by Jay McLean
Keels is blunt. “The truth, Miss Sanders.” Cunt.
Lane’s cry is quiet, almost silent. “I think you can guess, detectives.”
“We have to hear it from you.”
“You want me to tell you that my boyfriend used me as a punching bag?”
Rage.
White. Hot. Rage.
“Which boyfriend?” Keels asks. “Cooper or Luc—”
“No!” she almost shouts. “Lucas would never… God, what is wrong with you two? Why are you even here when he’s down the hall!” Her volume rises with each word. “You want the truth. Fine! I tried to break up with Cooper the previous week. We were in his dorm room, and he wouldn’t let me leave. He locked me in there and said we could “talk it out” but we didn’t talk. He yelled, hit, slapped, punched. And then he fucked me as if it was going to make everything okay.”
I cover my mouth to stop the puke because it’s right fucking there, like my anger, ready to explode.
“And it wasn’t the first time this happened. It’d been going on for months, and I’m sorry,” she cries, spit flying from her mouth, and she lets go of my hand and continues, “I’m sorry, Dad. I couldn’t tell you.” She looks at me. “I couldn’t tell either of you because I thought he’d do something to hurt you and I couldn’t…”
She cries into her hands.
Brian cries into his shirt.
And I’m too fucking angry to cry.
Keels looks at me, speaks to Laney. “If that happened, Ms. Sanders, then why is Cooper Kennedy’s signature on the hospital bill?”
“It’s not,” she sobs. “It’s not Cooper’s. It’s his mom’s.”
I’m on my feet before I can think, before the consequences come to me, and I march for the door with one thing on my mind: I’m going to finish Cooper fucking Kennedy. “Lucas!” Judge Nelson yells at the same time Dad grasps my arms, keeps me in place. The judge is in front of me now, her eyes red and raw. “Don’t do this, Lucas. Don’t make me question my investments.”
LOIS
“Your boyfriend’s got quite the temper, doesn’t he?” Keels asks, watching Luke storm out of the room.
I glare at him, eyes wide in shock. The Kennedys had requested detectives from a different precinct because they felt like Misty’s connection would somehow sway the investigation. I didn’t tell Lucas. I knew how he felt about the Kennedys. “You have no idea, do you?” I croak.
Keels crosses his arms, widens his stance like he’s readying himself for a confrontation. But he’s a blur. Everything is. I lost my glasses the moment I lost my breath somewhere in the parking lot of the hotel. He asks, “No idea about what, Miss Sanders?”
“Lucas isn’t the threat here, sir. Luke’s reaction is because he has a heart, not a temper. You heard everything I said, right?”
They don’t respond.
“Because you’re both looking at us like you don’t know us, like you don’t understand us. We’re just kids, detectives. We didn’t plan for this to happen. You think Luke’s got a temper? Imagine if I were your mother or your wife, your sister”—I glance at Dad—“your daughter. And then try to fathom how you would react if you were Luke.” I wipe my eyes, a memory searing my brain. “I got my first period when I was thirteen. By then it was just Dad and me. I didn’t know what was happening or what to do, and we didn’t have the supplies I needed. It was a Saturday; Dad was working overtime so I was all alone. I sat in my bathroom and I called my mom but she didn’t answer, not that she’d do anything, but I was that desperate. I called Lucy, Luke’s older sister, but she didn’t answer, either. Then I called Luke. I was in tears by the time he picked up the phone. I was so nervous and scared and awkward. He thought something had happened to me, and he kept insisting he call 911. When I finally told him what was happening, he took charge as if it was something he’d done a thousand times before. He raided his sister’s bathroom and packed everything in his backpack and rode his bike over to my house. He sat on the other side of the bathroom door while I—you know—and he read the instructions out loud to me. He kept saying things like, ‘This is normal, Lane. Nothing to worry about, Lane. It just means you’re a woman, Lane…’” I speak through the giant knot in my throat. “Lucas is still that same amazing boy he was back then, and up until Saturday night, he’d never laid a hand on anybody. He’s the most caring, most gentle person I know. He tucks his little brother into bed every night. Without fail. No matter where we are or what’s happening, 7 pm comes along and he’s there for his youngest brother. He’s there for all of them. It was those qualities in Luke I found in Cooper that made me fall for him in the first place.”
