From This Day On

by Janice Kay Johnson

  It seemed to take her a moment to summon the power of speech. “Are you implying it wasn’t rape if he didn’t beat me, too?”

  “No. God, no!” Jakob exclaimed. “He’s bigger and stronger than you. I have no doubt he forced you. I only wondered whether he carried enough rage to want to slug you, kick you.”

  Eyes nearly black with emotion, she pressed a hand to her throat. “No,” she whispered. “No. He was so drunk, I believe he passed out when he was done. I was able to...to get away and straighten my clothes before I ran back to my dorm.”

  “I shouldn’t have asked.” The lines in Jakob’s forehead were carved deep. “I thought Amy needed to know.” His eyes, smoky with regret, turned her way. “Maybe I was wrong.”

  Not for the first time in recent days, Amy found it hard to speak. She touched her tongue to dry lips. “I...suppose I did want to know. I’m sorry, Mom. Sorry to put you through all this.”

  Her mother looked blindly down at her plate. “There wasn’t a great deal of choice once that time capsule was opened, was there?”

  “If you’d been here, you’d have burned what you’d put in it, wouldn’t you have?”

  “Yes.” Her head came up and her eyes met Amy’s. “Yes. Right or wrong, that’s what I’d have done. I don’t think I’d even have opened the envelope. I didn’t need to see...” She faltered. “I will never forget...” When her voice broke again, she abruptly stood. “Please forgive me, but I don’t think I can eat.”

  Amy half rose, but Jakob’s hand on her arm stopped her. She watched her mother leave the room, her back straight and her head held high. Wouldn’t you know, she never lost her dignity.

  They sat without moving and listened to the soft sound of Michelle’s footsteps on the stairs, followed by the equally soft click of her bedroom door closing.

  “Oh, God.” Amy sank back into her chair. “Now I feel like scum.”

  “I’m the one who asked how brutal the rape was,” Jakob said ruefully. “It didn’t occur to me in time that it would sound as if I was questioning whether it really was rape.”

  “I hadn’t even thought...”

  “It’s been giving me nightmares,” he admitted. “I’m sorry I asked in front of you. The more horrific it was, the harder it would have been for you to accept that you have his genes and his blood.”

  Amy shuddered. “Isn’t rape horrific, no matter what?”

  “Yeah.” His voice was heavy with that regret. “It is.”

  “He doesn’t look like a rapist,” she heard herself say, without even knowing what that meant.

  “I know. I imagine that’s why so many women don’t report date rape.”

  Neither of them pursued the subject. The psychology was obvious. A woman who had agreed to go out with the man who raped her might all too easily feel as if, on some level, she’d conspired in the assault. She might share the confusion Amy was feeling because Steven Hardy didn’t match her image of a monster. She had to wonder whether her mother had gone through a period of wondering if she’d sent the wrong signals. Not been firm enough the other times she’d said, No, I don’t want to go out with you.

  Would a woman be more haunted by a brutal assault by a stranger, or the shock of being attacked by a guy she thought she knew?

  Amy shuddered. Oh, Mom.

  “We haven’t done justice to your dinner,” Jakob said into the silence.

  None of them had come close to clearing a plate.

  “It’s okay,” she said, glad to be pulled from her thoughts. “Um...would you like coffee?”

  “I’d love coffee.” He stood with her and helped carry dishes to the kitchen, where they scraped food into the garbage. She put on the coffee while he covered the unserved part of the meal and put it in the refrigerator.

  “You can take that home if you want,” Amy offered. “I’m sure you’ll be starved once you get away from the house of doom and gloom.”

  He laughed a little, as she’d intended. “Maybe I’ll take you up on that.”

  By unspoken agreement, they carried their coffee cups to the table in the dining nook rather than the more comfortable living room. Their voices might have carried upstairs from there.

  “Damn,” Jakob said. “Are you and she getting anywhere?”

  “She’s been more open than I thought she would be.” Amy told him what her mother had said about the shame burrowing deep, and about how she felt as if her parents had crippled her. “She said she hated them. And that while she knew she might not have been the best mother in the world, she’d tried not to do the same to me. She actually sounded as if she was proud that I was always so rebellious.” She paused for a moment to marvel. Her mother, proud in any way of her? The very concept boggled her mind. “And that got me remembering the times she backed me when I was in trouble with teachers.”

  “So...it wasn’t all bad.”

  “No.” Admitting as much was unsettling. “I guess it wasn’t.”

  “Anything else?” He lounged back, appearing as comfortable as if the straight-faced dining chair was a deeply upholstered leather club chair. He had a gift of stillness and ease, which couldn’t be more of a contrast to her own jumpiness.

  “I’ve started writing about it,” she said gruffly. “Since Mom got here. We talk and then one or the other of us disappears for hours at a time. I can’t concentrate on what I should be doing, so I’ve started...I don’t know, spilling it all out. Probably not in any coherent order yet. I have no idea where I’m going with this, whether it has the potential to be anything I’d ever want to publish, but just getting it down does help.” She gave a stiff little nod. “Thank you for suggesting it.”

