The rest of the day went on without incident. Cassie hung around the inside of the country club. She discovered it had an actual library and her mother let her have her book back. She read until dinner and changed again, this time into a dress and shoes that had a bit of a heel to them.
The firm threw a lavish dinner in one of the ballrooms. Word about what happened to her had made its way around the firm and several people stopped by her table to ask how she was. A young man, who she recognized as the one who had fallen on top of her, apologized so long that it started to embarrass her.
The wall at the side of their ballroom folded back to reveal a room the same size as the one they were in, but with a wooden parquet dance floor and a band with about ten musicians. Mr. Benton came over and asked Cassie to dance with him. At first, she shook her head, but he just smiled at her until she gave in. It was a short number and Cassie was relieved when it was over. When they returned to the table, Mr. Benton asked Delores to dance with him.
Several boys her own age and a little older came over to ask Cassie if she wanted to dance, especially during the faster songs. She told them all no. None of them were as insistent or persuasive as Mr. Benton.
At last the day was over, and Cassie said goodbye to the people that she had met. Los Angeles highways are always crowded, but tonight there were few cars on the road.
“Did you have a good time?” Delores asked her.
Cassie yawned and made an agreeable noise, but her eyelids were too heavy to keep open. She fell asleep.
She awoke next morning in her bed, wearing a T-shirt and underwear, without any memory of how she got upstairs, changed, or got into bed. She looked over at her nightstand. Next to the picture of her father was an alarm clock. It was 9:24. But it was summer. She was allowed to sleep in. Her mom would already be at work. Cassie would call her after breakfast.
She stood at the kitchen counter, pouring frosted corn flakes into a bowl when she heard a man’s voice behind her.
“Good morning, Cassie.”
She jumped and screamed and jerked the cereal box. Frosted corn flakes flew everywhere. As she turned, she looked around frantically for a knife or a stick or a threatening spatula, anything she could defend herself with. When she turned, she saw Clifford Benton standing there, smiling. He was barefoot, wearing the pants from the suit he had worn the night before with a plain white cotton undershirt. Behind him was her mother, in a long negligee and a matching robe Cassie had bought her for Mother’s Day.
“Dear,” her mother said, “we’ve got something to tell you. Cliff has asked us to move in with him.”
Cassie was having trouble making sense of this. “How long have you been going out … seeing each other … whatever?”
“About six months now,” Cliff said.
Cassie tried to do the math in her head. “So that means that you were seeing each other while Mr. Benton was still married?”
“Cassie,” Delores said with a look of seriousness she had never seen on her mother’s face. “You need to grow up and get over it. Cliff and I love each other. The heart wants what the heart wants.”
“I’d like for us to be a family, Cassie,” Cliff said. “A real family. Won’t you give it a try?”
Cassie nodded glumly. What could she do? She was too young to live on her own.
It didn’t take long. The movers showed up within an hour and boxed up all the things in the apartment they were taking with them. Cliff wanted them to leave it all, that he’d buy them new things, better things. But Cassie insisted on taking everything of hers. She carried the nightstand picture of her father on her lap.
Although she wasn’t a whiz at geography, she knew they weren’t headed up into the Santa Barbara hills. Instead, they headed west to the ocean. They pulled into large house right on the beach in Malibu. Cliff gave them a tour and showed Cassie her room on the upper floor with a balcony that looked out over the sea. They settled in. Cassie was registered at a new school, but it would be weeks before she’d have to worry about that.
Her mother and Cliff went off every day to the firm in separate cars. It would be a while before they told everyone. Cliff had a housekeeper who cleaned up and made lunch for Cassie.
After a few weeks, her mother went off to Vancouver. One of the movie directors the firm represented had a legal problem and Delores was part of a group that went to see him. The second night her mom was gone, Mrs. Suarez made dinner for Cliff and Cassie before leaving for the night.
“It’s a nice night,” Cliff said, “but kind of cool. Why don’t we sit in the hot tub before bed?”
Cassie didn’t think anything of it. She and her mom and Cliff often sat in the hot tub together. It was warm and relaxing. It was up on the deck, high above the beach, behind screens. No one could see from the nearby houses or the beach below.
Cassie shuddered from the cold when she stepped out onto the patio, but sighed as she slipped beneath the water. A layer of warm mist hovered over the surface.
Cliff came out wearing the same bathing suit he always wore, but holding a bottle of wine and a glass. She couldn’t remember if this was the bottle he opened with his dinner or if it was a new one. Cliff got in and slid around and sat right next to Cassie. Very close. Too close.
Cassie felt uneasy and said she was going to go to bed.
“Don’t go,” Cliff told her.
His voice had a harshness she had never heard before. He grabbed her as she stood up. She struggled to pull away. His hands were all over her and he slipped down her bathing suit bottom. Then she felt a pain below like nothing she had ever felt. She started to scream, hoping someone would hear her, but the only sound that answered back was the crash of the waves on the beach. He stopped moving his hips after a minute or two and let her go. She scrambled out, pulling up her bathing suit.
