonfire and burning me at the stake. God forbid I should say anything pro-Christian or anti-Wiccan.” I felt the familiar taste of my foot in my mouth as I noticed that Bonita was wearing an ornate rainbow-colored star on her shoulder.
Her brown eyes tracked my gaze, and she laughed. “I may be liberal, but I am broad-minded enough to put up with you narrow-minded Christians.” Bonita winked. “What else do you have?”
“Ahh . . . good. Big of you. So, I’ll start with mental health issues: multiple personalities and delusions, followed by a short discussion on social trends and the progression of cult involvement, such as kids with their games, music, movies, parties and such to extremists, like serial killers. Then I thought I would wrap it up with a segment for advocates: recognition, response, and referrals.” I threw her a look of self-satisfaction. “Did I miss anything?”
“Humph!” Bonita eased her bulk onto the corner of my desk and rubbed her chin. “Will law enforcement be attending?”
“Sure. A lot of police departments have in-house advocates these days.”
“Okay, so you probably want to add something about investigation and evidence”—she pointed to herself—“and talk to Amanda about prosecution. And I’m sure you have enough cases to reference for the rest of your career.”
Which could be shorter than I planned. “Okay. Thanks.”
Bonita was heading out then paused and turned. “And Sunny, you will tell me if any new threats pop up or fall down. Correcto?”
“Sí.” I nodded yes, having already decided not to tell her about the baby charm that Forrest had found at the ceremonial site. I would check out Paige’s bracelet for myself first.
I didn’t have long to wait. I saw Paige from my office window rolling my way, looking like a bowling ball bearing down on the kingpin.
“Oh, Sunny,” Paige gushed. She got a strike. “How can I ever thank you enough? I had so much fun at the shower”—her blue eyes sparkled and gleamed—“and I got sooo many presents. This kid won’t want for anything.”
“Mmmhmm . . . except . . . one itty bitty thing . . .”
Paige waited expectantly, in every sense of the word.
“A dad. You could give your baby that, you know.”
She considered this for a nanosecond before ditching the thought. “Get serious. Why would I do that? Dads aren’t good for anything except sperm donors.”
I thought back on Lefty and all the love and priceless fatherly wisdom that he had imparted.
“Dad. Where’s Mom? Where does she go when she leaves us?”
Lefty was polishing his motorcycle, lovingly shining each chrome spoke as I sat on a stump watching him work. I had been afraid to ask this very adult question, and now I was sorry I had. The question made my dad sad.
“Your mama is one of a kind.” He grimaced, looking up and around thoughtfully. “She’s not like that flock of birds eating all the cherries out in the orchard. She’s more like . . .” Lefty paused “. . . that Osprey nesting down at the lake. You can safely say your mother is an endangered species.” He laughed at his own joke.
“I don’t understand.”
“Well now. You don’t need to know everything, but understand this: your mama loves you as much as she is able to.”
He saw me frown and continued. “I remember the day you were born. We were camping up on Silver Creek when her water broke—under a full moon, just like she said it would.”
“Mom told me she’d wanted an a ‘bortion.’”
Lefty gave a half-smile. “Yeah, well, Starla said a lot of things. It’s true, she didn’t want kids. But she did want to know what it felt like to have a baby growing inside her and what it was like to give birth. You know she had you at home. She wanted you to be born naturally.” He stopped shining chrome, momentarily lost in a different kind of reflection. “Your mama was about the most beautiful thing I had ever seen in my life—until I saw you.” He gave me a sly wink and shook his head.
“Ah, heck. You wouldn’t understand.” He glanced around again. “Maybe she’s more like that hummingbird over there.” Lefty pointed to a ruby-throated hummingbird that flashed and darted from flower to flower along the rail fence that bordered our little front yard. We watched the bird as it eagerly sipped sweet nectar from the heart of each flower. “That’d be Starla. She never could stay put,” Lefty mused.
“But where does she go? Where does she stay?” I wanted to know.
I noticed that my father’s hair was turning gray. It was starting to look like the chrome on his Harley. “She goes from flower to flower, little girl. Sucking the life out of every man she meets. She can’t help it. It’s just the way she is.”
I was never as understanding or as forgiving as my father. I didn’t feel that a child should be a fashion statement—something to be tried on and cast off later when she was no longer a good fit.
