Boon stares as he listens.
“The search for missing maid Kit Darling appears to have come to a sad conclusion earlier this evening—”
“They found her body,” the cashier says, jerking his thumb at the screen.
Boon swallows as tears fill his eyes. Carefully, he sets his basket on the counter and exits the store. He walks through the rain to his car.
THE MAID’S DIARY
We’re on the log at the beach, my half-eaten sandwich fallen into the sand, and Boon puts his face into his hands. He rocks and moans as though in pain. I have just forced him to watch the recording I copied to my phone.
“I’m sorry, Kit. I am so, so sorry. God, I am sorry.”
“I loved you, Boon. With my whole heart. You were the center of my world, you know that?”
He looks up. His eyes are full of tears. They run down his face. My chest hurts. Part of me died when I heard his high, whooping, nervous laugh on Daisy’s recording. Another part of me is cold and dead as stone and can’t feel anything at all. I will not be able to trust or let anyone in again.
“I hadn’t come out as gay yet, Kit. I was scared. Some of the guys who were at the lodge that night, they were the same guys who beat me at school. Who called me a faggot. Who cornered me in the locker room at the rec center one day and pulled down my pants and taunted me with a bottle, saying they would push it up my butt. I was terrified that if I was the only one who stuck my neck out and told the truth of what we all saw, I’d be outed and worse. I honestly believed they mightbeat and kill me if I came forward and ratted on them and Jon and the other team members.”
He swipes his tears away. “I was a stupid, frightened kid with no one to turn to. My parents would’ve died in shame if they’d found out what I was—what I am. Kit, listen to me, you know that my mom and dadstilldon’t know. I have come out to the whole world, but I still can’t tell them. I just can’t. Not after everything they’ve done to try and make a life for me in this country. They’re just incapable of understanding. And now my mom is sick, and she probably won’t get well. And I would rather let both my parents pass without ever having to know this about their son. I—I am so ashamed by how I never stood up for you. I...I wish I’d been brave, bold. I wish I could’ve been the kind of kid hero you read about in books. The kid who risks everything to stand up for the underdog. But I wasn’t. I was a scared-shitless boy who didn’t fully understand his own sexuality. A kid who only wanted to belong. To be accepted. Loved. Can you possibly find it in your heart to understand this?”
“You’ve been my closest friend all these years, Boon. You could have told me you were there.”
“But then I would have lost your friendship, Kit. And I can’t bear losing you. My whole life I’ve been trying to make it up to you.”
“Yet you’ve lost me anyway.”
“I’ll do anything, Kit, if you will forgive me. Can you ever forgive me? Please.”
I turn away and stare at the sea. On one level I do understand what kid Boon did, or rather did not do. I know fear. I know marginalization. I was badly bullied myself. All I ever wanted was to belong, too, to be loved, accepted, admired. Maybe time will help me process and accept. Maybe it won’t.Why should we always “understand” our abuser, the villains, the mendacity of evil, the people who let us down? Does understanding help us heal?
I don’t think anything really heals trauma. You just find some kind of narrative to learn to cohabit with it.
I suppose now is the time to admit to you, Dear Diary, I never had a therapist. I always imagined that if I did she would coax me to start a journal. But the reason I really started this diary was to tell my Story. To leave something behind specifically to be found by the police.
To tell them about Jon and Daisy. And what happened that night in the lodge.
I started my diary the day I learned I was inside their house.
But you know what? My imaginary therapist was right. While I might have started this diary for one reason, it became something else entirely. Ididask why, why, why. And, finally, Ididdrop through that trapdoor.
You helped me see my world a different way, Dear Diary.
You helped me stand my ground. You helped me fight back.
You helped me realize I no longer wish to be Anonymous Girl. Or a ghost.
Now I plan to be SEEN.
Am I frightened that I’ve gone too deep and am in way over my head? Hell yes. I’m terrified I won’t survive this. That it will backfire. That I might die.
But I’m well past the point of return. I am Thelma and Louise racing at speed for that cliff...
MAL
November 4, 2019. Monday.
Mal is at the crime lab. It’s early Monday morning, and Benoit is back at the ADMAC site overseeing renewed attempts to bring up the trapped body. The retrieval was called off yesterday due to a severe storm and high tide that brought powerful currents.
