The Damage

by Caitlin Wahrer

  “What do you mean?”

  “Like I know you can tell someone if I’m going to hurt myself or someone else, but you said something about court once.”

  “I did?”

  Nick nodded. “The first time we met, you said a judge could make you give him my records.”

  “Oh. Well, that’s possible. I guess it would depend—I like to tell clients up front that there are a few limits on confidentiality. As much as I want you to know I’ll keep your secrets, I also want you to know that there are a few times when I can’t. I think it’s really important that I say so before something has happened.”

  Nick raised his hand to his head. The scab was still there. Drier and smaller, but he was still picking at it too often to let it heal all the way.

  “Nick,” Jeff said, and nodded in his direction.

  Nick lowered his hand.

  “I can’t see a scenario where Ray gets your records, if that’s what you’re worried about.” They called him Ray in Jeff’s office. Nick didn’t like to call him “Walker,” like the prosecutor or Tony did. “What do you want to talk to me about?”

  Nick’s arm began to itch, and he rubbed at it.

  “Nick.”

  Nick clasped his hands in his lap. He wasn’t strong enough to keep the secret anymore. He’d tried to clamp down on it, shut it out, but he was too weak. If he didn’t tell someone, he didn’t know what he’d do.

  “I want to tell you what really happened.”

  * * *

  Nick heard Johnny’s rusted-out Volvo before he saw it. Johnny had gotten there early and was waiting for him, just as he had been after each session since Nick left Tony’s house.

  Nick craned to see the car idling on the street behind the new snowbank, courtesy of the storm a day before. His face was puffy from spending so much of the last hour crying; as he stepped onto the sidewalk, the cold air stung his eyes. There was a swelling of hope in his chest unlike anything he’d ever felt. Back in Jeff’s office, he’d finally done what he had pretended to do so many times that fall. He gave someone the whole truth, and nothing but. When he was done, Jeff leaned forward in his chair and said Nick’s name. Nick lifted his head and met Jeff’s eye, and then, Jeff said the three most unexpected words.

  “I forgive you.”

  Jeff said lots after that, but those three repeated in Nick’s mind as he reached Johnny’s car.

  “I forgive you.”

  He could be forgiven for what he’d done.

  Nick opened the door and slid in beside Johnny. The Volvo looked like shit from the outside and roared above forty miles an hour, but it was warm and clean and smelled like strawberries. Johnny was always swapping out air fresheners, and the latest was a pink jelly thing that clipped into the passenger heating vent. It always made Nick crave buttery toast with jam.

  “How was it?”

  “Fine. Good, actually.” Nick pulled the seat belt over his lap and smiled at Johnny. “Thanks for picking me up.”

  Johnny smiled back as he drove. “You don’t have to say that every time.” Then the smile dropped from his face. “At least not as long as you’re pitching me gas money.”

  Nick exhaled a soft laugh. As the only one with a car, Johnny was stuck chauffeuring his roommates on a regular basis. After the first two weeks of living together he’d started to get annoyed, but then they started paying him gas money and it became less of an issue. By now the system was simple: no payment, no Taxi Maserati—Nick had come up with that name back in September. He hadn’t called the Volvo by that name in months.

  At home, Nick handed Johnny a five and went straight up the musty stairs to his room, closing the door behind him.

  He sat on his bed and pulled out his phone to look up the number for the DA’s office. Jeff had said Nick should try to talk to the victim advocate person, Sherie. Sherie would probably be the best to deal with this. Nick pressed the number on the DA’s webpage. If he didn’t call now, while he was reeling with confidence that it was the right thing to do, he might never pick up the phone.

  Nick pressed his way through a menu to reach a human.

  “District attorney’s office, this is Jodi speaking.”

  “Hi, um, I’m calling to talk to Sherie. The advocate, please.”

  “Sherie’s out this week. Are you a victim in an open case?”

  There was that word again. “Yeah, I— Yes I am, yes.”

  The voice softened. “Sherie’s had a death in the family, she should be back next Monday. Would you like to speak to the attorney assigned to your case?”

  Would he? No. She was intimidating. Sherie’s whole job was to be there for Nick. She would be easier to talk to.

  “Is the attorney the right person to talk to about your story, or your testimony? I mean, if I needed to . . . if . . .”

  What am I doing?

  “Never mind, I’ll call back next week, thanks.”

  “Can I—”

  Nick hung up. He needed to talk to Sherie. Not anyone else, not yet. He could make it a week. It wasn’t his secret alone anymore—he’d told Jeff, and that counted for something.

  Nick gently pushed his sleeves up one after another, careful not to scratch them down against the scabby wounds. They ran all over the undersides of his forearms, dry, brownish-red and pink rimmed. They itched to be picked at. Instead, he just observed them. They kind of looked like islands. He pictured Tony’s face when he saw what he’d done to himself. Nick pulled his sleeves back down and stood up from the bed. Enough of that, he thought. Redirect yourself, like Jeff said.

