30
Oliver and I get home in the late afternoon and when we do, Violet’s sitting on the front steps. Her eyes are red from crying and all of her gets heavier when she sees me.
News travels fast in a small town. I sigh bigger than I mean to as I climb out of the car.
She stands up and walks over to me, bottom lip trying to hold it together but failing miserably. It’s not her fault. How she’s reacting is natural. She’s guilty—it’s all over every ounce of her being—she thinks she could have done something. I’m not angry at her for thinking this, I’m not angry at her for being sad, it’s just—delayed grief is such a weird phenomenon if you’ve already grieved it.
Oliver gives my arm a squeeze as he walks away and inside.
Vi stands in front of me and I pace myself, tell myself to be gracious, that this is news to her and it would have broken her heart then if she knew, but she didn’t.
She gestures toward the path. “Can we go for a walk?”
I nod once. She takes this big, staggered breath, then breathes it out—and I know I told myself to be gracious, but I swear to God if one more person asks me why I didn’t tell them, I’ll punch them.
“Are you okay?” she asks once we round the corner of the house. She stands still; her eyes can barely hold mine they’re so weighed down with remorse.
“I’m fine.”
And I mostly am; it’s not a deflection. There are parts of what happened that kill me still now, flashes or memories of touches that I didn’t want, but for the most part, most days, I’m okay.
“How?” She blinks.
I give her a sad smile. “It was a long time ago for me, Vi.”
“But—”
I offer her a tiny shrug. “I’ve been in therapy since Mom and Dad shipped me away.”
“They sent you away because they thought you were sleeping with Maryanne’s boyfriend, but he—” She wipes away falling tears. “Your dad would—”
My dad would nothing , I’m fairly sure.
She sniffs and shakes her head and then she looks at me in this squinty confused way, and I can see it happening behind her eyes: she’s combing through her memories, flicking back to her thoughts of who I used to be when I lived here, wondering whether I asked her for help in a silent kind of way, and it pains her—it’s obvious it does.
“I let you down.” She nods, like she’s resigning to it.
“You didn’t.”
“I should have known.”
“I—” I shake my head. “I wouldn’t have told anyone back then.”
“Why?” she asks, and it’s so desperate.
She doesn’t understand. And to be fair, it’s a hard thing to explain, let alone understand, if you aren’t a psychologist or a victim.
I sit down on the little step that hems the garden path and sigh. “I was fourteen when it started.”
She sits down next to me, chin in hand, staring.
“And back then—even now, really—there’s not a lot of discussion around the physiological effects of rape.”
She frowns a little. “What do you mean?”
I press my tongue into my bottom lip and think back to the moments I try to avoid, wonder if there’s a way around saying it, but there isn’t, and I don’t think it’s the sort of thing we should talk around anymore anyway.
“Sometimes I’d come.” I glance at her, and she looks taken aback. “And that really fucked me up.”
“Oh,” she says, and she’s blinking a lot.
“And it took me forever to even say that out loud—I think I only ever said it to my therapist—because it is confusing, and you’d think you’d only come if you’re like, a happy, willing participant, which I wasn’t. But sometimes I’d come, so I began to wonder whether I was.”
“Oh, Gige.” Violet sighs, sadly.
“And it wasn’t until she compared it to being tickled that I realized—like how you can hate being tickled and still laugh when you are—the laughing isn’t a sign of enjoyment; it’s a physiological response to something happening to your body. Orgasms are the same, so it turns out.”
“So you didn’t tell anyone.” She nods, and I think she’s getting it.
“I wasn’t really sure what I’d be telling them?” I shrug. “Maryanne’s boyfriend keeps having sex with me and…what?” I trail off. I knew Beckett could tell the times when I came, and I think it validated it in his mind or gave him tacit permission or something, because he knew about as much about female orgasms and the physiology of it all as I did. “I didn’t know what any of it meant.”
“Honey.” She touches my face. “You weren’t supposed to.” She shakes her head and looks away from me. “I could kill that boy.”
I grimace. “I think they nearly killed him last night.”
“I heard.” She glances at me. “Good, I’m glad. Clay said Sam was real mad.” She’s peering at me out of the corner of her eye.
“He was.” I press my lips together.
“So what’s happening with you two?”
“Nothing,” I say reflexively.
Vi rolls her eyes.
“Something,” I say instead. I laugh once. “I don’t know—we haven’t talked about it.”
She smirks. “So what have you done?”
“Not a lot,” I admit somewhat ruefully.
She smiles at me warmly, then pauses. “Does Oliver know?”
“No.” I purse my mouth. “I don’t want him to yet.”
“Why?” she asks me even though I know she knows the answer already, and I shrug like I don’t.
“I’m just figuring things out,” I lie.
She stares straight ahead. “Mmhmm.”