I shook my head clear of my childhood memory with renewed amazement at the similarities between young Paige and my mother. Then I wondered what Paige’s father was like. Travis really liked the man, but I could only guess at the resentment Paige mu
st have harbored. She was only twelve or thirteen years old when she had been snatched from in front of a cigar lounge in Mexico. Her father, Perry Atchison, had lamented, “I only wanted some genuine Cubans.” Maybe Paige had gone from holding on to hope and faith that her dad would rescue her to hating him and blaming him as months in captivity slipped away.
I wished Paige a “Merry Christmas. Just in case you have the baby before I get back from Florida.” I produced the trademark Pandora black bag, topped with a red satin ribbon.
“Another charm?” Within minutes, Paige was dangling a tiny silver and gold baby carriage. “Oooooh, you shouldn’t have.”
Oh yes. I should.
“Where’s your bracelet? I’ll put it on for you,” I offered.
Paige’s blue eyes flashed as she held the charm, rolling it over and over in her hands. “It’s so cute!” I don’t know why you are so kind to me. I don’t deserve it,” said Paige with a wistful sigh.
No. You really don’t.
“My wrists and my ankles look like water wings. I’ve been too swollen to wear anything on my wrists or hands. Paige shook her ankle in front of me, saying, “Even the butterfly on my ankle looks like a nightmare from The Mothman Prophecies.
Another forty-five dollars out the window, I thought ruefully. “What does your doctor say?”
She thought for a moment as she rubbed her ankle. “He said the problem will be going away in a couple of weeks.”
The warmth of the pillows felt seductive. I reached . . . moving, moving . . . to wake, finding myself fiercely clutching Chance’s pillow . . . between my knees. Okay, I was sort of humping Chance’s pillow between my knees. I felt like a dog. So strong was the power of lust at that point, if there had been a pile of my husband’s clothes on the floor, I would have scratched around and rolled in them.
I groaned. It was so unfair that a man could have a sexual dream culminating in completion, but I always came up short, waking in a bundle of frustrated knots until my husband could untangle them, one delicious knot at a time. This morning the ache was so consuming, so long and so intense, that I either needed help or I’d have been tackling the job myself. I put Kissme on the floor and reached for the phone.
“Chance.” It came out as a whisper, or maybe a prayer.
“Good morning, beautiful.”
“Ask me what I’m wearing.”
“Umm . . . you’re wearing . . . nothing.”
I smiled. “How do you know?”
“I can smell you.”
“Ooh,” I moaned.
“What do I smell like?”
“You smell naked.”
“Naked?”
“You smell like the last day of summer when we made love on the lawn under the jacaranda tree. Your skin was bronze like the sunset . . . except for the parts that were like . . . ripe plums.”
“What did I smell like?”
“Summer. Dusky. Earthy. Like ripe fruit . . . almost exploding out of its skin. Begging to be picked. Tasted. Savored. Enjoyed.”
My breath came faster. My pulse raced. “And . . . ?”
“Flowers. You smelled like the flower I picked. The one I used to tickle and kiss every inch of your body—until you begged for more.”
I gasped. “Where did it kiss me? Where did it touch me?”
And my husband made love to me. Slowly. Restraining his own needs as we relived the dizzy, breathless passion of that night under the stars. The night that God and all his angels had smiled down on our love—until at last our passion was spent and we lay in our beds, a world apart, wrapped in the memory of each other’s arms.
Deeply in love. Completely spent. Totally fulfilled. Almost.
I still missed his touch.
CHAPTER 19
The early morning sun had crested over the rim of the distant Sierra Nevadas, spilling golden rays into the valley and filling it with a pale winter light on the two-hour trip to the Sacramento airport. Traffic had been light, and I was looking forward to some warm Miami sunshine.
The flight from Sacramento to Miami would take six hours. I sat on the plane next to Serena with an Ativan melting under my tongue and another tucked in my shirt pocket. It was my alternative to admitting to Serena that I had never been on an airplane before.
Serena was going to NOVA as an attendee. Aside from being the executive director for Rape Crisis, she was a friend of mine and a pastor’s wife. Today she was dressed in white, and with that silver halo-colored hair of hers, she looked like a shorter, thinner version of Della Reese in Touched by an Angel.
The flight attendant interrupted our chatter to present the safety features on the airplane, pointing out the seat belts, overhead oxygen mask, flotation devices, and exits.
I cinched myself in and gasped when I saw the oxygen mask dangling from her hand, and committed the exit doors to memory. I didn’t think that the flotation device would do me much good if we crash-landed in a cornfield. Perhaps a little more Ativan wasn’t a bad idea. The bottle said I could take two a day. It didn’t say anything about two at a time. So I took another and sucked on it like a breath mint.
