by Anne Conley
She took a step forward, leaning over his prone body. “I’ve realized that you never really owned me. Not all of me, anyway. I’ll always be Charlie. Never again will I be Carla. I’ll always be who I made myself.” She swiped a hand across her nose, leaving a trail of snot across the side of her face. It was the most beautiful thing Les had ever seen. The entire display made him want to haul her to the nearest preacher and make her his wife.
“I’ve finally gotten to the point where I can move on with my life.” She looked at Les, and the gratitude in her eyes filled him with longing. “I’m going to stop burying my past. I’m going to do more for girls like me.”
A nurse came in at that moment, and smiled. “Hello. Mr. Manning, I’ll be quick. You haven’t had many visitors.”
Les stifled the scoff in his throat.
“Um, Nurse? Can I talk to you outside a moment?” He shot Charlie a meaningful look, and she nodded at him before he led the nurse out the door and turned her back to the viewing window. He could see Charlie, but the nurse couldn’t.
“What’s his prognosis?” He did his best to affect a concerned demeanor, and while the whitless woman prattled on about the few days Mr. Manning had left, if he were lucky, Les watched over her shoulder as Charlie’s face got redder, her motions choppier, and finally…
She punched The Man in the nuts.
Twice.
Chapter 24
From prepared Congressional report entitled: “Sex Trafficking of Children in the United States: Overview and Issues for Congress”
“It is more profitable for a trafficker to prostitute a child than to commit other crimes such as dealing in drugs. For one, the commodity (child) is reusable.”
Les drove Charlie home. After the nut-punching, she hadn’t spoken a word to him, and as well as he learned to read her, now was not one of her more transparent times. He had no idea what was going through her mind right now. But he held an internal celebration anyway.
He’d learned so much today. And she was honestly trying to move beyond her past. By letting him into some of it, she was allowing him to see her efforts. And by him forcing her hand, and making her confront Douglas Manning, he was helping her, whether she liked it or not.
He pulled into her driveway, next to his own truck he’d driven over this morning—minus a hood and a front bumper—but the rest finally painted a solid color, primer gray. When he cut the engine, he just sat, waiting.
After a few minutes of watching Charlie chew on her top lip, she finally blew out a breath that stirred the air in the cab and said, “Alright. Come inside and tell me how you found out about him.”
“Will you tell me the rest?” This couldn’t all be one-sided. They needed a dialogue, a back and forth between them.
She stared at him, eyes beseeching him. When she didn’t say anything, he reached over and grabbed a tendril of hair. “Charlie, I know you want to keep your secrets, and I understand that. But this isn’t something you can just bottle up and forget about. Please, let me come inside and let’s talk together.”
Another sweet breath blew across his face as she steeled herself. “Fine. Come on.” She threw herself out of the truck, and Les had to run around it to catch up to her.
He followed her inside and into the kitchen, where he watched her fill two glasses with wine, before drinking half of one glass in three large swallows, watching him over the rim.
“How did you find out about him?”
Les ran a palm over his face, realizing he’d have to initiate this. “At the banquet, when you fainted, I’d never seen you so scared, and I’ve seen you scared before.” He didn’t think she’d shown that side of herself to anyone, and at that moment, Les realized how rare he was to have seen it on multiple occasions. Something rippled through him, but it was a wholly inappropriate pride at seeing beyond her walls, so he tamped it down. “I told Rachel to find out who The Man was you kept talking about, and she did some digging. All she could find was Douglas Manning, who’d recently been paroled for kidnapping and prostitution, but she couldn’t find anything linking him to you, so I thought he was a dead end.” This next part was going to piss Charlie off, he was afraid. “This afternoon, I texted her the name Bookenhaven, when I realized you might have shortened your name, and she dug up the rest.”
Instead of the anger at Les for the abuse of trust, Charlie only nodded, staring blankly at the wall behind his head.
