“Evelyn spoke to my mom all right—she scolded her and told her how embarrassed she was that the school called her. Wanting her to understand, my mom finally mustered up enough courage to tell Evelyn what her stepdad and his cronies had been doing to her. Now that she knew the truth, surely, she would do whatever was necessary to protect her daughter. Right?” Her eyes lifted to his. “That is not at all what happened.”
“Let me guess. She didn’t believe her.” Hawk’s voice was edged with anger.
She gave him a surprised look. “How did you know that?”
“Experience,” he said. “Denial is easier than believing something so horrible could be happening right under your nose. It can turn should-be protectors into willful enablers.”
Charlotte had been right about Hawk having an acute understanding of this sad topic.
“That is exactly what happened. She accused my mom of lying and said she was doing it for the attention. Said it was because my mom never liked Franklin and thought accusing him of something so awful would be a good way to get rid of him.” What she did after that was worse than not believing her daughter. “As if that wasn’t bad enough, Evelyn forced my mom to stand in front of Franklin and repeat her accusations against him.”
She sniffled and swallowed against the achy lump of rage lodged in her throat.
“Then that horrible, wretched woman forced my mom to apologize to the man who was victimizing her.” Tears burned Charlotte’s eyes when she envisioned her mother, a young, tormented child being forced to essentially bend the knee to her abuser.
“Son of a bitch.” Hawk scrubbed his hand down his face.
“Instead of ending up in jail, Franklin turned up the dial on the abuse, and it continued until right after her sixteenth birthday. That’s when my mom found out she was pregnant—with me. By that time, she’d been trafficked to at least ten men that she knew of, but there could’ve been more. Thanks to the drugs Franklin was giving her, her memory of the details has always been a bit hazy.” There were still entire chunks of her mom’s past that were completely blank, just a void in time with no memories.
“Mom was terrified because she knew they would make her get rid of it. But she desperately wanted to keep her baby. She wanted … needed someone she could love who would love her back.” Donna told her daughter many times that she literally saved her life. “Mom knew she had to get away from them, so one night, she shoved a bunch of stuff in a backpack, snuck out of the house, and ran to the bus station. She had just enough money for a one-way ticket from where she lived just outside of Chicago to Harper’s Ferry, West Virginia, where her aunt and uncle lived.”
“They’re the ones you mentioned earlier, the ones who left you and your mom their house?” Hawk asked.
“Yeah.” She nodded. “You can imagine how shocked they were when they opened the door and saw their niece standing there. The rain was coming down in buckets. She was cold, soaked to the bone, and looked like she hadn’t slept in years. Their first reaction was to call Evelyn, but she begged them not to.” Thank goodness they’d respected her wishes. “They gave her some dry clothes, fed her a warm breakfast, and once her belly was nice and full, she told them everything. How she’d been sex-trafficked by Franklin, how long it had been going on, and how her mother hadn’t believed her when she told her. She said she didn’t start crying until she told them she was pregnant and planned to keep the baby.”
“Sounds like your mom was pretty damn brave.” He stroked his hand up and down Charlotte’s arm. “Like mother, like daughter.”
“At first, Uncle Jerry and Aunt Marjorie couldn’t understand how no one noticed what was happening to her or why mom never told anyone.” No one dared come forward. The men involved were powerful, wealthy, and very good at protecting themselves. Just like the men on that wretched list Charlotte found. “Franklin had manipulated my mom and brainwashed her into thinking no one would believe her. That asshole told her that, if she talked to anyone about what was happening, he would make sure she was hauled off to a facility for troubled teens. He had the money and connections to make that happen. And since her own mother didn’t believe her, why would anyone else?”
“What did your aunt and uncle do?” Hawk asked.
“Their initial shock morphed to outrage, disgust, and an urgent need to protect their niece. The thing my mom appreciated most was that they believed her. They said she was staying with them and waited until she felt safe enough to share her story with the police.”
Charlotte had always loved and respected her great aunt and uncle, but finding out the catalyst for why they’d taken her mother in and how they’d shielded her had magnified those feelings.
“Two days after arriving at their house, Mom proved to everyone how strong she was by going into the police department to meet with a detective.” Jerry and Marjorie had walked into the police department on either side of her, surrounding her with love. “He’d listened quietly as she told him everything she could remember. The detective took pictures of the fading bruises around her wrists and ankles and asked that Jerry and Marjorie take Mom to the ER to get a rape kit done, a blood test, and a pregnancy test.” They’d also tested for STDs, and thank goodness, she was clean.
The angry energy in Hawk’s body was apparent in the tightness of his shoulders and the way he clenched his fist.
“They eventually determined that Stewart would crush up Rohypnol pills in a soda or glass of juice and make her drink it.” Sometimes called the date-rape pill, Rohypnol reduces inhibitions, impairs judgment, and, in the right dosage, can physically and psychologically incapacitate victims targeted for sexual abuse.
Like her mother.
Hawk shook his head in disgust. “We’ve encountered a lot of victims that had the same thing done to them.”
“Most times, she was completely out and didn’t know what had happened until it was over. She would wake up on a bed, sore between her legs, her shoulders in pain from being tied to the headboard. On multiple occasions, she’d awakened and realized someone was on top of her but, smartly, pretended to be out cold.” Charlotte couldn’t imagine the fear and helplessness her mom must’ve felt. “Mom heard men’s voices, including her stepdad’s, and even managed to catch a few names. At her first opportunity, she would write the names in a little notebook that she kept hidden in the liner of her backpack. She handed it over to the detective when he interviewed her.”
“Those bastards were tying her up?” The growl in Hawk’s voice was borderline scary.
Charlotte nodded and squeezed her eyes tight against the onslaught of terrifying visions of her mother bound like an animal, crying out for help but having no one answer.
“Hey, hey.” Hawk scooped her up and set her in his lap.
Charlotte hadn’t even realized she was crying until he wiped a tear from her cheek with the pad of this thumb.
"It's okay, Sweets. Let it out." He gently wrapped his arms around her, held her close, making her feel safe and cared for. “I’ve got you.”
She buried her face against his neck and her entire body shook as she wept for the young girl whose childhood innocence was ripped away from her by a group of evil men. The young girl who somehow managed to rise above it all to become an amazing woman and mother.
