by Leanne Davis
He hugs me hard. I hear the tremble in his voice as he says, “That is all I could ever want out of the world, for you to feel that way about me.” He clears his throat, wiping at his eyes. I suppress a small smile as he reins in his emotions. So typical of Dad. He turns away from me then, hiding his tears. “Tomorrow then? Be ready to head out at seven?”
“Seven.” I nod. He glances back at me and we hold each other’s gaze for a pronounced moment before I turn away to leave. I add, “I’ll be ready, Dad.”
And I was. I was ready bright and early the next morning and for several years of mornings after that. I worked hard with my dad and followed and learned nearly every aspect of his business until I had a workable grasp on all facets of it. By the time I took the helm I had a comprehensive understanding of the business I ran and the industry of which it was a part of.
In that time, Ramiro kept on with his studies at CWU and majored in construction management. He kept working too as a legal employee of my dad’s. When he graduated he started working under me and eventually we ran the business together after my dad gave me the reins. He likes to work in the field and I work the business end more heavily.
Harrison? Well, he did some jail time for attempted assault. He didn’t come back to town, thank God, and I never did hear from him again. But oddly enough because of him, I found a way to fulfill the one dream that always escaped me—reaching out into the world about violence against women. My YouTube channel took off and became my platform on which I talked about women’s issues and interviewed women as I once used to want to write about them. I found a way to find a voice and start real conversations about violence and women and society. Turns out, this was a more effective tool for me.
I found a way to reconcile my mom’s story, without ever once betraying her confidence. Because after my spontaneous trip to Mexico, it was over. Completely. We didn’t talk about it much after that. Mom needed that and ironically enough, I think Dad did too. When I told him he no longer had anyone to save because we were all okay, I think it released something in him that he’d been holding onto for a long, long time.
Dad no longer had to be anyone’s hero.
A few years later, Ramiro and I got married and this time I wore a slim silk dress and white canvas tennis shoes. We had an intimate ceremony and big party afterwards in my parents’ backyard. I ended up living, working, and raising my children in Ellensburg, Washington, just as I was raised, with my two sisters and their kids involved in our lives on a daily basis. Natalie’s family was in and out but we talked often and remained close always. Ramiro was right. Getting to work, live, and raise my kids in the same town as my family, all together, as healthy and safe citizens was a prescription for everything I could ever want from life. And I got that. Correction, we got that. Ramiro and I.
The weird part being I never once felt trapped or like I settled with Ramiro. Love. Love and friendship all tied up into one, made the formula that once seemed like a death sentence, become the recipe for a happy life.
I hadn’t settled, but I’d managed to find the entire world… right here.
Epilogue
~Jessie~
I stare out over the lawn. Members of my family dot the grass, some sitting at the makeshift picnic tables that were brought in, others lounging around the deck and spilling down onto the concrete patio beyond it. Kids are playing volleyball. The sun shines brightly from the blue sky.
My entire family is here.
So many years ago, decades now, this was not the direction my life was headed. It’s a beautiful summer day in which my four daughters, their spouses, and their kids, so many kids, gather together. Who could have believed this would be the outcome from all those years ago? Or that I’d become a grandmother of twelve children? The happy faces of my family smile and laugh. Delicious foods cover a table on the deck, a potluck dinner to celebrate the fourth of July.
Of course, they are waiting for me, their old, decrepit grandma, to come and join them. It’s getting harder these days. I don’t move as easily as I used to. It’s hard to accept one’s body slowing down, aching, and falling apart in so many different ways. Wrinkles mar the sagging skin that was once smooth and clear. My hair is still thick, but gray, even though I try to fill it with highlights and blond streaks.
Eighty years old. I never believed I’d live this long. Or survive so much. Or see so much. Or live so fully. If one documented the crises of my life, I think in the final analysis, they would be impressed by how well I healed, how deeply I loved, how much I lost, and most of all, how much I gained.
Will Hendricks. My heart. Through it all, I loved Will. There isn’t much else to show for my experience in this world, other than the love I share with that man. It managed to last until we are old and tired and starting to lose our minds. We fought and hurt and annoyed each other, and laughed and talked and connected, too.
After we retired from our given professions, I worked quite a bit longer than most people. I think that was because I found my profession so late in life. Being able to accomplish anything of merit was hard-won for me, and it lifted me mentally and filled me with confidence. So giving it up was one of the toughest decisions of my life. Plus, I loved my work and adjusting to a life of not doing it was almost harder than anything else. But Will retired eight years before me, and he asked me, no, he begged me to join him.
Will retired when he was sixty-six and gave the business to Emily. That came as a surprise to me. Emily! Ramiro earned a degree in construction management and worked for her. Turns out, my clever daughter took the reins of the business and managed to expand the Hendricks name. Now Hendricks HVAC is the number one provider of services all through the central and eastern parts of Washington and into Idaho and Oregon. She even has advertising spots running on TV, radio, and the internet. The commercials have this annoying little jingle attached to it, but it’s memorable and it’s worked to skyrocket sales. Ramiro and Emily got married and settled in town. They have two kids.
