I told Aaron, “I’d like you at my place, if you’ll come. You’d be in the house until I get the caravan set up. It’ll be a bit tight, with one bathroom, but I reckon we can make it work for a few days, and Daisy will be there as well. Two spare bedrooms for you and your family.”
He nodded and said, “That’ll do. Thank you.” Holding the enormity of what he’d done at bay, and getting on to the next thing. Exactly like his niece.
Drew spoke up, then, telling the single blond man, who was tall, well-built, and immensely fit, like he was ready to pose for a motivational poster, “We have a granny flat. You’re welcome to stay in it.” Proving that he was a good judge of men, but then, I already knew that.
That would feel like quite a way to land on your feet Outside, once somebody told him that he was bunking in with Sir Andrew Callahan.
So that was all good, and then it was just a matter of lifts to Dunedin, of stops for breakfast being planned. Wanaka’s cafés were going to have an overflow of Sunday-morning trade, but that was all good, too. Kane and Victoria scooped up Aaron and his family for the drive, and once that was sorted, I made the rounds, shaking hands. Men I’d never played with, who’d come to help anyway. Dorian and Chelsea, who’d done better than I’d have imagined. They’d turned up, anyway, and turning up was fifty percent of life. And all the rest of them. Men and women I knew, and men and women I didn’t. All of them answering the call.
Finally, though, they’d all driven off, and Luke and Hayden and Xena and I headed into the house. A house I didn’t have to worry about anymore, because Mum would be safe here.
Daisy and Oriana had taken Frankie upstairs, I guessed, because Mum was making tea and saying, “Seven people for breakfast. Hayden, you and Luke had better go to the supermarket and buy more eggs and toast.”
Hayden said, “Right, but don’t say anything interesting while I’m gone.”
Luke said, “I’ll go,” and did.
That was it, then. Except—where were the others?
Daisy
The first thing Honor said, when we got Frankie into the house, was, “Cup of tea all around, I think. And a cold pack for that poor face.” She gave Frankie a gentle cuddle and said, “I’ll let your sister check you over, but is one cold pack enough?”
“No,” Frankie said. “I need more.” The tears were bright in her eyes. The ones she wouldn’t have shed yet, because she couldn’t stand to give Gilead the satisfaction.
A man could take your freedom. He could take your body. But he couldn’t take your mind, and he couldn’t take your soul.
“Chilly bin, then,” Honor said. “A couple of Panadol as well. And tea.”
She headed out the door, and I asked Frankie, “Can I see, love?” My heart ached at the sight of her. Pain, and relief. All this time, the girls had felt as much burden as blessing. Only now did I realize how much I needed that burden, because helping them had been healing me.
She didn’t answer, just lifted the brown dress and pulled down the white undies.
Red wheals with clearly defined edges crisscrossed her buttocks, her upper thighs. The marks left by a leather strap, wielded with force. They’d be burning still, hot as fire, and they’d hurt for days. She’d have heard the terrible sound of the strap landing, have jerked with every blow, and have wondered in despair why nobody cared. Why nobody came.
I looked at them and could feel them myself, because I’d been there. I’d have wondered how she’d sat in the car without crying out in pain, but I knew. You did what you had to do.
None of us had slept last night, but none of us had hurt like this. I’d been scared, but Frankie had been terrified. She’d have been going on adrenaline, but now, she was feeling every bit of the pain, and every bit of the fear, too.
Oriana said, “I’m sorry, Frankie. I’m so sorry.”
Frankie said, “I’m sorry, too. I shouldn’t have gone. I was stupid.”
I took a deep breath. She wouldn’t want to hear any of this. It was the very last thing she’d want to do.
I asked it anyway. It was important. “Did he rape you?”
“No,” Frankie said. “He just had sex with me. Like always. You can’t rape your wife.”
I said, “Yes. You can. And we have to take you to the doctor. We need the evidence. Of the beating, and the rape. It’s not going to be fun, but we need to do it.”
“Why?” she asked. “What does it matter? I just want to take a shower and … and go to sleep. I just want to forget it. It’ll feel better tomorrow. It’s not like it’s the first time.”
