Chapter 13
Thirteen
Neisy
NOW
“Levi, get your shoes on. We’re going to be late.
” That kid will be the absolute death of me.
He moves in reverse, especially in the morning.
Kane and I joke about giving our six-year-old coffee for the jolt of caffeine.
We look forward to him becoming a teenager so that’ll be an option.
In the meantime, every morning is a struggle with him.
“He’s still in the bathroom, Mom,” my eldest, Charlotte, tells me when she comes downstairs ready to rule the fourth grade.
“Seriously?”
“Would I lie to you?”
“Never. Watch the twins while I fetch him.” I kiss the top of her blonde head and take the stairs two at a time. “Levi! Let’s go.”
“I’m coming.”
“Not fast enough.”
“Dad says these things cannot be rushed.”
I roll my eyes because that’s absolutely true. Kane takes forever in the bathroom, and his son is him all over again in more ways than one.
“If I have to come in there…”
“You do not want to come in here.”
“You’re going to miss the bus.” I drove Charlotte to school every day until the twins arrived and made it impossible to get four kids out the door by seven forty-five every morning. The bus is the best thing to ever happen to me since the twins were born.
“I haven’t missed it yet, and I’m not gonna start today.”
“Please, buddy. Hurry up.”
“I’m coming.”
The sound of the toilet flushing gives me hope that I won’t be trucking four kids to the elementary school this morning.
“I’ve got your stuff.” I go back downstairs with his sneakers and sweatshirt.
The mornings are still cool, but it’ll be in the seventies by midday.
I love the fall, but not as much as I love the lazy days of summer when no one has to be anywhere until cheerleading starts up for Charlotte in late August.
I’m in the kitchen closing lunch boxes when my phone rings. When I glance at it and see that it’s Kane, I grab it. He’s been deployed on the U.S.S. Dwight D. Eisenhower aircraft carrier for two weeks and is due home later tonight. I’m thrilled to realize he’s back in cell range.
“Hey there.” I hold the phone in the crook of my neck to keep my hands free.
“Hey, yourself. How goes it there?”
“Usual morning chaos thanks to your son.”
“I love how he’s my son when he’s causing chaos and your son when he makes the honor roll.”
“What’s your point?” I ask, smiling. I can’t wait to see him. Everything is better when he’s home.
“No point. Just sayin’. I miss you guys. How’re my babies?”
“They’re wonderful. Charlotte is in charge while I smoke Levi out of the bathroom.”
Kane laughs.
“It’s not funny, and it’s all your fault for telling him a man needs time to himself in the morning.”
“That’s the truth.”
“If you teach Hayes and Hudson that, too, we’re going to have a problem.”
“I can’t wait to see you guys.”
“Same.”
“Date night after bedtime?”
“It’s on.”
We’ve become experts at date nights in our own home, since finding a babysitter for four kids under the age of nine, including nine-month-old twins, isn’t a simple proposition.
“What time will you be home?”
“Should be there by late afternoon. I can see land.”
“They’ll be so excited.” I never tell them he’s due home until he’s back in port, lest something happens to delay him. That doesn’t seem likely today, so I feel safe telling them.
“Same. I’ll take them to the park to give you a few minutes to yourself before dinner.”
“I won’t say no to that.”
“See you soon. Love you.”
“Love you, too. Hurry.”
“I’m hurrying.”
“Was that Dad?” Charlotte asks.
I hand her lunchbox to her just as Levi finally appears in the kitchen to down a protein bar.
I point to his shoes. “Yes, that was him. He’ll be home this afternoon.”
“You get all silly when he calls after deployment,” she says, batting her eyelashes as she mocks me.
I sputter with laughter. “Are you having a seizure or something?”
“Haha, nope. That’s you when Dad comes home.”
I bop her playfully on the head, retrieve the twins from their high chairs and step outside the front door just as the bus lumbers down the street. Another close call. Somehow I manage to juggle the twins and blow kisses to Charlotte and Levi and get myself back into the house without disaster.
I put the babies down on their mat in the playroom and run into the kitchen to grab my coffee without taking my eyes off them. They’re quick these days.
When I return to the playroom, Hayes has Hudson’s foot in his mouth.
I don’t stop that until Hudson starts to protest and then I separate them. But like the proverbial magnet and steel, they’re right back on top of each other a minute later. They hate being separated for any reason.
I’ve just put them down for their morning nap when the doorbell rings.
