“I was a few months shy of eighteen, so I took the GED, and as soon as I got the results, I enlisted in the Marines.”
“Why the Marines?”
He gave a half-hearted smile. “They got to me first. The recruiting office had all the services. I was going to talk to the Army recruiter, but the Marine recruiter grabbed me as soon as I walked in the door.”
“Why not the Air Force or Navy?”
“Back then the Air Force didn’t take people with GEDs—I don’t know about now. And I get seasick, so the Navy was out.”
He glanced at her, trying to gauge her reaction so far. She leaned against the half wall that separated the reception desk from the rest of the garage, her arms crossed.
“What about Dani?”
Tinker stared over her shoulder, unseeing. This was when things got hard. “She couldn’t come with me, obviously. I had boot camp, then infantry school, then MOS school. Hell, it was almost nine months before I was able to go home.”
“Did she stay with friends?”
He shook his head slowly. “She moved in with Dimitrii and his wife.”
Tinker didn’t want to continue. He wanted to stop telling the story. Maybe if he didn’t say it out loud, Abby would never need to know.
“Tinker,” she said softly.
He licked his lips and nodded. “They offered to take Dani in. She’d been training with them for almost two years at that point and already spent most of the time with them anyway; she’d basically just be sleeping there instead of at home. It seemed like a good plan. His wife, Ksenia, was a dancer too. She was a lot younger than he was—had been one of his students. That should have tipped me off.
“When I came home the first time, Dani was quieter. Withdrawn. I thought it was because of everything that had happened, you know? Our parents died. I left. I told myself she felt abandoned and that was why she was distant.” He put the wrench down and fiddled with a screwdriver. It was easier than looking at Abby.
“I got lucky and was able to get stationed at Beaufort, so only an hour and a half, two hours from here. At first, I was coming back every weekend, but I was fucking nineteen years old. I wanted to party and get shit-faced with my buddies, so the weekends back to Charleston got further and further apart. When I did make it, she was withdrawn. Moody. I thought it was typical teenager stuff, you know. Being mad at me because I wasn’t here every weekend. I’d feel guilty and come back more often, but her attitude didn’t get better, and I thought, well, if she’s going to be pissy whether I’m here or not, I may as well stay at Beaufort. We texted and I still called her all the time, but she was either training or with her friends or just didn’t want to talk. Then I got deployed to Iraq.
“Ten months of absolute hell. I tried to call as often as I could, but back then, comms sucked. If you could even get a phone when it was normal hours here, it wasn’t always a good connection. Half the time there was a comms blackout because of having to notify all the next of kin of the casualties.”
He tossed the screwdriver onto the bench and turned, leaning against it and crossing his arms.
“I got a Red Cross notification Dani was in the hospital. She’d collapsed at school and was taken to the ER and then admitted. It took me three days to get home. Seventy-four hours of airports and planes and feeling caged. When I finally saw her—she was…” He rubbed the back of his head, remembering the first time he’d seen Dani. “My first thought was what the fuck? It’s hard to describe. She was gaunt. Not just gaunt, but almost hollow, inside and out. I knew it was more than depression or teenage angst. Something was really wrong.
“Then she told me she wanted to leave Charleston and didn’t want to dance anymore. That’s when I knew it was more than just teenage bullshit.”
Soul bared
Abby knew what was coming. God, she knew. And she didn’t want to know. Maybe if he didn’t say the words, they could both pretend none of this ever happened and go back to the way things were before. But that wasn’t fair. Not to her, not to him…not to Dani.
She waited, heart pounding in her chest, and let the silence stretch, giving Tinker the time he needed to say what he needed to say.
“I finally got her to tell me what was going on.” His chest expanded as he inhaled deeply. “She was pregnant. I knew. I knew and I still hoped she’d tell me it was some fuckwit boy from school.”
Abby held on to her emotions by a thread when all she wanted to do was throw her head back and scream. But this was Tinker’s story, and she needed to let him get it out. He hadn’t looked at her in several minutes. He stared vacantly at the far wall, and she wasn’t even sure if he was still talking to her or just talking to get it out.
“He started grooming her almost as soon as she went to live with them. She said it started with touches that lasted a little too long. Playing with her hair. Accidentally walking in on her changing or touching her chest when he was demonstrating a dance move. All things she could initially write off as accidental or innocent. He slowly ratcheted it up until there was no mistaking things. He started?—”
Tinker licked his lips. “He started raping her a week after I left for Iraq.”
Abby couldn’t stop the sharp inhale of breath. “Did she ever tell anyone?”
He glanced at her quickly, then back at his feet. “She tried to tell his wife at the beginning. That bitch—” He snarled the word. “Told her that’s just the way he was. That Dani wasn’t the first and he’d get tired of her soon enough.
“That’s what sent me over the edge. The fact that she’d tried to ask for help and was told ‘he’d get tired of her eventually.’” He pushed away from the bench and began pacing. “I took her to Planned Parenthood.”
Tinker stopped, faced her, and shoved his hands into the front pockets of his jeans. “When I got her safe, I went and found him at his dance studio and beat him until his face was nothing but a bloody pulp. I stomped on his legs so hard his kneecaps shattered. He can walk, technically. He’s not paralyzed, but he needs crutches or a wheelchair.”
