“Sure.” My voice still sounded odd.
Zeus greeted us with his super-wags and crooning, but even his adoration didn’t break through the shock that wrapped me in cold. I took off my coat and hung it on the hook, and Ben did the same.
My house suddenly felt very exposed, all these windows and doors and glass. All this darkness.
“Want me to make a fire?” he asked as I stood there.
“Yeah.” I gave myself a mental shake, then went downstairs to the kitchen, calling my dog so I wouldn’t be there alone.
It would be easy for someone to break into the house. I checked the sliding glass door to the porch . . . it was unlocked. Of course it was unlocked! This was Cape Cod. We didn’t need to lock our doors. I locked it now, but the porch just required a knife to cut through the screens. Someone could wait out there until I was home. Someone could smash the glass on the slider. The kitchen door out to the patio? I could kick it in myself. What about the door in the guest room? Also glass.
I’d get an alarm system. Yes. That wasn’t just a reaction to seeing . . . him. It was smart. I was a woman living alone on a remote dirt road.
“You good down there?” Ben called.
“Yep! Be right up.”
Should I make coffee? No. Bourbon. I poured some into two glasses, automatically checked the cookie jar—I had some spare snickerdoodles that hadn’t fit into the package I’d sent Dylan yesterday. I put them on a plate, set everything on a tray with a couple of napkins and took a deep breath.
Chase Freeman was back in town.
I suddenly bolted for the guest bathroom and threw up.
I had not thought of him, or that night, in a very, very long time. That night had become a blank spot, dominated by the car accident. But the body remembers, doesn’t it? I vomited again, caught my breath and flushed. Stood up and splashed some cold water on my face. I brushed my teeth, gargled, brushed again and went back to the kitchen, and carried the tray upstairs. Set it on the coffee table, sat on the couch and took a hearty sip of bourbon. It burned at first, then settled in my now-empty stomach with a much-needed warmth.
Ben had the fire going pretty good now. God, I was glad he was here. Zeus jumped onto the couch next to me and put his head on my lap. “I’m glad you’re here, too, buddy,” I told him, touching the heart on his nose. “Very glad.”
Ben sat in the chair across from me and eyed the tray. “So . . . something happened back there. Want to tell me about it?”
My hand found Zeus’s silky head, and I took another sip of my drink.
I had never told anyone about what happened that night. Not even Beth. It had all been overshadowed by my many injuries. Sometimes, though not so much in the past decade, I’d jolt awake from a nightmare of being chased (God, the double entendre), being lost, unable to run fast enough, hiding in a place where I knew I’d be found . . .
“Lillie?” Ben asked.
I took another sip of bourbon. “Remember . . . uh, that night? Of the accident?”
“Of course I do.”
“Remember how I was muddy and . . . alone?”
He leaned forward. Nodded.
“Chase had a party that night, and I got . . . drunk and stoned and . . . he . . . he tried to rape me.”
Ben’s jaw turned to granite and his eyes narrowed. Otherwise, he didn’t move or speak.
Another big breath for me. “Yeah. So. I got away and ran. Hid in the salt marsh on Town Cove, because I wasn’t thinking clearly, and . . . and they came looking for me.” Suddenly, I was crying. “With flashlights, and I just stayed where I was and didn’t even breathe, just hid in the reeds. When the house was finally dark . . .” I grabbed a napkin and scrubbed it across my eyes. “I ran down to Route 6 and started walking home. And then you picked me up.”
He rubbed a hand across his face, then came over to sit next to me. He put his arm around me and pulled me a little closer, and with Zeus on one side and Ben on the other, it was impossible to not cry. All that . . . kindness.
“Did you ever tell anyone about it? File charges?” he asked, his chin on my hair.
“No. I was drunk and high, I went to his room willingly, a zillion people saw me. And then . . . well, then there was the accident.” I wiped my eyes, blew my nose and stuffed the tissue in my pocket.
Ben was silent, and the only sound was the fire, snapping and hissing. I had never even told Brad about that night. About the accident, sure. But about Chase Freeman’s party? No. I didn’t want him to think of me as a stupid girl, even if I had been only seventeen. That sense of superiority he had, that faint disapproval when someone did something not entirely smart. I hadn’t wanted a lecture about something I’d learned the hard way.
Ben, on the other hand, said nothing, and nothing seemed like the right choice.
“Will you tell me about the accident?” I asked, my voice nearly a whisper.
His chest lifted with each breath. “You sure you want to know?”
I thought a minute. “I was there. It feels like I should.”
He got up and once again sat across from me. Took a drink of bourbon, then gave me a little smile. “Liquid courage.” He leaned back in the chair and sighed. “What do you remember?” he asked.
“I remember you picking me up in your truck.” The smell of coffee, and mud. “You asked me a couple questions. I remember feeling . . . safe. Your truck smelled like my dad’s. And that’s about it. I think I fell asleep, or . . . or I just blocked out the rest.”
He nodded. “Yep. Well, when I saw you walking, I figured something happened to you. It didn’t take a genius to tell you’d had a rough night. I thought maybe you’d—” He shook his head. “I thought maybe you’d crashed your car.”
“How’s that for irony?” I said, curling up so Zeus could have more room.
Ben looked out the window. “So we were driving along, and you were quiet. And . . .” It was clearly hard for him to revisit this night as well. I wondered if he’d had anyone to talk to. My father, maybe. “I was speeding. Doing about sixty, sixty-five.”
That was twenty miles an hour above the speed limit. Easy to imagine that late at night, when no one else was on the road.
“Then the tire blew, and we swerved across the westbound lane. I tried straightening us out, but I was going too fast. The truck went through the guardrail at Blackfish Creek.” He stopped for a minute and turned his eyes to me. He took a drink, then another. “You doing okay, hearing this?”
I nodded.
“Tell me to stop if it gets to be too much.”
“Keep going.”
He gave a slight nod. “We hit the marsh and the truck rolled. It was weird . . . it felt like I had all the time in the world to think. ‘Oh, shit, this will be bad, all this noise, are we ever gonna stop, is Lillie okay, what is all this shit flying around.’ That kind of thing. If the tide had been higher, we would’ve hit the water and probably would’ve been better off. But the tide was about halfway in, so there was still plenty of land for us to hit, which is why we rolled.”
I knew the spot well, of course. Passed it nearly every day. Blackfish Creek was more of a marsh with a tidal river in it. It boasted an unfettered view toward the bay, utterly breathtaking, a spot beloved by photographers and artists.
Ben took a deep breath and continued. “So we finally come to a stop, and we’re on the roof of the truck, which was completely smashed in, and the dashboard . . . it didn’t even look like a dashboard. It was just wires and twisted metal and plastic. But I was hanging upside down, so I knew I was still buckled in. Then the truck flopped down on the passenger side. Your side.”
His voice broke a little, and I did what I always did when people were struggling . . . I offered him food. “Here. Snickerdoodles make life better.” My hands were shaking, but only a little.