Chapter 40
Nina
I’ve come to the community center charged on pure adrenaline, pure anger, pure rage.
I hardly notice my family as I pass them, or Lyle, or Sienna, or Rae.
Even Wes barely registers as a blip in my peripheral vision, I’m so focused on Uncle Aaron.
It’s time to finally hold him accountable.
It’s time for everyone to see who he truly is.
But the look he gives me when he finally turns to face me on the stage stops me cold. Uncle Aaron has never liked me. He’s never been warm. He’s never made any secret about the fact that he doesn’t want me in his family. But this outright contempt in his eyes is something wholly new.
His face is turned away from the crowd and the cameras, back toward me, so only I can see him. Only I can see the way he’s looking at me like I’m a disgusting little bug he wants to squash under his shoe.
Suddenly I’m seven years old again, trying to reach out and hold his hand in church, only for him to shake me off him and walk away.
I’m fifteen, raising my arms and kneeling so he can check the modesty of my outfit, knowing he’s doing so because he thinks I’m so inherently sinful that I must be trying to get away with something.
I’m twenty-two, returning to his house after leaving my postulancy, seeing in his expression that I’ve just confirmed everything that he already thought was true.
I freeze.
I can’t help it. I don’t want to do it. I promised myself I wouldn’t when I made the decision to come to the community center so I could confront him. Never again, I’d promised myself.
But old instincts die hard. For years, years, I’ve been trying to win Aaron’s approval, capture even the tiniest morsel of his love. Even with everything I know now, it’s hard to face him, knowing he’s displeased with me.
Seeming to realize he’s gained some ground, Aaron lowers his voice to a menacing whisper. “Get. Off. The. Stage.”
I’m too frozen to do even that. If my flight instinct could kick in right about now, that would be helpful.
For the first time, I become fully aware of all the lights, the cameras, and the people witnessing this moment.
Desperately, I search the crowd for Wes, but the auditorium is too dark, the stage lights too bright, and it’s impossible to pick him out.
No. If I’m going to overcome this, I can’t wait for him to help me do it. I have to be the one to set myself free.
I think again of seven-year-old me. Fifteen-year-old me.
Twenty-two-year-old me. It feels too daunting—impossible even—to face Uncle Aaron for myself.
But for them? For the girl I was? For all the other people Uncle Aaron has hurt and will hurt if he keeps lying and cheating and charming his way through the world?
I have to.
Something shifts in me. I have to. Dragging my eyes away from the crowd, I focus my gaze again on Uncle Aaron. He must see that something in me has changed, too, because he takes a step back.
“I have something to say,” I repeat. I’m not shouting this time. That isn’t me. But my voice is firm. I won’t falter this time.
Taking advantage of Aaron’s changed position, I push in closer to the mic stand, talking hold of the microphone. If he wants it back, he’s going to have to snatch it away from me—and the optics on that won’t look good for him. Uncle Aaron has always cared so much about optics.
“I’m Aaron Miller’s niece,” I tell the crowd. My voice is so unexpectedly loud coming through the speakers that I instinctively flinch from the sound, but nevertheless, I force myself to keep going. “He and my aunt adopted me when I was a child.”
I sense more than hear the uncertain murmur coming from the crowd. They don’t know where this is going. They think this might be a nice story. It isn’t.
“From the time I was a little girl, Aaron made me work to earn my keep. By the time I was a teenager, I’d taken over almost all of the household upkeep.
I was a live-in housekeeper and nanny, but I never got paid.
Instead, he kept a running tally of everything I ate, anything that was bought for me—toothpaste, deodorant, tampons. ”
I hold up the ledger that I took from the suite’s desk; no one in the crowd will be able to see what’s on it from this distance, of course, but I feel more confident knowing that I have proof in my hands.
“Even when I became an adult, he held on to all my legal documents. My birth certificate. My social security card. A few months ago, my passport went missing, and I found out why when I looked through his desk tonight.” I take it out of the folder and show it to them, too.
“He was keeping this from me to make sure I couldn’t leave without his permission.
He wanted to control everything about me, from what I wore to what jobs I worked to what I ate. ”
As I’ve spoken, the outrage has started building up in me again.
I’m almost grateful for it, because I know I won’t freeze now.
I’ve broken free. And I’ll never go back in my cage again, not without a fight.
“But that isn’t the worst of it. Tonight I discovered that he’s been using an app to monitor my text messages and screen mirror everything I look at on my phone. ”
A murmur of unease rises in the crowd. The picture they had of Aaron Miller in their mind is starting to rearrange. Good. But I’m not done yet. “And it gets even worse. Tonight I found a recording of a conversation I’m sure he never wanted me to hear.”
I meet his gaze then because I want to see the look on his face once he realizes what I’ve unearthed. What truth I’m about to tell the world.
This isn’t the only recorded conversation I found tonight, of course, and it isn’t even the most inflammatory.
