I feel like someone pulled the air out of my lungs.
The truth barrels into me,again. My brother is a sexual predator, and Marnie knows hismodus operandi.
He’s a serial rapist—a piece of shit human being.
“Well…I guess that’s nice of him, so he at least doesn’t knock the girl up or worse give her a disease she has to live with.” There’s acid in Sarah’s words.
We all sit quietly for a long time. Nearly ten minutes. We need it.
Marnie breaks the silence. “Do you want to tell me what happened after that?”
“I couldn’t get a hold of Cade or my father, so I went…straight to the police station.” She chuckles now in self-recrimination. “I felt like such a feminist badass for doing that. I wasn’t going to be one of those suffering in silent types.”
Now, it’s easier for her to talk. She tells Marnie how the deputy scared her, how her own father denounced her. How I crushed her spirit.
My throat locks, guilt as thick as tar.
Sarah picks up the coffee mug and drinks, as if to soothe the rawness in her throat that came from saying these ugly words.
Marnie writes something and takes her time, giving Sarah space to recover from recounting her story.
“What you have just done takes more courage than most can imagine,” she says gently. “Sarah, I know this doesn’t do one damn thing to erase your pain, but it may assuage it a little. Your story matches what other women have told me.”
Her eyes flick to me, then back to Marnie. “What exactly do you mean by matches?”
Marnie nods slowly, her expression grim. “He targets them young—eighteen, nineteen. Always brunettes. They describe the same patterns—alcohol, isolation,coercion, force. And afterward…silence. Threats.” She shifts her gaze to me. “There was another girl. In Boston. Your father, Walt, shut her up with money and an NDA.”
Sarah flinches. Her mug scrapes against the table, a sharp sound that slices through the air as she sets it down too hard.
“Christ.” I drag both hands over my face. My palms smell like soap, dirt, and cattle—the everyday things that usually anchor me. Right now, they feel like the last threads keeping me from shattering. “So, all these years….”
Marnie tips her chin. “I believe your father was only involved twice, once with Sarah and the other with this woman in Boston. But your brother’s wife is the one who plays that role now. Two of the women I spoke with told me that Mrs. Mercer threatened them directly, pushed them to sign NDAs, forced them to take money, and shut up.”
I feel like my world has shifted off its axis. I knew about Violet ‘cause she all but admitted what she did. But my father? This means he’d known that Landon had a proclivity for sexually assaulting girls and yet….
But then again, Walt Mercer was a misogynist at his best and a tough asshole at his worst. He probably thought that the girls asked for it. I could just hear him say, “Hell, if she’s so fuckin’ virtuous, maybe she shouldn’t be spreadin’ her legs for my son.”
Sarah holds my hand, entwining her fingers with mine.
Now, she’s comfortingme.
No one, but no one, has a heart as big as my Dove’s because if someone had done to me what I did to her, I’d be working to carve their guts out, not hold it safe for them.
I straighten. “Marnie, do you have any questions for me?”
Well, knock me sideways and call me Sally. Marnie Evans, who’s probably heard every nightmare story under the sun, looks like I just rattled her teeth loose.
“You’ll talk to me?” She seems absolutely unsure.
“Yeah.”
“On the record?”
“Yeah.”
Sarah frowns at me. She’s surprised, though she shouldn’t be. I’ve been telling her I’m going to be on this journey with her.
Marnie focuses her gaze on me. “Cade, you were there that night. You witnessed the aftermath.”
