by Leddy Harper
“You knew? You knew Sean never raped her and never said anything? You never did anything about it?” I huffed and shook my head, retreating a step. “You both need help. You’re both fucked up in the head.”
“What did she tell you?”
“That she made the whole thing up. She lied about being raped and put an innocent man in prison because of it. He served time for something he didn’t do and then ended up taking his own life because of it. I walked out after that.”
“So she didn’t tell you everything,” Marie replied, sorrow filling her tone.
“What more is there to know? I don’t need to know anything else.”
“I’m assuming she told you Sean didn’t rape her, which is true. And I hate what that lie did to him, to Gabriella, and to me. What it did to our relationship. But that doesn’t mean she wasn’t raped.”
I was stunned into silence. My head grew heavy as the earth began to tilt. I had to force myself to take in enough oxygen to keep from passing out. I didn’t want to believe her. Gabi had confessed the truth, and I wanted to believe this was just another lie to keep me by Gabi’s side. But there was something in Marie’s eyes, in her tone, in the way her bottom lip quivered that told me that wasn’t the case.
“She was raped, Dane. It just wasn’t Sean.”
Bile rose up the back of my throat and I had to hold onto the wall beside me to keep from falling over. I didn’t know how much more I could handle, and wasn’t sure I could keep listening. But she had my attention. “And how do you know this?” I asked carefully.
She was hesitant as she stood there and wiped the tears from her chin. I wanted to scream, shake her, something to get her to answer me. But I couldn’t. I couldn’t do anything other than stare at her and ignore the ringing in my ears.
“Because she came to me after the first time it happened.”
The ringing in my ears grew louder and only made the pressure in my head worse. I bared my teeth and clenched my fists, refraining from physically lashing out at this woman. My words were clipped as I angrily gritted out, “The first time? How many times was she raped?”
She shook her head while staring at the ground. I took a step until we were toe to toe and repeated my question. The vicious tone I used caused her to flinch. She finally looked up and admitted, “I don’t know.”
“You don’t know? She came to you—her mother—and told you someone had taken advantage of her against her will, and you don’t know how many times it happened? What did you do about it?”
“Nothing,” she answered in a breath of air so quiet I almost didn’t hear it. I had to have misunderstood her. But somewhere deep inside, I knew I hadn’t. I was so angry I could have punched a wall. I wanted to strangle Marie. Pure, uncontrolled rage burned in my chest, and I knew if I didn’t step away from her, I would’ve done something I’d never be able to take back.
In a low tone, to prevent her neighbors from overhearing, I asked, “What kind of mother knows her daughter is being abused and doesn’t do anything about it? What kind of human being does that?” My words were slow, cautious, and heavy with disgust.
“I know, and that’s something I’ve had to live with. It’s something I’ll always have to live with. I let my daughter, my only child, down when she needed me the most, and nothing will ever make that go away. I wish I could go back and change it, but I can’t. I made a decision that I thought was best, but it wasn’t.”
“How in the hell could you possibly think doing nothing about it was for the best?”
“Gabriella came to me right after I married Peter. We had only lived there for about a month or two. She said her stepbrother made her feel uncomfortable. I kept telling her to give Todd a chance. It was difficult because he was so much older than her. She was fifteen and he was twenty-three. But we were a joined family and I wanted her to have a relationship with Peter’s son.”
I felt sick to my stomach. My throat burned with the vomit that threatened to come up. I couldn’t even look at her. I turned away and braced myself against the wall with my hand on my knee, hoping to calm down. I knew I hadn’t heard the worst of it, and I wasn’t sure I’d be able to handle more.
“It was a few months after that I noticed she didn’t want to leave her room. She didn’t want to be around anyone and stopped talking. She had always been a bit of a shy child. I don’t know if she’s ever talked to you about it, but we used to live in shelters before I married Peter. We bounced around from homeless shelters to boarding houses, the streets, and state facilities, before we finally moved here. Peter saved us; he really did. So I just thought she was having a hard time adjusting to actually having a home. We weren’t used to having all the things Peter provided.”
