Chapter 12 #2
see it, you’re a survivor.”
She couldn’t have been more taken aback. A survivor? Was that really the way he saw her, or was he simply trying to make her
feel better? But when had Clint ever not told her the truth?
Their gazes met. As the moon haloed his head, she wanted to feel that strong, solid body pressed against her. She reached
out to touch him. Pressed her hand to his chest.
The moon dipped under a cloud. He cleared his throat and stepped away. “We’d better get back.”
She pulled herself together. She had to think of Clint as a priest, not as the sexiest man she’d ever known. “Yes, it’s been a long day, and I’m getting cold.”
“I’d give you my jacket, but I’m not wearing one.”
“Always the gentleman.”
“Not always.” He took out his phone and flipped on the flashlight.
Insults were their common language, not this. She needed to right the ship she’d sent off course. “You’re a marshmallow. Or
in romance novel language, a cinnamon roll. Kind, decent, and deliciously good.”
He shuddered. “Don’t ever let me hear you say that again.”
“Come on, Watch. We’ve had enough of this marshmallow for the night. Let’s go home and dream about a real man.”
“Ouch.”
She smiled as the world resettled on its axis.
But her smile faded as she reached the caboose. Clint was right. It was long past time she got rid of the shame she’d been
carrying for so long. Her teenage self deserved compassion instead of judgment.
She climbed into the cupola, which had become her thinking place. Too much time had passed for her to exact revenge against
her rapist, but by holding on to her guilt, she’d been letting him violate her again and again. She needed to fix that. She
needed a ritual. A ceremony. Something.
She gazed into the darkness beyond the window until she knew what she had to do.
She climbed down the ladder and gathered what she needed.
Leaving Watch where he was, she went outside and turned on the flashlight she’d brought with her.
She found a collection of small rocks and placed them in a ring to make a miniature firepit.
Using a few sticks and some dry leaves for tinder, she lit a fire.
As it burned, she sat on the caboose steps with slips of paper she’d cut from the drawing pad.
Taking her time, she wrote a single word on each piece.
Anger. Helplessness. Shame. Guilt. Stupidity.
Debasement. Every emotion she felt connected to her rape.
Finally, she wrote his name. Mick Watkins.
Slowly, she fed the words, one by one, into the fire.
Then his name. As each burned, she whispered to herself, “I release
your hold over me.”
Only after they’d all turned to ash and the fire had died did she go back inside. She felt lighter than she could remember
in a very long time.
Clint wasn’t ready to return to the house, and he kept walking. He was shaken and enraged by what Dancy had told him. Even
in middle school, Mick Watkins had been an entitled little prick. He still occasionally tried to hit Clint up for game tickets.
While Dancy continued to hold on to shame, Mick was undoubtedly bragging about being her first.
He’d gotten so used to thinking of Dancy as the villain of his high school years that he’d forgotten what had drawn him to her.
More than her beauty, although there wasn’t a boy at school—gay or straight—who didn’t turn his head when she walked by.
From the beginning, he’d been comfortable talking to her.
She had observations about people and the world that were new to him, and her wicked sense of humor matched his own.
She was also accomplished from all the lessons and activities her parents had insisted on to make up for their abandonment: singing and dancing, playing the piano, gymnastics.
She’d been on the swim team and knew her way around a soccer pitch.
The girls thought she was conceited, but even then he’d known her aloofness came from insecurity instead of snobbery.
The clouds slipped away from the moon. He turned off his flashlight and stuck the phone in his pocket. The way she’d leaned
into him right before she left . . . She’d wanted a little comfort, but he’d moved away because he’d gotten hard. Now who
was the pervert? He was disgusted with himself.
Dancy found an envelope on the platform the next morning. In it was a car key fob and two separate keys, along with a scrawled
note from Clint saying he’d be gone for the day and to use the car if she needed it. Her eyes prickled. He’d been so kind
last night. That simple burning ceremony she’d performed hadn’t wiped out what had happened, but it had given her a kind of
closure that made her hopeful. Now she wanted to focus only on the amazing script Roth had delivered and the acting role of
a lifetime he seemed to be dangling in front of her.
She cleaned up the last of the painting mess, wishing Roth would appear so they could talk about it. When he didn’t, she rang
the bell at the house, but no one answered. She made her way to the three-car garage. One of the keys Clint had left unlocked
a small side door. The other key could only be for the house he’d forbidden her to enter. She knew a pity offering when she
saw it, and she hated him thinking of her as needy.
Inside the garage not even a cobweb disturbed the well-organized space, which had a shiny gray epoxy floor and built-in cabinetry. The Range Rover sat in the far bay, but the other two bays were empty. Clint’s truck was missing and so was Roth’s Ferrari.
What if Roth had already gone back to LA? As someone who’d once been attached to her phone like every other person in LA,
being without one for nearly a week had been a welcome escape into a different reality. But that time was over. Without her
phone, she couldn’t contact Roth about the script.
She could no longer afford to keep hiding in her protective bubble. She needed to buy a charger. Clint’s Range Rover smelled
faintly of soap, citrus, a dash of spice, and crisp, new paper—everything clean and fresh, exactly like him.
With her “Simply the Best” ball cap and a face mask, no one recognized her at the drugstore. When she emerged with the charger,
she felt as if she were holding a viper waiting to strike. She made herself take it out of the packaging, plug it into the
car, and connect it to her phone.