She did not head back into the house. Instead, she headed down the stairs and tried to run up the beach to the first house she could get to. She wanted to run, but running hurt. Walking hurt. Breathing hurt. Just being alive at that moment hurt so much. She looked back. Cliff wasn’t following her. She forced herself up the back stairs of the house next door and pounded on the French doors. A man and a woman came out.
“My mother’s boyfriend,” Cassie started to say, panting for breath, “he… he…” And then she could not find the words.
The man pulled out his cellphone, dialed a number, and gave his address. “There’s a girl who just came up from the beach. I think she’s been raped.”
Cassie was lightheaded and couldn’t think clearly. She wasn’t sure what rape was, but she didn’t think this was it. She didn’t remember collapsing on the ground, but there she was, in the doorway of the home of strangers. She looked down and saw that her bathing suit bottom was now soaked in blood.
This is must be what her mother warned her about. She got her first period. She didn’t know she would bleed so much.
Cassie remembered little from the night after that. She woke up in the hospital. A woman detective came to her bedside and asked her some questions. She said they did some tests on her. She met another lady who said her name was Georgette Grayson and that a judge had appointed her as her guardian because her mother was out of town. Grammy Pruitt showed up and held her hand all through the night while she slept.
Cassie’s life took a peculiar feeling that night. Time felt like it was moving like a cheetah and a snail at the same time. Her mother showed up the next morning, insisting Cassie had to be mistaken, that Cliff was a good man, that he would never hurt her. He saved her life once, her mother declared to anyone who would listen.
They caught Cliff at his Santa Barbara ranch at dawn, packing his clothes and with a large bag filled with cash. DNA tests confirmed what Cassie said.
Cliff was a trial lawyer with lots of friends in Los Angeles. He knew judges. And if he didn’t know the judge, his new lawyers knew the judge. Cliff’s lawyers and the district attorney and the judge all came to an agreement. The
y reduced the charges against Clifford Benton as much as they could. But it still meant that he’d be facing twenty-five years in prison, meaning he’d have to stay in jail at least until Cassie was in college. Cliff pled guilty.
The judge gave Cliff a small gift at sentencing. He suspended all but eight years of his sentence. There were conditions, of course. He had to remain on good behavior in jail. And he was to have no contact with his victim. Until she heard the judge announce the sentence, Cassie never thought of herself as a victim.
In four years, he’d qualify for parole. In four years, Cassie would be in middle school.
The judge who appointed Ms. Grayson as a guardian for Cassie after she had been raped kept her as Cassie’s guardian. Ms. Grayson filed a lawsuit against Cliff over Cassie’s mother’s objection. Because he plead guilty, it was just a question of how much money he’d have to pay. He admitted he did it. It didn’t take the jury long to award Cassie more than Cliff had or would ever have.
The Santa Barbara ranch and the horses were sold. Cliff’s cars and his clothes and his jewelry and his furniture were also sold to pay the judgment Cassie got against him. Cliff’s share of the law firm and all the money it owed him were given over to Cassie.
“Cassie, honey,” her mother asked her, “why don’t we keep the Malibu house? We could live there. It’s beautiful.”
“Mom,” Cassie said coolly to her mother, “I’d rather burn that house to the ground than to ever go there again.”
Her mother exploded at her. “I know something really bad happened to you. I know. I think about it every day. But maybe you should grow up and get over it.”
Cassie didn’t burn down the Malibu house. It was sold, but it was a long time before she spoke to her mother again.
#
Cassie rolled a Percocet between her fingers and thought about nothing in particular. She just thought. Soon she would be nothing.
She saw a therapist every week. “How are you doing?” her therapist would ask.
“I’m fine,” Cassie would insist, “really fine.”
But she wasn’t fine. She knew it and Cassie was sure the therapist knew it, too. The therapist told her she had post-traumatic stress disorder. It was psycho-babble for when something so bad happens that it makes your soul start to crumble. Sometimes you can build yourself back up. Sometimes, you collapse from within and nothing can stop it.
Cassie assured the therapist she didn’t think about hurting herself. But she did, the thought of it often came to her. At first, she could push it away. After a while, the thought would show up more often, like an unwanted guest at dinner time. Now the thought of suicide had moved in and was having its mail forwarded to her.
Mail, Cassie thought. She knew the mail was what her therapist called “a trigger.” There was a letter from the California agency that handled paroles saying Cliff had a parole hearing in three months. He might get out. He might soon be free.
The first letter led to the second letter. It was a letter from Benton to her mother. It was sent on prison stationary and marked “Legal Mail.” Benton apologized to Cassie’s mom. He said it was all a big misunderstanding. He said that because he was a rich, successful lawyer, the district attorney was out to get him. From what Benton wrote, it seemed like this was only the latest in a series of letters between Benton and Cassie’s mother.
The third letter was the one that pushed Cassie to the edge. It was from Benton to Cassie. It was written in a small, printed handwriting on a piece of notebook paper that had been folded many times. It hadn’t been sent in a prison envelope. Cassie’s guardian explained that every letter a prisoner sends out is read by someone in the prison, except letters to lawyers, which is how she guessed the letter to her mother got out without being detected. The letter to Cassie must have been smuggled out through a guard or a visitor.