I growled through gritted teeth, not giving two shits about the life they used to have.
She took a deep breath and continued. “I finally asked her one night what was going on with her. It took her a little bit, but she finally admitted it to me. She said Todd came into her room one night and…” Marie couldn’t finish her sentence, and I didn’t need her to.
I whipped around so fast it made Marie stumble back a step. “She confided in you and you didn’t do anything about it?”
“What could I do?” she cried, tears running down her face.
“Call the fucking police! Shoot him. Cut off his dick!”
“And go back to the shelter?”
I couldn’t believe what I heard come out of her mouth. “That’s what you were so fucking worried about? Being homeless?” Oxygen wouldn’t reach my lungs and I started to feel lightheaded. The anger had consumed me. My entire body shook uncontrollably until I leaned forward, bracing my hands on my knees, and took a deep breath. When the wave passed, I stared her right in the eyes and said, “You allowed your daughter to get raped at the age of fifteen by a twenty-three-year-old, and all you worried about was where you’d live. You fucking disgust me.”
Unable to listen to her anymore, or even look at her, I turned toward the driveway. I needed to get out of there. I decided I’d be the one to go see about Gabi and get her the help she needed, especially after hearing Marie’s confession. She admitted to not doing right by Gabi once, and I wouldn’t allow that to happen again. The anger and hatred I’d felt toward Gabi was now sheer pain and sympathy. My heart literally hurt for her.
But Marie followed me, begging me to listen. “It’s not like I didn’t do anything. I asked Todd about it and he said it wasn’t true. I thought maybe Gabriella was making it all up because she didn’t want to live there anymore. I didn’t want to leave and have nowhere to go if it wasn’t true.”
Reaching the hood of my car, I turned around. “Did you think he’d admit it? Did you really think if you asked him if he raped your daughter, he’d say yes?”
She hesitated. And it proved to be the longest few seconds of my life. “I didn’t know what else to do. She never mentioned it again, so I thought she made it up.”
“When did you know she was telling the truth?” I barely got the question out. I didn’t want to ask, nor did I want the answer. But since I’d heard this much, I needed to know the rest. I couldn’t continue to live with only part of the story.
“Just after she turned seventeen, she came to me and said she was pregnant.”
I thought about it. We were dating when she turned seventeen. We’d been having sex, but I always wore a condom. I felt as if I were holding my breath, waiting for her to keep talking. So many thoughts ran through my head, and I couldn’t keep any of them straight. I never knew she was pregnant, and I couldn’t understand why she never told me. Unless it wasn’t mine…but it could’ve been mine.
“I thought my life was falling apart. I never wanted my daughter to end up like me—pregnant in high school. I told her you needed to step up and do the right thing, whatever that may have been. But she admitted it wasn’t yours. I thought she was saying she had cheated on you and that’s why she came to me about it. I wasn’t expecting her to tell
me it was Todd’s. I didn’t believe her at first. But then she said it had been going on since the first time she came to me about it. I wanted to kill him, I honestly did. But instead, I went to Peter. I told him what had happened, and he demanded she get an abortion. I didn’t question it. I didn’t think anything of it. I just figured it was in the best interest of Gabriella if she got one.”
“You’re a fucking idiot,” I spewed. “He wanted it aborted so there wouldn’t be any evidence of rape. How did you not see that? How could you be so fucking blind?” My rage took over again and I was back in her face.
She began to cry harder, her words practically incoherent. “I didn’t know what to do. Part of me thought she only said it was rape because she didn’t want to be in trouble, or maybe she was scared of you finding out. Her being pregnant with his baby only meant they’d had sex…it didn’t necessarily mean it was against her will. I thought…I thought I would’ve known if Todd was abusing her. I would’ve heard her cry for help. I mean, she never said anything else about it after the first time.”
