He grinned at her. “Are you one of those people who eats a lot when they’re nervous?”
“I’m eating for two, remember?” she said, then added a bit defensively, “And I’m not in the least nervous.”
He walked her to the door of the radio station, feeling guilty about leaving her to wait out the forty-five minutes before her interview alone. Then he drove to the public library, where the Mid-Atlantic Lighthouse Friends were meeting.
He had taken the easier assignment, he thought as he spoke to the appreciative audience of thirty or so fellow lighthouse fanatics. They could not have been more receptive, and by the time he had finished, several of the men and a couple of the women had written hefty checks for the lighthouse fund. He left after a short period of questions and answers, and once back in the Bronco, turned on the radio to catch the last ten minutes of Olivia’s interview. Olivia and her interviewer, Rob McCain, were laughing, and he knew it was going well.
“Obviously,” Olivia said, “the vagaries of nature are only a small part of what we’re dealing with. Any decisions made with regard to the lighthouse have political and technological and economic implications as well.”
Alec stopped for a red light, smiling, impressed.
“But the sea wall concept seemed to have so much support behind it,” Rob McCain said. “Was that support politically motivated?”
“No more than for any other solution,” Olivia said. “The
interest
in saving the Kiss River Lighthouse cuts across political boundaries, and so the need for funding is completely nonpartisan. We’ve received donations from schoolchildren and grandmothers and executives and politicians. Anyone who cares about saving a piece of our history.”
He liked that she was using the word
we
to describe the committee, despite the fact that he usually felt possessive about the little band of lighthouse zealots he’d put together. After today, Olivia most definitely belonged.
She stood on the sidewalk in front of the radio station, watching for the Bronco. The interview had gone exceedingly well. She’d done a little extra reading on her own beyond the information Alec had given her, and it had increased her comfort, her confidence.
The Bronco turned the corner and came to a stop in front of the radio station. Olivia climbed into the passenger seat to find Alec grinning at her.
“I caught the tail end of it,” he said as he pulled out into traffic. “You were great.”
“Thanks,” she said. “I enjoyed it.”
It was hot in the car. She wished she could take off her suit jacket, but she’d had to pin the waistband of her skirt closed this morning. She’d been stunned that the safety pin barely managed to span the gap between the hook and the eye. Her jacket would have to stay on no matter how warm it got.
“Air conditioner’s starting to act up, I’m afraid,” Alec said.
She opened her window a crack and turned to look at him. “How did yours go?” she asked.
“Fine. They were very enthusiastic, but I think you should take all the speaking engagements from now on.” He glanced over at her. “You
floored
me, Olivia. I don’t think I believe that stuff about you not feeling confident outside the ER. I think you were
born
confident.”
She smiled. “The teacher I moved in with after I ran away from home was in charge of the debate team at my high school.”
Alec was quiet for a moment. “You ran away?” he asked finally. “You’d told me that you
left
home, not that you…” He looked over at her. “Why, Olivia? Why would you do something like that?” His tone was very soft. Curious, not accusatory.
Olivia gnawed on her lower lip, wondering how to answer him. Alec looked at her again, his eyebrows raised.
“I’m debating whether to tell you the abridged or unabridged version,” she said.
“I’d like the unabridged. We still have a long drive ahead of us.”
She drew in a breath, resting her head against the back of the seat. “Well,” she said, “I left home—ran away from home—the day I was raped and I was afraid to go back, so I never did.”
“But why would you leave your family at a time like that?” Alec’s eyes were on the road, but he was frowning.
She was quiet for a long moment, trying to find the words.
“Do you want to tell me?” He glanced at her.
“Yes.”
“Try, then.”
“It’s too hot,” she said, and even she could hear the child like tone of her voice.
Alec turned the failing air conditioner up another notch, and it gave out a promising stream of cool, light air. They were driving through Chesapeake, past the fast food restaurants, the hospital. It was one of the hospitals she had looked into when she decided to leave Washington General, but the offer in the Outer Banks had come first.
