“That’s soon, Kit. Six days.”
“I know, but Mom needs you. She misses you. Worries about you.”
“I know.” Brianna sighed. “That’s why I haven’t come before now. I haven’t been well. Didn’t want her to see me…this way.”
“What way, Bree?”
“I’m pretty thin. I’ve put on seven pounds, though. But for a while there I was just a bag of bones. People here kept asking me if I had cancer.”
“Do you?” Kit whispered.
“No.”
“Promise?”
“Yes.”
But Kit wasn’t reassured. “But there’s something else wrong, isn’t there?”
Brianna didn’t answer for a long time. “Yes.”
“Bree!”
“It’s all right. I’m dealing with it. But you can’t tell anyone…not Meg, or Sarah, or Cass. And you especially can’t say anything to Mom or Dad, or I’ll never forgive you. Never trust you.”
“I won’t.”
“That’s not true. You tell them everything.”
“I do not!”
“Growing up, you told them
everything
I ever did!”
“Not
everything,
” Kit protested. “Just the stuff that was dangerous.”
“Nice of you.”
“I did it because I loved you, and I worried about you, and I didn’t want to see you hurt.”
“And did I ever get hurt?” Brianna mocked her.
“No,” Kit said, in a small voice.
“No.”
And then suddenly that memory was back, the one about silence and secrets, the one that had been built to cover a little girl’s pain and fear. For a moment Kit couldn’t breathe, or think or feel.
There was a reason she’d never been comfortable being held too long. There was a reason why she’d never been easy around big men other than her father. There was a reason she feared feeling too much. Needing too much. Because feeling and needing might lead to losing control, and control was her friend. Control protected her, concealed her, kept her from ever completely remembering…
Or sharing…
Which kept anyone from ever knowing…
And Kit fought hard now, to push it away, not wanting to be
confronted by the past when there were so many other things happening now, when there were so many other important things taking place. There was no time for Kit’s past, no energy to expend on unreliable little voices. She’d resigned herself to living with these ghosts—mere shadows of memory—and she of all people knew they couldn’t be trusted.
She
couldn’t be trusted.
Because bad things didn’t happen to good girls. And Kit had always tried so hard to be a good girl.
They said good-bye, and hanging up, Kit returned to the house, stopping in the kitchen for a snack. She was just peeling the foil off a Greek yogurt when her phone rang. She glanced at the number. It was Bree calling back.
Kit licked the yogurt off her thumb and answered. “Hey. Did you already book your air?”
“No.” Brianna hesitated. “Remember when you told me about that date with Parker in early December?”
“Yeah.”
“I think about that a lot, Kit.”
“It’s behind me—”
“Is it?”
“What?”
“Kit, do you remember being little?”
Kit frowned. “How little?”
“Four or five.”
Kit’s insides wobbled. “Why?”
“Did something…bad…happen to you?” Brianna asked.
Kit reached for a counter stool and sat down heavily. “Why?”
Brianna was silent a long moment. And as the silence stretched, Kit’s heart began to hammer harder. “Bree?”
“Did someone hurt you…down there?”
Kit’s insides felt as if they were falling out and she swallowed convulsively, trying to keep from throwing up. She couldn’t do
this. Couldn’t talk about this. It’d make her sick. “I don’t know. And I don’t want to talk about this.”
“Why not?”
Kit leaned forward to press her forehead against the cool marble countertop. “Because I don’t know, and it’s something I don’t understand, and it makes me feel crazy—”
“I was asking, because it happened to me, and I wondered, if maybe it had happened to you, too…” Brianna’s voice drifted off, and for a moment there was just empty silence on the line. “But if it didn’t, that’s good. That’s great. I would never wish anything like it on anyone—”
“Something did happen to me,” Kit whispered, dragging in air, her chest tender with every breath. “I’m pretty sure something did, but the details are fuzzy.”
“What do you remember?”
“It’s a feeling more than anything. I’ve just always had this feeling that something had happened, something bad, and then a couple of years ago Richard tried something—in bed—and it hurt me and I freaked. And I heard this screaming in my head. Terrified screaming, but it wasn’t me. It was a little girl screaming. And then all of a sudden there was this flash, and in my head, I was the little girl.”
