Cuffed

by K. Bromberg

  “Sorry. Not sorry.” She shrugs unapologetically. “Grab that beef consommé there. We’ll use that with the roast.”

  I follow her pointing finger and put the can into the cart. “You sure I’ll be able to cook this by myself?

  She stares at me like a mother does a child. “Is that your way of asking me to come over and make it for you and then leave so you can pass it off as your own?”

  “I’m not saying the idea hasn’t crossed my mind, but no. I want to do this for Grant on my own.”

  “Okay. Now we need vegetables.” I scrunch my nose up in disgust. “It adds flavor. And while you may hate them, he may like them. He can’t have all those rippling muscles eating crappy food all the time.”

  She grabs a plastic bag and begins putting some potatoes in it.

  “So are you going to tell me why the sudden about face? I mean you went from running away from him, to struggling for control, to being a wreck last week, to being a giddy female when you’re not a giddy female. I’m getting whiplash here, Em . . . but hell, I’ll take it.”

  I want to argue with her and tell her there hasn’t been a huge about face but realize she’s right. I’ve been all of the above.

  “This isn’t like me, is it?” I ask but know I wouldn’t change it for the world because it feels liberating.

  “No, it’s not.” She holds up a rather large cucumber and giggles like a schoolgirl when she wraps her fingers around it and strokes it.

  “Put that down!” I glance around, mortified that someone might be watching her.

  “Can’t blame a girl for liking a little girth.” She sets it down. “I like this new you, though. I like the smile that’s plastered on your face. I like the laugh on your lips. I love the confidence that’s back with a vengeance but is still different. Care to explain?”

  “I just feel like things are falling into place,” I say over a mountain of apples.

  “Okay.” She draws the word out to let me know I’m making zero sense.

  “I’m feeling confident about getting approved for the loan. I went and spent some time with my mom when I was a wreck, and it kind of cleared my head and helped me focus. I let Grant break every single one of my rules and—”

  “Every single one?” she asks, voice incredulous, eyes wide.

  “Yep.” I flash her a huge grin.

  “What prompted this?”

  I contemplate how to answer her. While she knows I had a screwed-up past, she has no clue just how screwed up. I’ve let her assume what she wants to assume to avoid her putting a label on me like anyone else who has ever found out has. So, without giving her the correct context, there’s only one explanation I can give her that she’ll buy.

  “You were right.”

  She accidentally drops the onion in her hands onto the floor. “Excuse me? Did I hear you correctly?”

  I nod and let her have her moment of glory. “I let him in, Des. Instead of pushing him away, I let him in.”

  “You trust him,” she whispers as if she’s just unearthed the damn Rosetta Stone. She understands how huge this is for me.

  “Yeah, I do.” It feels so good to say it. It feels even better to think back over the past two weeks and remember all of the laughter Grant and I have shared. Whether it be taking his nephew, Luke, to an extra innings baseball game between the San Francisco Giants and the Austin Aces, or strolling hand in hand at the mall while eating ice cream, or snuggling up next to him while he prepares for his oral interview while I try to make sense of the Blue Skies financials to see where I can cut and expand once it’s mine. Dare I say, we’ve felt normal?

  And with the normal has come the cessation of more memories breaking through. It’s almost as if the more I fought them, the harder they tried to make themselves known, and then when I decided to own whatever ones came my way, they stopped.

  “Earth to Emerson,” she says breaking through my own self-realization. “You were saying before you drifted off to thoughts of Grant and what he’s packing . . .”

  I scramble to remember exactly what I was saying so I ad-hoc. “I’ve been so busy trying to hide who I was and Grant wouldn’t allow it. Instead he stepped in and told me that it didn’t matter who I was—what had made me who I was—because I was who mattered. The moment was what mattered. Not the past.” I groan and roll my eyes. “That’s not right . . . it’s hard to explain.”

  “I think I get it.” She shrugs and laughs. “Basically, Grant is me, but with balls.”