Emily found fame in a way that no one expected. That damn YouTube channel. I was stunned at first to understand she’d started posting herself talking about what happened to her with Harrison. Not my thing. Nor anything I understood. But it seemed to help her and it began to help other women. She talked about women’s rights. She did stories about girls in the area, who she knew and then branched out to others who contacted her as she started to gain more followers. She turned out to have a good voice for interviews and a kind hand at dealing with victims. She interviewed Lindsey in a series of four interviews which were discovered two years after she started her channel, and became the launching point for her popularity. A politician, much like Lindsey’s husband, was caught and convicted of the violent attack of his wife. The wife died from her injuries. The story drew comparisons in the media to Lindsey and Elliot’s story and some reporter found Emily’s recent interviews and contacted her. That exposure exploded her following.
She became a voice for women. She told their stories simply but with integrity. There was no lecturing or agenda. She wasn’t a politician or an activist. She provided an avenue for women to speak. It had a profound effect on those who listened to them. She didn’t do it for money or ratings or fame. It was not a way I’d ever considered her finding a voice or gaining a following. But she did. Emily did it. She found the voice of dissent about violence against women she always wanted. And she didn’t even have to use me. It turned out she was a fabulous public speaker. She gave lectures often at the university about women in business and about her YouTube channel and the stories she told there.
Years later, Emily got involved in local politics when there was a push to cut back on stalking laws. After her own experience with Harrison she was adamantly against that and fought hard and long to keep forwarding women’s rights. She campaigned for more funding, laws, and awareness at the state level, through the state legislative committee. I could not have been prouder of the way she attained her life’s dream, worked at the c
ompany her father built and then raised a family with the man she loved.
As my children flourished and found their way through their various careers and families, my life started to wind down.
The first year of Will’s retirement, I wasn’t sure he would survive. It reminded me so much of his first year out of the Army. He toddled around, but seemed lost. Things changed when he found golf. Not the sport I ever expected him to choose. Never expected Will to embrace golf as much as he does. It soon became his obsession as much as the Army was. He golfed daily, a full eighteen holes, even on the weekends. He also took up woodworking and spent hours in the shop creating a menagerie of carvings. He continued to work the twenty acres of our farm and tend to the animals, of course, as there was always so much to do. But when I retired, I reluctantly learned how to golf with him. I never took to it like he did, however. I manage to play nine holes three or four days a week and fill the rest of my time with our animals. Melissa keeps dozens of them here and I usually help her. And the kids. There are usually plenty of grandkids hanging around. Boys and girls of all ages.
The oldest, Jamal, who was adopted by Natalie, is thirty-five now. Natalie also has a twenty-two year old because when she was forty-one, she unexpectedly became pregnant!
And just as amazing is that she began calling me Mom. It happened sporadically at first, but as the years passed, she never addressed me as anything but Mom. Her pregnancy and choice to call me her mother were nothing less than miracles to me.
Then Will and I grew older. Will approached his eightieth birthday and that was a tough transition. Aging is much easier for me to adjust to. But not Will. He fell off a ladder while painting the barn and injured his shoulder and back. Unfortunately, it never healed properly. He said he got dizzy, so from then on, he had to swallow every ounce of his immense pride to ask Seth or Ramiro or Max to do the various chores. Slowly, every year, they become too much for him. Watching his strength ebb is heartbreaking and often brings tears to my eyes. I never let him see them, of course. I found him one day in his shop, which was torn all apart. Boxes were thrown everywhere, and the tools were in shambles, nails covered the floor. He was leaning on the workbench, breathing hard. His face was down. My heart went out to him.
“I couldn’t… I couldn’t lift the damn drill up onto the shelf. No matter how much I tried… I couldn’t. I got so tired.”
I touched his back and rubbed his shoulder. He is smaller now too, and his muscles are shrinking, which also affects his stature. He jerked away from me at first but I rested my face on his shoulder until finally, he tilted his head and his lips touched my hair. “I’m growing old. Useless.”
“We both are,” I mumbled.
He nodded and turned to embrace me. I snuggled up against his chest. “I never thought this would happen.”
“But don’t you see? That is the miracle of us. Our gift. We achieved the impossible. We grew old together, Will. Remember where we began?”
“It isn’t where we will end,” he finishes in a deep, strong tone. It’s something we often say to each other.
I sucked in a breath. Closing my eyes, his voice sounded as strong and forceful as it did when he was twenty-eight. Everything has changed. We both matured and nurtured our family and began to grow old, but nothing can erase how I met this man. I can so easily see the images of another lifetime, fifty years ago, just as easily as I observe his messed up shop we stand in. My mind can wander back to when I was twenty and I can see Will leaning against the wall, then he is creeping forward, a huge, hulking figure dressed all in black. I also see myself, so young, tiny, fragile, broken, and vulnerable. I was cowering with fear in my own filth, naked and chained to the floor, trapped. He told me, “Your father sent me.” And from that one sentence, and that critical moment, I trusted Will Hendricks. I knew he was on my side, no matter what, then and forever.
