“Who else could have done it?”
“I have no idea. I've suspected everyone at one time or another. Even my brother, Sam, and my best friend, Alex. Even Sharon's poor old cancer-ridden father. The maintenance man at Bliss's day care is my top candidate. But why would she say it was me? Why would she say it happened in her own room? Unless he told her to say that.” He sighed. “It's crazy-making, Eden. I've spent this last year and a half trying to figure it out. But even if I could, no one would listen to me.” He suddenly pounded his fist into his thigh and she jumped. “They wouldn't let me talk to her. I thought if I could just have a few minutes with her, I could figure out what was going on.”
“Ben…could you possibly have walked in your sleep or—”
“No, God damn it, I couldn't have walked in my sleep.” His voice was still calm, but the anger was real.
“I'm sorry.”
“It's all right. I have to admit I wondered about that myself. As the trial got rolling I felt such hatred building against me. In the jury, in the courtroom. In the whole community. It was hot stuff in the papers. I was guilty in everyone's eyes. And everyone was waiting for Bliss's testimony. I couldn't believe they'd put her on the stand. She was barely four years old, but they said she knew the difference between truth and falsehood, she was bright, articulate. A prosecutor's dream child, my attorney said. She—my own daughter—was going to hang me. All I could think of was her being up there in front of all those people, being scared, having to answer questions that would make a grown-up squirm. I knew what Barbara—my lawyer—would do to her when it was her turn to question Bliss. She kept telling me not to worry, that she was going to tear Bliss's story apart. Confuse her. But that was my little girl she was going to shake up. I couldn't stand to think of Bliss going through all that.”
“Kyle said you pled guilty.”
“Yeah, I did.” He laughed. “Temporarily. Temporary insanity. I don't think I had a clue how serious things were. People kept telling me I was in deep shit, but I knew I was innocent and I figured the truth would eventually come out and I'd be okay. I was never as scared for myself as I should have been. But I was terrified for Bliss. The day she was to testify, I was falling apart. I was sitting next to Barbara. Sharon was on the other side of the courtroom. Bliss came walking out, holding the hand of a woman, a social worker, I guess. She was clutching the stuffed monkey that she carried around with her everywhere. She was so, so tiny. She'd always been tall compared to other kids her age, but she looked unbelievably small in that room with the huge witness stand and all those grown-ups. My heart just about broke, Eden, looking at her. I hadn't seen her in months. She looked over and saw me and her face lit up. She waved. She pointed me out to the social worker and I could see her mouthing the words, 'That's my Daddy.'” Ben was quiet for a long mo-ment. “Can I have my whiskey, please?” he asked finally.
She handed him the bottle. He unscrewed the cap, then screwed it back on without drinking. “Anyhow, I felt as though I would fall apart if I had to sit there while they questioned her. So I pled guilty, right then and there. I said I wasn't really guilty, but I wanted to spare Bliss from going through the whole mess. I caused quite a stir and I absolutely didn't care. I just wanted her out of there. I wasn't thinking about the consequences at the moment. After Barbara gave me a talking-to I recanted, but I'd done myself a whole lot of damage. The judge refused Barbara's request for a mistrial. He told the jury to ignore my 'outburst,' as he called it, but they were twelve human beings and they all had ears. How could they forget they'd heard me say I did it?
“So the trial went on, confusing the hell out of Bliss. She really was beautiful, though. She had as much dignity as a four-year-old can have. Everyone was in love with her. And no one could possibly have thought she was making any of it up. I would have convicted me too if I'd been on that jury. It seemed so obvious that someone hurt her, and it looked like I was the only possible candidate. That's what kills me. If it really did happen, there's only one other person besides me who knows for sure that I'm innocent, and he's not about to come forward. And he might very well still be around her. It makes me crazy. There's no one to protect Bliss because they think they've got the culprit put away. I've talked to the protective services people about it, asking them to watch out for her, and they just tell me to forget it, the case is closed.”
“You haven't seen Bliss at all since the trial?”