The detectives are listening to me now, not just hearing me. Mayfield says, his voice weak, “Will you please tell us about your relationship with Cooper Kennedy. In detail?”
I nod slowly, fear of the memories squeezing my throat shut. I twist my hands, look over at Dad. “You can leave, Dad… if you want to.”
“Oh, sweetheart.” He sits on the bed next to me, his arm around me. “It won’t be any harder for me to hear than it is for you to tell. You’re braver than anyone I know.”
I wipe my tears again and try to steady my emotions. I want to speak with conviction, with heart. And I do. I tell them about how Cooper and I met. How he’d call every day when he was on campus and we’d see each other every day when he was in town. I mention the jealousy Cooper felt for Luke, but how he restrained it. At least at the beginning. Then he started to do strange things like calling me in the middle of the night to make sure I was alone, that I wasn’t with Luke. He’d call my work, make sure I was there when I said I would be. He didn’t like me talking to guys. Any guys. And I’d never been in a serious relationship before so back then, I thought it was kind of flattering—the jealousy. He got me a car for my birthday, and I found out later that he installed a GPS tracking device in it. He did the same with my phone. When I realized, I was too scared to go home.” I look over at Tom. “That’s when you found me sitting in my car on your driveway and I wanted to say something, but I couldn’t.” I go back to the detectives, tell them how whenever I wasn’t with Cooper, he stalked me from a distance. He knew where I was at all times. I tried to leave him during winter break. I said it was too much for me, and he promised he’d stop. New Year’s Eve, I was alone in a room on a houseboat and I was sick and I was scared and I needed Luke, he’d always been there in the past. So I called his brother’s phone because Cooper had blocked Luke’s number, and I knew they’d be together. Cooper came down a few minutes after midnight and caught me talking to someone. It feels strange to say “caught me” as if I was doing something so terribly wrong. In truth, I was negligent with Cooper’s wants, his needs, and those are the types of excuses I made throughout the entire relationship. I tell the detectives that New Year’s was the first time Cooper hurt me physically. He pushed me against a wall, and I collapsed to the floor and my glasses went flying. When I went to reach for them, he stomped on my hand and then stomped on the glasses and he picked me up, his hands tight on my upper arms. He shook me and yelled and shook me some more until I puked all over him, all over myself. He made me clean it up while he went back to the party, to the loud music that hid the evidence of what he’d done to me. I had bruises on my upper arms, but I didn’t tell anyone. I hid the truth, hid my shame, hid my guilt. Then I tell the detectives about how when school started again, things got worse. Cooper was under a lot of pressure. Again with the excuses. He had to maintain a certain GPA and his classes were killing him and his training was just as bad. His dad was threatening to kill him because his dad’s a monster, another excuse, and he started taking amphetamines so he could stay awake, stay alert, but they just made him crazy, paranoid. He became manipulative and vindictive and destructive, and every weekend I spent with him felt like I was walking on eggshells. He’d always go for the places I could cover up: ribs, back, hips… and he knew I wouldn’t tell. He used my weakness to his strength. I tell them about the
time Cooper took me to a business dinner with his dad and some of his clients and Cooper’s dad kept talking down to him, saying that he would amount to nothing and running track wouldn’t earn him a degree and Cooper got so mad, so livid, and we got in his car and he pulled over in an abandoned parking lot and smashed my head against the window. It came out of nowhere. I screamed, and he covered my mouth and then he forced me to…
I stop there.
At the point where Dad releases me, and all I feel is shame.
Then I hear him cry and I look up, but it’s not him, it’s Tom. Swear, there’s nothing sadder than watching a 6”4’ man hunched in a seat, his head in his hands, shoulders bouncing, sobs slicing the air.
Mayfield asks, “He raped you?”