And he did a damn fine job of making forever a fact, not just a dream.
Will has been my rock ever since. Throughout the years I’ve known him and shared my life with him, I sometimes miss my youth and beauty as well as the immense strength he once possessed. But gradually losing those things together is a living testament of our love and commitment to each other. We endured, and celebrated, and ultimately, survived.
“You’ll never be useless, soldier,” I say to him quietly in the husky tone I once used. I don’t talk like that in front of anyone else, not our kids or grandkids or extended family. It’s only reserved for us. For the soldier that rescued me, loved me, healed me, despite how it almost ruined us. It soon became everything that connected and bonded us. “Never to me. What would I do without you? What could I have ever done without you? It doesn’t matter if you can’t lift the drill or climb a ladder any longer. As long as you are still with me, here, it doesn’t matter.”
He drew in a breath, nodding, and kissed my forehead. We are very old, but sometimes, he still makes me feel so vibrant and youthful. I’m still his Jessie. The helpless girl he first rescued who grew up to be the woman he fell in love with.
We eventually moved out of the main house, giving it to Seth and Melissa and their four kids. It made the most sense. Melissa had all of her dogs and the rest of the animals in her care. Will’s shop was remodeled into our small apartment. No stairs. We’re old, remember. Will was bitter at losing his workshop, but neither of us could handle the daily ascent and descent with the stairs to use the existing mother-in-law apartment. He swore and cussed when it all happened, blaming the staircase. Seth came up with the suggestion of remodeling the lower level.
“He thinks I can’t walk up the fucking staircase.” Will protested in a loud and belligerent voice. I smiled and touched his hand until he calmed down.
I replied, “We can’t anymore, Will. Not in the winter what with the rain and ice and slipping. What if I fell?”
In order to protect me, Will agreed to remodel the workshop.
Right about then, Will entered his mid-eighties, and I started to notice some alarming things about him. He would forget simple issues we recently discussed. And where his belongings were, everything from keys to socks. He grew increasingly more confused. He refused to leave the apartment or go out into the world anymore. It seemed to exhaust and confuse him. That was wrenching to witness. While watching his pain and confusion, I wondered if that was how he felt all those years when he watched me struggling with my PTSD from rape and cutting myself. Feeling so helpless in the face of his physical and mental battles and health deficiencies bothered me because I could not help him or cure him. Just as he once could not help me with my physical and mental battles. Funny how life eventually brings things full circle.
Few couples share such a distinct, ugly, terrible moment to define them as Will and I started out with. That became the cornerstone of our early years together and defined much of the relationship that developed between us. My emotional problems started when I was quite young, and he had to fully support me because I was so mixed up that he had to be the sane one. That defined our days, at least on and off, for the first decade of our marriage. Later on, we learned how to be equal partners, working together as our kids were born, our family grew, and the pressures of daily life increased. There were plenty of rocky years too, as we figured out how to be with each other, and those also peppered the decades. Of course, we influenced all four of our daughters in positive, but different ways.
Seeing the family now, however, it doesn’t matter. What happened to me will be buried with me someday. My grandkids might hear watery versions of my story, but it won’t matter. It will be an ancient, sad story. As it should be. Having lived through it, I wouldn’t wish it on anyone else.
About a decade ago, Will and I decided to pack up several bottles of wine and the box of letters I wrote to him when I was twenty-one and twenty-two. We went down to the beach. We sat huddled together in front of a bonfire we built, all alone on the beach. We both got drunk and read each letter together. We became so emotional. We remember
ed everything. We cried together and experienced it as no one else could. No one. Only us. Good or bad, it’s our bond and very much a part of us. We held each other and relived the experience. We cried some more and vowed how much we loved each other.
Then we burned every motherfucking letter.
They are all gone. It’s over now. That was the last time we ever discussed it. Now, sixty years later, I can let it go forever.
There is nothing left for any unsuspecting grandchild or great grandchild to find while hunting through my things someday. No one will stumble upon those letters. No one deserves to know the horrors they described. I didn’t either, but I don’t want any of my loved ones to experience the pain I endured.
All I did was survive it.
And now, it will go to the grave with me, as it should. When it’s my time. My greatest accomplishment is that I didn’t pass it along to my daughters. They didn’t need to suffer because I once did. I made mistakes and wasn’t perfect by any standards, but I tried my hardest to be a normal mother for them. Their experiences in life, as well as their youth and vitality, remained untainted by my years of rape and brutality.
That is my greatest achievement in this lifetime.
“Jessie?”
I turn away from the door where I’m watching the family. Will’s behind me, and I hear the panic in his tone. “Jess?”
He’s still here with me. But he often panics when he can’t immediately find me. I am now his rock, his link to normal life. His strength.
“Right here, Will,” I call over my shoulder. He walks up to me and touches my shoulder. I grip his hand with mine. “Always. I’m always here with you, no matter what.”
He squeezes me. “The kids? They’re here, too? For the fourth?”
His voice trembles, so I turn. His eyes are clearer today. He remembers. These days, lucid and present are rare states for him, but also the goals of my life now to experience.
