“No.”
“It’s not really up for debate, Owen,” he growls. “These proceedings are not open to the public, and if I say she has to go...”
I shake my head again and cut him off.
“Come back with a subpoena, then. She stays or I don’t talk to you.”
The DA stares coldly back at me as if he’s hoping I’ll crack under pressure.
He just doesn’t get it, does he? This isn’t pressure and he isn’t scary. My father was scary. Dealing with him was pressure. This guy is just a slimy forty-something in a suit who wishes he had even half the power over me that my father had.
I can stare back like this for as long as it takes. I’m not going anywhere.
Thirty seconds later, he cracks.
“Fine, have it your way. She can stay,” he concedes, but I still catch the corner of his mouth curling up. He hasn’t given up yet; he’s just playing a different game.
“Glad you see it my way,” I answer, practically oozing sarcasm. “Now let’s get started.”
“Did your father ever hit you?”
I raise an eyebrow at his question. Is he really leading me down the path of questions I want him to? This is perfect. Of course he hit me. He hit me all the damned time. He hit my mother all the time, too. That’s how I know what happened to her—there’s no other way it could have happened.
“Yes, he did.”
“Where?”
“What do you mean, where?” I ask. “The living room? Alabama? In the face?”
“Since you put it that way, let’s go with all of them.”
“Everywhere.”
He waits in silence for me to explain myself.
“He hit me all the time, pretty much everywhere we ever lived, until I finally escaped and went to college. It was a constant thing in my life growing up.”
The DA jots down some notes and Maria squeezes my hand under the table. Her eyes are wide and sad, but they’re not fearful today. She’s sad that I have to do this—that I have to explain what should be obvious to anyone who really cares about my mother or even about justice being served.
“Did your mother ever hit you?”
I shake my head.
“Are you sure about that?” he asks again, raising an eyebrow. “She never once laid hands on you and caused you pain or discomfort?”
Of course she didn’t, at least not the way Dad did. She probably spanked me occasionally when I was a child, but if she did, I don’t remember any of it. All my bad memories are of my father.
“No, she didn’t.”
“Not a spanking, not a slap, not anything?”
A chill runs through me as I realize what he’s doing, and the chill quickly gives way to burning fury. I’m not letting him do this. He doesn’t get to hurt my mother just because he was friends with my father.
“No, never once,” I answer, masking my emotions and keeping my face as cold as stone. I don’t care if she probably did at some point. I’m not giving him the answer he wants now. I’m not letting him use my words to attack her.
“Did your mother ever sexually abuse you?”
Maria’s jaw drops beside me, but I’m still in control for now. I want to hit him, but instead I just shake my head. I shake my head repeatedly as he fires question after ridiculous question at me. She never stole from me. She never made me sleep outside or locked me in the closet. She never made me dress up in girls’ clothing. All the questions are about Mom, but it’s as if he’s trying as hard as he can to hurt and humiliate me in front of Maria now rather than interview me. It’s as if he wants me to know that this isn’t about solving a crime at all, but just about fucking with me until I slip up and give him something to use against my mother.
“Did she ever introduce you to anyone in a more than friendly manner?”
“What the hell does that mean?” I fire back at him.
“Did she ever... share you?” he clarifies. I’ve had enough. I scoff at him, push my chair back from the table and stand up.
“First, she never did that,” I hiss. “Second, go fuck yourself. We’re done here.”
I don’t care if he got that on tape. He deserves it. He deserves a swift kick in the teeth for everything he’s done so far. All he’s done since he picked up my mother’s ‘case’ is to try to his hardest to paint her as a murderer, leer at my girlfriend, and do everything he can to hurt me in the process.
“Hmm... sounds like the questions are hitting a little too close to home for you,” he taunts me. “I could treat your reaction as suitable cause for your mother’s arraignment in the event that she ever wakes up, you know.”
He smirks at me as I glare furiously down at him. I want to slap that stupid smile off his face and shake him until somehow he finally realizes that my mother’s not the villain in this.
He already knows that, though... he just doesn’t care.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” Maria suddenly cries out at the DA. He and I spin to her in surprise and Bill snaps out of whatever daydream he’s been off in for the last thirty minutes.
“Owen’s mother didn’t do anything!” she yells. Her face is red with anger, and she looks like she’s ready to claw his eyes out. “I’ve met his father. Everything—and I mean everything—is his fault, not his mother’s. He was a horrible person!”
The DA tries to interject, but Maria quickly cuts him off and pretends to zip his mouth shut. Tina would be so proud of her right now.
“You want to know when I first met him? It was right here in the kitchen at the start of spring break,” she continues. “I walked in on Owen’s father beating him, and then when I tried to stop them, he gave me a concussion.”
“Prove it,” fires back the DA as he recovers his composure.
Maria reaches into her coat pocket, yanks out a folded envelope and slaps it down on the table.
“Medical bills and insurance statements,” she hisses, “for two Cornell students admitted on March 16th for a concussion and a broken hand. The concussion was mine and the hand was his.”
