“Yes, let’s talk about Eddie.” Kara wrapped her arms around her knees, wincing as pain knifed through them. “Heisthe person you wronged most, isn’t he? That’s why he came to mind first. Which he shouldn’t, if he did what you claimed. I don’t know if rape deserves death, but I don’t feel the least bit bad about Bill, so I guess I’d accept the punishment as just.”
“I-I don’t understand.”
“But I do. I always have, I think. I just couldn’t let myself. I felt disloyal thinking it, believing my boyfriend over my best friend. Worse, if I believed he didn’t rape you, that meant you murdered him in cold blood. Murdered an innocent boy. Who would do that? Not a human being. That’s the act of a monster. The sort of person who’d let her friend go to jail, even when it didn’t clear her own name. Was accusing me supposed to clear your name, Inge? Or did you just want to ruin my life along with yours?”
“If someone said I accused you?—”
“No, but even if you didn’t, a confession from you would have set me free.”
“I thought we’d be together.” Ingrid hurried on. “Not that I accused you, but I didn’ttakethe blame, and I should have. I see that now. But I thought we’d be together. We’d look after each other. You owed me that.”
“I owed you? For killing a sweet kid who never did anything but treat me like I was special?”
“I treated you special.” Ingrid’s voice rose and her own chain clanked as if she was getting to her feet. “I treated you likegold, Kara, and what did you do? Threw me over for a second-string football player.”
“Who never laid a finger on you.”
A pause, too long. “What? No. Eddie attacked me. I was in shock and I thought he was going to hurt you, so I shot him. For you. It was all for you.”
“Bill, too?”
“Of course,” Ingrid snarled. “You know that. I killed him for you, and you were grateful for it, and now you dare accuse me of?—”
“Of murdering Eddie for no reason. You say you treated me like gold, but he?—”
“Don’t you fucking compare me to that boy!” Ingrid’s voice went shrill. “He barely knew you. We’ve been together since we were three.Threefucking years old! But there was always someone else. Some guy trying to get between us. To take you away. First Bill and then Eddie and now that Neanderthal you married. Gavin, Gavin, Gavin. Can I tell you what I’d like to do to fucking Gavin, Kara?”
Kara heard Ingrid’s door creak open. “Sure, Ingrid. Tell us what you’d like to do to me.”
“What?” Ingrid said. “It’syou? You sick son of a?—”
A thump and a screech as Gavin hit Ingrid.
“Kara?!” Ingrid screamed between blows. “It’s Gavin. It’s all?—”
“All me,” Gavin said. “It’s always been me. Looking out for my wife. You aren’t going to hurt her anymore, Ingrid. I’m here to make sure of that.”
The beating continued, Ingrid screaming for help, screaming for Kara and, finally, screaming for mercy, screaming for her life. That’s when Kara realized what Gavin meant to do. Stop her. Permanently.
Kara fumbled in the near dark with her leg iron. It was supposed to be latched, but not locked, just as it had been earlier. But now when she tugged, it wouldn’t open. She yanked harder, heart pounding as Ingrid’s screams took on the terrible edge of something no longer quite human.
“Gavin!” Kara shouted. “Stop! That’s enough! Please, stop!”
He did stop. Not then, not as Kara screamed, her voice raw, every shout stabbing through her bruised stomach. No, her pleas didn’t stop him. The thumps and the screams continued. Then thumps and whimpers. Then just thumps. And finally silence. Absolute silence.
Kara collapsed on the floor and started to cry.
Gavin.When Kara first met him, he’d reminded her of Eddie. He didn’t look like him, but there was the way his forelock fell, getting into his eyes when he was distracted. The way he smiled sometimes, at just the right angle. Even some of his kisses, in the beginning, took her back to those days, when life was as perfect as it would ever be.
But Gavin wasn’t Eddie. As time passed, she’d come to see more of Ingrid in him and, sometimes, even Bill. Old story again.Too often told. The victim who kept stumbling into the same kind of relationships, not because she went looking for them, but maybe because she didn’t feel she deserved any better. That after Eddie’s murder, she didn’t deserve another sweet boy like him. But at some point, when you realize what you’re doing, trapped in old patterns, you have to make a choice to stop doing it. To say “enough.”
Gavin must have sensed she was thinking about leaving him, because that’s when the condom “broke.” Twice. That’s when she got pregnant.
If he’d thought that would make her stay, he’d underestimated her. Whatever Kara still felt for him, she felt more for the life growing inside her. She’d tried to leave Gavin for the baby’s sake. He figured out how to make her stay. He might never have been even a B student, but he was a quick study, and he realized how to get to her. All he had to do was punch or kick a little too close to her belly, and she got the message.Leave and you leave alone. So she stayed. He promised to stop hitting her, and to take her to Seattle and start their new lives together, and she went because she didn’t really see another option.
As for keeping his promise, the hitting stopped while she was pregnant. She’d give him that. And he never threatened or hurt Melody. On a relative scale, he wasn’t as bad as he could have been, and she knew that was no justification at all, but sometimes, when you’re trapped badly enough, you need to find a bright side. Life was not good; life was not bad. Kara would bide her time until she finished high school, then she’d run with Melody.
That’s when Ingrid came back into her life, and things went from “not bad” to hell, the nightmare of her old life seeping into her new. That’s when Kara devised the plan, one Gavin happily agreed to. He would call pretending to be Eddie’s brother outfor revenge and if that didn’t scare Ingrid off, then this would. An abandoned cabin with a basement, where “Eddie’s brother” would beat them both until Kara found a way to “escape” and they’d flee. After that, Ingrid would keep running until she was out of their lives.
