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AUBREY
I held the invitation in my shaking hands.
“Aubrey, you’ve come such a long way. I’m so proud of you,” Dr. Wexler stated.
She was the therapist that I had been seeing for the last seven years.
“They wouldn’t have invited you to Dylan’s welcome home party if they didn’t want you to go.”
“His mom invited me. Not Dylan.”
“I’m sure he knows.”
I shrugged. “I wouldn’t know that. I haven’t seen him since the trial.”
I went to visit him once a month for the last six years and was denied visitation each and every time. He refused to see me, not wanting anything to do with me. I couldn’t blame him, but it still hurt nonetheless.
“Aubrey, you’re not that person anymore. The broken woman that came to me is long gone, sweetheart. She’s not even in the same vicinity as you anymore. You’re strong, independent and most of all you learned to love yourself again. You can overcome anything and you have.”
I took a deep breath. “I know.” And I did.
“So, you’re going to go?”
I nodded. “Yes.”
“Great. I can’t wait to hear about it next week.”
I drove home with a heavy heart. I knew he was getting out. It was all over the papers. During the months of his trial and then after his sentencing all you heard and read about was how Detective Dylan McGraw was behind bars for the murder of Jeremy Montgomery, son of the highly respected politician Bill Montgomery. Our families and close friends knew what I went through with Jeremy, but it didn’t matter. There were no police records for any of my so-called allegations of the years and years of abuse I endured from him.
Jacob said he was lucky that he was a Detective and had closed several cases saving peoples lives or else he would have been looking at twenty plus years versus the plea bargain that he had to take for only ten.
It didn’t matter how many times I tried to write him, all my letters were returned unopened. I kept them all in hopes that one day he would forgive me and read them.
The celebration of his release was being held at his mom’s house tomorrow afternoon. I would have to go to the home that held so many of my happy childhood memories. Come face to face with my truths.
I was going to go.
It was time to face my demons.
Most of them I had already conquered, especially the one smiling at me as she opened the passenger side door.
“Hey, honey, how was school?”
“Hey, Mom.” She kissed my cheek.
She was the sweetest girl with the sharpest tongue, much like her daddy. After the night Jeremy left me in the kitchen to die, I started to see Dr. Wexler, I told her that my biggest regret was turning my back on our daughter.
My Aunt Celeste came to see me a few weeks after the rape, nine to be exact. I could never lie to her. She was always very perceptive when it came to me, making it nearly impossible to slip anything past her. I broke down one night and told her about the rape. She held me in her arms the entire time, comforting me the only way she knew how. The next morning we went into my mom’s office at the hospital and she proceeded to tell my mom everything that I shared with her the night before.
Knowing there was no way in hell I could utter the words again. My mom cried for what felt like forever. Then they both took me down to the lab so that my mom could test me for every STD under the sun.
Except she took one test that I never even considered a possibility.
A few days later we found out I was pregnant. I was nineteen and knocked up, but the question at the time was whose baby was I carrying?
Dylan’s or my rapists?
I refused to tell anyone about it, which my mom and aunt understood.