  Jakob shook his head. “You’d have done the same without any prompt from me. You kept a diary when you were a kid.”

  Alarm and then outrage flashed through her. “It was a secret.”

  He cleared his throat.

  “Oh, my God. You read it.” Oh, please not when she was old enough to be in that phase when she hero-worshipped her big brother. Amy hated to think what she’d confessed to her diary.

  “Uh...yeah. A few times.” He looked apologetic, although she’d have sworn there was a gleam in his eyes. “You hid it in difference places when you came to stay. Finding it was a challenge.”

  She growled, a wordless sound of rage that had never escaped her lips in her life.

  “I really am sorry.”

  She finally found words. “You jerk! Do I have any secrets from you?”

  “We were kids. Your diary was boring. It was just the principle of the thing.”

  “Tell me the truth.” She hoped her narrowed eyes reminded him of fire and brimstone. A former boyfriend had once claimed her furious stare was more effective than any hell-raising sermon he’d ever heard. “Did you read it later, when I was a teenager?”

  “And mooning over some guy?” His mouth relaxed into a grin. The fire-and-brimstone thing wasn’t working. “Or a succession of guys? No, unfortunately. I didn’t see you that often, you know. I contented myself with pranks.”

  Like the blue boob that had made her life a misery for about two months.

  “Every time I start really liking you...” She shook her head. “I think I must have repressed a whole lot of memories. Now they’re popping out, like jack-in-the-boxes. Boo!”

  He was watching her a little strangely. “All bad?”

  It was definitely an echo of what he’d asked before, about her mother. “I guess not,” she conceded. Remembering, she thought, would have been bad if not for the presence of the Jakob she was now getting to know.

  “I kind of like what’s happened with us.” There was still an expression on his face she didn’t understood.

  Amy felt a little shy, but couldn’t be anything but honest. “I do, too.”

&nbs
p; “You come to terms with the fact that we’re not related?”

  That made her pulse bounce. Did this have anything to do with what he’d described as his “issues”? Should she ask? But her cowardice stampeded. “We’re still sort of family, aren’t we?” she asked instead. Begged?

  Whatever that odd expression in his eyes meant, he shut it down. “In a convoluted way, I guess.”

  Amy cradled the mug in her hands. “Very convoluted. Does Mom seem like a total stranger to you?”

  “She seemed like a total stranger even when she was my stepmother.”

  “She’s my mother, and sometimes she seems like a total stranger.” She momentarily closed her eyes. “That’s probably an awful thing to say.”

  “Honest, not awful.”

  Amy gave him a twisted smile. “My whole life feels convoluted right now. That’s a good word.”

  Jakob leaned forward, gaze suddenly intense. “Your life is what you make of it, not where you began. You’re still you, Amy. Don’t forget that.”

  “A woman in her thirties who jumped at the chance to house-sit for her mother because it meant she’d have two years without having to pay rent. That’s who I am, Jakob.”

  “You’re a good writer. Money isn’t everything.”

  She laughed. “Says the guy who must be rolling in it.”

  “Do I act as if it’s that important to me?”

  After a difficult moment, she shook her head. “No. I’m being bitchy.”

  “Why?”

  Oh, damn. He was watching her again in that same, meditative way. As if...she didn’t know.

  “Sometimes you scare me a little.” She was immediately mad she’d told him that. She leaped up and took her cup to the sink, dumping out the dregs.

  The scrape of chair legs on the floor told her he was following. “You want to tell me why?” His voice sounded a notch deeper than usual, even a little ragged.

  Amy shook her head hard. The silence made the back of her neck prickle.

  “Okay,” he said finally. “For now. You can trust me, though. You know that, right?”

  Squaring her shoulders, she turned around to face him. “You won’t jump out of my closet in a monster costume?”

  “God, no!” Jakob sounded as appalled as she felt the minute she said that.

  Amy flushed. “I don’t know why that rose to the top of the list of your pranks. I’m sorry.”

  “You should be.” He looked pissed now. “After what happened to your mother? And what you’re facing now?”

  “I’m sorry,” she repeated, embarrassed when her voice cracked.

  “I think I’d better go.” He set his cup down next to the sink.

  Amy swallowed. “Jakob, please.”

  He let out a long breath. “It’s okay. I can’t deny I did that to you. I meant to scare you. Maybe not as much as I actually did, though.”

  “That was a really long time ago. You were—what?—in about fourth grade? Boys that age aren’t known for empathy.”

  He smiled faintly, although she had the sense humor was the last thing he was feeling. “You can say that again.”

  On a stirring of worry, Amy realized they were circling back to the question of the issues that had made him continue to be hateful to her even when they were teenagers. He couldn’t possibly still have been jealous, could he? Not of some girl who showed up at most for spring break, maybe Thanksgiving, then a few weeks in the summer. Most boys his age would have seen her as a nuisance, nothing more.

  I should ask, she thought, but felt an instinctive retreat that told her she wasn’t ready.

  For what?

  She was dealing with enough, she told herself stubbornly.

  Coward through and through.

  “So, um, do you want the leftovers?”

  “Sure. If you don’t?”

  “I’m never that big an eater.”