“Right. It's been one long, lousy year. Barbara said if I got into a counseling program for abusers she could fight to get me supervised visits with her. So I tried. I went to the counselor, but it was a catch twenty-two. I told her I was innocent, she said 'Right,' and then she told me that until I was willing to admit to her—and to myself—what I'd done, she couldn't help me. She said I wasn't cooperating. I considered playing along, acting like I'd done it so I could get to see Bliss, but I just couldn't. So they said I was a danger to her.” He laughed and shook his head. “I was a danger to her, so they locked me up and told me I could have no contact with her until she's eighteen.”
“My God, Ben.”
He stood up and set the whiskey bottle on the table. “I lie awake sometimes wondering what she thinks about not seeing me…” His voice cracked. “Wondering if she thinks I don't love her anymore and that's why I went away.”
“They must have explained it to her.”
“Yeah. They told her Daddy can't see you anymore because he hurt you.”
He was innocent. He had to be. She stood up and put her arms around him, but he felt wooden beneath her touch and she knew he was a different man from the man she'd slept with the night before. Different, but not dangerous.
She leaned her head back to look at him. “Ben, I'd like to stay over tonight.”
He pulled away from her with a shrug. “That's probably not a great idea. Talking about all this makes me depressed as hell.” But then he smiled at her. “It doesn't do much for my libido either. My sex life was examined under a microscope and it doesn't matter that I'm innocent, I'm still left feeling like there's something wrong with me. I don't know how I managed last night.”
“You managed very well.”
He looked at her, reached over to touch her arm lightly. “I'd like you to stay. But I don't want you to have expectations.”
I don't,” she said. “I just want to be with you.”
Ben was quiet as he ate the food Eden brought. She didn't seem to mind his silence. She cut his roll for him and sliced his peach, then cleaned up the kitchen while he showered. And later they talked about Kyle and Lou, the site, the screenplay, as though the topic of his conviction had been dealt with long enough. It wasn't until she was nearly asleep, her arm across his stomach, that he forced himself to ask her, “Do you believe me?”
She sighed, raised herself up on one elbow to look at him. “I must,” she said. “Or I wouldn't be here with you. But there's one thing I keep pushing to the back of my mind because it bothers me so much.”
“What's that?”
“That you pled guilty. I'm sure I love Cassie as much as you love Bliss. Yet I would never have said I was guilty if I wasn't.”
He nodded, pulled her head back to his shoulder. “I agree. When I'm rational, it doesn't make a bit of sense.”
He felt her fall asleep. Her breathing slowed down, her arm grew heavy on his stomach. He felt drained. It was remembering the trial that exhausted him, and now the image of Bliss walking into that courtroom would not leave his mind. It was the last time he'd seen her.
They'd had some kind of booster seat for her and she'd climbed up, still clutching her monkey, a long-ago gift from Sam and Jen. They attached a small microphone to the collar of her dress and the prosecutor asked her her name.
“Bliss Azander.” She never could get that 'l' in there. The courtroom was quiet for the first time during the trial. Someone coughed and the sound bounced off the walls as the prosecutor continued with his gentle questions. Bliss was trying hard to pleas
e him. Someone had explained to her how important this was, how she had to tell the truth. A question—an easy one—confused her. Ben could see the fear in her eyes even from where he sat.
He leaned toward Barbara. “I can't stand this,” he said.
“Shhh.” She patted his hand with her cool, patronizing fingertips.
“No, I'm serious.” A drop of perspiration ran from his temple to his chin and he wiped it away with his handkerchief. “Call it off,” he said. “I'll say I did it. Just get her off the stand.”
“She's fine, Ben. She's doing—”
He stood up. “Your Honor, I'm innocent of these charges but I want to plead guilty to prevent my daughter from going through any more of this.”
Judge Stevens stared at him while Barbara jumped to her feet. “I'd like to request a recess, Your Honor,” she said.
