Chapter 16
Chapter Sixteen
L orelai…
I sat silently in the cab of Hangman’s beat up old truck, staring out the passenger side window; a death grip on his hand on the bench seat between us. He gripped mine back as the tears slipped down my cheeks and I sniffled here and there. I didn’t want to go home yet, but he was right… I needed help. Help I couldn’t get from him or hiding from the world, and so we were on our way to the hospital to see the nice doctor lady from that first night.
I didn’t want to leave, though. I didn’t want to let go. I didn’t want to lose him.
“It’s for the best, Sweetpea,” he’d murmured against my forehead, his beard and lips soft against my skin.
I don’t know what it was about those little touches that he gave me. The closeness of having his arms around me, but it felt like… it felt safer than anything I’d ever – than I’d ever been.
It felt like nothing could reach me when Hangman was around. I trusted him. I don’t know why, but I did, and now it felt like he was pushing me away.
“Will I ever see you again?” I asked him as he put the truck into ‘park’ in the hospital’s parking garage.
“Oh, baby. I’m just a phone call away…” he murmured and he reached into the front pocket of his sleeveless flannel shirt and extracted a battered business card.
I took it, the phone number on it in bold black print. Centered, with nothing else around it. No name, no logo, no business, or address.
“Don’t cry, Sweetpea. You’ve been so fucking strong to this point, and I need you to be strong just a little bit longer for me, okay?”
I nodded, but I couldn’t help but feel like the rug was being pulled out from beneath my feet again… and the whole world was falling as I hung frozen in time, paralyzed with fear, unable to move as everything crashed and broke around me.
I stared at him and he at me for a long time, in the quiet of the running truck, in its parking spot. It was dark and getting darker still with the setting of the sun. I had slept most of the day away, and I’d needed it. I didn’t realize how much until I’d woken to Hangman dressed and sitting on the side of the bed, watching me with that sad and almost wistful look in his golden-green eyes.
He'd discussed the plan to get me home with me and I’d readily agreed that it was best, but then he’d dropped it on me that it had to be tonight and that had been one very hard and bitter pill to swallow.
“Will you judge me if I want you to kiss me?” I asked before I lost my nerve.
He looked surprised and asked, “Judge you for what?”
I looked away and sighed, trying to find the words to explain myself. About how I felt like I shouldn’t want such things after…
He tipped two fingers against my chin to turn me to look at him, and I had expected it would be for me to explain myself, but then his lips were on mine and my eyes fluttered shut and I simply lost myself in this moment.
I hung onto it with everything that I was, with both hands, as he kissed first my top, then bottom lip, so carefully and so chastely. I sucked his bottom lip into my mouth and he groaned, leaning into me, his arms going around me and my heart swelled with a gladness that felt out of place when I still felt so numb from the medication of the night before.
We broke apart, and I felt myself flush with a mixture of desire and anxiety as he opened his truck door and slipped out of the cab.
He stood outside, back to the truck, taking in some deep breaths and shuddering like a dog that’d just walked out of a lake, he came around the back of the truck to open my door.
I swung my legs out and looked up into his so very serious face as he said, “I need you to try for me. To go back to your old life… but I mean it, Lorelai. I’m only a text or phone call away.”
I nodded and slipped out of the passenger seat to my sandaled feet, and I wrapped my arms around him, burying my face in his chest and trying not to sob.
He put his arms around me, smoothed a hand down the back of my hair and murmured into it, “Remember what I showed you, if you need it to help you sleep at night.” I nodded. It was an unconventional thing, a coping mechanism, he called it, and honestly, I didn’t know if it would work or not – but I was willing to try.
“Okay, c’mon,” he said, pulling back from me. “Before I can’t do this.”
I looked up at him, startled, because it was the first thing he said that let me know he was having just as hard of a time with letting me go as I was him.
I took his hand and let him lead me to the employee entrance down here. He knocked twice, paused for several heartbeats, and then knocked three times more, deliberately.
The doctor opened the door and she looked so scared.
“I hope you know just how much I’m putting my ass on the line for you and this whole charade,” she hissed at Hangman and he turned stony.
“You know what’s up,” he said and she looked only semi-chagrined. To me her whole countenance changed.
“Come on, you poor girl. Let’s get you into a gown and your room.”
I nodded and let Hangman deliver me into the good doctor’s hands and I honestly don’t know how I didn’t fall apart.
That had been two days ago, and now I was being discharged to go home.
All manner of tests had been run, and I’d had to speak to an endless stream of police officers and prosecutors, and lawyers, and doctors until I just wanted to scream at all of them to just leave me alone!
My mother and father arrived that first night, and my mother remained glued to my side, her hand in mine, and to be perfectly honest I was so grateful for that.
My dad did his best to hold the flood of people back to a trickle, but there was only so much that could be done.