“Why do you think that is, Marie? You didn’t do anything to fucking protect her!” I no longer cared if the neighbors heard. I almost wanted them to hear, to know what a piece of shit they had living next to them.
“I thought if I said something to Peter, he would figure it out. But all he did was tell me to have the pregnancy terminated. So I did. He said he’d deal with Todd. I didn’t know what he was going to do, but he talked to him and said he took care of it. Things were fine for a few weeks so again, I thought it was all a lie. It wasn’t until…” She trailed off and buried her face in her hands, wailing and sobbing uncontrollably.
I had no patience by that point. My voice couldn’t be calmed and my anger couldn’t have been tamed. I felt like a madman on the loose. My hands shook by my sides as I tried to keep from throttling her. I hated her. I hated what she did to Gabi, what she did to the innocent man who went to jail, and ultimately, what she did to me—she’d robbed every one of us of a normal life. She was a fucking monster, and I suddenly realized why Gabi had stayed away for so long. I only wished Gabi had come to me with the truth. None of what had happened over the last ten years would have taken place had I known.
“Until what, Marie. Spit it the fuck out already!”
People began to come out of their homes, standing in their yards and staring at the two of us in her driveway.
“The night when she was taken to the hospital,” she finally finished her sentence. “He…Todd…he um, was extremely angry over the whole thing. He was pissed that his dad found out, and even more irate that Gabriella got pregnant. He was on something that night—not really sure what. We were in bed when he came home and then I was awoken by the screams. I didn’t get there in time. He was already gone by the time she started screaming.
“I found her in the bathroom on the floor. There was a lot of blood…everywhere.” Her voice grew really quiet and I had to get closer to hear her. I needed to make sure I didn’t misunderstand anything. “He made sure she couldn’t get pregnant that time. Oh God, Dane. There was blood everywhere. And she was just curled up on the floor with it smeared all over the backs of her legs and….” Her sobs filled every painstaking word. “Peter was there. I begged him to call the paramedics while I sat with her. But when he did, he told the cops it was the neighbor. It wasn’t me or Gabriella that did that. It was Peter. And we had to go along with it.”
“No you didn’t.” I wanted to yell. I wanted to scream. But I couldn’t. My chest was so tight I couldn’t get a deep enough breath to even raise my voice above a throaty growl. “You didn’t have to go along with him. You could’ve come forward with the truth. You could have shown Gabi how to stand up for herself. You didn’t have to ruin a young man’s life. And in the end, you’ve ruined your daughter’s life. She’s lived with this for years. You were too damn scared to be homeless, and in the end, the bastard gave everything to his son anyway. In the end, you ended up alone without a roof over your head regardless of what you did or didn’t do. You sold your own flesh and blood out for nothing. Fucking. Nothing!”
“I know. Don’t you think I know what I’ve done? Don’t you think I’m paying for it and that I regret it every single day? My daughter has battled depression ever since then, and even tried to take her own life. That’s probably why she’s at the hospital now. Don’t you think I feel that blame? I feel it every day of my life.”
Suddenly, my own guilt set in. Gabi had begged for me to give her a chance to explain, but I didn’t let her. I walked away without ever asking her why she lied. If I had taken one second over the last eleven years to even think about the first time we had sex, I probably would have known. I would have been able to at least guess that she wasn’t a virgin when she said she was. There was no blood and she wasn’t overly tight. She was incredibly nervous, as was I, but I just assumed that was because it was her virginity. But it wasn’t. She hadn’t been a virgin when we first had sex. She’d been repeatedly raped for a year by that point, and I had no clue. I didn’t see it in her eyes when we were intimate, but thinking back on those early days, it became clear. The fear in her eyes was the same both before and after the incident. The shakiness that I assumed was nerves were the same before and after. I was the blind one. I’d let her down, and I continued to let her down. All those years I thought I was the one protecting her…I wasn’t. I was never able to protect her the way she needed someone to.
But I would.
I would make sure she knew someone was looking out for her.