Around noon our conversation turned to the conference. “That’s a dangerous topic you’re speaking on. Is your church praying for you?” asked Serena.
“I haven’t told anyone outside of work, except for Chance and my neighbor, Ashley. And I only told Ashley because she’s babysitting Kissme. I sure as heck didn’t tell my pastor.”
Serena cocked her head with the poised look of a bird considering a juicy bug. “Why all the secrecy? The topic must have merit, or NOVA would never have invited you. And the district attorney’s office sure as heck wouldn’t be footing the bill. Everyone in Victim Services knows about RA survivors. That’s part of the problem. Everyone is too embarrassed to talk about it.”
I sighed. “I give my church enough to talk about. If I tell my friend Ashley, she will feed the information through the gossip chain. Besides, it’s hard enough getting laughed at when I’m at work without the church making fun of me also. And no, I haven’t told my pastor because I’m not talking to him.”
“Poor baby. People are making fun of you?” Serena mocked sympathy.
Fired up, I gave her a scathing look. “You don’t know what it’s like.”
“You don’t know what I know. For one thing, I know that God’s work is not a popularity contest. And don’t think for a minute that you are not doing God’s work.” Serena tipped her head. “What is a ‘gossip chain’?”
“It’s another term I use for ‘prayer chain’—where everybody talks about everybody else’s personal business. I never asked for this caseload and it wasn’t part of the job description.”
Serena said, “A prayer chain is only as good as the hearts that participate in it. If people abuse it, you must speak with them and pray for them.”
She continued. “And you know we all have duties and responsibilities in life that we didn’t sign on for. For that matter, we didn’t ‘sign on’ for anything. Life is a gift from our Creator and we are here to do His will, not ours. Now tell me, what’s going on between you and that wonderful man, Pastor Mac?”
I squirmed in my seat, relieved that the third seat in our row was empty. I couldn’t lie to Serena and it was useless to try. I knew this because I’d tried in the past and she always saw through me. Besides, I was starting to feel very relaxed.
“Mac has this new girlfriend and . . . well . . . I guess I might have started some rumors about her.”
“What kind of rumors?” Serena’s eyes narrowed, her right brow arched like a door into a cathedral.
I raised my hand to the passing flight attendant and ordered a glass of wine.
Yes. I was feeling very relaxed indeed. “Nothing much. Something about her son being in prison.”
Serena’s eyes widened. “Is it true? Your work is confidential. Are you jealous of her?”
My eyes shifted back and forth as I considered her questions. “Yes. No. It’s not th
at simple. I walked in on a group of church women gossiping about her. I guess . . . okay, I know—what I did was wrong. I just wanted the women to like me. So I made up some stories about the pastor’s new girlfriend.”
The wine was delivered. It was cold, clear, and sweet.
“What stories?”
I started to feel as if I could tell Serena anything . . . everything. “Umm . . . that she used to be an alcoholic.”
Serena’s black skin paled fifty shades of gray. “Good Lord, Sunny. Have you told the new girlfriend yet?”
“Not exactly.” I sipped on my wine.
“That is why you’re avoiding your pastor?”
“Yes.”
Serena reclined in her seat and released the drop-down tray in front of her to receive her juice and bag of pretzels from the flight attendant. Munching thoughtfully on a pretzel, she continued.
“Anything else?”
“I said she was a prostitute.”
Serena sputtered, set her juice aside, and called to a passing flight attendant.
“Ma’am! Ma’am! A glass of wine, please.”
It couldn’t have just disappeared, and there was no possible way it was an accident. It was a complicated process to remove a file from a computer. First, you had to delete it from your active file which always gave a warning prompt: Are you sure you want to delete this? If you accidentally agreed, the file goes into a Recycle Bin which served as a kind of backup. Deleting a file from the Recycle Bin repeats the a warning prompt a second time and you would have click “Yes” to permanently remove it. So deleting a file is an intentional four-step process.
My presentation was MIA. I had reviewed it no less than ten times since arriving in Miami. Always second-guessing myself, I had continued making changes in my presentation for greater impact. I wanted my delivery to be awesome. No—I want it to be, exemplary. I was scheduled to speak at one o’clock. The last time the laptop was open was just before breakfast. And now the laptop was sitting on the desk grinning at me, and the presentation was gone.