The story had been that I was in a coma – not an uncommon thing with the corpse weed drug or whatever it was. I’d been found and admitted as a Jane Doe and due to a computer or paperwork error, I’d been cared for but lost to the system for a few days until I’d woken up and told hospital staff who I was.
Somehow, Hangman and the rest along with the doctor, had made it all work.
Now, I was finally on my way home to my parents’ house in Charleston, and as Savannah receded in the distance out the back window of the town car we rode in, whisking us up the interstate, I couldn’t help but feel like I was leaving my safe haven only to return to what felt tantamount to a strange land.
It was all so damn confusing and I was so tired of everything and under so much stress that the two hour or so drive honestly felt like it took an eon.
I slept, but not well for pretty much the next two days.
My mom came in and checked on me, brought me food and something to drink, but I was so medicated I felt like a zombie. Disconnected from it all. It didn’t help that while I was home, it didn’t feel like home. Everything was as it should be, but my memory was still shoddy at best. Absolutely wrecked… and I didn’t feel comfortable talking to anyone here about it.
It didn’t help that my mom, desperate to have her version of Lorelai back from before the bad thing happened, was constantly trying to refresh my memory. It felt like every five minutes or so she was saying something like, “ Do you remember when…” and sometimes, yes, I did remember but more often than not, I just stared at her blankly groping for something, anything familiar about what she was saying only to grasp at empty air.
I moved through the shadows of my old life, like a living shade or ghost, and it was beyond frustrating.
I started therapy but couldn’t bring myself to talk. We sat for an hour in almost complete silence, the therapist not pushing or asking any real probative questions, which confused me and put me on edge. Weren’t they supposed to ask you questions? We sat across from each other, her looking cool, calm, and collected while I shifted uncomfortably in my seat for almost an hour.
Finally, she looked at her watch and said gently that our time was up for today and I left feeling more hopeless and lost than the moment I’d walked in.
I missed Hangman.
He was entirely too easy to pour my heart and soul out to and to do so left me feeling heard .
Here, I felt as though I screamed into the void… and it all got worse on my eighth or maybe ninth day back, when I came downstairs to find my mother entertaining in the back garden… and who should it be, but Julie.
I paused in the kitchen as my mother laughed at something Julie said and I felt a fine trembling start in my hands. I was doing as Hangman had asked me to. I was trying… but this? This was rich.
I slipped out onto the back patio and Julie happily exclaimed, “There she is!”
“Lorelai, baby, come sit down. Look who came to visit!” my mother exclaimed.
Julie got up, her sharp heels clacking on the flagstones as she came around the small bistro table and hugged me.
I stood stiff, and didn’t hug her back, just sort of frozen in the face of her sheer audacity.
“Come sit!” my mother urged and took my hand. I flinched at the light contact and warily came around to take the seat my mother was trying to pull me down into.
“I’m so glad you’re home and okay,” Julie simpered as she re-took her seat and I blinked.
“Okay?” I echoed.
“Yeah,” she said and she looked a little… I wouldn’t say guilty. She wasn’t that. She swept her long, bottle bleached blonde hair over her shoulder and ran the extensions through her hands, catching a stray hair and shaking it off her hand into the light breeze back here and I just stared at her.
“I was telling your mom all about that night. How you broke your heel and insisted I go into the club while you went back to the hotel on your own to change your shoes. I feel so bad! I should have gone with you – don’t you remember?”
Really? I thought to myself, indignant.
“Oh, I remember…” I murmured.
She looked a little uncomfortable at that and shifted in her seat, taking up her coffee cup.
“Girls?” my mom asked, and the worry in her tone was palpable as she looked first from me where I stared a hole through Julie’s skull, willing her to come clean silently… but of course, she didn’t.
“Well, I’m glad we can put that all behind us,” she said awkwardly.
“Can we?” I asked. “I mean, I’m sure you can… you weren’t negatively affected at all.”
“Lorelai Mary Ellen Gantz!” my mother cried aghast.
“You weren’t drugged and gang raped, or left for dead. You were safe and sound inside the club dancing the night away – but fuck me, right?” I asked.
My mother gasped, and Julie stared at me, her eyes filling with tears.
“Don’t,” I said, sternly, my voice cracking. “I practically begged you to come back with me but all you could think about was yourself. How fucking dare you come in here and try to re-write history, hoping I just wouldn’t fucking remember thanks to those assholes little party favors! You vapid cunt! ” I cried.
“Lorelai!” my mother cried, aghast.
I shook my head.
“Get out,” I told her firmly and felt the tears spill down my face. I was barely restrained, my hands shaking so bad I could do naught but grip the arms of the wrought iron chair I sat in to try and curb their shaking.
I may never see justice from the men who did this to me, but I wouldn’t sit here and let my supposed friend get away with any more of her insipid bullshit.
