Page 87 of Devil in Disguise
He laughed. “Especially ashamed? Ashamed in relation to this? To you and me? You and your mom? You and Annabelle?”
“Well, I was pretty bitchy to my mom sometimes about Harlan, early on. Asking why she was so cautious about you, when I just thought you were great.”
“Yeah, see,” he said, “they aren’t going to know about that, and they wouldn’t care anyway. They’re going to blow up all the exciting stuff, and get your normal life all wrong.”
“How can I ignore it,though?” she asked. “When I know everybody around me will have seen it? My friends are watching, and so is Annabelle. She says everybody she knows will have seen it, so she needs to. And besides, she won’t be able tonotwatch it, so she’d rather do it with me. Pavani and I are going over to Fletcher and Avery’s, because they have a big monitor. So I can get a good view of mysweatpants.”
That was how he ended up watching with her and Annabelle, and with the comments from the friends coming through, too.
He’d thought it would be all about Harlan and Jennifer, and it was, a little. But mostly, it was aboutDymaand Jennifer. About meeting Harlan and Owen, moving to Portland together, settling into Harlan’s huge, modern-art-museum rental house, with some realtors’ images of the place so everybody could see how high on the hog they were living. There was footage of the courthouse in North Dakota when Harlan’s father was sentenced, and Harlan and Jennifer coming out of there holding hands, Harlan’s face grim and Jennifer pregnant as can be, looking up at him like all she wanted was to make it better, with Owen and Dyma and everybody else following after. None of which was terrible, because it was true, and everybody already knew it anyway. It had already been a story. It was over.
“WhoisJennifer Cardello, though?” the reporter asked, ten minutes into the thing. “What was it about this woman, a seemingly ordinary, struggling single mother, that captivated high-profile but notoriously elusive Harlan Kristiansen? The story begins in another courthouse in small-town Wild Horse, Idaho, on another football field.”
“Oh, boy,” Dyma said. “Here we go.” But she didn’t sound horrified. That came later.
Owen could see the moment her normally animated face got still, as a video of a high-school football game started to play. Not one of Harlan’s. Not even one of his. A shorter but still powerful kid with some natural talent, rushing for a fifty-yard touchdown and jumping into the air to celebrate, then being lifted to his teammates’ shoulders after the game. The kid being interviewed afterwards, laughing, very good-looking, and radiating confidence and charm, his helmet in one hand, his blonde hair wet with sweat.
“Who’s that?” Annabelle asked.
“I think,” Dyma said, a second before the reporter confirmed it, “it’s my father.”
A mugshot, then, of the same good-looking face with a thousand-yard stare, like he couldn’t believe this was happening to him. A newspaper clipping,Football star accused of sexual assault. And snatches of interviews.
“We were all really impressed by Jennifer,” a woman said. “How she just went ahead and had the baby and kept on going to school like that, even with a rape trial hanging over her head.”
“Did you hear the testimony?” the reporter asked.
“Oh, yes,” the woman said. “Lots of people went. You know, to support her.”
“Ha,” Dyma said. “I bet that is so not why.”
“I understand, though,” the reporter said, “that there was a fair amount of sympathy for the accused man. Danny Howard.”
“Well, of course,” the woman said, not looking quite so comfortable. “Danny was popular, and Jennifer was … well, she was a little … a lot of people thought, why did she have sex with him in the first place? If her mom had kept her at home the way most moms would with their fifteen-year-old daughters, well, obviously, it couldn’t have happened. There are two sides to every story, but he was the one who went to prison. Although you can’t blame the victim, of course.”
“Except that you just did.” That was Pavani, sitting beside Dyma on the bed, about as close as she could get.
The reporter, now, saying, “Jennifer’s baby girl, born when she was barely sixteen and named Dyma, grew up and went to school in that same building. She attended football games played on the same field where her father had led the team to the state championship, before he was sent to prison on the six counts of sexual assault that led to her mother’s pregnancy. What shadows did being conceived of rape cast over her, and what do her classmates remember of young Dyma? We interviewed them to find out.”
A guy Dyma’s age, standing in front of a car-repair place in coveralls, saying, “Dyma Cardello? Yeah, she was tough. Always getting in trouble for fighting. She had a chip on her shoulder for sure.”
“About what?” the reporter asked, as Dyma said, “Jason Baumgartner. He was in my class a lot in elementary school.”
“I don’t know,” the guy said. “Well, that her dad raped her mom, for one thing. Everybody knew that. It made her kind of sensitive, I think. It was funny, because she was always one of the smallest kids in the class, but she was the one who’d go after the bullies. Always jumping in to defend somebody, that was Dyma.”
“So you liked her,” the reporter said.
“Oh, yeah. She was tough, like I said, and funny, too. Kind of a smartass. The crazy thing, though—she did great in school. The kind of kid who sits in the front of the class and always raises her hand. She did all the AP classes, too. Sort of what you’d call a contradiction, you know?”
“Well, thanks, Jason,” Dyma said on Owen’s screen. Owen wanted to tell her,Don’t pay attention to the good things, and then you won’t have to pay attention to the bad things,but the reporter was talking again.
“We can wonder—what kind of future did Jennifer imagine for her daughter? What kind of chance would they both have for a better life, especially when Jennifer found herself pregnant once more, by another football star who was long gone? Would there be a happy ending after all? We’ll have more when we return.”
A clip before they left, though, of Dyma in her fuzzy socks, sweatpants, and sweater, saying, “If buying your girlfriend jewelry is a crime, Owen’s definitely guilty. He bought me a ring, too, see? It cost even more than the earrings.” And then a car ad came on.
“Oh, my god,”Dyma said. “I can’t—”
Owen thought,I told you not to watch.Somebody muted the TV on the other end, and after that, there was silence from the others in the room. Annabelle said, finally, “That’s horrible. They make you sound like you werebragging!”