I stare at the envelope in disbelief as I sit back down. She kept copies of all our bills and brought them? I didn’t think to bring anything to support my testimony and she came prepared with medical bills. I wish I had even an ounce of her forethought, and I have no idea how I’m ever going to make it up to her for bailing me out again.
The DA opens the envelope and glances over the paperwork inside, and then he nods and slides it back across the table to Maria.
“Thank you for providing documentation,” he says. The gloating, barely-hidden laughter in his voice is gone, replaced instead by a grating professionalism that still drives me nuts.
“You’re welcome,” answers Maria, and she lets out a long sigh as she tries to calm herself down. Now it’s my turn to squeeze her hand under the table.
“However,” continues the DA, raising one eyebrow, “while that may substantiate the claim regarding recent violence, it does nothing to support Owen’s claim of past violence. Unless you magically have proof of that as well, Miss Ayala?”
“Of course she doesn’t have proof of that,” I interject. “She didn’t know me back then. The only proof she’s seen of that is...”
I trail off as I suddenly realize that I did bring proof with me. I’ve brought evidence everywhere with me since the first time he hurt me, and that evidence has grown bigger and more complete with each passing year and every new nightmare. I stand up again and Maria inhales sharply as she realizes what I’m going to do.
I lift my long-sleeved tee shirt up and over my head, baring my scars for all the world to see.
Friday, April 5 – 5:35 PM
Maria
“Of course she doesn’t have proof of that,” Owen interrupts. “She didn’t know me back then. The only proof she’s seen of that is...”
I know what he’s going to do the moment his voice trails off, but I don’t know how to stop him.
He shouldn’t have to do this.
He shouldn’t have to show his scars to that horrible jerk. The scars are both his burden and, in a horrible way, his inheritance. Some people leave their children with fortunes or at least wonderful memories of their time together, but his father decided that nightmares and a body covered in scars were enough for him.
His scars are even more than that, though. They’re like my book of nightmares, and one by one, they tell his story. Instead of scribbled memories inked on paper, his nightmares are all carved into his skin, forever reminding him of the horrible life he’s left behind.
I gasp as he lifts his shirt up and bares his scars to the others, to these terrible people who don’t deserve to see them. Slash after horrific slash, some faded from decades passed and others fresh, reveal themselves as his shirt rises first to his ribs and then up and over his head.
“Jesus Christ,” whispers Bill, his eyes wide with horror. “All those were from Todd?”
“He stuck to fists when I was young, but as I got older...” answers Owen quietly, his voice starting to shake, “well, he found other ways to hurt me then.”
I leap out of my chair and take his hand in mine and he smiles weakly at me before continuing his story. His eyes are sad and tired, and even though he’s looking at me, I feel as if he isn’t seeing me anymore. He’s going somewhere far away—somewhere deep in his terrifying past—as he tells his story.
I squeeze his hand and hold onto him tightly as he starts to speak. I can’t tell the story for him, but I’ll be here by his side as he tells it.
“These three on my back... well, I can only reach the first two, but they were from a broken broom,” Owen tells the DA, turning around to show him the scars. “I accidentally ran over the broom while backing the car out of the garage for my father and that was reason enough for him to beat me with the broken end of it.”
I know which ones he’s talking about, and I gently reach out and touch the unreachable bottom scar for him. It’s a long, straight brown mark running from the middle of his spine down toward the small of his back. I let my fingers linger for just a moment against his soft skin, hoping and praying that he knows that no matter what happens—no matter what story he tells—I’m here for him. He doesn’t have to be scared to tell his story or of hurting me with it. I like his scars now—they’re a part of the man I love, and I wouldn’t have him any other way.
“He broke my ribs while making this one,” continues Owen, his voice cracking as he runs his fingertips along the crisscrossed grid of dull, narrow scars on his right side. “I dropped a flagstone while helping him fix the patio, and he grabbed one of the shattered fragments and hit me with it. It was sharp along the broken edge.”
Bill’s jaw drops lower and lower as Owen hits him with story after story. The sheriff’s face is as white as a sheet, and even the DA is turning pale now. One scar just above his sternum is from when his father threw him into a table and broke his collarbone. He was twelve years old. He runs a finger over the long, white scar on his jaw as he tells them about seeing the glass flying toward him, how it seemed to hover in the air, time stopped dead in its tracks, right before smashing against his face. I can hardly believe how many scars he has and I’ve seen them before. My heart sinks as I realize how stupid my idea to learn the story behind all of them was; he shouldn’t have to relive them all just for me. I don’t want the memories to hurt him anymore.
Owen keeps going, telling the horrible stories behind scar after scar. My stomach turns at the detail he’s going into and the tortured pain in his eyes, but I refuse to look away as he points to a jagged scar on his left shoulder. I don’t care how much his stories hurt—I’m not going to sit down, not going to let myself get sick. He needs me to be strong for him. He had to live through it all the first time, and now I need to be here for him, supporting him, while he suffers through it again.
“This one was from...”
“Enough!” interrupts the DA as he turns away. “I’ve... I’ve heard enough. Put your shirt on, please.”
I stare in astonishment at the DA as he hunches over in his chair. His face is pale and he’s visibly shaken as he stares down at the tile floor. He looks like he’s about to throw up.