Brianna exhaled slowly. “Oh, God, Kit.”
“But maybe it wasn’t anything,” Kit said hurriedly. “Maybe it’s just my imagination—”
“Can you picture anyone…when you think about this?”
“Yeah.” Kit swallowed hard. “I can. I can see him right now. He lived on a street behind ours. He was kind of a hippie. Long light brown, dirty-blond hair. Beard. I think he had a beard. I remember he used to wear plaid shirts—”
“Flannel,” Brianna finished softly. “Blue.”
Kit closed her eyes. “You know who I’m talking about?”
“Yes.”
“Did he…did he…hurt you, too?”
“You mean cover my face with my sweater so I couldn’t see him rape me?”
Kit didn’t know if she fell off the stool, she was sitting on or climbed off, but suddenly she was on the floor of the kitchen, her back pressed to the cabinets and her forehead pressed to her knees. “Is that what he did?”
“You don’t remember?”
“Not what he did…specifically. Just that he put my coat over my face and I couldn’t tell anyone about the coat, because if I did, he’d do it again, and make me disappear. And then nobody would ever be able to find me again.”
“So you do remember.”
“Just that.” Kit’s heart raced and her stomach was jumping up and down and she wanted to cry but couldn’t. “I wish I could remember the rest. Makes me feel crazy not to remember.”
“I’d give anything not to remember.” Brianna paused, laughed. “But I can’t forget.”
“Why do you remember and I don’t?”
“I work with abuse survivors all the time here—men and women and children who’ve been through hell and back with all the wars and genocide. They’ve been kidnapped and mutilated and raped, they’ve watched their families and friends be tortured and murdered, and the survivors develop different pathologies to help them cope with the trauma. Some of them remember, some of them block it all out. Either way, it’s a survival mechanism, and after you were abused, your psyche tried to help you by putting up a screen and blocking off the memories to try to protect itself.”
Abuse survivors
. Kit repeated the phrase silently. The words fit war victims in Africa but felt alien and uncomfortable when applied to her. “And what did
you
do to protect yourself?” she whispered.
“Became promiscuous. Sexualized my identity.” She laughed
and the sound was sharp, self-mocking. “Made me feel safe, strong, in control. It’s how I felt loved.” Brianna’s voice suddenly hardened. “But you know that. You know I lost my virginity young, had that abortion in high school, and the doctor botched it—”
“I didn’t know,” Kit interrupted.
“Mom promised me she wouldn’t tell Dad, but I figured you knew. We shared a room.”
“When was this?”
“Homecoming week. Our junior year of high school.”
“And Mom knew?”
“It was Mom who found me in the bathroom and rushed me to the hospital. She checked me in as ‘Brianne Donahue’ and paid for everything privately that day, out of her own savings, to protect me. It cost thousands of dollars. It was almost everything she’d saved and she used it for me.”
Kit drew a breath. This was a lot to take in and her mind was scrambling to go back, put all the pieces together. “It was our homecoming weekend that Mom threatened to leave Dad.”
“I know.”
“It was because of what happened to you…wasn’t it?”
“I don’t know.” Brianna’s voice thickened. “I just remember that I was in bed still feeling so bad and I could hear Mom and Dad fighting and fighting. And then Sunday morning it stopped and Mom’s suitcase was by the front door.”
Kit remembered a suitcase the color of Dijon mustard. All the kids saw it, and Mom dressed in her good clothes, wearing her good coat, waiting in the living room for Dad to return from the early morning Mass so she could say good-bye properly. To his face.
None of the kids came downstairs that morning. Meg was already off at college in San Diego, which meant Kit was now in charge and she was doing her best to comfort Sarah, who was just
eleven or twelve, and crying hysterically. Sarah wanted to fling herself on Mom and beg her not to go, but Kit wouldn’t let her go downstairs, telling her this was between Mom and Dad, and for once Sarah mustn’t interfere.
And then Dad came home.
Kit, Tommy, and Sarah all leaned as close to the top of the landing as they could without being seen.
And then Mom said in her clear, firm voice, “I’m leaving, Tom. I cannot stay with a man who will put his pride and his anger before his daughter. Since you can’t find it in your heart to forgive her, I can’t find it in my heart to love you.”
Dad had been floored.
