by Kate Morris
“Nope,” Reagan states with fortitude. “I’m not moving until you tell me. Don’t you have feelings for Sam?” she says, deciding on a different tactic to get him to talk. “Is Sam in love with you? It sounds like it in that letter. She seems like she is. I’ve seen it. I’ve seen it in you, too. Don’t you love her, too?”
“Sam is like a sister to me,” he says, his eyes darting around, probably seeking another form of exit.
“Ha!” Reagan counters loudly. “Get real. She isn’t your sister. I caught you two making out! Remember? In the supply room at the clinic in town? Your sister’s upstairs asleep. Sam is more to you than that. I’ve seen the way you look at her.” This gets a reaction. He looks directly at her as if startled to hear this. “Oh, yeah, I’ve seen it. You love her. I know you do. Hell, Simon, I think everyone knows you do. What I don’t understand is why you just don’t tell her.”
He runs a hand through his already-standing-on-end hair and then rubs his face with both hands.
“Stop it, Reagan,” he says more firmly.
“No, talk. Then you can go. Tell me.”
Simon glares at her again, staring her down. “Get out of my way, damn it. I don’t want to hurt you by moving you.”
His temper is about to blow.
“Do what you have to do, but I’m not moving.”
He stalks toward her, realizes he can’t touch her, and growls with frustration, making two fists at his sides again.
“Don’t do this. Stop. I mean it, Reagan. Move.”
His words are delivered through gritted teeth.
“Why do you push her away? Why don’t you just let yourself love her? She’s going to end up with Henry or some other Henry if you don’t do something pretty soon.”
“I’ll kill him,” Simon says with deadly cold menace.
“You can’t kill them all, honey,” she informs him patiently. “And, trust me, dear, there will be more. I mean, sure, maybe you’d get away with killing one or two, but more will come.”
“You aren’t being funny right now.”
“She’s going to marry someone else. Is that what you want?”
He looks directly at her and says, “Yes, I want her to be happy. That’s all I want for Samantha.”
“I don’t believe you,” Reagan states emphatically.
He gives her a whole new sneer, this one malevolent.
“Then why not marry her yourself?”
The expression that comes over Simon’s innocent face is one of revulsion and, if Reagan is guessing correctly, self-loathing.
“Marry her, Simon. You two are perfect for each other. It’s obvious that Sam loves you.”
“She’s just a child.”
Reagan actually laughs, “No, she’s not at all actually. She’s an adult woman. And as an adult woman, I think I can speak for her. I was a late bloomer in every sense of the word, but Sam’s not. She’s very mature for her age.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” he says.
She sighs and continues, “She’ll marry someone else, and you’ll be miserable.”
“Good,” he says as if this makes sense. “It’s no less than what I’d deserve.”
Reagan frowns. “What? What do you mean?”
“Nothing. Can you move, please?” he requests more loudly.
“No, I’m not going anywhere, and neither are you. Not until we talk this out because I am sick to death of not understanding you and Sam’s situation.”
“There is nothing to report. Stop being so snoopy. You sound like one of your damn sisters.”
“Good! If that was supposed to be an insult, it wasn’t. Why do you think you don’t deserve to be happy, to be with her? She’s clearly what you want.”
Simon starts pacing again. He even holds a hand to his stomach as if he is nauseous.
“Simon, talk to me. Why? Why can’t you be with her?”
“Stop it,” he states in a quiet, frustrated tone.
“No, I want to know. Damn it, this affects us all. We’re all a family, and I for one am tired of watching the two of you be miserable.”
“Just drop this. Please, Reagan,” he pleads in a softer tone.
Reagan notices that his hands are shaking. She is hitting on something that is important.
“You deserve to be with her. You don’t deserve to be unhappy. If Sam would make you happy, then you should be with her.”
He groans as if the thought of this is something distasteful. There is a bead of sweat running down his forehead.
“You kids have been through so much together. She trusts you, Simon, and sometimes that’s more important than a lot of other bullshit romantic ideas that people put out there.”
