Page 68 of Protect Me
The gentle stream we maneuvered through moseyed across a rocky canyon, rubbing along the edges of the rocks as it slipped by. Not a sound, not a white cap, not a soul. Nothing lay around us except blue sky, dark water, and puffy clouds.
Kate hadn’t said a word as I told her to get changed, loaded the canoe on top of the Jeep at my place, tossed the oars in the back, and drove to the river. We unloaded in the same stillness. In the movements, the lack of talking, her color returned. She seemed less gaunt, though distant.
If Kate wanted peace, then Kate needed water.
When I handed her a paddle, she wrapped her fingers around it with a trying smile. She climbed into the front. As we navigated away from the shore and into the gently-winding river, she trailed her fingers over the side. Sunshine warmed her bare shoulders. Her hair topped her head in a messy bun that I wanted to tug loose and watch tumble free.
Instead, I waited.
Twenty minutes into our adventure, when no other sign of life stirred in the sleepy timber that sprinkled the mountains on either side, Kate spun around. Her legs, long and tanned in the sunshine, stretched in front of her. One of her toes gently touched my ankle and sent a shiver through me. She hid behind a pair of sunglasses, but I sensed that they gave her courage.
“I owe you an explanation, Vik.”
No, I wanted to say.You don’t owe anyone, anything.
My breath caught. I said nothing. This was her moment to control.
Kate pulled her knees into her chest, folded her arms, and rested them on her bent legs. She looked at me as she said, “Five years ago, I was at my aunt’s house. Visiting, just for a minute. I had a few papers for her to sign and . . . anyway, that’s not important. I got pulled into her frightening orbit longer than I wanted, and by the time I went to leave, it was dark.”
Trina, a willful, bitter kind of woman, flashed through my mind. Trina hadn’t always been that way. As a child, I remembered her with warmth. She’d squirt the hose over the fence when we played outside and try to soak us in the summer. Over the years, she faded.
Then she left.
Despite knowing what came next in Kate’s story, my shoulders tightened all the same. Her fingers turned into white-skinned machines, gripping her arms so hard they blanched.
“I left out the back door to avoid . . . some people that had come into the front,” Kate continued, wooden now.
Her evasive words, and the tone in which she said them, painted a clear picture.Some peoplemeant gamblers, many of them druggies. Trina had all kinds of people coming in and out of that place, at all times of the day, when she ran extensive and hidden gambling tournaments.
I leaned back, my attention riveted on her. Though I couldn’t see her eyes, her tone said it all. She was far away, somewhere else.
“Timothy was in the back. I have no idea what he was doing back there. He called out to me, I ignored him. I didn’t know him. I’d seen him at Trina’s before but hadn’t really spoken with him. He sort of gave me the creeps. Anyway, he followed me around the side.”
“The far side of the house?”
She nodded. Trina lived behind my old house. Our backyards shared the far fence. On the other side of Trina’s house was another house, dilapidated and old. A tired eyesore that the neighbors constantly complained about. Low lighting cast it in shadows, and thick bushes blocked much of it from view, particularly along the driveway that ran all the way to the back.
“It was storming,” she murmured. “I . . . I guess I wasn’t thinking. I just wanted out of there, so I ran. Timothy chased.”
Vini’s preparation, though lacking in detail, prepared me for what came next. She adjusted, set her chin on her folded arms.
“He tackled me from behind.” She winced, jaw tight. “I still . . . I still remember the gravel scraping on my back. The dark bushes. The . . . thunder. I saw his face in a flash of lighting. Then . . .”
She trailed away.
I didn’t move, worried I’d frighten her away. She had nowhere to go but the water, yet the rhythmic consistency of her voice told me that’s exactly where she’d go next, given the opportunity.
“Then he raped me,” she said simply.
The words came out unencumbered, as if she mentioned a grocery list, and I couldn’t help but wonder how long it had taken her to get to that point. To be able to say such horrific words without a visible shudder, a sob.
“You pressed charges?” I asked quietly.
She nodded. “Called the cops, they came. Went to the ER, pressed charges, the whole deal. I don’t think I would have gone through with it if Vini and Amma hadn’t been there for me.”
My nostrils flared. I’d been so in and out of the family, and they kept confidence so well, I hadn’t even known. Disappearing into adventures, living my wild life. It cost me an opportunity to help someone who meant more to me than I knew was possible.
Words and thoughts flooded me, but I couldn’t articulate any of them. A hot rock sat in my throat, blocking my brain. Flashes of the coiled, angry man that came into the Outfitters, looking for a job, trickled through my mind. His cagey eyes. Tightly-held body.