  Nick walked downstairs and popped an ice cube out of the tray in the freezer. He held it in his left hand, squeezing it tightly. The cold ached against his palm. He held out his throbbing hand and let the melt dribble into the sink. The pain in his hand was all he could feel, just like he wanted.

  38

  Julia Hall, 2015

  Julia could hear the kitchen from the bottom of the stairs. The sizzle of bacon, the sputtering of the coffeemaker, the familiar voices of local news personalities on the television. Channel eight’s anchors hosted an inane show called Saturdays with Michelle and Miguel, which Tony sometimes turned on as he made breakfast. It was the cookie-cutter morning-show template of overcovered local news split up by segments on recipes and shelter pets. She’d never knock the show too much, though—any time she heard it, it meant breakfast was underway.

  Julia paused at the doorway to the living room, where the kids were playing. Down the hall in the kitchen, a third voice chimed in between Michelle’s and Miguel’s. Julia didn’t recognize the voice, but she knew immediately what they were discussing.

  “What makes this case so interesting is that we have an adult male victim,” the voice said. “I don’t want to call it unheard of, but it practically is.”

  Julia hurried to the kitchen, where Tony stood motionless in his sweats. A heavy man in a suit was on the screen before him.

  Julia moved to Tony’s side. “What’s this?”

  “Shh!” Tony hissed.

  On the screen, the man sat in a chair across from Michelle and Miguel. “It will be fascinating to see how a jury responds to the situation.”

  Julia stepped forward toward the TV. “Why are you watching this?” She reached out a hand to turn it off.

  Tony pushed her hand down. “Leave it, I’m trying to watch.”

  “Why are you doing this to yourself?”

  He widened his eyes in annoyance but kept them on the screen. “Can you stop talking?”

  Julia settled back on her heels and crossed her arms.

  Miguel leaned toward the man. “And what is the situation, as we know it?”

  “The two men met at a bar, Jimmy’s Pub, in Salisbury. Somehow they determined that they were mutually interested, and they left the bar together and went to Mr. Wal
ker’s hotel room. The State will be looking to prove that Mr. Walker essentially clobbered the victim at the hotel, and that the sexual assault followed while the man was unconscious.”

  “Now, why would it matter that the victim is male?” Michelle asked.

  “It will really matter more in terms of the stories that the defense and the prosecution tell, and it may affect what the jurors believe happened. It could go either way. Will a jury believe that a strong, healthy man was essentially knocked out and has no memory of the event? There’s a lot of speculation about how much alcohol the victim consumed, but as a male, his tolerance is higher, of course. And there probably won’t be questions about what he was wearing,” the man said with a gross little smile.

  Julia shot out a hand and flicked off the TV. Tony stood motionless, staring at the black screen. She reached for him as he stepped away, and her hand passed through the air where he’d stood.

  Without a word, he strode from the kitchen into the mudroom. After a pause, the door slammed. She heard the crunch of shoes on gravel, and Tony was gone.

  * * *

  Tony was sitting in bed with a book in his lap, staring at the window across from him. He’d been reading the same book for a month. Barely reading it, really—Julia kept seeing him like this, holding the book but off in his head somewhere. She climbed into the far side of the bed. She reached for the book at her bedside, but he spoke.

  “That fucker needs to be put away.”

  He was talking about Walker. He was always talking about Walker. “He probably will be.” She had more to say, but Tony cut her off.

  “Probably?”

  “You just never know. But even if he does go to prison, that’s not going to make Nick stop hurting himself.”

  “It might.”

  “I think you’re oversimplifying what Nick’s going through.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Walker going to prison isn’t going to help Nick come to terms with whatever happened that night.”

  A small smile crept over Tony’s face. It was an ugly smile—as though he’d thought to himself, “There it is.” Like she’d just proved him right about something.

  “What?”

  Tony opened his book. “Nothing.”

  “That’s not passive aggressive.”

  “Fine.” He shut the book. “Sometimes I feel like you don’t believe Nick.”

  “What? Where did you get that from?”

  “I just feel it, the way you talk about him.”

  “How do I talk about him?”

  “Just now, like he doesn’t know what happened to him.”

  “I’m saying where he blacked out we don’t know—”

  “Stop.” He flipped back the comforter and climbed from the bed.

  “Whoa!” Clearly this had been a mistake.

  He was at the dresser now. “Before you say what I think you’re going to, I want you to remember what he looked like at the hospital. In our home. What the nurse said. You know what, I don’t want to know what you think.”

  “Tony—”

  “I won’t be able to look at you if you think—”

  “Tony—”

  “No, just stop, I’m done with this.”

  They were talking over each other.

  She didn’t want to raise her voice with the kids down the hall. “Tony. Tony. Listen to me. I’m telling you I think Nick is telling the truth, but he said he doesn’t know what happened. Don’t you think it’s weird there’s no one else Walker’s done this to?”

  Tony eyed her meaningfully. “There’s a first time for everything.”

  “What, us disagreeing?”

  “We don’t know there aren’t other people out there.”

  “What if we do know that?”

  “How would we? The police don’t have time to look for others.”