“Good idea,” said the judge. He was a sixty-year-old man whose own daughter had been raped as a teenager; his life as a man and a magistrate would always be colored by that crime. “And please advise your client of the gravity of his action.”
“I don't need a recess,” Ben said to Barbara. “It's over. I want this to be over.” His hands shook on the table in front of him while the tittering mounted in the jury box. Bliss looked frightened.
“Daddy?” she said into the microphone.
He was breathing hard and fast, almost choking on the air. He watched Sharon push through the crowd to get to Bliss. He watched her lift Bliss up and carry her out, and he felt enormous relief that this was over for her. It's over, baby, he thought. You don't have to go through any more of this.
“Ben?” He felt Eden next to him in the darkness. “Are you all right?”
He wrapped his arms around her. She was wearing one of his T-shirts and the fabric warmed his hands. “I want you to understand why I pled guilty,” he said. He rolled onto his back, holding on to her, holding tight. “When I was five and my brother was seven we had a baby-sitter. Randy. He sat for us often, at least once a week. He would take us into the bathroom, one at a time and make us…do things we didn't want to do. He told us if we told anyone—even each other—he'd kill our mother. So I never even talked to Sam about it, though I'm sure the same thing was happening to him. Every night after Randy baby-sat I'd spend an hour or so throwing up. My parents eventually questioned me.” He laughed. “They asked me if Randy was giving me candy or something. I finally said he touched me. I remember thinking that if I just told that little bit, maybe he wouldn't kill my mother. But my parents didn't believe me because Randy was such a nice boy from such a nice family. They asked Sam about it, and Sam was so scared he said he had no idea what I was talking about. But I kept getting sick, and finally my parents took me to see a shrink. Then the police. I can't remember what I did yesterday, but I remember that whole experience vividly. All the questions. I kept changing my story, getting trapped in my own lies, because I thought if I told the truth Randy would hurt my mother. When I'd finally gotten the whole story out no one believed me. Randy would pass me on the street and laugh at me. I'd wake up in the middle of the night and sleep outside my parents' door on the floor in the hallway, thinking I could protect my mother somehow if Randy came to get her.”
Eden didn't speak, but she nudged closer to him, set her cheek against his shoulder.
“They tore me up with their questions,” Ben continued. “Then they left me feeling crazy and scared. I remember so clearly how that felt, and there was no way I could watch Bliss go through it. She'd already been questioned and interviewed and picked apart enough. But I think what really terrified me was having to watch it, to feel myself going through it all over again through her. So I guess ultimately it was myself I was looking out for, not her.”
He ran his fingers through Eden's hair. “Sharon's the only other person I've ever told about Randy. Even Sam and I have never talked about it.”
“Sharon knew and she still didn't believe you?”
“Well, you have to understand that by the time I pled guilty, things had already fallen apart between Sharon and me. Plus, Sharon had read somewhere that men who were sexually abused as children stood a good chance of becoming abusers themselves. My experience had the exact opposite effect on me. I could never hurt a child the way I was hurt. Never.”
Eden sat up and pressed her back against the wall. She held his hand in her lap. “You haven't had a very easy life,” she said.
He laughed. “You must think I'm totally screwed up now. But honestly, Eden, between the ages of five and thirty-seven I was dynamite.”
She smiled at him, drew his hand to her lips. “Tomorrow morning I'm going to call Michael,” she said. “I need to tell him that I'm seeing someone else.” She lowered his hand, leaned forward to kiss his cheek. “I need to tell him I'm in love with someone else.”
–30–
One week later Ben and Eden beat Kyle and Lou at tramposo for the first time. No one said it out loud, but Eden knew it was a milestone. Tramposo measured the quality of a relationship, the intimacy, the teamwork. So when Ben grabbed her in the kitchen for a kiss and said, “We beat the shit out of them, Eden,” she knew he was talking about more than a card game; he was telling her they were solid now.