It’s probably my neighbor wanting me to try her latest confection. She’s working on getting a home baking business off the ground, and I’ve been assisting with social media.
I swing the door open, but it’s not Gretchen.
The sight of Houston Rafferty brings back a thousand painful memories in one big rush of emotions from a time I’d much rather forget. What the hell is he doing here? “Houston?”
“Hey, Neisy.” And that name… I haven’t gone by that since the summer from hell.
“Wh-what’re you doing here?”
“Could I come in for a minute?”
I realize I’ve been frozen in place since I realized who was at my door. “Of course.” I unlock the storm door and open it for him.
As my old friend steps into my house, I’m screaming on the inside. Houston was always so good to me, but he’s a reminder of a time I’ve worked so hard to leave in the past.
“Beautiful home.”
“It’s a mess. Four kids.” I shrug. “I gave up years ago.”
“I was happy to hear you and Kane were still together.”
“H-how did you find me?”
“I saw Ronnie.”
My mom’s cousin, who owns the restaurant where I worked with Houston. I haven’t seen Ronnie in years, not since…
I cross my arms, wishing that could protect me from the onslaught Houston’s unannounced arrival has unleashed.
“Could we sit?”
If he hadn’t been the one person from that time who was good to me, I would’ve said no, we can’t. I would’ve asked him to leave. But because it’s him asking, I sit on the loveseat while he takes the sofa in the one room that’s not been completely overtaken by kids.
“Why are you here?”
“I have some news about your case.”
Those words make me go cold all over with dread. “My case? There is no case. It was dismissed for a lack of evidence.”
“A witness has come forward.”
It takes what seems like a full minute for his words to register. “A witness.”
“Yes.”
“Someone saw him…”
“Yes.”
He never blinks.
I look away. I can’t bear this.
“Neisy—”
“Please don’t call me that. I’m Denise now.” I want to tell him Neisy died a long time ago. Denise was forced to pick up the pieces of her life and carry on, to find love, meaning and joy, things Ryder Elliott tried to take from Neisy.
“I’m sorry, Denise.”
“What do you want from me?”
“I’m the police chief in LE now. The attorney general may be willing to reopen the case based on this eye-witness testimony.”
“No.”
“No?”
“I’m not reopening the case. The first time almost killed me. I can’t go through that again.”
“I understand how you feel, but—”
Rage, the kind I haven’t felt since that summer, boils up inside of me.
“Unless you were attacked, assaulted and robbed of your virginity by the local hero and called a slut by his friends, you can’t possibly understand how I feel.
Unless you miscarried the baby you were left with after that night, you can’t possibly know the journey I was forced to take to get my life together or how long that journey took.
It took years, Houston. I can’t go back to that place again because someone who failed to do the right thing then wants to clear their conscience.
There’s nothing in this world that could make me revisit that time. ”
“Not even to get justice?”
I shake my head. “Who’s the witness?”
“I suppose it doesn’t matter because if you’re not willing to participate, we have no case.”
“It matters to me. I want to know who left me in the woods after I was raped and then sat on that for all these years.”
“Blaise Merrick.”
It takes me a second to put a face with a name. I remember Arlo Merrick because I had a class with him, and he was one of the boys who signed that hideous affidavit full of lies. Blaise didn’t stand out to me, which means she wasn’t one of the tormentors.
“Why didn’t she come forward?” As soon as I ask the question, I hold up my hand. “Never mind. I know why. She grew up with him. I was nothing to her.”
“You weren’t nothing to her. I took her statement.
This has weighed on her soul every day since it happened.
She explained that she had close ties to him through her brother, who’s still one of his best friends.
Her best friend at the time was dating his brother.
And she wasn’t allowed to be in LE with the car.
A lot of things conspired to keep her quiet, and she regrets that very much. ”
I find that hard to believe. “So why now?”
“Ryder is running for Congress. Blaise said she couldn’t bear to think of him running for office, knowing what she did about him.
She said the minute she heard about his campaign she couldn’t hold on to this secret for another second.
She drove straight from her home in New York City to LE and asked to see me. ”
My insides twist into knots.
Ryder is running for Congress.
Blaise saw him rape me and is willing to testify to that or Houston wouldn’t have come all this way to find me.
Houston puts a business card on the table in front of me and then stands to leave. “Think about it. If you change your mind, give me a call.”
I want to tell him I won’t change my mind.