I said, “Do you want to see him in prison?”
“Yes,” she said.
“Then we need to go. You need to give a statement. They have to take pictures, and to take samples. If we let them do that, Gilead will be in a cage tonight. He likes to lock people up so much? Let’s see how he likes it.”
“All right,” Frankie said. “If that’s why—all right.”
I hugged her and said, “You’re strong, and you’re brave. You can do this. I’m with you all the way.”
Honor came back with the tea and the ice. When I told her, she nodded and said, “I’ll drive you. Wait. No car.”
“Gray can drive,” I said. “Frankie will feel safer then.”
“Will you stay with me?” Frankie asked me. “While they do … whatever?” She clutched my hand. “I’d feel better if you were there.”
“Oh, my darling,” I said, through a throat so tight, it was hard to get the words out. “Of course I’m coming. Of course I am.”
Most of us were quiet on the drive. Frankie, because she was tense with the need to hold back the pain, and Gray, because he was coldly, murderously furious. And Honor, because she could read a room.
“I wasn’t sure, before,” Oriana said, the two of us holding Frankie between us in the back seat, “that we were right to leave. Or I thought you were, Frankie, but I thought—maybe I’d made a mistake. Maybe I don’t … fit, Outside. But I’m going to have to, aren’t I? I can’t go back there. It isn’t right to be able to hurt somebody like that. It isn’t fair.”
“No,” I said, “it isn’t fair. It’s not fair to hurt them, and it’s not fair to put them in a box. Nobody should have to live in a box. And of course you fit Outside. There are all sorts of ways to fit, not just one way. You don’t have to be like me, or Frankie, or Honor, or anybody. You just have to be yourself.”
“Even if I don’t go to University?” she asked. “I’m not clever like you two. Or I am, but I’m only clever in my … my hands. Is that enough?”
“Yes,” I said. “There are heaps of things a person can do. Look at Gray. Look at Honor, and Iris. You need to finish school, but after that, you can decide what your way is.”
“Will you help me, though?” she asked.
“I promise,” I told her. And I meant it. I’d been guilty of doing the same thing Mount Zion did. Of putting my sister into a box. Of telling her there was only one way.
Not anymore.
Wanaka’s version of a hospital was the back entrance to a medical building, with one doctor and one nurse in attendance and nobody else around, but they knew what to do, and so did the policewoman, when she came. The indignity of a full sexual assault exam, then, of photographs and swabs and urine samples and reciting the terrible details, and Frankie, chilled and hurting and exhausted, clutching my hand tight. Wanting me there, because I understood.
The nurse was still working, photographing the injuries, collecting evidence, and Frankie was still enduring it. But this couldn’t wait. Not one more minute. I pulled the heated blanket closer around her neck, took both her hands in mine, pressed them tight, and said, “Darling. You know how much I love you.”
“I wasn’t sure,” she said, gasping as a swab scraped tender, abraded flesh. “Because you … sometimes you seemed like you just wanted to be with Gray, and then Honor said she was leaving, too, and I … I wasn’t sure.”
“So you went back w
ith Gilead,” I said. “When he said he’d hurt us. Because you weren’t sure we wanted you anyway.”
“I tried to remember …” Her chin was starting to tremble, and the tears were coming at last. “That you came before. I was in the Punishment Hut that first night, and you found me and got me out anyway, so I tried to think that you’d do it again, somehow. But I wasn’t in the Punishment Hut this time. I was locked in our room, and I couldn’t get out. Gilead said I’d stay locked in there until I was …” A heaving-in of breath. “Until I was pregnant. I tried to tell myself you were coming, that you wouldn’t leave me there, but you didn’t, and I … I was so scared. Worse than any time before. I realized I’d been so wrong to believe him that it would be different, and I’d been so stupid, and I thought … what if she doesn’t come? What if I’m really alone? What if he kills me this time? What if they let him?”
This love. This pain. “I was always coming,” I said. “I’ll always come. And now I’m going to tell you the truth. Are you ready to hear it?”
