by Beca Lewis
Bryan sat in the other chair in the room. The one by the bed and said, “I’ll be here. I’ll be a witness to your bravery.”
Connie smiled at Bryan through her tears. She stepped to the mirror and ran her hands through her hair, making it stick up just a bit, the way she liked it. The sun had tipped the ends, and Connie knew that she had never looked more beautiful than she had this night. Maybe if she did it all right this time, she would feel beautiful again someday.
So that night at dinner, Connie let herself watch what she knew Theo would do. She watched him drop something into her drink.
She hadn’t seen it before. This time she had, and yet she picked up that drink, smiled, and toasted to Edith and the baby that was coming as if there was no evil in the room, grinning at the two of them, shining through Theo’s eyes.
She said what she had said before, “Wow, I must have drunk more than I thought.”
She let Edith help her up to her room and tuck her into bed while telling her how happy she was, and she would see Connie in the morning.
She lay there, knowing she still had time. She could call for help. She could stumble down the stairs and drive at least a few blocks away, thwarting what would come next.
She did none of those things. This was not the place where she had to change things. This was what she had to go through again.
So she lay in bed as the paralysis took over. Felt the same terror. Actually, she felt more terror because she knew what would happen next.
She heard the slight squeak of the door, and Theo mumble to himself to get someone to take care of that. She opened her eyes as she had the last time. Eyes filled with fear and terror, and finally sorrow for herself, as Theo brutally raped her over and over again. She knew that in the morning, she would find bruises over her entire body, where no one could see them.
She kept her eyes open this time as dawn broke, and Theo leaned over her and said if she told anyone, he would kill Edith’s baby.
“Do you understand? Blink if you do.”
She blinked.
“I’ll tell Edith that you don’t feel well and are staying in bed this morning. Then take a shower, get dressed, and leave this house and never come back. Or I’ll do this again. Blink again if you understand.”
Connie blinked.
Yes, that’s what she did the last time. She never came back. This time she would.
Forty-Five
Connie called in sick that day. And the next. It was what she had done before, and it was easy to repeat. She had no desire to change anything. Yet.
Bill called and asked how the trip went, and she mumbled that she was sick and hung up on him.
The first time it had happened, she went through the stages of denial, rage, grief. This time, each stage was even more intense because Connie knew the consequences of Theo’s brutality, one of which was her daughter, Karla.
In a month, she would go to the doctor and find out she was pregnant. She would drag herself through the next weeks in a state of confusion that bordered on insanity.
Her work would suffer, and her employers would warn her she wasn’t living up to their expectations. She would alternate between hatred and awe.
The first time, she had contemplated having an abortion. Her life was just beginning. She had plans. Having a child would change everything. The child was the product of violence. But it wasn’t only the fact that abortions were both illegal and dangerous in 1968 that stopped her then. It was the feeling of love for a child she didn’t know yet.
That was then. Now, Connie of the future knew even more about why she wanted the child.
Karla had turned out to be everything anyone would want from a daughter. Kind, generous, intelligent, and witty. And sad. But that wasn’t Karla’s fault. It was hers. It was because of what Connie had done with her life that took away Karla’s happiness. Theo may have started the problem, but it was what she did afterward that ruined so many lives.
In the past, Connie only had to deal with what had happened to her. Now she had to deal with what she knew would happen. Connie knew that she had to figure out at what point she would change the past. There were so many small decisions that she had made.
Which choice was the one that would tip the future into one that brought Karla joy, not sadness? Which one would release her from the in-between? Which decision would help Eddie? Would he still die? If he didn’t die, how could he have helped her in a future where he hadn’t died?
Perhaps he wouldn’t have had to help her because she wouldn’t have ended up in the in-between. Maybe she would have lived longer.
Connie had no answers to all her questions. So besides reacting to what had happened to her then, and what she knew was coming, Connie felt even more insane than she had the first time.
Eddie had warned her about feeling this way, but he hadn’t given her any answers to make it better either. All her decisions had to be hers and hers alone. It had been hard then. Now it tore her apart. With that one act, Theo did what he wanted to do. Destroy the future for her and everyone she loved.
*******
Connie was not the only one suffering from that act. Bryan had returned from that evening filled with rage.
It was a rage so deep it made him want to go out into the streets and scream. Maybe throw rocks through a window, find someone, and beat them to a pulp.
It terrified him that he felt that way. Was he a violent person? Could he actually do those things he felt like doing?
Bryan had always seen himself as a gentle person. Maybe too passive, but not violent. The rabbits on his walk seemed like tiny versions of himself. Peaceful. A little playful. But perhaps useless in the big scheme of things.
Now Bryan felt more like a wild dog, ready to rip into anyone and anything that crossed his path. Including Rachel.
She had pulled him back and then stepped away. She had suspected that was what would happen, so was prepared for how upset Bryan might be. But he was far angrier than she had expected.
