“Not long. I ran away. I lived on the street for almost two years.”
Wade went quiet, absorbing the full weight of her words. Two years on the streets, and little more than a child. The urge to wrap his arms around her was suddenly overwhelming.
“Foster care was that bad?” he asked instead.
“It was for me. And when I think of Iris going through what I did, I just . . .” The words trailed off. She shook her head. “I can’t bear it.”
She was rocking back and forth now, drawn in on herself, worrying the underside of one wrist repeatedly with the ball of her thumb. Wade locked on the gesture, frowning as he tried to pull up a memory. And then he had it—the night on the deck when he’d asked about her scars. At the time, it had seemed like nothing—three small scars whose origins she claimed not to remember. Now, he wasn’t so sure.
He reached for her hand, surprised when she didn’t resist. “I asked you about these once,” he said, tracing a finger over the trio of crescent-shaped marks. “You said you didn’t remember how you got them, but I think you do.”
She nodded, and the tears began again. Wade had no idea what to say, no clue how to stem her pain, and so he said nothing, holding her hands instead and simply letting her cry. She had a right to her grief, a right to shutter whatever private hell she had endured, and to keep it shuttered if she so chose.
And then, without any prompting on his part, the whole of it came pouring out.
FORTY-THREE
Goose Creek, South Carolina
July 18, 1998
Christy-Lynn cracks open the bathroom door, checking to make sure the coast is clear before slipping out into the hall in her towel. After two months at the Hawleys, she still feels like an intruder, the new kid everyone watches while pretending not to watch. She can hear the television downstairs, the eleven o’clock news punctuated by the steady sawing of Dennis Hawley’s snores. He was usually asleep by now, aided in part by the six-pack he killed each night while his wife worked the nightshift at Charleston Memorial.
She reaches for the knob of her bedroom door, trying to remember closing it in the first place. She can’t but isn’t surprised. She’s been in such a fog lately, still sleepwalking through most days. The room is dark. She tries to remember shutting off the lamp beside her bed. That’s when she feels the first prickle of warning crawling along the back of her neck.
There’s a whiff of stale smoke, of sour sweat and old beer. She barely has time to register that she isn’t alone when she feels a hand wind through her damp hair, and she’s yanked backward. As she gathers her breath to scream, a second hand clamps down over her mouth and nose, cutting off her air. She kicks and flails, but it’s no good. She’s being dragged across the room, her towel lost somewhere in the dark.
Her head slams against the headboard as she’s shoved down onto the bed, and a burst of blue light blooms inside her skull. And then there are more hands—fastened over her mouth, pinning her wrists, prying her legs apart. There are two of them, she realizes sickeningly, two sets of hands pawing at her. The reality of what’s about to happen—of what is happening—is almost too much to grasp. She can’t move, can’t breathe, can’t scream.
Someone is on top of her, a faceless shadow in the darkness, crushing the breath from her lungs as a sweaty hand fumbles between their bodies. And then there’s a piercing between her thighs, a rend up the center of her that feels as if she’s being split in two. For a moment, she’s terrified she’ll be sick, that she’ll choke on her own vomit because of the hand over her mouth. There’s a brief battering, a sickening spell of gasping and bucking, and then finally, a collapse of heavy, sticky flesh against hers.
She has no idea how much time passes as she lays there, pinned to the mattress, trying to breathe through the fingers still pressed to her face, but eventually the weight lifts away. There’s a rasp and then a flare of light, the brief flame of a disposable lighter, and for the first time, she can make out Terry Blevins’s face hovering above her, slack-jawed and slick with sweat.
“You want a turn, bro?” he asks thickly, still straddling Christy-Lynn as he smokes. “I’ll hold her.”
“Let’s just get out of here before the old man wakes up.” It’s Todd, the younger brother, the one who has her mouth covered and her wrists pinned. He sounds scared, as if he’s just realized what they’ve done.
“Come on, man. She’s right here. Or are you scared?”
“Ain’t scared,” Terry grunts sullenly. “Just don’t want to.”
There’s a moment, a fraction of an instant when the pressure over her mouth goes slack. She wrenches her head free and opens her mouth to scream. The sound is cut short as an open palm connects with her cheek. Lights dance, and she tastes blood.
“Hold her still, dumb ass,” Terry growls at his brother. He sucks on his cigarette again, then aims the smoke at Christy-Lynn’s face. “As for you, you stuck-up little bitch, you’re going to lay there and listen. Got it?”
The grip on her wrists tightens again, and her fingers begin to go numb. She lies still and dazed, tears leaking from the corners of her eyes.
“You ain’t gonna tell anybody about this,” Terry says with vicious softness, his face so close she can smell the beer on his breath. “You’re gonna pretend it never happened. ’Cause if you don’t, if you even think about making any trouble, we’re coming back.”
He leans closer then and takes another pull from the cigarette. The tip glows hot orange in the dark, sinister and coming closer—so close she can feel the heat of it against her cheek. She closes her eyes and struggles to pull away. She isn’t expecting the blinding sting that suddenly sears the underside of her wrist. She begins to buck and thrash, anything to get free, but there’s another slap, and then another sting as he presses the cigarette to her flesh again. Somewhere above her head Todd lets out a groan.
“Jesus, Terry . . . leave her alone. You got what you wanted.”
“Shut the hell up, boy,” Terry barks. “I ain’t done.” He leans in then, crushing the cigarette out against her wrist, holding it there until the reek of burning flesh fills her nostrils. “Now, you remember what we talked about,” he slurs menacingly close to her ear. “Not a word. Or I’ll be back—and next time I won’t be nice.”
When Christy-Lynn finally eases herself up off the bed, she isn’t sure if one hour has passed or four. She has wept herself dry and knows what she has to do. She has seventeen dollars to her name, the last of her tips from the doughnut shop. Not nearly enough. But she can’t stay.
She dresses in the dark, ignoring her wrist and the dull ache between her thighs. She empties her backpack—she won’t be needing her schoolbooks—then rolls up a pair of jeans, a T-shirt, and a denim jacket and stuffs them inside. It’s all she can fit in the backpack, but she’s afraid her duffel will be too heavy. And too conspicuous.
Her hand is on the knob when she remembers the envelope in the stand beside her bed. It’s a silly thing to care about at a moment like this—a meaningless trinket—but somehow she can’t bear to leave it behind. After retrieving the envelope, she folds it into her back pocket, slides her pack up onto her shoulder, and steps out into the hall.