My eyebrows pinch, confusion swirling. “No. I mean, I was his girlfriend and I was scared, so I just let him…”
“Oh, Laney,” Tom groans, rubbing his face. He looks up, his eyes locked on mine. “Why didn’t you come to me, sweetheart? I understand if you were afraid to tell your dad or Lucas, but all these years you’ve been like a daughter to me. You could have told me.”
I break down. Shut down. It hurts too much. Physically and emotionally. I grasp onto Dad, use his shirt to catch my cries. “Can we please stop now? I don’t want to do this anymore.” I look up at him, speak through my sobs. “Please, Dad, make it stop?”
LUCAS
I didn’t kill Cooper.
Instead, I go outside and get some air, away from the bullshit media and the bullshit cameras and the bullshit reporters who have nothing better to do than wait around a hospital, digging for their next fucking angle. I go far away, more than a hundred yards, so I don’t break my bullshit restraining order.
I find a bench under a tree. I sit. I think…
The glasses.
The clothes.
The blocking me from her phone.
The distance.
“We’re still together. It’s just hard… you know…”
“There’s so much I want to tell you…”
He was controlling.
Unpredictable.
“I managed to escape—”
“I’m so tired, Lucas. Of everything.”
“I’m finally free of him.”
The darkness during sex.
“Be gentle with me, Lucas.”
How did I not see this?
How did I not save her?
“Is this seat taken?”
I look up to see a familiar face. Mrs. Kennedy’s standing in front of me, huge sunglasses covering her eyes. She clutches her purse as if I’m here to steal her fucking money, as if she’s not the one who approached me. Fuck you. “No, ma’am. Seat’s free.”
She sits next to me, crosses her legs. “I didn’t know kids still say ma’am.”
I look straight ahead. “My mother taught me manners.” She taught me a lot of things, like not to beat on women. What the fuck have you been teaching your son?
I’m sure she knows who I am, but she’s faking it, and I’ll play her fucking game and I’ll win because I’m sick of fucking losing. My mom. My freedom. My perspective. My goddamn mind.
She pulls out a stick of gum from her purse and offers it to me.
“No, thank you.”
We’re not friends. We don’t share gum. What the hell does she want?
“So polite,” she mumbles.
“Like I said,” I lean back on the bench. “My mother taught me manners.”
“It’s Katherine, right? Your mother?”
I hate this so much. I hate that my mom’s name left the mouth of his mom. I start to leave, but she says, “Lucas?”
I sigh, sit back down. “With all due respect, Mrs. Kennedy, what do you want from me?”
“So you know who I am?”
“I saw you at the hospital the night your son tried to kill my best friend.”
“I thought she was your girlfriend.”
I face her. “She’s both.”
She nods, smiles like she has a right to. “I met your mom once, at this charity event. She was dancing with your dad, and I remember looking at them and being so jealous. They loved each other very much.”
“Love,” I correct.
“Excuse me?”
“They love each other. You said loved. Love doesn’t die just because one heart stops beating. When you love someone, you have the same heartbeat and it’s still there, just not as strong. So no. There’s no loved. Dad still loves her.”
She stares at me a long moment, longer than I’m comfortable with. Then she looks away, tries to hide her emotions. “Like you love Lois?”
“Lois is my heart, ma’am.”
She sighs, picks at imaginary lint on her Fuck You money dress. “You’re lucky.”
I’m lucky? My girlfriend’s been shot multiples times and I may be going to prison. Fuck you, again, ma’am.
She adds, “I’ve never known a love like that. I met Lance in high school. He was a lot like Cooper. Popular and handsome and driven.”
I don’t care.
“The first time Lance laid a hand on me I was seventeen. I didn’t have friends or family to run to, so when he said he was sorry and that it wouldn’t happen again, I believed him. Through the rest of high school and college, it kept happening. Then I found out I was pregnant and I thought it would change things. We got married and had Cooper and for a while, it was perfect.”
I still don’t care.
