AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Smuckers has decided he would prefer to take his seat on the board. As a voting shareholder, with me as his assistant, to interpret his wishes regarding Locke Worldwide.”
Chapter Four
Vicky
The inside of the police station is an old friend I never wanted to see again. The shiny institutional surfaces, the hard seats, the sounds of police radios up and down the halls, the emotional distance that the cops and other staffers maintain, everything strangely plain and professional even as you’re scared out of your mind.
And, of course, the little room they make you wait in.
I tell myself it’s different this time, but it doesn’t feel different.
At least I have Smuckers with me. He took a pee on the way here, but he didn’t poop. I’ve got the poop card to play.
I wasn’t on the criminal end during the incident with Denny Woodruff—I was the one who made the accusations and Denny was the one who had to sweat it out in the little room. But after my story was made to look faked, I became the criminal. The false accuser. The one in the little room.
I sat in there alone, thinking I’d be sent to a juvenile facility. Considering home life at the time, it would have been an improvement, except for having to leave Carly unprotected with a mom who’d betray her own daughter for the right price.
Mom wasn’t always that way. There was a sunny “before” picture of us in a tiny but bright little home at the end of a long driveway. I would ride my shiny bike up and down it while Mom and Dad hung out with Carly, a pudgy two-year-old with fat cheeks and a huge smile.
Then Dad died.
The “after” picture was a chaos of lost jobs and increasingly shabby apartments, and us two sisters eating cereal dinners alone in smelly, dirty kitchens. And Mom was either a ball of scary energy or else had the shakes and the weeps and the two-day sleeps. And the kind of boyfriends who were overly friendly to little girls when she wasn’t looking.
The Woodruffs “generously” decided not to press charges; they saw to it that I didn’t get into trouble for supposedly lying to the police, falsifying evidence, and selfishly causing a three-day manhunt. “You owe them a debt of gratitude,” a stern policewoman named Sara told me as she led me out.
I said nothing. I had protested my innocence enough by then to know it was a waste of breath.
I followed Sara out, hungry and tired and beaten down because I’d told the truth and the whole world had turned against me, and I still didn’t understand how those tests came out the way they did, or how Denny’s lies became truth and how my truth became lies. And I didn’t know how I’d get home or if there would be food, or if Carly was okay. She was eight that summer, and Mom would leave her alone to “do errands.”
Sara held open the door for me and I stepped out into the sunshine only to come face-to-face with a crowd of reporters, yelling questions, taking pictures.
Do you have an apology for Denny Woodruff and his family? Do you feel like you deserved to be released? Do you have a message? Do you have a statement? How does it feel to be forgiven?
I didn’t have much left in me by then. Just two words for the crowd: Never again. I just looked into the nearest camera and vowed it. Never again.
People wanted clarification. Did I mean I’d never lie again?
I headed off onto the sidewalk. A few of the reporters tagged along with me, trying to get me into conversation. I would say nothing more. Eventually Sara the policewoman took pity on me and drove me home.
My release and my definitely-not-grateful-enough comment made the local and national news. It was your classic study in “do and don’t”—the Woodruffs outside their beautiful home with their forgiveness, hoping I could get help. They were the DO. And then there was me with my tear-stained cheeks and swollen eyes croaking Never again into the camera. I was the DON’T. Put a red circle around my face with a line through it.
I got asked about my terse statement a lot after that. People want contrition from a villain. They need you to feel pain for the wrong of your ways. Never again just doesn’t do it.
But it did it for me.
Never again was my vow to the world, to myself. Never again would I be bullied by people like the Woodruffs. Never again would I allow a rich asshole to make me feel small and scared.
Never again.
Looking back, the exercise of hauling me down to the station was simple intimidation. It was the Woodruffs flexing their muscles. This is what happens when you oppose us.
I tell myself that’s all this is with the Locke clan. I’m being detained, not arrested.
I think again of Henry, standing there all smug. We will bury you. Suddenly he was Denny Woodruff. And all I could think was Never again, motherfucker.
Never again.
The price of taking that money was way too high, because it would be like admitting I’m a scam artist or a liar or guilty of something.
