Catch My Fall (19 page)

“In the meantime, Macy’s family was falling apart because without his job, her father wasn’t going to be able to afford the treatment that she needed.  My Uncle and I met with my father and made a deal that I wouldn’t press any child pornography charges against Brady if my father would pay for all of Macy’s care, cover the cost of her family’s health insurance until her father has another job, pay off their mortgage and all their bills and pay her college tuition when she was able to go.  He agreed without batting an eye, which tells me that he and his wife felt that they had a lot to lose if things went public, but it almost cost me my sanity to sit there with him and pretend that I would have pressed those charges.  Thank God I did though, because it turned out that Macy needed a specialized kind of care that meant her family had to pick up and move about forty minutes away from here.  She’s living at the Choices facility and her parents are renting a house just a few miles away.  I haven’t seen her in almost six months but her mom says that Macy is finally ready to see everyone now.  I wanted to tell you all of this because there’s always going to be a chance that those pictures will come out, and I’ll always worry about it.  Do you understand?”

Tristan was like stone beneath me, his face so white that it was scary, and he hadn’t said a word the entire time I’d been talking, just like I asked him.  I stared at him for a minute as I waited for him to say something.

When he finally did speak, I wasn’t at all prepared for what he said.

“Mia.  I need you to get up. 
Now
.”

I scrambled off his lap in shock, my mouth agape as he stood up and ran out the front door, slamming it behind him.  As the door closed, I knew that something was horribly wrong.  I was expecting any number of reactions, but I hadn’t expected him to jump up and leave me.  Going back over everything I said to him during the last half hour, I realize that I was midway through the story when he had stopped rubbing my back and had turned to stone beneath me.  I don’t want to think that he was repulsed by me, but why else would he have run out?  Tristan teaches women self-defense.  Did he blame me for getting into a situation that I couldn’t get out of?

Running across the room I flung open the living room door and ran out onto the street. Looking around, I saw nothing.  I yelled his name a few times and when I got no reply, I screamed it.  Seconds later Trace and Darby came running out the front door in a panic, wondering why I was screaming.  Dropping onto the curb, I sat with my knees pulled up to my chin and opened myself up all over again as I told them a very abbreviated version of what had happened.  Just as I finished, I heard my phone buzz.  Pulling it out of my pocket with shaking hands, I saw that I had a text message from Tristan.  Swiping my thumb across the screen, I read his text as my heart broke into a million tiny pieces.

Tristan: You need to know that I didn’t run because of you.  You’re special, Mia.  So fucking special and so fucking beautiful, and you deserve better than what I am. We can’t be together anymore.  I know that you’re going to hate me for running out, and I don’t blame you.  In fact, it’s probably for the best.  I’m sorry… I’m just so fucking sorry. Go home with Darby and don’t ever look back.

My body shook as sobs overtook me and Darby got down on the ground next to me to hold me in her arms.  Looking up at Trace she said, “I’m going to take her away from this.   Go find him.  Hurry… you know he can’t handle this.”

I don’t even know how Darby got us both into the car and back to the dorm.  I hadn’t stopped crying since the moment I opened that horrible text message so God knows I certainly wasn’t any help to her.  After settling me on my bed, she disappeared for a minute before returning with a cold washcloth and a box of tissues.

“Mia, we need to talk.  You need to understand why Tristan j
ust freaked out.  I wish I had just told you this before so you knew what you were dealing with but I’ve been so wrapped up in my own shit…I’m sorry I let you and Tristan both down.  I suspected that you’d been sexually assaulted and there’s no excuse for not warning you.”

Sniffling as I wiped at my face with the washcloth I whimpered, “Warning me about what?”

Sitting down next to me on the bed, she sat with her back against the wall and began to talk. 

“My parents moved here when I was in preschool and Austin met the Chamberlain twins on our first day on the street.  They were such uptight and odd little boys, but Austin took to them right away and so did I.  My mother just loved those boys and she pulled them into our family.  They lived with their grandmother, and back then I thought my mom had them over so often because the grandmother was so old and she couldn’t handle them.  Years later I realized that my mom knew that something wasn’t right with that old bitch so she did everything that she could to keep the boys at our house as much as possible.  By the time they were ten, they all but lived at our house full-time.  They spent most nights at their house, but from breakfast to bedtime they were at my house.”

“As their grandmother got older, she gave up more and more control to my mother.  The old bitch hated everyone, but because my mother was the church secretary, Mrs. Chamberlain let her take over.  There was only one thing that made Mrs. Chamberlain happy, and that was church.  She was there every single day, for hours at a time, praying.  Before the boys were allowed to start spending time at our house, they used to spend all of their free time at church with the grandmother praying for God to take away their evil.  Trace has told me that he thinks he spent thousands of hours as a child on his knees in the church and at home admitting to sins and praying for forgiveness, even when he didn’t understand what the words meant.”

Shaking my head I asked, “What evil? Forgiveness for what?”

“This is bad, Mia.  This is really, really bad.  In my little girl mind, I had always assumed that Trace and Tristan’s parents were dead and that’s why they lived with the grandmother.  When I was twelve, Trace told me the truth.  Their mother, Lynette, was in college and was dating the football-player son of some rich guy.  One night they were at his college frat house, and he date-raped her. She got pregnant and didn’t realize that she was pregnant for a few months, and when she did she secretly planned to get an abortion.  Somehow her mother caught wind of it and Lynette confessed that she had been raped.  Instead of agreeing that Lynette should have the abortion, Mrs. Chamberlain forced her not to go through with it. She was a very religious woman and she told her daughter that if she aborted her child, she would go straight to hell.  The grandmother demanded that Lynette continue the pregnancy, and she did. After Lynette gave birth to the twins, she disappeared. She checked herself out of the hospital two days after delivery and left them behind, and no one heard from her until her mother was dying.