“Cooper was four the first time Lance hit me in front of him. He ran away, up to his room, and locked himself in his closet. He was so scared, so petrified, and when he saw me and the damage his father had done, he started wailing. I should’ve protected him from it. I should’ve left Lance, but he was always there, a constant reminder that without him, I’d have nothing. Even if I left, he’d fight for custody of Cooper and I couldn’t let that happen. I couldn’t let him control our son. But without me realizing, he did it anyway. He wanted to mold Cooper into him, and he succeeded. He put so much pressure on that boy… and Cooper—he didn’t know any better. That’s what love was to him.” She looks away, wipes her eyes, and continues, “I knew about Cooper’s amphetamine addiction and I didn’t do anything about it, and when Lois called me from the hospital, my worst fears came true. Lance had created an identical version of him.”
“Did she tell you what happened… at the hospital?”
She doesn’t answer me, instead, she says, “Cooper loved Lois so much and when she wanted to leave him, he lost his way. He wasn’t himself that night, Lucas, you have to understand.”
“No.”
“No?” she asks.
“No. I don’t ‘have to understand.’ I’ve sat here and listened to what you’ve had to say, and it’s not good enough and it’s not going to change anything. He was still there, he pulled the trigger, four times, and she’s lying in a hospital bed minus a spleen with two bullets still inside her and you want to see justice. You want me behind bars because I did something someone should’ve done to your husband a long time ago. If you came here to try and make peace with yourself, I hope it helped. But there’s no peace for me, and there’s definitely none for Lois.”
She nods, removes her sunglasses so she can wipe her tears. I don’t miss the scars, the darkness and swelling around her eyes, and for a moment, I feel for her.
Really.
Truly.
She asks, “Do you regret what you did?”
I think about the answer long and hard. “Every time I close my eyes, I see Laney. I see her lying on the ground in her blood-stained dress, and I didn’t realize it at the time—I thought she was clutching her chest, clutching for breath, but she was holding on to this necklace my mother left her. I keep going back to that moment, and I try to come up with all these different scenarios. Try to think of other ways I could’ve handled it, and I can’t. I just can’t.” I take a breath, look down at my hands, picture her blood on them. “I’m not sure if I’ll ever regret what
I did, but I regret hurting you in the process.” I look up at her, meet her gaze. “I have five little brothers, Mrs. Kennedy. The youngest one’s seven, and for some reason, he looks at me like I’m some kind of hero, and now it’s up to my other brothers to try to explain why his hero is going to prison.” I stand up, face her. “I’m sorry that you had to experience all that you’ve been through, ma’am. And if my mom were alive, she’d want me to open up my home to you, somewhere safe you can go if you get scared. And so the offer is there if you need it. But the excuses have to stop. For you, for Cooper, for Lois.”
Then I head back to the hospital, make my way to Lane’s room. I ignore the stupid flowers and stupid gifts and stupid police protection just outside Cooper’s room and prepare myself to face-off with the detectives, but just before I open the door, my phone rings.
It’s Chapel Hill.
UNC.
They’ve pulled my scholarship.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
LUCAS
There’s this nightmare I have, only it doesn’t just happen at night. It happens every time I close my eyes. I’m on my knees and she’s in her periwinkle dress, limp in my arms. She offers me those eyes and that’s when I get handcuffed, dragged away, and then I’m in a jail cell, bright orange jumpsuit, and in the middle of my cell is a giant hole in the ground, six feet deep, and in my dream, I always tell myself not to look because I know what’s in there, who’s in there. Still, I look, and there’s Lane, her arms crossed at her chest, and those eyes are closed and covered with crochet flowers.
“That’s a little morbid, Luke,” Laney said after I told her about the nightmare, the visions.
It’s now been six days and twelve hours since the incident that’s been dubbed The Night the Town Turned Red, Blue and Black. Three days since Cooper left his hospital room with a few broken ribs, a busted jaw and some bruising that won’t be going away any time soon. But, at least he’s not there, meaning I can see Laney whenever I want. It’s also three days until my trial. My lawyers say I’m lucky I’m not being charged with attempted murder, but given the evidence (Logan’s video) and the circumstances, Cooper with a gun (premeditated) and me with my anger, it would be easier for the Kennedys to get what they want on the assault and battery charges alone. The Kennedys had requested a different judge, someone who will see the facts, aka someone who accepts their Fuck You money. Their request was granted, so there are no doubts I’m going away. The question is for how long.