“Yes,” she said. She was crying, the tears running down her red, swollen face. She wasn’t even trying to wipe them away. She was utterly exhausted, drained by terror and pain. But she needed to hear this.
I said, “Everything he did to you. All of this. He did it to me, too. I know how much it hurts, and how dirty you feel now, how small, how ashamed. I haven’t talked nearly enough to you about it, and that’s going to change. We’re going to go see a woman who can help. She helped me, and she can help you see this for what it is. Which is that it’s not our shame. It’s Gilead’s. And we’re more than what he did to us. We’re our own selves. He didn’t destroy that in me, and he didn’t destroy it in you, because I’ve seen who you are. When you took off your cap, and your apron, and your shoes, in front of everybody, and walked out? That’s who you are, not this. Or maybe this, too, because the fact that you’re lying here, enduring this because you want him to pay for what he did, and you know, deep down, that you didn’t deserve it? That’s who you are, too. You’re going to rise from the ashes and be everything you were meant to be. You’re going to live. And he’s going to pay. I’ve made a complaint to the police, too, and I’m pursuing it. Both of us. Side by side. I hope you’ll sit with me through all of it like I’m with you now. That will give me courage.”
“You have courage, though,” she said. “You have so much more than me.”
There was too much emotion in my chest, in my body. It almost blocked my voice, but I wouldn’t let it, because she had to hear this. “You’re wrong,” I told her. “You wait. You’ll see how wrong you are. You don’t know how scared I was, all the way along. Leaving. Starting school. Going to University. Learning how to survive Outside. I didn’t do it because I was brave. I did it because I had no choice. That’s what courage is. You’re scared, but you have no choice, because you can’t stay where you are. So you keep moving forward instead. That’s what you’re doing here.”
“Did it feel as good to you as it did to me,” she asked, “when Gray hit him in the nose, and it bled? When he was lying in the grass, getting wet?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “How good did it feel to you?”
“Like the best thing I’ve ever seen.” She started to laugh—gently, because it hurt—and so did I, and then she was crying. Great, gulping sobs, gasping for air in between, shuddering with shock and pain and remembered fear. I held her hand, and I didn’t tell her not to cry. I cried myself. For what she’d endured. And for what I had.
If you can’t let yourself hurt, you can’t let yourself heal.
“I’m here for you,” I told my sister, “and I always will be. I promise. We’ll do this together. You and me. Step by step. Starting now.”
57
Like a Superhero
Gray
Eventually, we went back home again. Mum and Oriana headed into the kitchen to make breakfast, but I didn’t stay with them. I gave it twenty minutes, and then I went upstairs and knocked on the door of the guest room.
“Come in,” I heard. Daisy’s voice.
“Hi,” I said, lifting the mugs I held. “I brought tea. Thought you two might need it.” Hot and strong, and with sugar in it. Best thing in the world for shock.
Frankie was on her side on the bed, wearing another of Mum’s dressing gowns. She was holding a cold pack to one cheek, and Daisy was pressing another to her backside.
It’s not about you, I reminded myself when the rage tried to overtake me again. I went over and handed Daisy her tea, set Frankie’s on the bedside table, and asked, “May I sit down?”
“Yes,” Daisy said, and stood up.
I took her place, held the ice to Frankie’s bruised flesh, and said, “He’s going to prison. He’s never going to bother you again.”
She nodded once, then said, “Thank you for helping me.” Her voice small. Subdued.
“I was a bit proud of myself at the time,” I said. “For not stooping to his level. Not giving him the beating he deserved. Now, I’m sorry.”
“No,” she said. “I don’t want you to go to prison, too. Who would Xena love?”
I smiled. “Fair point.” Then I sobered and said what I’d come to say. “Life gets better than this, you know. This is a valley, or more than that. A gorge. You can’t see the view out the other side when you’re down in the pit, but you can still climb out. You can climb up, and there it will be. There’s something better out there for you, and you’re going to find it.”
“Daisy did it,” she said.
“Yes. She did. And so will you. You’ll have all this help along the way, too. Did you see all the people who came out for you today?”
