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I pale. I can physically feel it happening, the blood rushing from my face with harrowing anxiety.
“I - I - I don't know. Oh my god.” I suck in a panicked breath. “Oh my god, do you think he's hurt her?”
Leigh lays her hand over mine again, squeezing gently. “I don't know, babe. I hope not. But my guess is he didn't just do what he did to you, ya know? It's the kind of thing men like that do over and over again until someone finally stops them.”
Though her words fill me with violent terror, I know she's right.
And it only makes me more determined to take him down.
Geoff Hammerstein better watch out because I'm coming for him.
“Then that someone's gonna be me.”
* * *
The relief that surges through me when Bethie tells us, in a small and inconspicuous diner on the outskirts of town, that Geoff Hammerstein was never able to hurt her is immense. Dressed in a thick maroon cardigan, her signature glasses settled as they always are on the end of her nose, she tells Leighton and I that while Geoff has often made her feel uncomfortable, he's never actually managed to put his hands on her.
All the color drained from her face when I told her what he'd done to me. She'd gasped and clutched her throat, tears sparkling like moonstone in her eyes before running tracks down her cheeks.
At first, I thought she was crying for me.
But she wasn't.
In the six weeks that she's been working for him, Bethie has seen at least ten girls leaving his office in tears. At the time, she'd thought they were simply upset because they hadn't secured a contract with the agency and put it down to Geoff's reputation for being ruthless and cold. Now, she realizes there was something much darker happening behind those closed doors. With a broken, shaky voice, she tells us that a couple of the girls couldn't have been older than sixteen.
That's the moment I realize just how serious this is.
Before, I could pretend it was only me he'd done this to. I guess despite how destructive my father's behavior had been about what happened to me, there was a kind of comfort I could take from believing that I'd brought it on myself.
Because if it was all my fault, if I really was a whore who'd seduced a man much older than myself, then I could let myself believe he wasn't hurting anyone else.
But now, there's no pretending.
I can't hide my head in the sand anymore or live with my hands over my eyes, never really accepting the gravity of the situation while still allowing the trauma to leak out into every aspect of my life, amplifying my problems with eating and destroying my relationships.
I realize now that I have to face my past head on if I have any hope of healing.
If I have any hope of Cole ever coming back to me.
* * *
Four weeksafter the trial ends, my journey to find self-healing brings me back to Tupelo.
Six months have passed since the last time I was here. Back when Christmas lights were still wound around every bare branch in town and the mornings brought the kind of frost that freezes your toes in your shoes.
Now, the cruel winds of January are a distant memory. Gray skies have given way to clear blue, the trees are full of life and the air is rich with the smell of cut grass and the twittering of birdsong. It's an Oklahoma summer's day straight out of my childhood.
My white skirt muddies as I kneel on the ground in front of my father's grave. It's the first time I've been here since the burial, the first time I've managed to make it through the front gates of the cemetery.
Already laid in front of the headstone is a small bunch of hand-clipped white roses. My mother must have been by already. She moved back to town two months ago and told me during one of our weekly calls that she stops by his grave every morning to lay fresh flowers and tend to the plot.
Setting the bottle of lager that I brought with me beside the roses, I take a deep breath and look up at the headstone.
“Hey, Daddy, I brought you a beer,” I tell him in a small, quiet voice. “Sorry it's taken me so long to visit you. I've been working some things out.”
Pulling at a long strand of grass, I worry my lip between my teeth in thought.
I thought I knew what I wanted to say to him, but it's different now that I'm here. It's harder than I thought it would be to get the words out. Because seeing my father's name carved in stone, visiting the site of his eternal resting place, his grave beside his parents in a quiet corner of the cemetery, it brings me a kind of peace I hadn't realized I'd needed.