  “Not the police.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  Did she want to tell him about Charlie Lee? She’d thought she wanted to keep it private—keep him from being disappointed that Charlie hadn’t found anything to help secure a conviction. But clearly she did want to tell him—she’d led him right to it.

  “I asked Charlie Lee to look into things for us.”

  “Who’s Charlie Lee?”

  “That PI I used to work with.”

  Tony stared at her for a beat. “You hired a PI?”

  It wasn’t much money, but she’d leave that out entirely. “I was already using him for the juvenile records report.”

  “When did you talk to him?”

  “Which time?”

  “So you’re working with a PI and you didn’t tell me.”

  “I didn’t think I should tell you—I called him right after you put your fist through a door in front of the kids.”

  Tony frowned and suddenly his face was all Sebastian, teetering on the brink of tears. That was harsh; she shouldn’t have said that.

  She softened her voice. “I’m sorry. But I think we need to be realistic about what court can give Nick. I know there’s some other evidence, but it’s really going to be Nick’s word against Walker’s, and Nick is going to say he doesn’t remember what happened. That’s not great. So I asked Charlie to see if he could find anyone else, and he couldn’t, and he’s really good at this.”

  “So what, he called all the men in the world and asked them, ‘Hey, were you ever—’”

  “Obviously not,” Julia cut in. “But he tried a bunch of gay bars in New England, where Walker might have gone on work trips. Only one of them even thought it was possible he’d been there.”

  Tony’s face lit. “Someone recognized him?”

  “No, maybe, he wasn’t sure. Just that he looked like a guy who went home with a younger regular once, but that was it. Charlie can’t find who the regular was, so literally all we know is someone who looks like Walker went home with a young, shy guy, and the bartender never got to hear what happened.”

  “Are you listening to yourself? He has a type. He has an MO. This needs to go to the DA for court.”

  “God no, absolutely not! If I were Walker’s attorney I’d have a field day with that. ‘Where’d this information come from?’ ‘Nick Hall’s family hired a private investigator.’ ‘And all he found is that someone who looks like my client went home with a guy at a bar two years ago?’ It’s worse than not having looked at all.”

  “Right there,” Tony said as he pointed at her. “That’s your problem.”

  “What?”

  “‘If you were his attorney.’ You’ve been his attorney before, Julia. You’ve defended scumbags like him.”

  “So what?”

  “You’re looking at it from his point of view when you should be looking at it from Nick’s.”

  “That is so insulting. That was work. This is personal—this is family. I just want you to be realistic about how this part of the whole thing might end. Walker might go to trial, and if he does, Nick will have to testify, and Walker could win.”

  Tony held up his hand. “I need a walk.”

  “Right now?” The window across the room was a black mirror. “It’s dark; it’s freezing.”

  “I’ll wear a jacket.”

  It was too cold to go out on foot. And would he walk, or would he get in his car and drive? And where could a drive lead him but back to Walker’s?

  “Please don’t go out right now.” If she said what she was thinking, she would only entrench them further in this, this fight, whatever it was. But she had to know he wouldn’t do something else he’d regret. “Please don’t go again.”

  Maybe he feared the same thing she did, because he relented. “Fine.” He snatched his pillow from beside her and retrieved the book from under the covers. He didn’t look at her.

  “Fine,” she said.


  He paused in the doorway. “Can I just point out, for all your talk about what you think I’m not saying, that was a pretty big secret you kept, hiring that guy.”

  She reached for an apology, but it wouldn’t come. She wasn’t sorry.

  “Good night,” she said, and she stretched her hand for the lamp at her bedside. She flicked it off, sending Tony into the darkness.

  39

  John Rice, 2019

  They’d finished the tea and time was getting on. It seemed strange to Rice that Julia had let him drag her through the fall into the winter—that winter—without complaint. Without asking where he was taking her. Her face looked about as pale as his did every time he caught his reflection in the bread box (he’d removed the mirrors weeks ago). Was it the standard civilian compliance he enjoyed when he asked questions on his home turf? Normally home turf meant the station—this was his first interrogation on Maple Street. It could be that. Or it could be that Julia didn’t need to ask where he was taking her; perhaps she already knew.

  “Here I am talking about what I was feeling, but I had no idea what your brother-in-law was going through.”

  Julia nodded. “I didn’t either, really.”

  “Did you ever learn why he . . .” Rice paused.

  Julia’s voice was unapologetic. “Tried to overdose.”

  “That.”

  “I think it was a lot of things, all piling up on top of each other.” She turned her head and thought. “I remember he had had a really hard week.”

  40

  Nick Hall, 2015

  The week went like this.

  * * *

  On Saturday night, Nick drank alone. He finished off Mary Jo’s Stoli and an old jug of cranberry juice from the back of the fridge. He wondered if Mary Jo would ask him about it when she noticed the empty bottle, or if she’d avoid the topic like she had the assault, since her boyfriend broke the news to the whole campus. Nick still caught people staring at him, even fucking whispering, because Mary Jo hadn’t been smart enough to see that her boyfriend was a douchebag.