There was nothing she could do for a while, and she had an idea. The caboose deserved something more than fresh paint. After
stopping at an ATM to replenish her cash, she drove south on the highway to the large red barn she’d spotted the day she picked
up Erin. Big black letters across the front read “Antique Mall.”
Two tour buses were parked outside the barn, and as she walked in she saw dozens of senior citizens browsing the many stalls.
She considered returning when the place wasn’t so crowded, but she was anxious to see what she could find that would make
the caboose more comfortable.
Wedging her way through the swarm of senior shoppers and into the stalls, she located a hand-knotted Persian rug that had probably survived decades of abuse and could surely handle the lively children who apparently visited the caboose.
She found lace curtains in cellophane packages and three interesting lamps.
A spatterware tea kettle caught her eye, along with a charming lithograph of an old steam locomotive and a pair of primitive-style paintings of a lakeside village.
It took forever to lug everything through the hordes of tourists and back to the Range Rover. With the rear seats down, she
managed to hoist the rug inside. She’d just finished stowing the rest of her purchases when she felt a tug on the leg of her
shorts. She looked down and saw a little boy with curly red hair who appeared to be about four years old. The red smears on
his white dinosaur T-shirt suggested he’d recently finished either a juice box or a popsicle.
“Do you have kids?” he asked.
She swallowed around a lump in her throat. “No, but I have a dog.”
“Where is he?”
She looked around for a parent but saw only a crowd of seniors. “He’s home.” Home. In my little red caboose.
The child’s lip quivered. “My mommy said if I ever get wost, I need to find a mom with kids.”
“Very good advice.” Dancy closed the tailgate, pulled down her mask, and knelt next to him. “Did you come here with your mommy?”
He nodded as tears welled in his big brown eyes and trickled down his grubby cheeks. “My mommy and Tawoowah.”
She gave him a gentle hug. “What’s your name?”
“W-W-Wevi.”
“Levi?” He nodded. “I’ll help you find her. What does she look like?”
“Wike my mommy.” He began to cry.
Dancy’s heart melted. She took in the dinosaur on his shirt and cupped his grimy cheek. “How about if we pretend to be dinosaurs looking for something to eat while we go find her? Can you roar like a dinosaur?”
Levi proved he could, indeed, roar like a dinosaur.
She took his small hand in her own, where it nestled like a warm chick. “My dinosaur name is Rex. What’s yours?”
“I wanna be Rex.”
“Rex it is. I’ll be . . . Susie.” Stupidest dino name ever, but he seemed satisfied. She gave her own roar. “Come on, Rex,
let’s go into the jungle and look for some wooly mammoth mommies.”
He roared back, tears forgotten. She slipped her mask in place, and with his hand trustingly tucked in hers, they entered
the antique barn. She regarded the crowd with dismay. Gray hair, silver hair, pink hair, and black hair. How was she supposed
to find his mother in this crowd?
As people bumped into them, Levi’s roar began to wobble. Dancy picked him up, and he wrapped his arms tightly around her neck.
Compact body, sweaty, little boy hair. “Do you see any wooly mammoths, Rex?”
“I see one!” He pointed to the ceiling rafters, which wasn’t exactly helpful.
“Excellent. Keep looking for more.” She remembered a TikTok video she’d once seen about what parents could do if they lost
a child in a public space. “Cover your ears, Levi. I’m going to get really loud!”
She drew a deep breath and called out in a voice she hoped would carry over the crowd: “Little boy! White dinosaur T-shirt and blue shorts! Curly red hair!”
The young clerk behind the register must have seen the same video, because she immediately joined in. “White dinosaur T-shirt, blue shorts, curly red hair!”
An unidentified voice from one of the stalls repeated the call. “Little boy, white dinosaur T-shirt, blue shorts, red hair!”
Levi roared.
A young woman broke through the crowd. “Levi!” She hurled herself toward him. She had wild auburn hair, freckles, a blouse
tucked half in and half out of a pair of jeans, and a baby in her arms.
“Mommy!”
Dancy set Levi down as the woman barreled toward her son. When she got there, she barely spared Dancy a glance before she
thrust the baby into her arms and dropped to her knees to embrace her son. “Levi, you scared me so bad!”
The baby regarded Dancy curiously. This, Dancy suspected, was Tawoowah. Unlike her big brother, Tallulah had straight blond
hair combed up into a perfect whale spout. She reached for Dancy’s face mask with wet, chubby fingers. “Hey, you,” Dancy whispered,
catching her hand.
The baby smiled, revealing two tiny bottom teeth. “And aren’t you perfect,” Dancy said, which seemed to delight the baby who
began bouncing in her arms.
Levi’s mother came to her feet. “Thank you! I can’t thank you enough,” she said on a single breath. “One minute he was there,
and the next minute he was gone. I looked everywhere.” She reached for her baby daughter.
Dancy didn’t want to give her back. She wanted to grab Levi, pop him and the baby in the car, and drive away. She didn’t care
that the baby smelled like she’d unloaded in her diaper and that Levi had started jumping up and down holding his crotch.
She wanted these children with all her heart.
She released the baby to her mother and patted Levi on the head. “Nice getting to know you.”
The mother gave her another grateful smile. “Thank you again.” With both children in tow, she walked across the parking lot
toward her car. Before she got there, however, Levi turned back and waved. “Bye, Susie.”
She blinked back tears. “Bye, Rex.”