I looked deeply into her eyes. “Hit me with it,”
She inhaled through her mouth and exhaled just as slowly. “Just because I don’t want to fuck you, doesn’t mean I don’t like you or that I’m not sexually attracted to you.” She twisted her napkins between her fingers. “Actually, I’m really struggling right now because I think I do like you, a lot, and I’d…” She shook her head. “There’s a part of me that just can’t. I’m not afraid of sex, I’ve had a boyfriend, but I just… it has to be love.”
She was tender and real, my heart threatened to explode in my chest. There was something else there too. Jealousy. The emotion hit me like a brick.
“What happened to your ex?” I probably shouldn’t have asked, but I seemed to be doing many things I shouldn’t lately.
“He… well, he wanted to travel the world and get lost in it. I never wanted to get lost. I always felt like I was clinging to safety, you know, so the idea of free falling was unimaginable. After we graduated college, he got a job teaching English in China. He’s still there. Lives in Guangzhou and has two kids with his Chinese wife.” She seemed sad, but relatively resolved about the issue.
“Did you love him?”
“I thought I did, but I guess I didn’t love him enough.” She curled the cloth napkin in her fingers, and I could tell there was more she wasn’t telling me.
“Why not travel?”
She lifted a shoulder. “It wasn’t the traveling. I think I really do want to see the world, but my grandma means a lot to me. I never wanted to leave her out. I thought it was selfish to just pick up and leave her alone.”
She might’ve rejected it, but I laid a comforting hand on her. “Do you mind if I ask you a personal question?”
She stared at me, a sense of conviction and honesty in her eyes. “Where’s my mom and dad?”
“Yes, if you don’t mind sharing.” I traced the outline of her fingers with the tips of mine. “I’m also curious to know what you’re so afraid of? I mean, with sex and men and your average roll in the hay?”
Damn. Yet another thing that didn’t come out right. I was articulate in the boardroom. I could hold my own in any conversation. But when I was within arm’s reach of the auburn-haired beauty, my brain turned to mush and took my tongue with it.
She took a deep breath and a healthy gulp of wine. She was also given a moment’s reprieve because the waitress came with our meal. Before she attempted to eat the lobster, she rolled her head to release the tension from her neck, then studied the tablecloth for a moment. This was big shit. I took a deep breath too and prepared myself.
“When I was five years old, my dad told me we were going on a trip. I asked if I could bring my doll with me, and he said, ‘Sure, bring Grace along.’ He seemed really friendly when he mentioned the trip, and I was excited about going. I was little so getting in the car and going anywhere for any distance was totally thrilling. I bugged him about where we were going and remember asking him a million questions, but he didn’t give any details. He just kept saying that it was a surprise.”
She glanced up at me, and down just as quickly. I gave her the space she needed.
“When I thought of a surprise, I envisioned Disneyland or the mountains, but he didn’t give me any more information than just…you’ll be surprised. He drank beer all day while my mom packed our suitcases.”
Caitlyn swallowed hard and pressed her napkin to her mouth.
“Mom was really quiet, not like her usual bubbly self. She kept suggesting to him that they not go on the trip. She told him he needed to calm down. He seemed calm to me. He just repeated over and over again, ‘I’m taking you,’ so she stayed quiet after a while. It seemed like the start of a really horrible vacation. When we got in the car, my dad was slurring his words and was driving really sloppy. My mom was in a faraway place, and she seemed out of it. I really got nervous because I didn’t feel like either of them were okay. We drove for like an hour in silence while my mom slept and Dad white-knuckled the wheel. Then he shut the car off in the middle of nowhere. He bent down under his seat and pulled out an iron bar.”
Shit. Shit. Holy shit. Fuck. I’d been part of too many movies not to see where this was going. I reached out and took Caitlyn’s hand in mine again.
“Instinctively, I was terrified, but I didn’t know why. It was just a piece of metal. He asked her if she was leaving because she wanted to be with Uncle Jonas, a friend of our family, instead of him. My mom said she was leaving him because she no longer loved him. She tried to open the car, but I later learned he had activated the child lock feature. She screamed at him and called him a drunk bastard. That’s when he hit her with the bar. I just closed my eyes and put my hands over my ears and screamed, ‘Stop it, Daddy!’ I remember yelling that over and over, again and again.”
Caitlyn closed her eyes, and I’d never wanted to hold anyone more.
“I stopped screaming when all was quiet. Deathly quiet. My voice and my head hurt badly. I looked up, and he was staring at me. There was blood everywhere and my mom was slumped over the dashboard covered in it. I don’t think I breathed. He had a gun. Even though he hit her with the metal bar, he had a gun. He pointed it at me.”
My stomach had a pulse. Every cell in my body had a pulse. I couldn’t believe this happy person could have gone through so much.
“I thought she was alive. I must have known she died, but I didn’t want to believe it. I didn’t want to think that he had just bashed her skull in. He had both weapons in the car, he was always planning on killing us. You know when stuff like that happens, you just… it isn’t real.”
Her fingers were trembling under mine, and I held them tighter. This was too much. “Caitlyn, sweetheart, you don’t have to go through this.”
Her eyes snapped up, remembered terror lingering behind the determination to finish her story.
“I remember his cold eyes staring at me. I tried to talk to him with my mind because I didn’t dare open my mouth. He said I was a pretty girl. Then I heard a clicking sound. I froze. I had no concept of death. The only thing I really understood was that he was my dad. He was this hero. He had made this amazing tree fort in the backyard. He swung me really high on the swings. Why was he acting this way? He, um, then took the gun and put it to his ear…there was a horrible loud sound…and I don’t remember anything else.”
I took her hand between both of mine. “I’m so sorry.”
She nodded, a tiny movement of her head. “My gran told me he was sick, he had mental problems and my mom was pregnant. We were going to stay with her sister for a while until the baby was born. I found out later, it wasn’t his child.”