“We’ll be right back. Feel free to go out there if you want,” Wallace says.
After kissing the kids goodnight, I watch them all disappear down the long hallway and I feel like I’m totally alone.
The valley is lit up by a million small lights. The views go around the wrap-around porch and are absolutely breathtaking.
When I glance up, I see that the house is practically etched into the mountain behind it.
I follow the curve of the pool, around the built-in hot tub with a cascading waterfall in front of it, and toward the other side.
The lights out front don’t reach this far, and it takes me a moment to adjust to the darkness in this corner of the backyard.
“Aren’t you going to introduce me to them?” Owen asks. For a second, I think I’m hearing things.
But when my eyes adjust to the darkness, I see him. He’s standing in the doorway of their pool house.
“What are you doing here?” I run over to him and push him inside.
“Why are you here?”
I look back hoping that they will take a little bit longer inside.
“Just wanted to check up on my sister and see how she’s doing.”
“You made it perfectly clear that I’m not your sister anymore,” I snap.
“Well, I thought that maybe we could go back to that.”
I see that as my chance. “Yes, we can,” I say. “I just want you to get out of here.”
“No,” he says loudly. “Come to think of it, I’d much rather have you as something more than a sister.”
“Lower your voice,” I whisper, trying to offset his booming sound with the quietness of my own.
It doesn’t work.
“Why haven’t you been returning my calls?” he asks.
“We had a fight, Owen. I don’t want to talk to you.”
“Whatever,” he says, waving his hand and sitting on their bed.
“Get up!” I grab him to pull him up, but instead he just pulls me down on top of him.
“Get off me!” I yelp, but he puts his hand on my mouth.
I bite down as hard as I can. He screams out in pain and slaps me square across my face. My cheek burns like it has been lit on fire and something starts to ooze out of my nose.
When I taste the iron, I realize that I have a bloody nose.
Before I can stop him, I’m on the bed, flat on my back, and he’s on top of me.
“Get off,” I whimper but he doesn’t budge.
Instead, he pins my hands back, towering over me.
“Tonight, you’re mine,” he whispers into my ear and pulls out a gun. “If you don’t do as I say, I’m going to kill that new family of yours.”
27
Olive
When I stay quiet…
My mind goes blank. My body stops moving and resisting.
I just got my mother back. I’m not going to do anything to hurt her. I’m not going to do anything that will hurt my brother and sister.
“That’s more like it,” he says, relaxing his grip a little around my hands but not on the gun. “Now, you’re going to do exactly as I say or they die.”
“What guarantee do I have that you’re not going to kill them…after?” I ask, keenly aware of my parched mouth.
“You don’t. But I’ll let you go if I have a good time here.”
Blood drains away from my face.
My fingers get ice cold and so do my feet. He feels my body as if I have given my consent.
Thoughts rush around in my head.
Mostly, they are memories of what he used to be like.
How can this really be the man I used to know?
How can this really be the man who I wrote all of those letters to in prison and who wrote me all of those letters back?
He used to be someone I admired and now he’s someone I despise.
I smell liquor on his breath. He’s drunk but he has a high tolerance.
Still, he knows exactly what he’s doing. His hands move around my body as I try to figure out what to do.
I can’t let this happen but I also can’t let him hurt Josephine or her family.
I have a lot of regrets in my life and that won’t be one of them.
He starts to kiss my lips, my mouth, and my face. When he starts to move down my neck, he whispers, “Kiss me back.”
I don’t want to, but I can’t say no.
I have to buy more time.
I need to figure this out.
There must be a way out.
I want to bite him, but I force myself to kiss him back.
He doesn’t seem to notice that I’m doing it under duress.
“Yes, isn’t that amazing, Olive? Is that everything you have dreamed of?” he mumbles and kisses me again.
I press my lips to his, I slowly open my eyes and glance down.
I can’t see for sure but it feels like he’s no longer holding onto the gun. I move my body and he moves his on top of me.
He thinks that I’m under his spell when all I’m doing is trying to find an angle.
When he grabs at my chest, I jerk away and head butt him with my head. He winces from the pain but it’s not enough to keep him away.
He pins me down again but I wrestle out of his grasp. I search around the bed for the gun but I can’t find it.
I try to kick him but his body is draped too closely over mine.
Then he does it again.
He presses his forearm against my throat.
My airway tightens and I start gasping for breath. I start to see stars and then my vision gets blurry.
When everything goes black, he finally lets me go. My throat burns with each cough.
“Don’t you ever do that again, Olive,” he sneers.
I glare at him.
Air starts to come back, clearing my cloudy thoughts.
He’s on top of me again, not choking me but trying to take off my clothes.
I feel around my side for anything sharp or hard I can use to protect myself. But my fingers find nothing but clumps of sheets.