Kit didn’t remember what he said, but Mom didn’t go. And two days later he and Mom began seeing a counselor. They ended up attending counseling for six months and little by little Dad repaired his damaged relationship with Bree.
“Oh, Bree,” Kit breathed, “this is crazy.”
“Yep.”
“I had no idea that…any of that stuff…had happened to you.”
“You just thought I loved sex.”
“Don’t you?”
Brianna sighed. “No. Not so much.”
Kit’s head was spinning. And even though she’d learned more today than she’d ever wanted to learn, there was one more thing she had to ask. “How did we end up at that guy’s house?”
“I’m not really sure. I just remember something about being special, he’d make me special, I don’t know why I remember that part…”
“He told me that, too.”
“Did he? Interesting. Wonder how many other little girls he said that to.”
Kit’s eyes burned. “Oh, God, I didn’t even think of that.”
“Let it go, Kit. There’s nothing you can do.”
Kit’s teeth chattered. “Come home, Bree. Get on a plane now. Don’t wait. Please come home soon.”
“I will. As soon as I hang up, I’ll book my flight.”
“Love you, Bree.”
“Love you, Kitty.”
After hanging up, Kit reached for the crucifix that hung around her neck and clasped the cross with Jesus, clinging to the crucifix, clinging to her faith. How did these bad things happen? Where was God in all the violence and pain? Was He there with her and Brianna when they were being hurt?
She blinked as tears filled her eyes and then scrambled to her feet as Claire appeared in the kitchen.
“Your mother wants you,” she said briskly.
Kit nodded, and wiped away the tears with the side of her arm. “Tell her I’m coming,” she answered. “I just need a minute.”
G
oing to bed that night, Kit was glad Jude was gone, glad that she couldn’t tell him about her conversation with Brianna, not sure she could tell anyone about it.
The whole thing with that neighbor was confusing. And shameful, and the fact that Brianna remembered didn’t lessen the shame. Just made it more real.
Because apparently what their neighbor did had been real.
Kit hadn’t made it up. She wasn’t crazy. Something bad had happened, and not just to her, but to Bree. That’s the part that broke Kit’s heart.
Poor Bree. Poor Bree for remembering and not being able to forget. Kit was glad now that as a little girl she’d blanked out details. Glad her young psyche had drawn a curtain over the worst of it. She couldn’t imagine being Bree, going through life remembering every horrifying thing that man had inflicted on her. Little
wonder Bree had grown up acting out, trying to lose herself in sex and drugs and everything else.
No, good thing Jude wasn’t here. Kit wouldn’t want him to see her crying herself to sleep.
I
t was noon, lunchtime, and Kit had remained in her classroom since the Drama Club was meeting twice a week now to prepare for their production in May. They’d scrapped doing a full-length play this year, in favor of a series of one-acts, and the kids had sat in groups practicing their lines, anticipating blocking out the scenes next week. They were gone now and Kit had her planner open, trying to remember what she was supposed to teach next.
“Do you believe in God, Miss Brennan?”
Kit looked up to find Delilah standing next to her desk. “Yes.”
“Do you believe God really answers prayers?”
Kit closed her planner, put down her pen. “I pray.”
“Does it work?”
“I believe God hears our prayers.”
Delilah’s straight, light brown eyebrows lifted. “But that’s not the same thing as answering them, is it?”
How many times had Kit said the same thing to herself? “Faith requires faith.” She saw Delilah’s puzzled expression. “Get a chair, Delilah, bring it over here. It’d be more comfortable talking if you didn’t have to stand.”
Delilah carried a chair back. She sat down, looked at Kit expectantly. “How does it work? You ask God for things and then wait? Hoping He’s going to answer?”
“We’re told in the Bible to have confidence when we approach God. In John, it says that ‘if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us.’ And in Mark, we’re told ‘whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.’”
“So basically God only answers the prayers that fit into His scheme of things.”
Kit thought of her mom, and it hurt. “But we don’t know if something is God’s plan without asking. So I do think it’s important to go to Him with everything, believing that what we need will be given to us.”
Delilah stared across the empty classroom, her gaze fixed on a distant bulletin board. “Miss Powers said you missed school that week because you were taking care of your mom. She’s sick.”