There are some very legally questionable things I uncovered that I’ve already emailed to Morrie.
But this one won’t interfere with the investigation.
It might not even affect him legally at all.
It doesn’t matter, though. This one is for me.
Aaron’s face drains of all color. I feel the sweet satisfaction of it. He knows. I’m about to ruin the image of himself he’s spent so many years building, and he knows it.
Ignoring the optics now, Aaron reaches forward, jerking the microphone stand away from me.
There’s not much I can do about that; he’s stronger than me. But I retreat across the stage, turning back to face the crowd and raising my voice to a shout. “When I was eighteen years old, a man who was a regular guest in our home told me he loved me, and I believed him.”
I leave out the part where that man was my cousin Miriam’s fiancé—not to protect myself, but to protect her. None of this is her fault. When she finds out, I want it to come from me, not from a television show.
“I’d never had a boyfriend before. Never been kissed.
Never held hands with anybody.” My voice is already raw from how loudly I’m shouting my truth out to the world.
I feel a little unhinged, honestly, but in the best way possible.
I wish my friends were here to see this.
I know they would be so very proud of me.
“So I was easy prey for him when he told me he was in love with me. When he pressured me into sleeping with him to prove I loved him, too.”
The reflexive shame tries to wedge its way into my mind, but I force it back, unwilling to let it take hold of me.
This isn’t my shame. It’s his. “Afterward, he made it seem like I was the one who initiated everything. He confessed to my uncle, and they both made me feel so . . .” For the first time my voice falters, but I push on.
“Wrong. For doing something so normal. Something that came from what I thought was a place of love. It wasn’t wrong.
” I’m saying this more for myself now than anyone listening.
“I didn’t do anything wrong. But they made me feel so much shame for it.
Afterward, he got to go back to his life just like it had been before.
And I was packed up and sent away, the horrible family secret.
I’ve always felt so terrible about what I did.
I convinced myself I must have misremembered things, that I must have been so much more sinful than I’d ever realized. ”
I reach into my cardigan pocket, withdrawing my phone. “But tonight I found a conversation between them that Uncle Aaron recorded.”
Glancing over at him, I make sure he hasn’t advanced on me. He hasn’t, but his face is red and his shoulders are bunching up high, and I know it’s only a matter of time before he snaps again. I have to act quickly.
“I think I’ll let the rest speak for itself,” I say, before I press play on the copy of the voice recording I sent to myself.
I’ve turned up my phone’s speaker volume as loud as it can go, but without the microphone, it’s still going to be hard for everyone to hear. Luckily the room is absolutely silent, all those faces in the crowd watching, listening.
“I understand the temptation.” Uncle Aaron’s voice comes through clearly. “Believe me, I do. A lot of people like us who do missionary work in poverty-stricken countries develop—what’s the phrase for it? Brown fever?”
Ugly male laughter follows, from both him and Micah—Miriam’s then fiancé and now husband.
My stomach curdles all over again just listening to it.
“There’s a lot going on under all those long, loose dresses,” Micah confides, sounding clearly at ease about saying such objectifying things since he knows he’s in good company.
“Why do you think I make her wear the long, loose dresses?” Uncle Aaron replies with another laugh. “I could be in a lot of trouble otherwise. She’s a very . . . well-developed girl.”
Bile rises in my throat. The way they say it, it puts all the blame on me, like I’m the reason these two adult men couldn’t keep from sexualizing a girl who was barely eighteen.
“Take my advice, though,” Aaron continues. “I’ve gone down the same path. I was lured in by a beautiful face and a tempting body, and I made a wife out of her. We’ve made the best of things, but I’ve had to do a lot of work to keep her in check. A lot of work.”
I wonder what Aunt Hope is thinking, hearing that spoken out loud.
It’s hard to feel entirely sorry for her, since she always took Aaron’s side, since she let him treat me like the family’s dirty little secret all these years, but still.
I wonder if after jumping through every single hoop he set out for her, time and time again, she’s surprised to hear it still was never enough.
“You’d be much better off with a good, godly girl.
A proper wife who knows her place.” He’s speaking about Miriam here, trying to urge Micah back to her, but I double-checked the recording to ensure he never mentions her by name.
“Have your fun with Antonina if you like. Bed her if you want. Get it out of your system. Then marry the right kind of girl.” He chuckles again.
“But you’re still single now, aren’t you? Might as well enjoy yourself—”
I’m not sure why Aaron waited this long.
Maybe he forgot just how bad this conversation actually was.
Maybe he got a taste of what it feels like to be frozen in place, unable to move in a moment of crisis.
But suddenly he’s on me, his hand clamping down on my shoulder, wrenching me back so he can snatch the phone out of my hands.
It all happens so fast, I don’t hear if the crowd reacts. I don’t even know if I scream or try to pull away. All I’m aware of is one voice, cutting through the crowd.
“Get your fucking hands off her!”