After a few minutes of silence, he broke it. “Charlie?”
She finished her wine in two gulps and poured herself another glass before twitching her head toward the living room, gesturing for him to follow. After sitting on the couch and resting her feet on the coffee table, as if they were about to discuss pending holiday festivities, she began.
“I grew up with junkies for parents. The Man paid for me with three eight balls of coke.” Almost as an afterthought, she added, “On my tenth birthday.” Les didn’t say any of the things he wanted to say. There was so much racing around his head, but if he spoke, she would stop. So he clenched his teeth together to keep his mouth closed and let her continue. It was a while before she did.
“He promised me a better life. Daddy had been abusing me for years, and letting his friends do stuff to me, so I already had a shitty life. I believed The Man, thinking things couldn’t get much worse. The first week or so, he kept me high and had sex with me, telling me how special I was. And I felt special. He bought me things all little girls wanted—Happy meals, nail polish, hair bands.” Her voice cracked, and Les unclenched his fists long enough to pull her body closer to his, tucking her into his chest. She trembled against him, but she continued.
“It wasn’t long before he started letting other men in, and the next thing I knew, I was a hooker, having sex for money. I had a quota. He would drop me off on a corner and let me work it, telling me I had to bring home so much money. If I didn’t, he took away the drugs, or food, or contact. If I didn’t bring in enough money, he left me alone for weeks at a time.”
“So I got good at it. I learned to make his money, because that’s when he treated me good.” Her voice had risen in pitch, and Les realized that she was re-living these memories as a child. He’d heard most of this before, from the girls at the Refuge. While it was shocking to hear from a girl fresh out of the life, it was worse to hear from the woman he loved.
“When he treated me bad, things were terrible. I couldn’t work because nobody wanted to have sex with a girl who was all beat. And I didn’t make money that way, and I got beat some more. It was a hole I couldn’t dig out of.”
“Things would get hot, and he’d move and change up the routine. A lot of times he’d rent a motel room, and line up Johns to visit us there. They’d get fifteen minutes or a half an hour, and then he’d get them out for the next one. We stayed tied to the bed. Or he would let them come to the house he rented. He kept he girls separated as much as possible, so we couldn’t really talk to each other, but we knew others were there. Sometimes, we travelled to different locations together. But we couldn’t talk.”
Les was trying to follow what Charlie said, but she was starting to babble. Her words poured from her as if a damn had burst.
“He started renting me out for parties. Gang-bangs. The first couple, he went along with me, but after that, he just got me really high and dropped me off. That’s where Adam found me…”
She stopped talking, lost in some memory, so Les prodded her, “Adam from today?”
Charlie nodded, “Yes. He was the captain of the football team. The quarterback. They’d just won the state championship, and one of the dads had rented me for them.” A small self-deprecating smile graced her lips. “I was their reward. Adam saw what was happening, and got mad at all of them, basically kidnapping me. He carried me out like a princess and I thought I could get him to love me.” Her eyes met Les’s for the first time since she’d started talking.
“I was good at making men love me. I thought I could do the same thing with
Adam. But I couldn’t.”
“But he got you out of there.” Les wanted to find Adam and give him everything he owned for saving Charlie. She was lucky she hadn’t been killed. Then something dawned on him. “Y’all were married, so something must have worked for you.”
A scoff escaped her throat. “I tricked him into getting me pregnant, and I never really loved the baby. His parents made him marry me, because that’s the kind of people they are. But I fucked everything up, Les.” Her eyes on him were crystal clear. “I fucked it up bad, and Adam left me, taking Trent with him. I was so heartbroken at losing Adam, I signed over Trent to him without even really thinking about it. I didn’t want Adam’s baby if I couldn’t have Adam. And there really wasn’t any way he or his parents would let me have the baby after the things I’d done.”