“The house I grew up in was a real rat’s nest,” she began slowly. “It was very tiny. Just one bedroom, which I shared with my two brothers. My mother slept on the couch in the living room—or rather, that was where she passed out. She never remarried after my father died. She was…heavyset, and she used to say the only man who would fit on the couch with her was Jack Daniel’s.” Olivia felt her lips curve into a smile. She glanced at Alec, whose somber expression didn’t change as he stared at the cars ahead of him.
“I came home late from school one day. It was winter, and I remember it was already dark out. The boy who lived next door to us—Nathaniel—was in my room with my brothers. I was uncomfortable around him to begin with, because he was enormous. He was seventeen and probably six and a half feet tall and two hundred and fifty pounds, and his idea of fun was to shoot dogs and cats with a pellet gun. Anyhow, when I walked into the room, the three of them suddenly stopped talking and I knew they were up to something. I tried to leave, but Avery blocked the door and Nathaniel started circling around me, saying I looked good, I was really…filling out, was what he said. He started touching me as he walked around me. Just little touches—” she touched her fingertips to Alec’s shoulder, just for a second “—like that. But all over. Surprising me. I didn’t know where the next touch would get me. He was really frightening me. I started beating on Avery to try to get the door open. At one time I could actually beat Avery up, but he’d gotten too strong for me—he was almost seventeen then—and he just laughed. Someone said something—I don’t remember what—but I realized then that I was part of a deal. Nathaniel had done something for them or given them something and I was payment.”
“Jesus,” Alec said.
The air conditioner had grown sluggish again. She could barely breathe. She opened the window a few more inches, but the hot, noisy air was intolerable and she rolled it up again. “All of a sudden, Avery grabbed me and held me back against him by my arms and Nathaniel tore my blouse open.” The buttons of her blouse had landed on the wooden bedroom floor with little clicking sounds, rolling beneath the beds and the dresser. “I was fighting like crazy, kicking at him, but he didn’t even seem to feel it. He pushed my bra up.” She turned her head to look out the window again, remembering the sharp pain of her embarrassment. She had only recently taken to dressing in the closet, away from her brothers’ eyes.
“Olivia.” Alec shook his head as he turned the Bronco onto the jughandle by the tall, sky-blue water tower. “You don’t have to tell me any more. I shouldn’t have asked.”
“I
wanted
you to ask,” she said. She wanted to tell him all of it, to get it all out. “I want you to understand.”
He nodded. “All right.”
“Nathaniel started touching my breasts. He was really rough and I screamed for my mother, but I knew that was useless, and I screamed for Clint to help me, but he was just sitting on the bed, staring at the floor. The next thing I knew,
I
was on the floor and Avery somehow pulled my blouse back in a way that trapped my arms so I couldn’t move.” She shuddered. “That was the worst part, not being able to use my arms or my hands. I still…I can’t stand to feel trapped. Paul once held my arms down when we were making love—not to scare me, he didn’t mean it to frighten me, but I started screaming.” Paul had cried when he realized how he’d fed into her terror. “Poor Paul,” she said. “He didn’t have the vaguest notion what he’d done.”
She rested her temple against the warm glass of the car window and shifted uncomfortably in her seat. She would need a rest room soon. Her bladder seemed perpetually full these days.
“So,” she continued, “Nathaniel pushed my skirt up and took off my underpants and Avery crammed them in my mouth so I couldn’t scream. I felt like I was choking and it was so…humiliating. I was kicking at Nathaniel with all my strength and finally Avery told Clint to help hold me down.” She looked at her hands where they rested in her lap, and an old ache started deep in her chest. “I feel sorry for Clint when I remember this,” she said. She could still see the confusion in her twin’s face as he struggled to figure out to which of his siblings he owed his allegiance. A year earlier, it would have been Olivia for sure, but now, at fourteen, his older brother’s approval meant everything to him. “He was crying himself, but he got down on the floor and held one of my legs while Avery held the other.”