“Mrs. Chamberlain found her and begged her to come see her before she died and that’s why she came at all, but she refused to be in the same room or house as Trace and Tristan.  The grandmother died when they were fourteen, and we were all shocked to find out that in addition to assigning guardianship to my parents, she had left half of what amounted to more than four million dollars to the boys. You would never have known that their Grandmother had that kind of money in the bank, not ever.  It turns out that the family of the boy that raped her daughter paid the grandmother off after the twins’ mother ran off.  Apparently she threatened to sue them for child support and rather than deal with the accusations that the old lady was making, they paid her off.  When she died she left half of the money that no one ever even knew about to the twins and the other half went into a trust that her daughter could only access if she used a portion of it to help girls who got pregnant from rape. As far as Trace and Tristan go, the money is a touchy subject for them both. They’ve used some to buy their house and their cars, and they’re using it to pay for college, but they’ve also been donating to Women’s Shelters and organizations that help victims of rape.

“They’re
never going to be able to forget that they were conceived under such horrendous circumstances and the money is a reminder of that.  Their mother came to Mrs. Chamberlain’s funeral and she wouldn’t even look at her sons until seconds before she was leaving.  When she did finally look at them, she told them that they looked “just like the rich asshole” that ruined her life.  If they weren’t fucked up before that, they were after. My mom and dad did a lot of work trying to counteract what had been done to them by their grandmother and their mother, but it’s always there, just below the surface.”

“They were raised to believe that they’re no better than Devil’s spawn. They were told that they were unclean and unworthy. Think about what you see at their hous
e
—
it’s immaculate.  If they weren’t on their knees praying, they were scrubbing away the imaginary filth that their grandmother insisted was around them. She beat it into their heads that they were born of evil and had to repent so they didn’t turn out like their father, and that fucked them both up more than you can imagine.  My family and I are the only people that know because both Trace and Tristan have always been too embarrassed to tell anyone that their father is a rapist and their mother hates their guts.”

I cried my eyes out for my poor beautiful boy, so full of good that even now
he was trying to make penance for something that wasn’t his fault.  Now I understood why he and Trace taught self-defense classes, why they were both so anti-frat party, and why they had small gatherings at their house with people who weren’t inclined to party hard.  Remembering Tristan jumping up and off the bed when I said
stop
broke my heart.  He must have felt like such shit in that moment.

My father is a horrible human being, but at least I had my amazing mother.  To be raised knowing that your biological father is a rapist and your mother hates you would be hard enough, but having someone tell you that you’re evil would’ve made all that psychological trauma even harder to work out.

While I was crying Darby’s cell phone rang, and when she answered I could tell that she was talking to Trace.  Whatever he was saying to her shocked her because she gasped.  I tried to listen, but she stood up and walked into the bathroom and the rest of the call was conducted in a whisper.  That wasn’t doing my frame of mind any favors, and I proceeded to make myself crazy as I tried to imagine what Trace had said that made Darby gasp. She came back a few minutes later, white as a sheet and dropped down on the bed next to me.

“Mia… did you know that your friend Macy is pregnant?”

“What? No!  She’s not pregnant. Why would you think that?”

“Because when you told the story to Tristan, you said that Macy’s in a facility called Choices forty minutes away.  Opening Choices is what Trace and Tristan’s mother did with the money that their grandmother left them.”

I shook my head emphatically as though it would make her words go away.  “Yeah, but that doesn’t mean Macy is pregnant just because she’s there…. Right?  Her mom said it was a special facility that helped girls who were raped.”

“Well, it is that, but it’s specifically for girls who were raped that got pregnant and chose not to have abortions.  She wouldn’t be there if she wasn’t pregnant.  They do a lot of counseling to get these girls back on their feet and they help them through the process of deciding whether to keep their babies or give them up for adoption.  Choices is about healing after the unthinkable, and as far as I’m concerned, it’s the only worthy thing Trace and Tristan’s mother has done since the day she had them.”

Looking down, I saw that my hands were shaking.  Every time I think that I’ve finally landed on my feet, another layer gives way and I’m falling all over again.  There’s only one person that I want to see right now, only one person that I trust to hold me together.

“Where is he?”

“Trace caught up with him a few blocks away and took him home.”

“I need you to take me back there.  Now.”

“No, Mia! That’s a terrible idea.  You’re losing it and he’s already lost.  I can’t do that to either one of you.”

“Get. Him. On. The. Phone. And. Tell. Him. That. I. Need. Him. I. Am. BREAKING.  He’s the only one… I’m going whether he wants me there or not.”

Standing up, I ran for the door, just getting it open before Darby grabbed the back of my shirt and yanked me backwards.  “Stop! I’ll call him… I’ll go to the bathroom and I’ll call him.  Give me five minutes.”

“Darby, you tell him that I need him more than
I’ve ever needed anyone before and I’m not going away. 
I need HIM
.”

While she was in the bathroom calling him, I packed the mother of all overnight bags.  There
were at least four days’ worth of clothes and if I could fit another damn thing in the bag, I would.  I’ve run scared my whole life because I’ve always felt that I’m unworthy or some kind of a burden. Where Tristan is concerned, I’m not running anywhere but straight back to him because I’ll fight for him until there’s nothing left to fight for.

Coming out of the bathroom, Darby stared at the bag with worried eyes.  “He says if you really want him, he’ll never turn you away.  Mia, he’s a mess right now.  Are you sure about this?”

My answer was to pick up the bag and walk out the door. Seconds later Darby hustled after me with car keys in hand.