“Yes,” she said, and smiled. I could see it, under the cold pack. “It was awesome. Like a pageant. Like a Bible story.”
“Or a superhero movie,” I said. “Except not. Much less fighting. We decided it wouldn’t work, and that we had to find another way.”
“How?” she asked. “How did you think to do all that?”
“Ah,” I said. “That was Hayden. And Victoria. They made the plan. Do you want to hear it?”
“Yes,” she said. “Please.”
“Well,” I told her, “it was like this.”
We’d come up with it during dinner the night before, when Daisy had been all but dancing in her need to drive up to Mount Zion right the hell now with her foot pressed all the way to the floor. And probably landing in the river again, which was why I planned to drive instead.
We hadn’t left, though, until two in the morning. That was Hayden. He said, “You need the media. We need this on film, and they’ll need lead time. And light.”
“Why?” Daisy asked. “I’ve always done these kinds of things in the middle of the night. Actually, at three or four in the morning. That’s when people are least alert, when you can get in and out quickly. What you don’t need is light. Or people who’ve already woken up, either.”
“I thought you were a nurse,” Hayden said. “Not a commando.”
“I’m both,” Daisy said, and I had to concede that it was true. She wasn’t going to be a commando by herself anymore, though. If she made any more of those dark-of-night visits to the shed, I was going with her.
“I’m skimming right over that,” Hayden said, “even though I’m now seriously intrigued. It’s private property. We can’t actually burst in there and take Frankie by force, even if you knew exactly where she was. It’s not an action movie. Unfortunately, because I’d love to see Luke and Kane and Gray doing that. Oh, and Drew. You don’t mind if I call you Drew, do you? You don’t insist on the title?”
“No,” Drew said, clearly having a hard time not smiling despite the tension. “Cheers for including me in the cast.”
“And where will you be in all this?” Victoria asked. “Isn’t there always a clever fella? Comic relief? The brains of the operation?”
“I’ll be directing from behind the scenes,” Hayden said. “With a headset on, looking at the
drone footage. But we’re not doing it, remember? We have to get in there legally, or get Frankie out legally, so she can press charges, and so she has proof to do it. For that, we need pressure. We need the media, and we need a crowd to get the media. It has to be a story.” He thought a minute, then told Drew, “You’re good.”
“Thank you,” he said gravely.
“No,” Hayden said. “I mean you’re leverage. We need more leverage, though. Community pressure, that’s the idea. The community coming out to demand the release of a beautiful young woman who tried to escape the cult, but was grabbed again just as she was on the verge of starting her new life. It helps that she’s so young and he’s so much older, but this Prophet guy didn’t get where he is by backing down, so it’s got to be overwhelming pressure.”
“He still won’t care,” Daisy said. “I want this to work, but I can’t pretend it will. We can show up with the media, I guess, if we can get somebody to come, but he’s seen the media before, and they’ve seen him. He knows there’s massive disapproval of what he’s doing. That’s just more fuel for his fire. The disapproval is proof of how ungodly the world is, the need to seal yourself away from its corrupting influence. No. We have to go in there and grab her. Who’s he going to call? The police? Let him. Let him call, and explain to them why Frankie’s there, and the condition she’s in.”
“Is she likely to be that bad?” Drew asked, and he wasn’t smiling now.
“Yes,” Daisy said. “She is.”
Victoria said, “There’s a better way. A faster way. And not that you all aren’t seriously large and scary, but there are dozens of men living out there, right? Farmers, with farm implements. Fighting your way in isn’t the answer. If the Prophet doesn’t care about community disapproval, we need to threaten him with legal charges. That’ll be the last thing he wants. He can deal with bad publicity, like you say. The world being evil toward the godly. Fine. He can’t deal with the police investigating, with his members being arrested, with search warrants and income tax and labor standards investigations. Probably the thing he’s most scared of, worse than physical abuse, worse than sexual abuse that he can say he had nothing to do with and didn’t even know about. But back pay for all those people he never paid a dime to? Tax fraud? You can believe he’s scared of that. That’s how we get him.”
Kiwi Strong (New Zealand Ever After Book 3) Page 40