He offers a sardonic laugh.
“Why are you laughing?”
When he looks at her, Reagan is actually afraid, “You have no idea the irony of what you just said. She trusts me. That’s rich.”
“Why?”
He shakes his head and says, “Move.”
“No.”
“Get out of my way,” he repeats, his eyes becoming menacing and deadly.
Reagan doesn’t back down. She isn’t afraid of Simon, but for him. This much rage can’t stay bottled up inside a person for so long.
“You think it’s ironic that you have Sam’s trust?”
He doesn’t answer but balls his shaking fist again.
“You want to hit me? You want to hit something?”
Simon flinches as if he doesn’t even understand his own emotions right now. He shakes his head, but Reagan isn’t sure he realizes he’s doing it.
“You’re so angry,” she says more quietly. It hits her. “You blame yourself.”
“Reagan,” he warns, looking down at his feet.
“You blame yourself and find it ironic that Sam trusts you because you feel like it’s your fault for what happened to her. That’s it, isn’t it?” It’s as if the last four years, his behavior, the sly looks he slides toward Sam during dinner when she still lived on the farm and didn’t know he was watching her, the longing she’s seen in his eyes, the desire, all of it finally makes sense. Reagan is cracking his code of secrecy. And he’s scared to death for it to be known.
“Stop,” he says and backs away.
Reagan pursues him.
“Get away from me,” he warns.
Reagan keeps following him until Simon has a building support pole at his back. He turns around instead of facing her, but she potentially has him cornered.
“Are you seriously blaming yourself for what happened to Samantha when you two were held prisoner by those people?”
“Go away,” he says.
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me, Simon. That wasn’t your fault.”
With a roar, he explodes and punches the steel pole. Reagan wraps him in a bear hug from behind, trapping his arms down at his sides.
“Simon, oh, Simon,” she coos. “Don’t do that. Darling, it wasn’t your fault.”
He jerks from her grasp and steps a few feet away.
“You have no idea what happened, so don’t you assume you understand, Reagan,” he shouts, pointing at her, blood dripping from his damaged knuckles onto the concrete floor. There are unshed tears in his eyes, so he turns away.
“Explain it then,” she presses. He doesn’t say anything but continues to stand there shaking, this time his whole body and not just his hands. “Explain it to me so that I can understand.”
Simon turns to face her, and Reagan can see the pure and utter self-loathing, the hatred, the anger, and the anguish in his troubled eyes. His poor heart is so downtrodden with this burden.
“You want to hear it?” he asks, an almost taunting grin on his face. “Prepare yourself. I guarantee you aren’t going to want to hear this. I tried, you see. I tried to hide her so they wouldn’t find her in her parents’ house because I knew what they’d do. But they found her. Of course, they did. They were the worst sort of human beings you could ever imagine. He found her. B
obby. You want to hear how I had to lie awake and listen to my bastard of a cousin rape her? How I was too weak to help her, too outnumbered to do anything, too tied up? How he raped her a total of nine times? How the first night he had her, he raped her twice? How’s that for an introduction into our group? How’s that for an introduction to sex? She was a virgin and was raped twice by my cousin. She could barely walk the next day. Or do you wanna’ hear how I tried to claim her for myself to spare her from what I knew they’d do, but how my cousin had the other men tie me up so that I couldn’t help her? They knew me. They knew I was just trying to spare her, that I’d never hurt her like they wanted to. I couldn’t claim her. Bobby wanted her for himself the second he laid eyes on her hiding in that closet. Is this what you want to hear?”
Reagan cannot help the tears that slide down her cheeks. She’s not the kind of person who cries easily, but this is maybe the most horrific thing she’s ever heard. She knew Sam had been raped, mostly assumed it from her behavior, but could not imagine the horrors that they both faced with those wretched people. She’s glad they’re all dead.