Although he didn’t tell her any details—she didn’t really want to know them—she guessed it had been terrible. He had hissed at her to leave him alone and then went into his room and slammed the door.
If he had let her, she would have put her arms around him and held him, which would have helped her too. But he left her to deal with her feelings on her own. Except she decided she didn’t need to do it alone. She had friends who could help.
When Bryan didn’t come out of his room, she left him a note saying she was going to the coffee shop, and please call when he was ready to talk.
One of the many reasons Rachel had always loved living in Doveland was that most of what she wanted in town was within walking distance.
But instead of walking straight to the coffee shop, she made a detour and passed by Edith’s family home. She didn’t know what she expected to find. Perhaps some answers. Or a feeling about what to do to help Bryan and Connie. Rachel couldn’t imagine how difficult it would be to return to a past that was so horrific, let it happen, and then deal with the consequences and the ramifications of what it would do to the future.
Rachel worried about Connie. What if Connie chose the wrong thing and what happened after that was worse than before? Or perhaps Connie’s life improved, but would everyone’s get better? How many things would change based on what Connie did?
Standing in front of Edith’s old home, Rachel thought the house looked a little different from the last time she had been there. Maybe it was her imagination. Or was it part of what was going on for Connie in the past?
Rachel sighed and turned away. She needed to talk to someone. A few minutes later, Grace looked up as Rachel slipped into a booth along the wall, and without thinking twice, gave Valerie a call and asked her if she could come over. Grace would have called Barbara, but she knew that Pete and Barb would be in the middle of the breakf
ast rush at the Diner.
A few minutes later, Valerie slid into the booth across from Rachel, and Grace slid in next to her. Rachel attempted to smile at them both but managed only a weak version of her usual smile.
Grace reached over to grab Rachel’s hands and said, “Okay, dear. We’ll listen. You talk.”
An hour later, Rachel stood, gave Grace and Valerie hugs, and headed back to Bryan’s. She would insist on doing the same thing for Bryan. She would listen. He would talk. And together, they would figure out how to help Connie.
Forty-Six
“This is my last visit,” Eddie said.
Connie cried. They were in her apartment in Pittsburgh, so different from the first time she had seen him waiting for her in her garden. She missed that garden and wondered if she would end up in it again someday.
“If things go well,” Eddie answered her unspoken thought.
Back at her house, Connie had resisted Eddie. Well, she had resisted everything. That she had died was at the top of the list. Now she wanted to hug Eddie and thank him for giving her a second chance. But she couldn’t. Now she was a physical body in the past, and he was still a spirit guide in the in-between.
“Will I ever see you again?” Connie asked, crying silently. Her emotions were all over the place these days for more than one reason. In the past, she would have tried to hide her feelings. Now she let herself be present with them, knowing that not expressing them before had helped bring about the life she had lived. She would not repeat that mistake.
“If things go well,” Eddie said again. He paused before continuing, Connie’s tears making him want to cry too.
“But not in the same way. You have help now. Bryan and Rachel will also have help in case they run into trouble.”
“What if I don’t make the right choices?” Connie asked. “What then? Maybe things will be worse, and I never see you again. So many terrible things could happen.”
“And so many marvelous things could happen, too,” Eddie said, reaching out to hold Connie’s hand. For a moment, Connie thought she could feel his touch, and then he was gone.
She let herself cry. Then she rose, stretched, glimpsed the wreck of herself in the mirror, and made a decision. She needed to see Bill. She phoned his office and made an appointment for that morning.
Bill laughed and said she didn’t need an appointment. She told him that what she needed to talk to him about required an appointment and hung up before he could say anything.
She took a shower, chose clothes that made her feel put together, added a little makeup, and ate a piece of dry toast, the only thing she could keep down these days.
Before leaving her apartment, she checked the mirror. There were dark circles under her eyes, and she looked as if she had been sick, but at least it wasn’t the ghastly wreck she had seen a few hours before.
Bill was waiting for her at the elevator. He took one look at her and said, “We are not meeting here. I don’t know what’s going on, but you will tell me everything.”
They walked to a Denny’s near Bill’s office, and Bill chose a booth tucked away in the back corner of the restaurant. After the waitress filled their coffee cups, Bill leaned forward and said, “Talk to me.”
Connie stared at her cup, contemplating the possible results of telling Bill. She had not told him the first time. She had slunk away to the trailer park and told Mama Woo what happened. That’s when she had learned that her father had died a few years before—dropped dead in an alley behind a bar where he had drunk himself to death every night of his adult life. She had not cried. She only felt relieved knowing that she wouldn’t see him again.
After weeping and swearing about the situation, Mama Woo took over. She and the other women arranged for Connie to stay with them in a trailer that had stood empty for six months. First, they cleaned it, painted it, and then helped her move from her apartment.