Owen broke him. He actually broke this horrible man.
Owen puts his shirt back on and returns to his seat and I shakily sit down beside him. I feel queasy from his stories, but how I feel is nothing compared to how sick the others look. Bill looks like he’s seen a ghost and the DA still hasn’t looked up from the floor.
“We’ll take your testimony into consideration,” stammers the DA after a long silence, still not looking up at either of us. “Thank you for your time. We’ll be going now.”
Without waiting for Owen to say anything, he gets up, grabs his briefcase and hurries to the door. Bill stands up as if he’s about to follow but instead turns back to Owen.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” he whispers. “If I’d known all this was happening back then...”
“I was too scared to tell you,” answers Owen in drained exhaustion. “Dad was right there when you were talking to me, and if I told you, he’d have killed me too.”
“I could have stopped it,” Bill starts to tell him, and Owen suddenly explodes.
“Then why didn’t you?” he yells. “You knew what he did! You saw my sister and then left me there with a murderer!”
I nervously inch away from him in my chair as he yells at the sheriff. He’s out of his seat now, refusing to let Bill get in a single word as he hurls years of pent-up anger and frustration at him. I’m starting to get scared—I don’t want to have to break up another fight, but I definitely don’t want Owen to get arrested.
“You knew... you knew the whole fucking time. You knew what he did and you still left me there trapped with him.”
Owen’s voice fades as his anger burns out, and he falls back into his chair beside me as if he’s so exhausted that his legs can’t support him anymore. Bill hangs his head in silence for what feels like an eternity.
“Say something,” whispers Owen. “Anything. I don’t even care what it is, just say something.”
“Owen... it was the worst mistake I ever made,” he finally answers, “and I can’t fix it no matter how much I want to. Even if I know the DA wouldn’t have taken the case, I should have tried. I’m sorry.”
Bill casts Owen and me a final, sad look before hurrying to the door.
We’re alone again.
The clock ticks in the kitchen. Second... by second... by second... Minutes pass. Maybe hours. I don’t know anymore. Time doesn’t matter. All that matters right now is Owen. He lays his head on the table, his unkempt blond hair poking out from between his arms, and he doesn’t move as I lean in and softly massage his shoulders.
“So what happens now?” I ask.
“As soon as my legs stop shaking, I’m going to the library to study,” he answers quietly, not looking up at me. “Mid-terms are coming up and I’m not ready yet.”
“I didn’t mean like that,” I tell him, still gently kneading his shoulders. “I meant about your mother and the police.”
“We wait and see if they learned anything today. Maybe they understand us now,” he whispers back, and I know exactly what he means.
He’s not talking about the mother who abandoned him and his sister or the father who tried so hard to break him all these years. He’s talking about us, the ones left behind to pick up the pieces now that they’re gone.
Friday, April 5 – 9:15 PM
Maria
I shiver as I sit on the steps of the library and wait for Owen to come out. It’s dark and cold out here, and the freezing, misty drizzle cuts straight through my coat. I should’ve gone inside fifteen minutes ago when I first got here, but I didn’t expect Owen to take this long. He said that he’d be done studying at nine o’clock and I came up to walk home with him.
He looks exhausted when he finally staggers out of the library a few minutes later, hauling his enormous backpack over
one shoulder, and he gives me a halfhearted, tired smile as I take his hand in mine and kiss him softly on the cheek.
“You didn’t have to come all the way up here to meet me, you know,” he tells me as we carefully make our way down the west campus hill. The sidewalk is slick from the rain, and for whatever reason, most of the streetlights are out tonight. I can hardly see a thing.
“I wanted to walk you home,” I answer quietly. “You’ve had a rough day.”
He had classes first, then a harrowing police interview, and finally office hours and homework until late at night. ‘Rough’ might be a bit of an understatement.
“Thanks,” he whispers and he squeezes my hand appreciatively.
We walk the rest of the way down the hill in silence and then follow the road toward the suspension bridge. The sky is dark and cloudy and the wind starts to blow, growing stronger and stronger as we make our way out onto the bridge.
Owen stops as we reach the middle of the bridge and stares over the railing down into the blackness below. It’s too dark to see the water tonight, but I can still hear it crashing against the rocks a hundred feet down.
The streetlamp at the far end of the bridge finally flickers to life and bathes the bridge in pale, almost gray light. I immediately catch the look on Owen’s face and tense up. He’s staring down into the gorge, his face strained and his eyes as dark and clouded as the sky above us, and he suddenly feels impossibly distant. It feels as if his thoughts have dragged him somewhere far away—dragged him to a place where I can’t follow him. I nudge him worriedly and he snaps out of his trance.
“Owen, talk to me.”
“I’m just... thinking. That’s all,” he tells me, still staring down into the gorge.
“I know,” I say. “About what, though?”
I’m scared to hear what he’s going to say. I’m frightened because I’ve stood in his place before, stared down over the edge into the darkness and listened to the whispers in my head as they promised me freedom. All I had to do was jump and I’d be free. As Owen stands and stares into the gorge, he’s reminding me of myself that night.
Found (Lost and Found #2, New Adult Romance) (Lost & Found) Page 12