Benton said he was sorry if Cassie thought he hurt her. He said he still loved her mother. He said he wanted Cassie to forgive him, like he had already forgiven Cassie. He knew that they could be a family again when he got out.
That was it.
That was it.
That was it.
This letter was not just a trigger, it was a high-caliber bullet aimed right at her heart, one that would shred her soul.
Cassie was done. She gave up.
Cassie looked at the clock on her nightstand. If she got started, she’d have enough time before her mother got home. Her gaze stopped on the picture of her and her father. Perhaps tonight would be the time she’d be able to meet him again.
Cassie needed to make one last call. She dialed a number on her smartphone.
“Hello,” the voice on the other end said.
“Hi, Grammy. It’s Cassie.”
“Is everything all right, dear?” her grandmother asked. “You sound different.”
Cassie laughed awkwardly. “I’m fine, Grammy. How are you?”
“I’m good.”
“Can I ask you a question about my dad?” Cassie asked.
“Of course, dear. Anything.”
“Did he ever get so angry or disappointed he just wanted to give up?”
“I’m not sure what you mean, dear. Did he have disappointments? Certainly. Everyone does. Did it make him sad? Yes. But he had a forty-eight-hour rule.”
“What’s a forty-eight-hour rule?” Cassie asked.
“He said that if something bothered him too much, he’d give himself two days. Forty-eight hours to feel bad. Then he had to get to work to fix whatever was bothering him.”
Cassie did not say anything.
“Every time I hear your voice, sweetheart, I can hear Paul in you. He loved you so much, even before he got to meet you. And then he met you and he loved you twice as much.” Cassie could hear her grandmother clear her throat. “Would you like Grandpa and I to come over? We could all go out to dinner and talk.”
“I’m sorry, Grammy. Some other night. I’ve got a project I’ve got to get started on. I love you.”
“I love you, too.”
Cassie hung up and looked down at the picture of her father and her in her lap. She kissed him.
She scooped up the pills she had carefully laid out on the nightstand and held them in her hand. Then she walked into her bathroom and stood in front of the mirror. She looked herself in the eyes, something she hadn’t had the strength to do in quite a long time.
“Now or never,” she said out loud to her reflection.
After a moment, she answered herself. “Never.”
Cassie reached out and flushed the toilet and then tipped her hand over the swirling water in the bowl. Sixty-one white Percocet pills tumbled briefly through space, were caught in the whirlpool, and were then swept away. Cassie was sure there would be some sleepy alligators in the sewers of Manhattan Beach tonight.
She looked back at her reflection in the mirror and, for the first time, smiled at herself. “Time to get to work.”
She locked the apartment door behind herself and walked down the street to the CVS Pharmacy. She bought a pack of unlined index cards, a book of Forever stamps, a Sharpie, and a pack of beach-themed stickers she had passed dozens of times. There was a coffee shop next door. She ordered an iced latte and carefully opened the pack of cards using a napkin and drew out a card without touching it. She could not leave any fingerprints. Across one side of the index card, she wrote the prison mail address for Clifford Benton, but it looked too much like her handwriting. After four attempts, she wrote the address slowly with her other hand. It looked nothing like her own handwriting. Then she opened the pack of stickers and peeled off the two in the center and affixed them to the other side of the index card. They were a yellow bikini top and bottom. She carefully affixed a stamp to the card.
After Cassie finished her latte, she dropped the index card into the mailbox. She had taken her four failed disguised handwriting attempts and ripped them into confetti-sized pieces. Small clumps were dropped into every public and private garbage can she co
uld find. Maybe she was being paranoid, but she wasn’t going to take a chance.
Cassie did not have to wait long. Two days later, there was an envelope addressed to her. The handwritten note inside said:
Cassie:
I was so happy to receive your mail. Who else would send me a picture of a yellow bikini? I knew it was you. And you are right to communicate in code. I can get these letters out to you, but I can’t risk letting you know how I do it.
I hope to be out in about three months. I know we can all be the family we were meant to be.
Cliff
Cassie followed the same procedure as before, this time putting a smiley face emoji sticker with the yellow bikini. She added four sticker letters below the bikini: “M-O-R-E.”
What followed was a torrent of letters from Benton. She added valentine hearts to the bikini and kept putting the word “MORE” on the cards she sent back. With each new letter, Cliff became more and more expressive.
It took eight weeks of back and forth, but Cassie finally got the letter she wanted. Cliff never admitted his assault on her was a crime. He described it as an act of love. And he promised that once he got out, he would express his secret love for Cassie over and over again. Every day. That’s what they both wanted, he was sure of it.
With that, Cassie stopped sending cards to Benton. She didn’t need anything else.
She hailed an Uber after school and took a ride downtown to meet with her guardian. She brought a notebook with twenty-two of the twenty-four letters Benton had sent her along with other papers. The second and sixteenth talked about her postcards to him. Cassie could never show those to anyone. The other twenty-two letters she had seemed like they were unprompted expression of Cliff’s perverted mind.
Cassie gave the notebook to her guardian with the notice of Benton’s Parole Board hearing.
Betrayed: Powerful Stories of Kick-Ass Crime Survivors Page 24