They had fallen into an easy routine, so easy that she'd forgotten the risk she was taking in this relationship. Mornings, she worked with Ben at the site. In the afternoons, she pored over old newspapers at the archives in Winchester or interviewed the few elderly neighbors still living in the area. Or worked on the screenplay. She wasn't reading the journal. “You need a rest from it,” Kyle said in his “I know what's best for you” voice, and she didn't fight him.
She and Ben spent several evenings that week with Lou and Kyle, whose company she looked forward to in a new way. They made dinner for the older couple on a few occasions, followed by the heady games of tramposo. One night Kyle showed slides from their trips to South America, and it was like watching strangers, people she was just getting to know and care about, a family she wanted to belong to. Ben's hair was longer, scruffier in those old slides, and he wore a beard. “I shaved it off after the trial,” he said. “I was too recognizable.”
She was thoroughly convinced of his innocence. There was nothing mysterious about him. Nothing suspicious. And nothing kinky, although he was certainly a far more intriguing lover than Wayne had been. Well, she was not the same woman she'd been with Wayne either. “You inspire me,” Ben said to her one night. She doubted she had ever inspired Wayne.
When she woke up these mornings, sometimes in her mother's old room, sometimes in Ben's cabin, she had the feeling of being perfectly safe. The nightmares had vanished. The only missing piece in her life was her daughter, but at least their phone conversations had improved. Ben suggested she tell Cassie about the things they could do when she came to visit—King's Dominion, the dinosaurs, Luray Caverns—and Cassie was finally looking forward to coming.
Ben was building Cassie a dollhouse. “It's from Kyle and me,” he said the first time Eden saw the pieces spread out on his table. “Kyle's the financial backer.” She watched him put it together, a huge Victorian with lacy gingerbread trim, and thought of what his own daughter was missing out on and would continue to miss.
“Are you allowed to give her gifts?” she asked as he glued a tiny window frame in place.
“No contact,” he said. “That would constitute contact.”
“But even if you were guilty, isn't totally depriving her of her father more damaging?”
“You and I are the only people who seem to think so. And Sam. Sam's doing what he can to try to get me supervised visitation, but I'm not optimistic. Her counselor says it would confuse her. It's not in the best interest of the child.” He stood back to look at the house slowly taking shape on his table. “What color do you think I should paint it?”
As open as he was, there were times he could not talk about Bliss, and she learned when to back off. When he did speak of her Eden felt his helples
sness and his rage.
“I can't stand the thought of Jeff being in my house, sleeping with my wife, reading Bliss Green Eggs and Ham, and tucking her in at night. One day I had a wife and child and the next day Jeff strolls in out of nowhere and takes over. Finders keepers.”
“How did Sharon know Jeff?”
“The school where she taught. He teaches history.”
“Could Sharon have set this up somehow?” she asked, carefully. “Maybe she wanted you out of the picture.”
“No, I don't think Sharon knew Jeff very well back then, and our marriage was okay. Besides, even if she despised me she wouldn't use Bliss that way.”
The phone call to Michael had been more difficult than she'd anticipated. She was surprised at how much it hurt her to hurt him. She cared about him more than she'd admitted to herself.
“Is this just a summer thing?” Michael had asked. “I mean, how serious is it?”
“I'm not sure,” she'd answered. “I'm taking it one day at a time.”
Michael hesitated. “Have you slept with him?” he asked.
“Yes.”
He gave a pained laugh. “You've been going out with me for nearly a year and I get a good-night kiss if I'm lucky. You've known this guy a couple of weeks and…Christ.”
“Michael, I'm sorry. But I never led you to believe there would be more between us.”
“I know.”
“I still want you to play Matthew Riley. The more I get to know about him, the more I realize you're perfect for the part. You even look like him.”
Michael said nothing.
“Michael? You'll still do it, won't you?”
“As long as you're still playing your mother and we get some juicy scenes together.”
She smiled. “I care about you a lot, Michael. Please, let's stay friends. And don't let this…set you back.” She could see him going out tonight, getting high, licking his wounds. She thought of asking him not to spread this around, but that would hardly be fair.
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