“Yes.”
“What exactly do you remember?”
“Waking up in bed. With blood on my clothes.”
“How do you know it was the same day?”
“Because I panicked and ended up being late to work, and I saw it on the news later.”
“Okay.” I push back my sleeves, lean in toward him. “I’m going to ask a lot of you today. We’ll need to discuss your abuse again.”
Donny Ray swallows hard. His Adam’s apple rises, then falls.
“The dress your father made you wear. Was there more than one?”
He closes his eyes and slowly shakes his head.
“Can you describe it for me?”
When he opens his eyes, he’s fighting back tears. His lips part, and I see the slightest quiver. “I . . . I don’t want . . . I can’t . . .”
“I have to know, Donny Ray.”
He looks to one side and toward the ceiling, the lights above reflecting off tears that fill his lower lids. “It’s too . . .”
“What? Tell me.”
“It’s so . . .” He stops again. “Humiliating!” he says through a strangled voice, still refusing to look at me.
“I know . . . I understand, but I wouldn’t ask unless it mattered. I need this information for your evaluation. I need you to help me.”
Donny Ray collapses forward, reaches around his legs, and pulls them tightly together. With cheek resting on knee, veins grossly protruding from his neck, he rocks his body. Like he’s back there again, enduring his father’s relentless cruelty. Like this is all too painful.
I fall back in my chair and wait, knowing how difficult this has to be for him. To suffer that kind of shame after such horrid abuse. To be hurled back into that dark place and describe such a lurid and repulsive detail.
Donny Ray tries to pull himself together—or I think that’s what he’s doing. His posture rises and stiffens, but he still can’t look at me.
“Lace,” he at last tells me through sputtering lips. “It was lace.”
“I need to know what color it was.”
“I . . . I don’t . . . I can’t.”
“Please try. This is extremely important.”
He leans forward again, rocks harder. The side of his face that I can see is stained by tears that fall quickly and seem endless.
“White.”
The floor falls out beneath me. In a few heartbeats, my theory has caved in onto itself. Adam was right. I’m sunk.
My voice is unsteady when I ask, “Was . . . was the dress all white?”
Donny Ray finally looks at me. He pushes the bangs off his face, swipes away a tear. “No, the dress wasn’t white.”
I’m confused. I ask him to explain.
But he has trouble forming words, like they’re lodged in his throat. He clamps his hands to each side of the chair. Muscles strain against skin. A bead of perspiration rolls down the front of his neck, then disappears beneath his shirt collar. Now he looks angry—no, it’s more than that. I’m witnessing rage, a brand so raw and caustic that it almost feels like my own.
And in a fast second, Donny Ray’s eyes open so wide that I can see the whites. His fiery blue irises rest at their center, aimed directly into mine, their heat so intense that I can barely stand to look at them.
A guttural sound rumbles from deep inside his throat, and Donny Ray growls, “You. Fucking. Monster!”
I try to remain calm—or at least look that way—because I know he’s not just remembering what happened. He’s at last experiencing the rage he was never allowed.
“What was white?” I ask, gentle but firm. “Tell me what was white.”
Just as fast as it appeared, his fury morphs into a new emotion. His angry eyes go dull and unfocused beneath half-opened lids. His shoulders droop, posture crumbles.
Then, in the tiny voice of a child, weak, pleading, and barely audible, Donny Ray mutters, “The bow . . . The bow was white.”
And there is nothing but aching silence in this room.
Donny Ray looks down. Tears fall into empty palms as he says, “A giant bow . . . the purest white. It was the only time I ever saw my father’s hands clean. He’d stand over that bathroom sink—he’d stand there and scrub them—for twenty minutes before fixing the bow on the front of that dress, and . . . and I always knew what was coming next . . . then he’d spray it with starch, wouldn’t even let me use the seat belt on our drive to town.”
Donny Ray stares vacantly while the impact of his narrative lands. “Every day, I pray to God that hell never gives the man a second of peace. Not a goddamned second.”
I can’t argue with his sentiment. I inhale and exhale. My heart is breaking, but time is flying. I have to move this forward. The picture on the wall feels as though it’s screaming at me. I lift my head to look at the girl in the blue dress and nearly choke on bile. The girl in the picture is no longer peaceful. Now a thin line of scarlet blood trickles down her leg, collecting into a growing pool by her feet.
Tick tock, tick tock.
Overwhelmed by a fusion of nausea and terror, I have no choice but to close my eyes and open them, hoping my insanity will hold off until I can get what I need from Donny Ray. Slowly, the blood near the girl’s feet and on her leg evaporates. The picture is restored to order, and for the moment at least, I am able to tackle reality.
So now I must ask. “The dress, Donny Ray. What color was the dress?”
“My favorite color. He did it on purpose.”
“Donny Ray, what color was the dress?”
He spits out the word as if it tastes rotten.
“Blue.”
56
I sit in my office and stare at the computer screen.
Evaluation complete. Diagnosis: dissociative amnesia, brought on by acute and repetitive psychological trauma.
Though I know every missing girl is connected to Donny Ray’s horrors of the past, as instructed, I’ve kept them out of this, only focusing on Jamey Winslow. The rest I’ve moved into a separate file, should I require it at a later time.