Nathaniel had loomed above her like a giant and she remembered the scene as if it had happened in slow motion, his meaty hand pulling down the zipper of his pants, reaching inside to draw out his huge, dagger-straight penis. She had screamed then, the sound muffled by the cloth in her mouth. “The next thing I knew, all two hundred and fifty pounds of him were on top of me, but he couldn’t get inside.” His body had hammered against her unyielding flesh, his face growing red with frustration. “He said it was like trying to…fuck a brick wall, and I kept praying he’d give up, but he didn’t. I was crying and gagging and I couldn’t use my
hands.
” She lifted her hand to her throat. “He was so heavy. He was crushing me. I remember Clint saying, ‘Maybe you should stop, Nat,’ but I don’t think Nathaniel even heard him. Finally,” she shrugged, “I felt as though I…split open. The pain was so bad and it took him forever. I passed out, I guess, because when I woke up I was alone in the room. There was blood on my skirt and my legs. There was blood on the doorknob.”
Alec took his right hand from the steering wheel, reaching toward her to slip his fingers into the cup of her palm. His thumb traced the bones in the back of her hand, and she closed her own fingers gratefully over his.
“I ran to Ellen Davison’s house. She was my science teacher. I didn’t tell her what happened. I
never
did, but she must have known somehow. She acted as though she’d been waiting for me to show up. She had a spare room, the bed made up and everything. I just moved in, and she switched me to a school outside my neighborhood. I never saw anyone in my family again.”
“Good lord, Olivia.”
“I worried about Clint,” she said, “but I only thought of myself after I left home. I learned about my mother’s death during my first year of college, and I knew I should go back to make sure Clint was all right, but I just couldn’t. I was so terrified of Avery, and…” She wrinkled her nose. “I felt as though if I went back after all my hard work to get
away
from there, I would somehow be stuck there again. That I would become the old, scared Olivia. I know it doesn’t make sense, but…”
“How could you still care about Clint after what he did?” Alec interrupted her.
“He really wasn’t part of it.”
Alec glanced at her sharply. “What do you mean, he wasn’t part of it? He held you down while another man raped you.”
“But he…”
“You said he was only mildly retarded. Didn’t he know the difference between right and wrong?”
“Yes, but… Paul used to say I should give him a chance to redeem himself, that he was just a kid then, and…”
“No.”
Alec squeezed her hand hard. “What happened was too big, too much to forgive,
ever.
”
Olivia bit her lip. “Annie would never have turned her back on her brother,” she said, “no matter what had happened in the past.”
“Annie did many asinine things in the name of charity.”
“Clint
needed
me, though. Once I was on my feet, once I was established as a physician, I really should have tried to see him. Avery certainly didn’t know how to take care of him. My own
mother
didn’t know how. We lived in a
sewer,
Alec. You’d be sick if you could see where I lived, and I just left him there to rot.” She pulled her hand out of Alec’s and brushed her bangs off her forehead. “A couple of years ago, Ellen wrote to tell me she’d heard he had died. Most likely he was an alcoholic, like my mother. No one ever told him it could kill him. If I’d helped him, he’d probably still be alive.” She looked at Alec. “I deserted him.”
“To
survive.
You had no damn choice.”
She closed her eyes, trying to take in his words, to believe them. Then she sighed. “I could really use a rest room,” she said. She pulled down the visor to look in the mirror, groaning when she saw her face. Her nose was red; her mascara had run onto her cheeks in elongated gray triangles.
“We’ll stop at the next gas station,” Alec said.
He waited for her in the parking lot of the small gas station. He cleaned the windshield of the Bronco and took off his jacket and tie before getting behind the wheel again. There really was something radically wrong with his air conditioner.
He could not scrape the image from his mind of Olivia’s brothers holding her down while the leviathan seventeen-year-old raped her. Only in his mind, it was his daughter he saw on that floor. Maybe Olivia had been right the night before when she’d said that Lacey should be reined in a little more. He had no idea where she was at night, who she was with. He was not being much more help to her than Olivia’s mother had been passed out on the couch.
Olivia got back in the car, her face scrubbed clean of makeup. Her recent sunburn had all but disappeared, and she was once again anemically pale, her green eyes and dark lashes a dramatic contrast to the whiteness of her skin. She was still pretty, though. Perhaps even more so.