“I was on the toilet, in the dark, when I heard…”
James’s arm tightened around her. “You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.”
But she did.
The words spilled out over themselves.
The footsteps. Heavy. Andrew’s. The shadow of his feet under the bathroom door from the light he’d turned on in the hallway.
She was washing her hands when the doorknob began to turn.
She’d yelled she was inside. But he only shouted back for her to open up. He was drunk. Nowhere to hide.
That’s when she remembered the scissors in the drawer, the long narrow-bladed pair her mother used to trim her bangs. She grabbed them and hid them behind her back.
The door opened.
Then she was on the floor, his breath in her face as he groped her under her pajamas.
Shay sat forward suddenly, gasping for breath.
“I can’t remember! I can’t remember!”
James touched her lightly on the shoulder. “Shay?”
She jerked away from his touch. “Don’t touch me! Just don’t.”
He twisted away and reached for the lamp beside the sofa. It flared to life.
Shay sat hunched over, gasping as if she’d been punched in the stomach.
He leaned close but didn’t touch her again. “You need something? Water?”
She shook her head tightly. “The scissors just missed his heart. They said I could have killed him.”
“Serves the asshole right.” James didn’t sound in the least bit doubtful about that opinion.
She turned her head toward him, a deep crease between her brows.
“You were being attacked. You defended yourself. Should have been an airtight legal defense.”
Shay shook her head, years of therapy unspooling in her thoughts. “No. It wasn’t like that. Andrew admitted he was drunk when he went to take a leak. He said he didn’t know I was in there. I just went berserk when he opened the door.”
James frowned. “People who are afraid sometimes overreact but you were defending yourself, Shay.”
“Not everybody would have stabbed someone.”
Shay turned away from him. It was easier than watching his expression of sympathy. “Mom said the police found me in the middle of the street screaming and screaming, with blood all over me. They thought I was injured. By the time the EMTs got there, I’d shut down. Everything. Couldn’t even speak. They took me to emergency and then checked me into a psych ward. The doctor said the traumatic event of the stabbing caused me to have a nervous breakdown.”
“Christ!” James made a fist to keep from touching her. “How long were you there?”
“Thirty days. Court ordered. I was evaluated with a dissociative anxiety disorder and as a possible endangerment to myself and others.”
“None of that has anything to do with attempted rape. The authorities would still have to take into account your statement of what happened.”
“They didn’t get my statement.” Shay swallowed, the rest of the story coming a little easier. “I couldn’t defend myself. When I could talk again, after twenty-four hours or so, I couldn’t remember what happened. I didn’t for weeks. By then Andrew had pressed charges. He was out of the hospital and said I needed to pay for what I’d done.”
“Screw that! You had every right to defend yourself.”
This time James reached out for her and tried to draw her back against him but she resisted. “Don’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“Try to make me sound … normal.”
“You were normal. It’s the situation that was bat-shit crazy. Andrew tried to molest you. You did finally remember that.”
She flinched as if his compassion were just another burden. “Not soon enough. My mother had pushed me to accept a plea bargain of temporary insanity. I was tried as a juvenile. I didn’t have to do jail time. But there was court-ordered therapy.”
“Aw shit, Shay.” Her words grabbed him by the throat, choking off the life’s blood of his professional detachment until he was just a man aching over the pain of someone he cared about deeply.
Shay sat with her fingers twisted together, gulping in uneven breaths. Shouldering the unfamiliar feeling of helplessness, he watched her silently wrestle with her old demons. He knew that he couldn’t simply talk or argue her out of her feelings. She’d lived too long with this for him to change years of thinking in a single conversation. But the story made him want to break a few heads, specifically ones belonging to Andrew and Eric. Andrew’s vicious actions had screwed up her sense of self and of justice at a tender age. Eric, though he did not know why, had taken advantage of her need to keep all aspects of her life secret. Yet, somehow, she had survived. That grit had to be admired. “What happened next?”
“By the time I remembered enough details for my doctors to believe my story, the courts said it was too late to change the plea bargain. But my records would be sealed after five years if there were no additional misconduct charges.”