And then…
It’s so cool and hard, it’s hard to believe it’s there and it’s hard to confuse it with anything else. I grab the gun and push the barrel into his body. When I pull the trigger, he lets out a yell, grabbing onto his stomach.
“Olive, give me the gun,” someone says over and over again while I stand over Owen writhing around in pain.
He repeats himself a number of times before I register the fact that it’s Wallace who is speaking.
“The police are on their way,” Josephine whispers. “He won’t hurt you again.”
At some point, I give up the gun.
At some point, the paramedics throw one of those gray blankets over me to keep me warm.
At some point, they put Owen on a stretcher and start to roll him away.
At some point, Josephine takes me into her arms, kisses my head, and tells me that everything is going to be okay.
The police don’t give me a lot of time to rest before they come at me with their questions.
Josephine and Wallace walked in on me standing with the gun pointed at Owen after I had already shot him. No one here knows who he is and, for a moment, I debate whether they should.
“Oh, no, what did he do to you?” Josephine asks, tugging at the blanket around my neck and looking at the bruises.
I drop it to the floor and show them everything.
There’s no point in hiding it.
If I lie or try to protect him, they are going to arrest me.
They document my bruises. They take pictures and make notes.
There are a lot more than I even thought I had.
There are those around my neck where he tried to strangle me.
There are those on my arms where he pinned me down.
There are those on my legs when I fought back.
There is even a visible mark on my cheek from when he slapped me and my nose started to bleed.
; I describe what happened in as much detail as I can.
There are some parts of the attack that I don’t quite remember the order of but everything else is crystal clear.
“I wanted to freeze but then he would’ve gotten what he wanted,” I say at the end. “And I couldn’t let him do that to me.”
The detectives are cold and unresponsive but at least Josephine and Wallace believe me.
“And how did he know you were here?” one of the police officers asks.
“He knew that I came to Palm Springs to find my mother. I had her address and he saw it.”
“And he’s your boyfriend?”
I shake my head. “He’s my brother,” I say quietly. There’s an audible gasp at that revelation.
“But he knew for a long time that we weren’t really related. Something I only found out recently.”
There is so much more to say and so much more to keep to myself.
But it’s not Owen I want to protect.
It’s Nicholas.
Owen has made his bed. He tried to rape me, he promised to kill my real mother and her family.
But the more I tell them about why we’re here, the more likely they are to find our connection to Nicholas.
“And what is your attacker’s name?” one of them asks and then I freeze.
28
Olive
When I make a decision…
The police officer asks me for Owen’s name again. And then again. And again.
At first, I thought it would be so easy to go ahead and just tell them the truth, but then doubts creep in. I want him so badly to be the person that I thought he was that I almost can’t come to terms with who he really is.
“Ma’am, what is his name?” a detective asks.
I can tell that they are growing impatient. Josephine puts her arm around me and asks them to give us a second.
“What’s wrong? Why won’t you tell them?”
Tears start to stream down my face.
“I just never thought that he would ever do that to me. I thought that he was someone I could trust. I waited so long for him to get out of prison and then out of that coma…” My voice trails off as I gasp for air in the middle of my sobs.
But touching my neck, I flinch.
“He tried to strangle you, Olive,” Josephine says in her soothing, kind voice.
I nod.
“He tried to rape you. He would have succeeded if you hadn’t shot him. He deserves everything that’s coming to him.”
“I know that’s true. Of course, I do.”
“So, what’s holding you back?”
I swallow hard. When I look up at her, I lose myself for a moment in the blue of her irises. There’s a deepness there that makes my whole body shake.
“You can do it,” she whispers into my ear.
I open my mouth to say it but another cop interrupts me.
“His name is Owen Kernes and he’s her brother,” he reports.
“Your brother tried to rape you?” the detective asks.
“Yes, but he’s not my biological brother.”
Didn’t I say that already? I wonder.
Suddenly, I have an out of body experience. I find myself telling the story or part of the story of my life but it doesn’t feel like it’s me saying it. Instead, I’m just watching this lost little girl with a blanket around her shoulders tell a bunch of strangers in uniform things that she hasn’t told anyone before.
As the detectives turn their attention to Wallace, I pull away from Josephine and walk toward the ambulance.
Someone stops me from climbing in but not before I yell, “Why did you do that? Why did you do any of that?”
Owen doesn’t respond.
“Why?” I scream, pounding my fists on the back of the ambulance.
“‘Cause nothing matters without you, Olive,” he says slowly. “Don’t you get that?”
“No.” I shake my head.
“I don’t have a life without you,” he says.
The paramedics close the door and someone moves me out of the way. Big tears rush down my face, and I sit down and bury my face in my hands.