“I said, get out!” I screamed; my voice shrill. Julie jumped and gathered up her purse. Sniffling, she strode for the garden gate, her heels clacking smarter than she would ever be along the path on her way out.
My mother stared at me aghast, and I looked at her.
“What?” I demanded sharply.
“I… I don’t even know who you are right now,” she said and her voice sounded wounded.
I scoffed and got up. Hurt beyond measure that my own mother would choose decorum at a time like this over the feelings of her shattered and traumatized daughter. High society be damned at a time like this.
I thrust myself to my feet and snapped at her, “I don’t know, either!” and let my tone drip with sarcasm and anger as I strode back into the house.
I went upstairs, feeling as though my heart would try to explode out of my chest, and changed back into the sleep set I’d worn the night before. It was a tank and pair of short shorts, similar to the ones I’d worn the night it’d all come back to me at Hangman’s apartment.
God, how I longed for that small, cozy space and his presence, his quiet and calm strength… God, how I missed him.
I closed my eyes, and put my hands over my mouth, trying to hold in the shards of agony that comprised my soul these days.
I cried, breathing in slow and sure deep breaths. Counting to try and diminish the rising panic, but I felt frenzied somehow. This torrent of emotions ripping through me. Anger, outrage, anguish… just everything. All at once. Swamping me completely.
I just wanted a hug, and a good cry, and I just couldn’t get the former… or could I?
I went to my top drawer and pulled the mail order bag out of it that I’d had yet to open. Tearing open the packaging, I spilled the coil of royal blue bamboo rope onto the covers of my bed.
It was soft to the touch as I picked it up. Much softer than I expected it to be, with an almost satiny quality to its twisted fibers.
I swallowed hard, and closed my eyes, remembering back to that morning after my epic meltdown. At how Hangman had stood me up after telling me I had to go home, that there was no more help for me there – that I needed more .
I don’t think he was wrong, but here it was almost ten days back, and I felt like I was falling apart even worse and not getting any better. Like I was shaking so bad to my core it was only a matter of time until the pieces started flying off.
I needed something to help hold me together, and to that end, I was willing to try anything… especially the thing that reminded me of him.
I unfurled the rope, and tried to remember how this went. Draping it around the back of my neck and crossing the two pieces in front of me, between my breasts. I swallowed hard and twisted the two ends behind my back in an X pattern, and it took me several false tries to get that part right to where I could wind the rope around my body and pull it tight to where it felt the same.
The rope harness was something beautiful when he’d done it, and it had fit so close and so wonderfully tight, the only explanation I had for the sensation of it was that it’d felt like a hug from God himself… even though I knew it was twisted, meant to be dirty, it left me feeling put together and clean. Like when you just stepped out of the longest hottest shower of your life and felt cleansed soul deep.
Only this was less a clean thing as a I felt held together kind of a thing.
It wasn’t perfect, but it was close, and I found myself crawling back into bed with my stuffed rabbit clutched to my chest. It was childish, I knew, but it made me feel better to have something to hug…
I lay on my side and cried, staring at the bent business card with just a number on it propped against my bedside table’s lamp.
My mom knocked a short time later, but I didn’t answer. She poked her head in the door and sighed, coming over to sit on the bed. I burrowed down deeper under the covers and hid my face.
“Baby, why didn’t you tell me?” she asked gently.
“I don’t know,” I said and sniffed.
She sighed and put her hand on my back, rubbing over the blanket and asked, “What’s this?” she peeled the covers back and took a deep breath and held it before letting it out slowly.
“I don’t know what this is, or if I should be concerned about it, Lorelai. I’m going to need you to explain this to me.”
I swallowed hard, and felt bad, but I lied about it.
“It’s just something I read or saw a video about. It’s supposed to feel like a hug and help with feeling anxious so you can sleep.”
Her face crumpled into lines of sadness mixed with confusion and she said, “I don’t know how to help you and it’s breaking my heart,” she said.
I pushed myself into a sitting position and said, “I don’t know how to help me, either.”
“You need to talk to someone… if not me…”
I nodded rapidly and said, “I know someone, but you’re not going to like it.”
She searched my face and there was nothing but love, compassion, and concern in it.
“Just talk to me, baby,” she said. “I promise to just listen and to not judge.”
I hugged my knees, crushing my stuffed bunny between them and my chest.
“I don’t want to worry you and Dad any more than I already have,” I said quietly, dashing at the stray tear rolling down my cheek.
“Let me handle your father,” she said. “I just want to make things better.” Her voice cracked, and she sniffed.
I felt trapped. I so badly wanted my mommy’s opinion, but by the same token, I didn’t want to betray Hangman’s trust in the slightest.
I thought about it, warring with myself and decided to do my best to split the difference.