  I laugh so hard I snort. “Can we scrub that visual from my mind with bleach and finish getting the ingredients I need?” I glance at the time on my phone. “I need to make sure I have plenty of time in case I screw this meal up.”

  “Thank you. I appreciate it.”

  “You need anything else?” Grady asks as he stands in the entryway of Grant’s house.

  “No. Here’s to hoping I don’t burn the house down.” I laugh, knowing my attempt to cook anything could end up in a dire situation.

  “At least you know a firefighter to call,” he says before tossing me a wink.

  “True.”

  “Well, I have to get back.”

  “’Kay.”

  He turns to walk out the door. “Hey, Em?”

  “Yeah?” I look up from where I’m unloading groceries onto Grant’s kitchen counter and hope I look somewhat competent.

  “This is a really cool thing you’re doing.”

  “I wouldn’t say that yet. My post-interview, celebratory dinner hasn’t even been started, so let’s not jinx me. Cooking is not my strong suit.”

  “No, I mean it,” he says, looking outside and then back toward me. “You mean a lot to him . . . and the fact that you’re taking the time to do this is pretty cool.”

  I smile as he gives me one last nod and then closes the door behind him, leaving me to do this all by myself.

  Sort of.

  As soon as I know Grady has driven away, I FaceTime Desi.

  “Are you sure you don’t want me to come over there and help?” she greets me.

  “No. I’m capable and competent.” There is far more gusto in that statement than I feel. Inside, I’m secretly wishing she would. She may have written down step-by-step instructions, but even that isn’t foolproof when it comes to me.

  “He better appreciate the fact that you’re risking life and limb to do this for him.”

  “It’s cooking, Desi.”

  “Exactly. For you, that means life and limb.”

  “Hardy, har, har.”

  Oddly enough, the house actually smells delicious. And not the delicious that’s really a cinnamon scented candle I lit so I could pretend I’d been baking desserts, but like real, honest-to-goodness, meat-and-potatoes type of food.

  And despite how great the aroma is, I’m suddenly nervous. It sounds stupid that I’ve let the man see me naked, strip me bare, but letting him eat my cooking makes me anxious. Most likely because I half expect him to keel over and die because I screwed it up so badly.

  So, I busy myself with straightening the stacks of case files on the coffee table. Then I shift the plant sitting in front of the window so the opposite side grows stronger toward the light. I wipe the counters down for the umpteenth time. I fiddle with the place settings on the table and debate over whether that seems too stuffy, but decide the candle I put in the middle negates that.

  I pace the room a few times and then decide to fluff the couch pillows when I’ve never even fluffed my own. I’m putting a pillow back and pulling a throw blanket off the corner to fold it when the green of a case file catches my eye, and I smile. Considering how many times I have caught him nodding off amid reviewing stacks of them, I’m not surprised one has fallen into cushion oblivion.

  But it’s only when I dislodge it and go to set it on the table where the other stacks are that my heart stops. I shake my head to reject what I’m seeing.

  It can’t be . . .

  My heart races, and my mind tries to compr
ehend what my eyes are seeing.

  Closed File #713920: Emerson Reeves – Sexual Abuse – 10/23/1997

  But I know what it is.

  This is me. The old me. The little girl I was and don’t want to be. It’s the past I don’t want to be reminded of, and yet, my file is sitting here—in Grant’s family room—hidden in plain sight so I wouldn’t see it.

  These are the answers that could simultaneously cure all the doubt that plagues me and knock me so far down the rabbit hole I might not be able to find my way back.

  Fuck having ownership of memories should they come. This is proof. Proof in ways I can’t comprehend. There is no ownership of it now. There is only falling victim to it when I’ve been a victim enough in my life and . . . Oh. My. God.

  Shock burns its way into anger. The fuse is so short it’s combustible.

  My hands tremble as I throw it down on the table like it’s burning my skin. It hits the wooden edge and falls to the floor, causing a few items to dislodge.