“Go to the hospital,” I told Marie, leaving no room for questioning. “She needs someone there. Go there and make sure she gets all the help she needs. Now and when she’s discharged. She probably doesn’t want to see you—and I don’t blame her, because I never want to see your face again, either. So sit in the waiting room, don’t let her know you’re there, do whatever you have to, but make sure she gets help. You both need it.”
I turned around and walked away, leaving Marie and her fucked-up life behind me while I went to take care of something that should have been dealt with twelve years ago.
17
Nothing looked the same as I made my way down Gabi’s old street. I’d been to the house plenty of times when we were in high school, when I used to pick her up for dates or to hang out. She never allowed me to come inside, though. At the time, I had brushed it off and assumed she was embarrassed about it since my house was so much bigger. It never bothered me, and I never thought twice about it until now. Until I found myself driving down the same street with the knowledge of what truly happened under that roof. It did nothing but fill me with more rage.
Before I even made it to the driveway, I saw him outside. He was working under the hood of a car. I came to an abrupt stop and parked on the side of the road before finding myself running in his direction. He never heard me coming up on him. My knuckles slammed against the back of his skull and I could literally hear his forehead bounce off the engine with a sickening thud.
He grabbed the front of the car and cursed before righting himself and facing me. He took a look at me and then cocked his arm to swing. Instead of hitting me, he stumbled, off balance from hitting his head. Blood gushed down his face, impeding his vision, but I didn’t show him any sympathy, nor did I give him time to get his bearings straight before my fist connected with his jaw, knocking him into the car. I didn’t stop there. When he fell to the driveway, I continued to land punch after punch to his face.
I felt a pop and heard cracks as my fist met his nose. Blood flowed, and I couldn’t tell if it came from his mouth or from his obviously broken nose. “You motherfucker!” I shouted at him as I continued to assault him. “Fucking rapist. You get off by touching little girls, you asshole?” The only thing that saved him from being sent straight to hell right then and there were the men that came running to his aid.
They yanked me off him, but it wasn’t easy. I didn’t relent without a struggle. T
here were two of them, and they were rather scrawny. I elbowed one in the face to get him off me, and he went down immediately. The other hightailed it as I stared him down. I’m sure I looked like a crazed lunatic.
As soon as they were gone, I went back to Todd. I stood there and watched as he gagged and coughed on his own blood. After the slight satisfaction, I dragged him up by the front of his shirt and slammed him against the engine, leaning over him. He could barely open one of his eyes, but I made sure he heard every word I spat at him.
“You’re a fucking piece of shit. You don’t deserve to live after what you did to her.”
“You can’t prove anything,” he muttered between his gasps for air.
I grabbed his face, digging my fingers and thumb into his cheeks, and got close to his ear so he would hear everything I had to say. “When I’m finished with you, you’ll be begging the law to take you away. You’ll be praying they lock you up.” I searched the ground and noticed the metal pipe for his hydraulic carjack laying on the cement. I let him go long enough to pick it up.
He began to cry like the spineless piece of shit he was.
“Did Gabi cry like this when you’d come into her room and rape her? Did she beg you to stop? Because that’s what you’re going to do now. You’re going to beg me. But I’m not going to listen. I’m going to do to you what you did to Gabi. I’m going to shove this pipe up your ass so hard it’ll come out of your throat.” My voice was thick and strained as I growled in his ear, swiping the pipe along his jaw.
He cried harder and actually began to beg. I wondered if Gabi crossed his mind during any of this. If he thought about how much she probably begged him to stop just before he took everything from her. I wondered if the images of her bleeding all over the bathroom floor flooded his mind at the thought of me doing the same to him.
Rage consumed me and all I could think about was degrading him, violating him the way he had done to an innocent girl. And then I thought about beating the life out of him with the same pipe I’d use to tear him open. I wanted him dead. He needed to know exactly how it felt for Gabi, and then I wanted to kill him. He didn’t deserve to live after what he’d done.