“When I was in the hospital, I met someone. A veteran that would walk past my room visiting someone else…”
The lie came surprisingly easy. I told my mother all about Hangman, and how we’d started talking and how he’d helped me, telling me about some of the ways he coped with things after coming back from overseas. She listened, rubbing the top of my foot through the covers, and said…
“And you feel like you can talk to him?”
I nodded and she looked thoughtful.
“Have you talked to him since coming home?”
I shook my head.
“Why not?” she asked.
I shrugged a little helplessly and said, “He wanted me to try. Thought home was the best place for me… but mom, I feel so weird being here. Like a – a – a – stranger in my own house kind of a thing. Like I’m not really me, but like one of those old Irish myth babies that were put in place of the real one.”
“A changeling,” she supplied and I nodded rapidly.
“What can I do?” she asked.
I shook my head and sighed.
“I don’t know. I don’t think anyone can do anything, to be honest.”
We sat in silence for a while and she heaved a big sigh.
“Honey, you’re twenty-four years old… you’re not a child anymore even though you’ll always be my baby girl. I just want what’s best for you and I don’t know anything about this man but…” she paused in what she was saying and looked like something occurred to her, “What’s his name?” she asked.
I felt myself blush and said, “Don’t be upset, but I honestly don’t know his real name. Just his nickname or whatever and it’s probably going to sound really bad.”
“In for a penny, in for a pound,” she said and looked like she steeled herself for whatever it was.
“His friends call him Hangman and he, um, he’s an Iron Wraith.”
She stared at me, shocked, and gave a slow blink.
“ Lorelai!” she cried and I tilted my head.
“Mom, you promised you’d keep an open mind!” I said just as sharply and she held up her hands in surrender.
“You’re right, you’re right,” she said and yet she huffed out a great sigh and asked, “If he means so much to you, why haven’t you contacted him?”
I looked back at the business card and took it up in my hands, staring at the block numbers in bold black font on its front.
“I don’t know,” I said honestly. “I guess, to some extent, I wanted to make some progress or, I guess, have something to show for myself in the way of progress before I did.”
I swallowed hard and said, “I guess I wanted him to be proud of me.”
“Just how old is this man?” she asked.
I shrugged.
“Thirties, maybe… it never really came up in general conversation.”
My mother was trying her best, but I could see this wasn’t going great… I mean, I probably sounded like a fucking lunatic but hey, I felt like a raving lunatic so I guess there was that.
“This is really hard for me,” I murmured and my mother’s face did that thing again where it went from lines of suspicion mixed with deep concern only to crumble into what can only be described as devastation on my behalf.
“I still don’t understand why you didn’t say anything about Julie… I never would have invited her over here if I’d known she’d done that to you.”
I swallowed hard, and said, “I don’t know why I didn’t say anything either… I guess maybe I just didn’t think that I would be believed maybe? I don’t know.”
“Oh, honey, why would you think I wouldn’t believe you about something like that?” she asked and she looked hurt.
I felt my shoulder slump and a tiredness that had nothing to do with anything physical wash over me.
“I can’t tell you how many times I told the police the same thing over and over and I honestly don’t feel like they believed me, either.”
She sighed and shook her head.
“I’m so sorry,” she said. “I feel like I’m failing you at every turn when all I want to do is help.”
I nodded and said, “I know the feeling, I feel like I’m letting everyone down by not being able to get it together.”
“Oh honey, oh, baby no…” my mom reached out and chased one of the layers too short to be captured by my simple braid back behind my ear. My eyes started to well and my nose started to fill again. I sniffed and dashed at my tears.
“You should call him. If talking to him makes you feel better, and he gave you his number – you should call him.”
I nodded, and she got up, handing me my new cell phone off the side table off its charging pad.
“I’ll give you some privacy,” she said and her eyes lingered on the rope harness that was seemingly holding me together. I nodded and felt guilty, knowing it was weird but still taking comfort in it anyway.
“Okay,” I whispered as she went out, shutting the door softly but firmly behind her.
I felt a surge of emotion, gratitude chief among them, that she’d remained calm and measured and hadn’t lost her shit on me.
My mom wasn’t generally like that, to be fair and in all honesty, though. Stiff upper lip and all of that British propagandist garbage. My dad, on the other hand… he would be tearing his hair out, pacing back and forth in my bedroom ranting, raving, and probably screaming at the top of his lungs wanting to commit me to a lunatic asylum just for the rope harness thing.
I took several measured breaths and with shaking hands, keyed the number into my phone from the card Hangman had given me.
I tensed as it started ringing, and ringing, and ringing, my heart skipping a beat when it sounded like someone picked up.
“ Ah yeah, this is Benjamin St. John. I can’t come to the phone right now so leave a message and I’ll get back to you.”
Of all the names he could have, I hadn’t thought Benjamin. The phone made its shrill tone in my ear and I held my breath.
Shit. What did I say?