“Do you want to know that the other men also wanted her, but I convinced my cousin not to let them? I heard their disgusting plans for Sam. Huntley’s father, Frank. Rick. Buzz. Willy. They all wanted her. I heard their plans. They would each take a turn. I couldn’t stop them. I had to do something,” Simon says, almost trance-like. “The guy who was already abusing her, my own cousin, I had to talk him into keeping her for himself so that she wouldn’t be raped by every other man in the group. Do you know what that felt like? Do you? Could you? I was condemning her to being raped by Bobby, but sparing her from gang rape from the others.”
“Simon,” she starts and sniffs hard but is cut off again, this time by the anger that has returned to his soft voice.
“Or do you want to hear how I had to help her down to a lake one day after a particularly fun night with my cousin to wash away the blood from her small face and busted lip where he’d beaten on her for lying to him about having her period. The lie that I came up with!” he says, shaking again uncontrollably. “Her thin thighs and tiny wrists were so bruised from him hurting her. Her neck had bruises, too, so I think now that I’m older and know more that he might’ve choked her. She was so small.”
“Simon, for God’s sake! You had broken ribs when you first arrived on the farm. You’re leaving a lot out here. Huntley and his brother and mother showed signs of abuse. You suffered at their hands, too. We all saw it.”
“But she suffered far, far worse than the rest of us. At least Huntley’s mother and brother died. They got out a lot easier than Samantha.”
“Simon, stop,” Reagan pleads, trying to get him to see reason.
“Oh, no. You started this. Do you want to hear how she could sometimes barely walk because he’d been so violent with her the night before? Or how her little doll face and arms and legs would always have bruises on them. How her wrists were bruised from being tied up. But those weren’t just from my cousin. Oh, no! Everyone in that group would abuse her, even the women. They’d hit her if she moved too slow getting them things. My aunt would abuse her because she was jealous that the other men looked at her with desire. Or would you like to hear how I found a pair of earplugs in the RV and used them at night so I didn’t have to hear Bobby raping her, so I wouldn’t have to listen to it happening. Or how I devised a plan of escape, but we were caught. She was beaten for that as badly as I was. Then Bobby chained her to a bar inside the RV. Or how we came up with another plan to escape but Huntley’s brother, Garrett, got sick and we couldn’t leave them. I told her, begged her to go, to get out without us, that I’d stay with Huntley and his brother and mother so that she could make her escape. She wouldn’t. She didn’t want to leave without us. ‘We’ll wait till Garrett gets better,’ she’d argued with me. Can you believe that? I had the perfect escape planned for her, but she wouldn’t leave Garrett, a kid she barely knew. And why? Because that’s Sam. She loves kids, loves people, just loves too much, too easily. She should’ve gotten away. I should’ve forced her to leave. I didn’t, though. Truth be told, I didn’t want her to go. I was afraid of what else could be out there and that I’d never see her again. Does this all sound like a reason for Sam to trust me? I failed her when she needed someone the most not to. Don’t you get it? Do you understand now?”
Reagan nods jerkily and wipes at her tears. She looks down and sees drops of blood coming off of his trembling hands and grabs a towel from the counter. She squats in front of him to clean it. Simon follows her and rests his weight on one knee. Then he takes the towel from her and begins wiping at the concrete floor. Reagan instead rests a hand gently on his shoulder.
“Don’t,” he says. “Don’t touch me.”
Simon tries shirking her hand, but Reagan rests it more firmly there.
“Reagan, don’t,” he implores more weakly this time. “Don’t do this. Not you.”
“Oh, Simon,” she says with so much wrung out, raw emotion from listening to the terror that he and Sam suffered. She rests her hand on the back of his neck where the skin is bare and warm. “My darling brother. You and Sam…my God.”
Reagan doesn’t care if she’s crying freely or that someone could walk in on them. She cups his cheek and strokes her thumb gently there. She coos, “Poor Simon.”
His shoulder begins to shake like his hands. It’s different this time. His emotions have been strung out so tightly that he’s cracking. He sniffs hard, and she realizes that he’s crying. Reagan rubs his back.
“Simon, I’m so sorry you two went through what you did. No kids should ever have to endure such pain and agony, both emotional and physical.”