After a while, the police officers leave. I’ll probably have to answer more questions and provide more explanations but for now they leave me alone. Josephine offers me some tea and a Xanax but I just accept the tea.
“I am really sorry about all of this,” I tell both of them in the kitchen. The kids are luckily asleep and have slept through all of it.
I am sure that they are tempted to ask me to rehash everything that has happened but luckily, they don’t. I don’t have the energy to go over it one more time.
“I think I better get home. I need some sleep.”
“No, no, no,” Josephine says. “Please, stay in our guest room. It’s all set up already.”
“Only if you want to,” Wallace says, giving me an out.
“Okay, but only if it’s not a big imposition,” I agree.
The room is spacious, about the size of a master bedroom in a normal house. It has its own bathroom and a walk-in closet. Wallace shows me where they keep the towels and Josephine comes in with an armful of sweats.
“I’m sure you want to change your clothes. Let me know if they’re not a good fit and I’ll try to find something else.”
“I’m sure they’re fine,” I assure them and we bid each other goodnight.
I take off the clothes that the police had given me after they photographed me and took mine for evidence. I step directly into the shower and melt onto the floor.
My tears mix with the rushing water, alleviating some of my pain. I feel so alone and there’s only one person who can make it all go away and he’s not here.
My thoughts return to Nicholas.
“Where are you?” I ask. “Why aren’t you here? Why did you listen when I told you to go? Why didn’t you stay and fight?”
In the morning, at first light, I get up and sneak out of their house. I leave them a note thanking them for everything they have done and telling them that I need some time alone. At the end, I promise to stay in touch.
I don’t tell them where I’m going because I don’t know myself.
All I know is that I need some space.
I need to go somewhere to clear my head.
The cops told me to stay close in case they have more questions but I’ll just come back if they do.
I’m not running away, I’m going somewhere to find myself again.
29
Olive
When I try to clear my head…
I drive for a very long time. I don’t know where I’m going and I don’t really want to. When early dawn turns to midday, I turn up the air conditioning and keep driving.
When I get hungry, I pull over to a truck stop and wander the aisle looking for something healthy to eat. Stale donuts and old candy should be appetizing but for some reason they’re not.
I grab a water and get back in the car.
What am I looking for? I don’t know.
My life lies ahead of me but I don’t know where it’s going to take me. I can do anything and yet I feel like doing nothing.
I continue up the Pacific Coast Highway, watching the waves crash against themselves down the hills below. Every few miles there’s a turnaround and people pull over and take pictures.
A small collection of shops congregates around the bend. I don’t know exactly where I am except that it’s somewhere in central California. The shops are small, more like shacks and I stop into one to buy some fruit and a cup of juice.
I walk down to the sand and drink my juice with my feet buried deep under the cold coarse sand. The wind coming off the ocean sends shivers through me and I wish I had a warmer sweater, but it also wakes me up. I stare out at the horizon and lose myself in it for a long time.
When I drink the last drop, my body feels full and energized, but my mind is no less muddled. A part of me wants to go back home, not just because it’s the only place
that feels familiar, but yet another part wants to go to Hawaii on the off chance that he’s there.
I’ve been trying to put Nicholas out of my mind for a long time but it’s just not working. I thought that him not being on social media would make things easier. But for some reason, it has made this whole process more insufferable.
He is gone.
Vanished.
And the more that the FBI, the police, and who knows who else is looking for him, the further away he seems to be.
If they can’t find him, how can I?
I am sure that there are many women out there right now who would love nothing more than to be actually cut off from contact with their ex. No phone number to text after a few glasses of wine, no social media posts to drool over or get jealous of.
Well, at first I thought I was one of the lucky ones.
I can’t contact him and that means that if I want him out of my life, he is out of my life.
But now?
Now that I really can’t contact him, I’m suddenly full of regret.
I wish there was more that was said.
I wish that I wasn’t so angry that night, that I’d actually listened to what he was trying to tell me. I wish that I had been strong enough to tell him that I love him and just let it be known.
Somewhere in the distance, I see a guy walk excitedly holding his surfboard. His suit starts at his ankles and zips up all the way to his neck, leaving only his feet, hands, and head free.
The ocean in California is cold year round. I thought that if it’s seventy-five degrees outside, the water would be warm like it is in Florida. But the currents come from Alaska and the coastline is very deep so if you want to spend any considerable time in the water, you have to wear a wet suit.
The surfer pulls on the zipper up his back to close it shut before giving me a slight nod and running into the waves.
Suddenly, a wave of nostalgia sweeps over me.
I remember walking on that warm Hawaiian beach and seeing Nicholas for the first time, before I even knew he was Nicholas.
Tell me to Fight Page 11
