Christy-Lynn blotted her eyes again then shook her head. “Not presumptuous. Desperate. She’s terrified that when she dies Iris will end up in foster care—or with Ray.”
“You’ve already gone above and beyond, Christy-Lynn.”
“I know.”
“Then why are you crying?”
“Nothing. It’s nothing.”
“It’s not nothing, Christy-Lynn. I just had to chase you into the woods.”
She was quiet for a time, her gaze distant and clouded. “I know what it’s like,” she said finally. “To have no one, to be on your own in the world. I know what that’s like.”
Wade reached for her hand, then thought better of it, afraid he might spook her again. “How old were you when you lost your mother?”
She blinked at him. A fresh pair of tears slid down her cheeks. “I didn’t lose her.”
“But I thought—”
“Th . . . that she was dead, yes. It’s what I wanted you to think.”
Wade wasn’t sure what he expected, but it sure as hell wasn’t this. “Why?”
“Because I wanted it to be true,” she said with a watery hiccup. “And because as far as I was concerned it was. I was sixteen the last time I saw her. She was in the hospital, under arrest for smashing her boyfriend in the mouth with a bottle after he sliced her face open with a paring knife—and for being a thief and a junkie. She went to jail, and I went to foster care.”
The news landed squarely in the center of Wade’s solar plexus as the pieces fell into place. One vital element of the story, and suddenly everything made sense; her obsession with Iris, her resolve to correct a parent’s neglect, her determination to safeguard Iris’s future. It all finally added up. And it was a gut-wrenching picture.
“I don’t know what to say. I guess I get why you’ve been torturing yourself over all this. How long were you in foster care?”
“Not long. I ran away. I lived on the street for almost two years.”
Wade went quiet, absorbing the full weight of her words. Two years on the streets, and little more than a child. The urge to wrap his arms around her was suddenly overwhelming.
“Foster care was that bad?” he asked instead.
“It was for me. And when I think of Iris going through what I did, I just . . .” The words trailed off. She shook her head. “I can’t bear it.”
She was rocking back and forth now, drawn in on herself, worrying the underside of one wrist repeatedly with the ball of her thumb. Wade locked on the gesture, frowning as he tried to pull up a memory. And then he had it—the night on the deck when he’d asked about her scars. At the time, it had seemed like nothing—three small scars whose origins she claimed not to remember. Now, he wasn’t so sure.
He reached for her hand, surprised when she didn’t resist. “I asked you about these once,” he said, tracing a finger over the trio of crescent-shaped marks. “You said you didn’t remember how you got them, but I think you do.”
She nodded, and the tears began again. Wade had no idea what to say, no clue how to stem her pain, and so he said nothing, holding her hands instead and simply letting her cry. She had a right to her grief, a right to shutter whatever private hell she had endured, and to keep it shuttered if she so chose.
And then, without any prompting on his part, the whole of it came pouring out.
FORTY-THREE
Goose Creek, South Carolina
July 18, 1998
Christy-Lynn cracks open the bathroom door, checking to make sure the coast is clear before slipping out into the hall in her towel. After two months at the Hawleys, she still feels like an intruder, the new kid everyone watches while pretending not to watch. She can hear the television downstairs, the eleven o’clock news punctuated by the steady sawing of Dennis Hawley’s snores. He was usually asleep by now, aided in part by the six-pack he killed each night while his wife worked the nightshift at Charleston Memorial.
She reaches for the knob of her bedroom door, trying to remember closing it in the first place. She can’t but isn’t surprised. She’s been in such a fog lately, still sleepwalking through most days. The room is dark. She tries to remember shutting off the lamp beside her bed. That’s when she feels the first prickle of warning crawling along the back of her neck.
There’s a whiff of stale smoke, of sour sweat and old beer. She barely has time to register that she isn’t alone when she feels a hand wind through her damp hair, and she’s yanked backward. As she gathers her breath to scream, a second hand clamps down over her mouth and nose, cutting off her air. She kicks and flails, but it’s no good. She’s being dragged across the room, her towel lost somewhere in the dark.
Her head slams against the headboard as she’s shoved down onto the bed, and a burst of blue light blooms inside her skull. And then there are more hands—fastened over her mouth, pinning her wrists, prying her legs apart. There are two of them, she realizes sickeningly, two sets of hands pawing at her. The reality of what’s about to happen—of what is happening—is almost too much to grasp. She can’t move, can’t breathe, can’t scream.
Someone is on top of her, a faceless shadow in the darkness, crushing the breath from her lungs as a sweaty hand fumbles between their bodies. And then there’s a piercing between her thighs, a rend up the center of her that feels as if she’s being split in two. For a moment, she’s terrified she’ll be sick, that she’ll choke on her own vomit because of the hand over her mouth. There’s a brief battering, a sickening spell of gasping and bucking, and then finally, a collapse of heavy, sticky flesh against hers.