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The look he gives me says whatinvolvedmeans.
“That’s not possible. You would never. You hate the Constantines.”
“She was convincing.” My skin goes cold. Leo continues. “It wasn’t how I thought it would be. She got upset when I tried to end it. Crazy. She begged to see me one last time, and I fell for it. She had whiskey waiting when I got there. Drugged. It was how she got what she wanted. Sex, and then…” Leo gestures over his shoulder. “After she was done, she sent me home again.”
No.
“She drugged you because she—because you—” I shake my head. You don’t drug someone who wants to be there. You don’t whip someone for trying to leave. But some people do. The world is full of people like that. Every woman alive knows the danger. It couldn’t have happened to Leo. “She made you do it?”
A shadow moves across his eyes. “I agreed. In the beginning.” Hearing this is like swallowing glass. It has to feel the same way to say it. “Not so at the end.”
“But…” I’m beginning to understand something, and I don’t want to.A long time ago, I got involved with her.“When did this happen?”
“Daphne…”
“When?”
“When I was fourteen.”
I stand up without knowing why. Leo crosses the room and picks up something from the floor. A wastebasket that sits at the side of my desk.
“That’s too young,” I manage, and then bile surges up along with my dinner.
He holds my hair back from my face. And that’s maybe the worst thing. That he’s standing here saying things likeit’s okay, Daphanddon’t worryandI knowwhen it’s him who has to live with it, and I didn’t know, I didn’t know. When it’s over I burst into tears.
Most of my memories from that time are hazy and indistinct, but there are a few that stand out in perfect clarity. Me, standing at the side of Leo’s bed, shaking him and shaking him. I’d had a bad dream. I’d dreamed I was still in trouble from earlier in the week. But he wouldn’t wake up. He looked too pale, too deeply asleep, and that scared me more than the dream did.
Leo goes to the door and murmurs something to someone waiting outside, and then he takes me through to the connecting bathroom. He puts toothpaste on my toothbrush and gets an elastic for my hair and collects a glass for water.
I can’t stop crying. I’ve had a lot of practice turning off tears, but this time I can’t do it. He takes me back to the bedroom and waits while I sit at the side of the bed. Then he pulls up the chair from the desk.
He doesn’t lean back in his chair, and I notice it now. All the times I’ve seen him. In his house. In our parents’ house. He’s never tossed himself onto a couch or sat back in a church pew.
“Does it still hurt?” I want him to tell me it doesn’t. That it looks worse than it is.
“It’s hurt every day since it happened, Daph. My nerves are all fucked up.”
“Jesus.” I wipe away more tears. I might not be able to stop but I don’t have to sob. Hurt coils around my heart. “Is it bad?”
“Yes.”
Thatyes, from him, might as well be a novel on how badly it hurts. He would never admit it if it wasn’t terrible. “Am I the only one who didn’t know?”
“No.” He looks me in the eye. “I’ve told a very limited number of people. Eva and Haley. Gerard and Mrs. Page.”
“But not me.”
“Daphne.” More hurt wells up at his tone. So damn gentle. “You were five.”
“I’m not five now.”
“I’m telling you now.” His eyes flash, and my stomach crumples again. I am asking too much. “Jesus. I never wanted to tell anyone in the first place.”
“Why did you tell Eva, then? Because she could handle it, right?” And I couldn’t, no matter how old I got. He is my favorite brother. That doesn’t mean he owes me his secrets. But he’s been wrapped in pain for years and years, and I never noticed. How could I have missed so much?
He takes a breath and his gaze slips away again. Something’s happening in his mind. To keep himself in control. I’ve seen him do this a hundred times. A thousand. I never knew what he was thinking about.
“Eva only knows because she was standing in the foyer when I got home. There was no hiding it. The blood had soaked through my jacket.”