  Every part of me screams to turn around and run out of the house while my feet remain rooted. A little voice in my subconscious tells me, “Look at them.”

  Trepidation courses through me as I take the dare and bend over to pick up the piece of paper that taunts me.

  What am I doing?

  I turn it over, and it takes me a few seconds to have the nerve to open my eyes and look. What I see has a sob falling from my mouth as I sink to the floor.

  The top of the page is labeled “Child Assessment – Emerson Reeves – Age Eight.” Memories ghost through my mind of when I drew this—the light blue room that was cold, the nice lady with the gentle voice who asked me to draw a picture to show her what happened, my tears hot on my cheeks as I looked around for my mom.

  The drawing depicts what I saw through my innocence. Now, I look at it with the knowledge of an adult. Tears well as I take it all in. There is a bed where two stick figures lie, one bigger like an adult with short brown hair and the other smaller with red hair. The red-haired figure, me, has blue dots falling from her eyes and making a puddle on the floor. The brown-haired man, my dad, has his hand over where the legs on my rendition meet. There’s a black L-shaped thing on the top of the bed, a gun, and words line the left side of the page: No, stop, hurt, all my heart, I love you, daddy.

  It hurts too much. This hurts too much.

  I want to cover my ears and squeeze my eyes shut and block this all out so I can forget that I remember that day.

  In haste and with a scattered mind determined to get the drawing out of my sight, I shove the piece of paper under the file’s cover where it is on the floor. I pick it up to put it on the table, and when I do, I see the Polaroid beneath it.

  I forget every intention I just had when I’m met with a picture of myself in a hospital gown. There is no smile on my lips. There is no happiness that every eight-year-old should have. Everything about me—my posture, my expression, my eyes—look defeated and scared.

  I stare at the little girl in the photo and tell myself I am not her anymore. I will never be her again. But every part of me feels like her right now. Lost. Withdrawn. Petrified.

  Betrayed.

  A tear drops on the picture, and I realize for the first time that I’m crying. Tear after tear tracks down my cheeks as parts inside me I thought were whole again slowly crumble to rubble.

  I tell myself to close the folder because I don’t need to see this. I don’t need to know more details. Don’t I already know them somewhere in my mind?

  It’s as if my day just keeps getting better and better. I nailed my interviews and now I come home to find Emerson’s car in front of my house and music floating out of the windows.

  Grady’s cryptic text earlier of “I let her in” makes perfect sense now.

  Tonight seems like it’s going to be even better than today.

  What did I do to deserve this?

  “Emerson?” I call when I open the door, but I see her before the word cuts through the room.

  When she hears my voice, her body stiffens where she’s sitting on the floor behind the coffee table. Her head rises slowly and the look in her eyes—a mixture of devastation and anger—is enough to have the hairs on the back of my neck bristling.

  “Em?”

  “So, what? I don’t tell you what you want to know, so you figure, fuck my privacy. Fuck my need to quiet my own mind and deal with my own shit as I see fit . . . and take it upon yourself to figure it out on your own?” Her voice escalates in pitch with each word and warns me to proceed with caution.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I trusted you!” she screams at the top of her lungs, and it isn’t the sound of her desperation that kills me. It’s the depth of grief in her eyes.

  “I don’t . . .” I step into my own house and begin undoing the knot of my tie. I’m fucking suffocating all of a sudden and have no clue why all the oxygen has been sucked out of the room. “I don’t understand.”

  “Exactly. You didn’t understand,” she says as I round the couch and see it at the same time she speaks. “You didn’t understand, so you dug up my old case file so you could.”

  Oh. Shit.

  The green file folder—her file folder—is sitting squarely in the center of her lap, causing dread to drop through me like a lead weight.