“She wouldn’t have if I’d protected her. But I didn’t. I couldn’t protect her because I was too weak.”
“But, Simon, you were just a kid,” she says and pulls him into a close hug. This time he doesn’t push her away. She rises and takes him with her to a cot a few feet away where she sits next to him. “You were barely fifteen years old when this happened, darling. Those men were all in their thirties and on up. And higher than kites on every drug known to man, so who knows what the hell they were taking. But they were probably stronger because they were hopped up on drugs and shit.”
“They were high all the time. And drunk. But that doesn’t excuse me from not protecting her.”
“Did any of the other men rape her, or just your cousin?”
“Just him. But I should’ve stopped it. I should’ve done so many things differently. She could never forgive me for failing her.”
“Don’t be crazy. Sam loves you. She knows you tried to save her. What the two of you went through together is like nothing anyone has ever experienced. It was horrible, but it also bonded her to you forever. She understands…”
“Understands. Forgives. Loves. These aren’t words that I’ll ever reconcile myself to, Reagan, where Samantha is concerned. I could never be with her. It’s wrong. It’s sick. It’s like this disgusting thing inside of me that I can’t suppress when she’s around. It makes me as evil as him.”
“Who? Bobby?” she asks and gets a nod. She grasps his hand tightly in hers. “That’s ridiculous. Don’t say that. Don’t you ever say that. You have nothing to be ashamed of, Simon. Your love for Samantha is pure and good and comes from a place of innocence. It’s not the sick desire of a man who would hurt someone weaker than them just because they can. Your love is free of pain and humiliation. You love her so strongly, so purely. She knows you’d never hurt her. She knows you are nothing like them. You’re the one who has to let it all go, my darling. Sam has. She moved on. She wants to live a happy life now free from the past.”
He scoffs. “As if we could ever be free from that.”
“But you are. You tried to kill Bobby, remember?”
He nods angrily, “Of course I remember. If I wasn’t so concerned about getting you away from him and out of the danger zone, I would’ve finished the
job.”
He’s referring to stabbing his cousin in the back when he had Reagan on the ground and was going to rape her just like he did to Sam.
“I know. Sam knows this, too. And she loves you, Simon. She doesn’t care about the past anymore.”
“Really? She still draws…horrible things when she gets sad.”
“Well, maybe that’s just her way of dealing with it. And maybe what happened to her isn’t the only thing that makes Samantha sad. She’s a very sensitive girl. It’s just the way she is, innocent and fragile and artistic and beautiful inside. She sees such goodness and lightness in everything. But then we’re confronted with such darkness like these highwaymen assholes. I think Sam’s sensitive to this sort of evil. She’s not self-harming. She’s a very well-adjusted young woman for what she’s been through. And you’re her anchor, Simon. She leans on you so hard for help and support. She has never to this day told any of us about what happened to her, not in detail, not even as much as you just told me. If she told Grams, I don’t know of it.”
“I could never be with her. I’d never allow myself to do it.”
Reagan frowns. “But why?”
“You say that what we went through bonded us and made us close, but it also condemned us never to be together. We can’t, not after that,” he says and shakes his head. “I couldn’t save her. I was just a failure, and I will never forget it.”
“You don’t have to forget it, but at some point in your life, Simon, you’re going to have to forgive yourself.”
“No,” he says with finality. “What we went through ruined us ever being together.”
“Because you see her as soiled goods?”
“What? Hell, no!” he snarls. “Sam is nothing of the sort. Why the hell would you say something like that to me?”
“She mentioned something about it a while back, but I didn’t understand why she’d say it. I got the impression she thought that you think of her that way.”
“God,” he says with frustration and runs a hand through his hair. His fists clench again with anger.
“I also think you should consider her feelings in this, too. She’s not getting what she wants out of it. She wants you. I can tell Samantha loves you, but you aren’t making her happy because you can’t forgive yourself for something that was out of your control to stop from happening in the first place. So by forbidding yourself from being with her, you’re also condemning her to unhappiness.”
