Page 100 of Devil in Disguise
“But they …” Dyma was wound up like crazy, but she was hanging in. Owen wanted to stand up and hold her, but she had to work through this, didn’t she? He stayed where he was. It wasn’t easy. “But you had to do atrial?Did you have to actually testify about what he did? In front of people?”
“Yes,” Jennifer said. She was pale now, and as for Harlan, this whole thing was just about killing him. “I did.”
“Random people like that woman? When you werefifteen?”
“Yes,” Jennifer said again. “Though I was sixteen by the time the trial happened. There are rules about an open court. Even little girls have to testify in open court about their abuse. That seems completely wrong to me, but I don’t make the rules. So, yes, lots of people heard my testimony, and his. And the cross-examination, too. It was pretty bad. I won’t lie. It was. Knowing that everybody’d heard it, or that they’d know as soon as people went home and spread the word? I felt ashamed. Worse than ashamed. I felt dirty. I feltsmall.Having Danny there, too, and saying it in front of him, knowing I was sending him to prison, and that it was partly my own fault? It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. But Grandma was there, and Grandpa Oscar, too. That helped.”
Harlan made a noise. Something inarticulate. Something like pain. Jennifer told him, “I’m sorry. I didn’t want you to have to know all that. But know that it’s over, and it can’t hurt me anymore. And Dyma. Baby. Yes, it’s awful to have it playing on all those screens out there, having even more people see it, but you knew this had happened. There’s nothing new here. Why is it so bad now? So bad that it’s tearing you up?”
“Watch the rest,” Owen said. “Dyma. Let her watch the rest.”
Dyma was frozen. Barely feeling, Owen could tell. She handed back the remote, and Harlan turned the thing on. And Dyma stood there, her arms around herself, as it all played out.
The words were hard. Brutal.Six counts of sexual assault,like the producers had to detail every single time it had happened.
And then the roommates.“She’s especially scared of guys, to the point where we felt like we couldn’t even have our guy friends in the room. I told my mom, I’m a little worried about her. She’s … well, she’s unstable, honestly.”
“We tried to help her, to invite her to do things with us, but she just wouldn’t. It’s like she’s so angry, she’s just broken.”
That last part, then, Dyma flashing back at the reporter, standing to her full five-foot-two-inch height, angry and defiant.“I plan to use him for sex and then throw him away.”The credits, and Harlan turned it off.
And silence.
Dyma, her elbows crossed, her hands on her cheeks, as shut down as she’d ever be. Her mom holding her again, and Dyma not unwrapping, because she couldn’t. Her mom saying, “I’m so sorry, baby. I didn’t know it was that bad. Why didn’t youtellme?”
“Because I didn’t …” Trying to get herself together. “Want you to worry. I washandlingit! I was! I found a new roommate.”
“Pavani,” her mother said.
“And now her parentshave seen that, and they may not want me to live with her anymore. They’re deciding. My friends have seen it, andtheirparents, and …”
“What did they see?” Harlan asked. As angry as Owen had ever seen him, nothing but hardness in his face, with all the good-natured façade stripped away. “They saw two women with a rough start, that’s what. Women who’ve made something of themselves against the odds. There’s nothing in that show for either of you to be ashamed of.”
“Wait,” Jennifer said. “It was seeing him, wasn’t it?”
“I barely knew …” A gulp. “His name.”
“Danny Howard,” her mom said.
“Mom. Iknow. Now,I do. He looks like me! Helookslike me!”
Jennifer sank right down onto the rug and pulled Dyma with her, and it was as if the rest of them receded into the background. “He does. You have his eyes, and his dimples. You have some pieces of his personality, maybe. That doesn’t mean heisyou, and it doesn’t mean you’re him.”
“But what if he is?” Dyma asked. “What if I am?”
“If I thought that,” Jennifer said, “wouldn’t I have worked with you on it?”
“But youdid,”Dyma said. “When you talked to me about my temper. When you taught me to pound a pillow or stomp my feet instead of hitting. I didn’t tell you when I got in trouble for fighting, because I knew you’d get sad, like you hadn’t taught me well enough. I told Grandma instead. Part of the reason was that I knew that it would hurt you to know I was like that. That I hurt people.”
“Now, wait a second.” That was Harlan. “That’s not even close to the same thing. You didn’t hurt people because youwantedto hurt them, or because it made you feel bigger to hurt them.”
“How do you know?”she said. “Maybe I did.”
“How do I know? Because I had an abusive dad, that’s how. Because I had him taking out his anger on me just about every single week until I grabbed the belt out of his hand, one day when I was fifteen, and told him that if he ever hit me or my sisters again, I’d beat him down, and I wouldn’t stop. Because I went to school on lots of days when it was hard to sit down because of the bruises, and I know about shame and secrets. Because I heard the things he said to my mom. I know what somebody sounds like when he’s a mean son of a bitch—sorry, baby—and I know how he sounds when he’s a manipulative one, too. When he’s trying to gaslight you and make you feel sorry for him, because I heard plenty of that, too. I know what abuse looks like. I know what evil looks like, and so does Annabelle. And you don’t have it in you.”
“It can be genetic, though,” Dyma said. “Antisocial behavior.” A hard breath. “Sociopathy.”
“Maybe it can,” Harlan said. “You know more about that than I do. Don’t you think I’ve thought about that myself, though? I’m my father’s only son. I’m his oldest child. I get my athletic talent from him. Don’t you think I’ve worried that I could’ve gotten something more? That I could hurt somebody I loved? Or the other side. The manipulation. I’m a charming guy. Do I always use that the right way?”
