Chapter Twenty-Four
Lochlan
18 years ago…
As soon as I turn onto Bethany’s street, every house and yard in sight is lit up in red and blue flashing lights.
Cop cars are parked on the curb in front of her house, and my heart rate picks up…
What happened?
Did someone get hurt?
There are no ambulances, only cop cars.
A few police officers mill about on her porch, but I don’t see Bethany anywhere.
The thought of her being hurt stirs dread in my chest that I’ve never experienced.
I park my truck on the street as close as I can since the driveway is blocked and cut across the front lawns to get to her house.
As soon as the cop on her front stoop sees me, he startles, drawing his gun on me.
“Don’t fucking move, boy.” My hands go up on instinct.
“I’m Bethany’s boyfriend. I need to make sure she’s okay.”
“Oh, you’ve done enough, son.” He moves towards me and motions to the ground with the barrel of his gun while two more cops provide backup.
I’m big for my age, my grandfather always warned me to respect the law because they’d be intimidated by my size.
I’m complying, but they don’t seem to care.
“Down on your stomach, now!”
I do as I’m told, lying face first in the muddy grass, staining my nice shirt.
I thought tonight would be special, but now it’ll be a night to remember for the worst reasons.
He cuffs my wrists behind my back, and I let him because this has to be a big misunderstanding.
There must have been a robbery, and it will all get cleared up when Bethany and her parents see me.
Except when two of the cops work together to help me stand, I see Bethany’s dad standing on the porch with his arms crossed.
“Sir, what’s going on? Is Bethany okay?”
“Don’t ever speak her name, you vile son of a bitch!”
What?
I knew he didn’t approve of us dating, but what did I do to deserve this type of hate?
“Please, someone tell me what’s going on! Call my grandfather! Please, someone help me!” I beg as they shove me into the back of a cop car.
They ignore my pleas, pulling away from the house without explanation.
I strain my neck to get a glimpse of her window when I notice a silhouette.
She watches as the car I’m in gets further from her house.
* * *
“The next time I saw her was in the courtroom. She sat behind the District Attorney and accused me of rape.
“I couldn’t believe it was happening.
I thought I would marry this girl, and she was letting them destroy me.
I was so angry, but at the same time, I had convinced myself it was all a mistake.
Her father had to have put her up to it.
She was still 17, but we had been dating on and off for two years, and it wasn’t illegal.
“It wasn’t until she was called to testify that my world fucking shattered. She swore under oath that I had forced myself on her after she told me that she wasn’t allowed to date me.”
I keep my focus on the moon because I’m not brave enough to look Jo in the face as I tell this story.
“She gave them details about my anatomy and how rough I handled her. She told them how afraid she was of my size. I’ll never forget the betrayal I felt when she sat there in front of everyone and described a sexual encounter that we had, but twisted it into a non-consensual nightmare.” I hang my head in my hands, recalling how sick it made me.
“They all took one look at me and assumed my guilt, but I didn’t, Jo. I never…” I can’t even finish my thought.
Saying this out loud to her is painful.
“I believe you, Lochlan.”
“I don’t know why. No one has ever given me the benefit of the doubt.” I shake my head.
“After I got sent to prison, and she was no longer a minor, it came out that she was pregnant. That’s what started it all.” Jo gasps beside me.
“Even after everything that happened, I still convinced myself that she was confused and scared. Her father was a mean man, but I made my grandfather promise to take care of her and the baby, despite what she had accused me of. If I had a child out there, I wanted it taken care of…
“He told me when it was born, but she wouldn’t speak to my grandparents, and she eventually ran off with the baby.
”
“Oh my God. I didn’t know.”
“Pops spent his life savings to hire a private investigator to track her down. I spent 68 months in prison, not knowing if it was a boy or girl, what it looked like, what she named it.”
“That must’ve been torture.” She gazes at me in disbelief, but she hasn’t heard the worst of it yet.
“Almost six years in, I finally found out it was a girl… But she wasn’t mine.”
Jo covers her shock with a hand over her mouth.
There is nothing to be said when hearing a horror story like this anyway.
“It took years to get the paternity testing done, though. Bethany would refuse; her lawyers made our lawyer jump through every hoop, and she lived in a different state by that time. But even after the DNA test results were presented to the court, they wouldn’t reevaluate my conviction. They were bogged down, no one wanted to reopen such a heinous case. I think the heartbreak of that is what killed my grandmother. They said it was a heart attack, but I know it was my fault.
“She never got to see me as a free man.
I missed her funeral…
”
“You shouldn’t have had to go through that,” she murmurs, settling some of the rage boiling back up inside of me.
“My grandfather didn’t visit me for almost a year after she died. I didn’t blame him for it. The stress of my situation and losing the love of his life was too much for him… But when he did come back, he had a letter.
“I guess Bethany sent it here, assuming my grandfather could get it to me.
”
“What did it say?”
“She admitted that she lied about everything. When she found out she was pregnant, she was terrified to admit the truth to her father, especially since she wasn’t supposed to be dating at all. She was sleeping with a bunch of people, cheating on me. That broke my heart all over again because I really had loved her at the time.” I shake my head at the memory.
“She admitted that blaming me for rape was an impulse decision because she felt trapped. She regretted it immediately, but she was too afraid of her father to tell the truth. She only wrote the letter to me because she had finally gone no contact with him after years in therapy.”
“Still, she ruined your life,” Jo says angrily.
“I know. I had to mourn the relationship that I thought I had with her. I mourned my normal life. I mourned a child that was never truly mine. It ruined me.”
“But you got a second chance.”
“It took my grandfather forever to get a meeting with your father. I couldn’t believe it when he called to tell me it worked. I was exonerated. My charges were dismissed, and I wouldn’t have to live with my name on some vile sex offender’s list.”
“Did he tell you about it? The meeting?”
“No, not really. We were so happy I was getting out of prison that we only spoke about the future.” I glance at her as she bites her lips introspectively.
“Why?”
“I need to tell you the truth about something, but I don’t want you to be angry at me. ”
“Why would I be angry?”
“I’ve kept something from you.”
My stomach sinks.
After the betrayal I just spoke about, she thinks dropping another bomb on me is a good idea?
“Tell me, Jo.”
“I knew your grandfather.”
“What?”
“I met him that day, in the Governor’s office. I was shadowing my dad for school in my sophomore year.”
I stare at her fully, not having any idea where this is going.
“I listened to him talk about his grandson and how innocent he knew you were. I was moved to tears, hearing him advocate for you. No one in my life had ever been in my corner the way he was for you. He was the most genuine man I had ever met. I felt like I could see the honesty in his eyes, and I believed every word he said.
“He was in his military uniform, it was really sweet.
He showed the letter to my father to prove your innocence, but I never knew what it said.
All I knew was that my father was going to say no.
He had no intention of exonerating you.
”