Connie became a member of the trailer park community. It felt familiar, and she felt safe. No one knew about it. King’s Row had been her secret, and once again it became her home.
She had quit the job she had worked so hard to get, told Edith that she had to go away for a while, and disconnected her phone. Bill and his family had no idea where she had gone. She had broken their hearts, along with her own. But at the time, she thought she was saving Edith and her baby. That turned out not to be true. But she hadn’t really known Theo then.
While living in the park, Connie got a job at a local furniture shop, and it turned out to be the best thing to have happened to her. She was so good at helping people pick out furniture that they asked her for more advice, and she started what eventually grew into her design consulting business.
The job, and her own business, kept her busy during her pregnancy. After Karla was born, she didn’t return to the furniture store. She worked out of the trailer, and she grew her business enough to keep herself and Karla fed and sheltered.
But when Karla turned two, Mama Woo said they had to move on. Find some place else to live. Make a life that meant something. Mama Woo said that Connie hadn’t worked as hard as she had to end up like them. She pushed and prodded Connie, asking her where her gumption had gone.
Finally, she and the women simply locked the trailer and wouldn’t let Connie back in. All her belongings were in the tiny yard, and one of the women had Karla in her trailer, packed and ready to go.
Connie had been furious. She screamed and yelled until she finally broke down and hugged every woman as if she would never see them again. She told them that they were her family, and she would never forget them. And despite everything else that she didn’t do right in her life, she returned as often as possible to see them.
That day they helped her put all her belongings in the Pontiac, and after hugging everyone again, and with all of them crying, she and Karla had driven off.
Mama Woo had given Connie the name of a woman she had once known who she thought could help Connie make a home in another small town near Pittsburgh, and Connie wisely accepted the help that the woman offered.
And that was where she had lived out the rest of her days, eventually buying the home they had first moved into. She and Karla often visited the park until Mama Woo died, and the other women moved away. Without Mama Woo, the “community” was gone.
That is what she did the last time. This time she was doing something different. This time she would tell Bill. Connie prayed that this was the right thing to do because, after that, everything would change.
Forty-Seven
Sitting across from Bill, Connie knew that she had two stories to tell. One was about Theo, and one was that she wasn’t who she appeared to be. She had to decide. Would she tell him the second one? Did she have to? If she didn’t tell him, how would she convince Bill about Theo?
Because it wasn’t just the rape that she had to tell him about, it was what Theo had been hiding all along. Even though in the past, she had hidden from everyone except Mama Woo and the other women of the trailer park, she had not stopped watching over Edith and her family.
Watching over was not an adequate term for it, because she did nothing to keep them safe. She told herself that she couldn’t have because it took years to collect information before she realized all that Theo had been doing. She had proof in the future. In the past, the evidence would be hard to find.
Connie felt stuck. She didn’t know where to start, and she was terrified about the consequences of her actions. But then Connie reminded herself what the lack of action had produced. She also knew that she couldn’t do what needed to be done on her own. She needed help in stopping Theo, and if all went well, saving Edith and Eddie.
Bill sat across from her, waiting, his clear blue eyes filled with compassion. He knew what it was like to be careful about revealing too much, and he could see Connie struggling with what to say. The waitress topped off their coffee and asked if th
ey wanted to order breakfast.
Connie shook her head no, and Bill handed the waitress ten dollars and said, “Thank you, that’s all we need.”
Watching Bill’s kind gesture released Connie from her paralyzed state. At that moment, she realized that Theo had paralyzed her twice. Once with a drug, and again with his words.
No more, she thought to herself.
She began at the beginning—how she had always been worried about Theo. Didn’t like him very much, but couldn’t figure out why. Bill nodded and said that he had that same feeling.
Encouraged, Connie continued. When she got to the part where Lorraine had figured out that Edith was pregnant, Bill broke out in an enormous smile and said Edith had called him with the news, and he couldn’t wait to be an uncle.
Connie waited for a beat, remembering what a good uncle Bill had been to Eddie, and hoped that if this went well, Bill would be an honorary uncle to Karla this time around.
When Connie told Bill about what happened in the guest bedroom at Edith’s home, Bill stood, causing the coffee cups to rattle, and hissed, “I will kill that bastard.” A few other customers looked their way, and Connie reached out and pulled Bill back into his seat.
“No, you won’t. But we do have to stop him.”
“Stop him? But he already did it!”
“Yes. But I can’t prove it.”
Bill hung his head and asked what he could do. Connie thought about how hard it would be to have Theo arrested, even if this had happened in the future.
Now, in the past, it would be impossible. There was no DNA testing. They often accused women of causing the rape to happen. Not much has changed, Connie thought. But in 1968, it was almost always the woman’s fault.
Connie realized then that she couldn’t tell Bill half the story. She had to tell him the entire thing because she couldn’t explain how she knew she was pregnant when only a few days had gone by.