  This smile was crooked but more relaxed. “It’s because there’s so little of you.”

  Amy rolled her eyes but reached in the refrigerator for the lidded container. “He’s not very big, either.” Then her eyes widened as she realized what she’d said. Was he in her head all the time?

  Jakob waited until she’d turned around. “I didn’t know that. Only that there was something about his face.”

  “Doesn’t it figure, I look like him. It must have been hard for Mom.”

  Was she ever going to be able to see herself in the mirror without picturing Steven Hardy? There was a lovely thought.

  “I like your looks.” Jakob’s voice came out rough. “I always have.”

  Astounded, she stared at him. He couldn’t possibly be suggesting what she thought he might be. But warmth uncurled like a cat stretching and flexing its muscles. He had said exotic. And...as a boy he’d cut off her pigtail not to be mean—well, not only to be mean—but also because her hair had always fascinated him.

  “Really?” The plea escaped before she could snatch it back. Oh, way to beg. Please tell me I’m ravishing, sexy, way more interesting than those ordinary beautiful blondes.

  “Really.” He stepped forward until only a few inches separated them. He very gently ran his knuckles over her cheek, sending prickles as far as her toes. Then he bent forward and lightly bumped his forehead against hers. Somehow their noses touched, too, and it felt as if he was nuzzling her. “Why don’t you sleep on that?” he murmured, and now there was a smile in his voice as well as an unidentifiable hint of strain.

  He removed the container of food from her nerveless hand and started for the front door.

  It was a minute before her feet were capable of enough movement to follow him. He finished shrugging into a parka, smiled at her one more time and left with no more than a “Lock up” lingering in the air.

  Stunned, Amy stared at the closed door.

  I like your looks. I always have.

  Oh, my God, she thought.

  Exhilaration that made her want to dance swirled with confusion and something more ominous. Apprehension? Or an emotion darker yet?

  CHAPTER NINE

  WHEN HIS PHONE rang, Jakob glanced to see his father’s phone number and couldn’t help a spurt of worry. Dad never called in the middle of a workday.

  Jakob was back in Beaverton to continue the discussion about a line of jackets and pants designed for runners that would be sold under the Boulder River brand name. Not that good quality ones weren’t already available, but with the constant evolution of high-tech fabrics, he thought they could do better while keeping the price tag reasonable. A minute ago, he’d been focused on wind and water resistance and whether the line ought to include a jacket that converted to a vest, something he generally thought was stupid but did sell.

  “Excuse me,” he said. “I need to take this call.” He walked a few feet away from the two people showing him around the factory. They politely strolled toward the manufacturing floor to make it obvious they weren’t trying to eavesdrop.

  He didn’t even get a “hello” out.

  “I talked to Michelle this morning” was Dad’s opening lob.

  “You called her?”

  Josef snorted. “You think she’d ever talk to me if she didn’t have to? Hell yes, I called her.”

  Jakob could hear heavy machinery in the background. Dad must be out on a construction site. He was a major enough contractor to usually have half a dozen projects going.

  “You couldn’t have waited to let me know until tonight?”

  “Did I interrupt something?”

  “I’m in a meeting.”

  “Sorry.” He didn’t sound it. “She got me steamed. Acted like none of it was any of my business. I had to wring an apology out of her. ‘It was wrong of me to use you,’ she finally said. ‘But I was
desperate.’”

  “She was desperate.”

  “Goddamn it, why didn’t she tell me?” his father bellowed.

  Jakob held the phone a little way from his ear. There had to be irony in him discovering he actually did understand and, yeah, even sympathize some with why Michelle had trapped his father into marriage. “From things she’s said to Amy, I doubt she ever had anyone she could depend on. It probably never occurred to her it was possible.”

  Well, crap, he thought. Was he describing Amy, too? He had no doubt in the world that she would be a rock for anyone she loved, but he’d been able to tell that the concept of being the one doing the leaning was foreign to her. One minute she was grateful he was there, the next she swung out somewhere on the continuum between dismayed and panicky. Maybe she even resented feeling as if she needed someone?

  His dad was quiet for a minute. “Maybe. Goddamn,” he said again. “Amy’s ignoring me, too.” He was clearly disgruntled.

  “She’s going through a lot right now.”

  “With no one but that cold fish of a mother at her back,” Josef grumbled.

  “She’s got me.”

  This silence sizzled with suspicion. “I don’t get it.”

  “Dad, I have people waiting on me. This is not the moment for an extended discussion about my relationship with Amy.”

  His father ignored his effort to duck this entire conversation. “Does she know your thinking isn’t all that brotherly anymore?”

  Jakob looked over his shoulder to be sure he couldn’t be overheard. “I’m not her brother.”

  “You’re as good as.”

  That raised his ire. “No. I’ve seen her exactly twice in the last ten years, and we barely bothered with ‘How are you, I’m fine’ when we were both in your house. You’re right. I don’t feel brotherly.” And never did. He made sure his voice was undiluted steel. “Stay out of it, Dad. This is none of your business.” He ended the call and then muted the ringtone. His old man could stew if he wanted to; Jakob had a job to do.