Les held the woman in his arms, feeling completely helpless. There was nothing he could do for her that she hadn’t already done for herself. Who had he been kidding that he could save her? She’d already done that for herself. Even if she thought it was Adam who’d done it, he’d only gotten her out of the initial situation. She was the one who’d pulled her insides out and reshaped her own paradigm from one of a victim to one of a survivor.
Suddenly, everything started fitting together—the tattoos covering the cut scars, the casual, sex-only relations, the house and business choice, the willingness to talk dirty to a total stranger. Wait a minute…
“So, the dirty phone calls? You knew who that was; you said it was someone you’d never thought you’d hear again.”
She shuddered in his arms, and he almost regretted bringing them up. But this all needed to come out. All of it.
“I put him in prison. My testimony. Adam convinced me to testify, and I wanted to make him happy, so I did it. Adam sort of made The Man a cross to bear. He cared enough about me to want to put him away for a long time. I think it was a sort of self-righteous thing, he couldn’t imagine something so awful taking place in his own perfect world.”
She’d gotten off topic, but Les didn’t have the heart to stop her. Her voice was getting stronger, so it seemed like talking was helping.
“Adam has become a sort of mouthpiece for human trafficking, he’s a lawyer now, and takes on all these human rights cases. He’s been a great dad to Trent. And Sarah’s been an amazing mother. I couldn’t really have done him justice if I’d kept him.”
Les tightened his grip but didn’t say anything. He knew that words at this point would be useless. He wasn’t even sure she realized he was still here.
“But Adam didn’t tell me The Man had been paroled. I don’t know why. He should have told me.” She was quiet again, locked in her own head. Her arms snaked around Les’s torso, and she clutched him, muscles shaking with the force of her hold. “Somebody should have told me…” She squeezed the air from his lungs, but he let her. “I’ve been talking dirty to The Man for six months.” Tears etched her voice. “Six months, Les. His voice did something to me, something I’d forgotten all about. I had this response to it, the sound of his voice over the phone made me want to do dirty things. Like before.” She sobbed into his chest, deep, body-shaking sobs that Les had never heard from her before. This wasn’t the silent tears of a strong woman. This was the bawling of a little girl lost. “The worst part of it all, though, was that I honestly thought you were calling me, you were showing your kinky side. I enjoyed it because I thought I was talking to you.”
Now Les felt dirty that he’d been mistaken for a trafficker, but he let the dirty feelings wash over him in a vague attempt to be able to relate to Charlie. Jesus. That felt wrong on so many levels.
Still, though, some part of her story wasn’t quite fitting together, and he couldn’t put his finger on exactly what it was. But he didn’t pry, not yet. He just held her and let the emotions she poured out through her tears wash over him, seep into his skin, and chill him to the core.
While she cried, Les’s mind reeled. Most of the girls he’d dealt with went back to drugs and the life after leaving it. It had an unbelievably high rate of recurrence. Most of the girls didn’t have a home life they wanted to go back to, or they didn’t know how to live a normal life. That was why places like the Refuge were so important. It was a half-way house of sorts, trying to acclimate them back into society. But sex trafficking laws hadn’t even come to the forefront of law enforcement or society until almost 2000. So she had been trying to break out of this vicious cycle before there was even mainstream awareness of it.
He couldn’t stop the word from coming out. His whispered, “How?” made her head pop up to look at him, as if she hadn’t realized he was even there. “How did you do it?” She snuffled and wiped her nose before taking a deep breath and speaking.
“Something inside me didn’t want to live that life anymore.” She smiled at him sheepishly, as if remembering he was holding her. She tried to squirm out of his lap, but he held her tightly, unwilling to let her go. A heavy sigh escaped her, and she settled back in his arms, leaning her head against his chest.