  “You had to call it up from wherever the fuck it was so you could pour over every goddamn detail there was about me. About what he did to me. Anything you could find so you could satisfy that hero complex of yours and come to the rescue with your cape and save me.” She stands and slams the folder down on the table with a smacking noise that sounds just like I feel. “Well, fuck you, Grant Malone. Fuck. You. If you think he violated me, what the hell do you think you just did to me?”

  For the first time in my life, I’m at a complete loss for words, and yet, I know I need to find them.

  “It was a mistake—”

  “So were you.” Her voice is as cold as steel.

  “It isn’t what you think.” I backpedal, trying to explain. “The file. It was a mistake. I had a list of files to pull to work on for Ramos. I was thinking about you. I doodled your name down—”

  “And then what? Then you got the file and kept it? I’ve seen you move boxes in and out of here after a few days . . . but you kept mine. Why, Grant? Face it, you couldn’t handle me not telling you what you wanted to know.” She paces like a caged animal begging for either an escape or an attack. I guard the door, willing to take whatever she throws at me as long as it means I can explain what happened.

  “At first, yes.” My confession is barely audible.

  “I hate you.” The tears burning so bright and pain so raw in her voice it shatters every part of me.

  “No, Em. No. It wasn’t like that. I wanted to know. And then I realized that—”

  “You don’t get it, do you?” she shrieks, hysteria bubbling over in her erratic movements and flailing arms. “I don’t want to know. I don’t want to know every little detail. I don’t want to hate the dark again like I used to. I don’t want to lie in bed at night and listen for every damn noise because I think he’s walking down the hall to ‘love me’ again. I don’t want to remember the feeling of the hair on his legs scraping against my bare bottom when he sat me on his lap.” She covers her hands over her ears and emits the most horrid sound I’ve ever heard. It’s part sob, part yell, part protest, and if I never hear it again, I’ll be good with that. It renders me helpless. “I was fine until you, Grant. I had the memories I had and those were enough nightmares for a lifetime. But that wasn’t enough for you, was it? My lack of answers wasn’t enough?”

  “Em—”

  “Don’t you get it? I don’t want to remember what happened after the feel of his hair scraping against my skin. It was obviously so bad that my own mind has shut the memories out—repressed the fuck out of them to protect me . . . and yet, you know. I don’t even know, but you know.” A heart-wrenching sob breaks fre
e from her chest.

  I fumble for words, for a way to get her to see that I never opened the folder, but the truth she just told me is more staggering than that.

  It was so much more than her remembering the damn rocks the other day.

  She doesn’t remember anything. At all.

  How could I have been so stupid not to pick up on that?

  “No, Emmy. No—”

  “Don’t you dare call me that! Just don’t.” She takes a step back as I take a step toward her. “Please don’t.” Tears continue to streak down her cheeks, and her mascara paints their paths. She’s a broken woman, and I’ve done this to her. “Knowledge isn’t power in this case. You can’t use it to your advantage to save me from what already happened.”

  “Will you fucking listen to me? I did not look at it.”

  “I don’t fucking believe you!”

  “Christ.” I blow a breath out and run a hand through my hair to stop myself from reaching out to touch her like every part of me wants to. “Will you quit being so goddamn stubborn and hear me? I did not—”

  “How can I ever let you look at me again without thinking about how you know things about me that I don’t even know? How can I ever be with you when you cared more about feeding your own need to be the hero than how it would make me feel?”

  Her words cut into the room and ram like daggers into my heart.

  “I trusted you, Grant. You pinky promised,” she says, her words quietly followed by a hiccupped sob. “And you broke it. Again.” With that, Emerson rushes past me out the door.

  “Em. Wait.” I jog down the path after her.

  “I hate you. I never want to see you again.”

  It’s those words—the ones repeated twenty years apart that hit their mark. I don’t have the heart to stop her from going . . . because she’s right.

  Shell-shocked, I watch her get in her car and drive away without looking at me. I stare down the empty street long after the glow of her taillights have faded and the crickets have settled into their space in the night.