“I was appointed an attorney when they caught The Man. She was young, idealistic, and totally offended by what he’d done to me. And she was trying to make a name for herself. The judge was also appalled by everything, and I won a Civil Suit against him for damages. Since I was a minor, and he’d prostituted me, I couldn’t garner lost wages. Not for something illegal, but I got a nice sum for psychological damage and reparations for medical and therapy bills.” She shrugged against him. “Enough to buy this house, my truck, and start this business, anyway. But it took a decade to finalize and in the meanwhile, I went to my therapy sessions, took my medication, and repressed as much as I could.”
She extricated herself from his grasp and breathed out deeply, as if expelling demons. Les could almost see her shoulders lift with the gesture, as if she felt lighter.
“Can I get you anything?” Yup. He felt like a completely useless sack of shit next to the extraordinary woman next to him.
She nodded, not looking at him. “Yeah, bring the bottle of wine in here. I need more; I’m not done.”
Grateful for something to do, Les stood and rushed to the kitchen for the wine, returning to re-fill her glass. Watching her carefully, he sat back down next to her. What more could she say?
Reaching over to a table next to her, Charlie opened a drawer and pulled out a letter. Silently, she handed it to him. It was postmarked eight months ago.
He read it, and any reality he had known before was ripped from him.
I know you, and I have a job for you. There is a motel owner in Serendipity who has made us aware of happenings there. A resident takes girls there. Girls like you used to be. I know you have gone to great lengths to establish a new identity, and will respect that if you get the girls out. If you go to the police, or refuse to cooperate with us, we will expose you to the public. You need this. The girls need you. Take them to the below address. The Refuge will keep them safe.
His eyes snapped back to Charlie, who sat there, gnawing on that lip.
“You’re The Liberator?” Silently, she nodded. “Who’s been blackmailing you?”
She shrugged, but her eyes dropped. “You have a theory, though. Who do you think it is?” Les’s voice was low, he was trying not to be pissed, but someone had put her in harm’s way. The Liberator had rescued dozens of girls, but she’d put herself in danger in the process. Up until now, Les had thought it was of her own free will, not because she’d been blackmailed into it.
“Adam.”
“Why would Adam do this?” Why would a man that Les had respected and wanted to buy a case of Glenfiddich for just ten seconds ago, want to endanger the woman he’d saved?
“Because I’d gotten stagnant, I think. He probably thought I needed this to proceed with my recovery, or whatever.”
He processed the information, unable to speak for several minutes. Charlie just watched him warily.
“So you were there that last night, when the
motel owner got shot? Were you in danger?”
“I wasn’t there when they shot the motel owner. I didn’t know about that until I heard talk about it at the banquet.” She swallowed thickly. “But I was part of the struggle, yes. They’d caught on to me, and set me up.”
“How?” The need to gather her into his arms again persisted, but he needed her to talk, so he stared at her. Hard.
She shrugged under his scrutiny. “I was prepared for it. I know how they worked, remember?”
A chill swept through Les. Imagining his Charlie fighting for her life, while he was obliviously writing notes for a stupid speech left him dumb. He gave into temptation and scooped her into his lap, burying his face in her shoulder.
His Charlie was The Liberator. His Charlie had been sold for sex. As a child. His Charlie. He held her against him while his own tears leaked out of his eyes. His Charlie had saved all those girls in an attempt to save herself.
His Charlie.
In that moment, Les realized he could never be her hero. She was her own hero. She had saved herself, and could never need him for that. He would never be able to erase that kind of pain, and the realization socked him in the gut.
His kissed the top of her head with a forcefulness that surprised him.
“I love you so much, Charlie,” he murmured against her hair.
She snorted against him. “Why? So you can save me?”
He lifted her chin so she could see his eyes. He was desperate that she understand him, believe him. “No. You’ve already done that. I’ve never met anyone like you, Charlie.” He gripped her chin to keep her from burying her face again. “You’re strong. You’re brave. You’re smart. You’re kind. You’re beautiful.”
“I’m ruined.” Here we go. Time for her to retreat.
He shook his head. “You’re perfect.”
“I’m medicated.”
“So am I.”
