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“Did it set you back emotionally? Answering such graphic questions?” Margot whispered, her notebook completely ignored at this point, her gaze locked on mine.
“No. It helped actually.” I gave her a smile. “The thing with trauma is you can say you’re done living in its shadow and pretend that you’re okay, but until that trauma is done with you...you can’t be free.”
“What do you mean?” Margot whispered.
“I mean, you can choose to be free and still be trapped. You can convince others with words that you’re okay, but those words won’t save you. Until you can prove to your trauma that you’re ready to do whatever it takes to truly be free and not just desperately cling to words that have no strength to make it so, then it won’t stop. I didn’t know that at the time. I was only seventeen, after all. I thought the power of my mind and the repetition of positive words would eventually heal me, but...Aslan was right. Until I stopped running and accepted it, I kept giving away my strength with denial.”
I spun my wedding ring, remembering the surge of that strength. “Who would’ve thought that the best cure for my trauma was to fight for the life of another? To realise that everything I’d endured only carved me into who I was meant to be? And I liked who I was meant to be because that girl would do anything to protect those she loved.”
“So...you told the police everything?” Dylan asked.
“Everything about the rape? Oh, yes. I held nothing back. I ensured they hated Ethan as much as I did by the time I finished. Of course, I told them nothing about what happened afterward. I’m not that mad.”
“And then what?” Margot whispered.
“And then fate ensured that my decision to accept what Ethan had done was right.”
“What do you mean?” Dylan frowned.
“I mean, Zara turned up later that week and mentioned the police had been round to talk to her boyfriend, Cooper.”
“Shit, wouldn’t he say that he hadn’t seen Ethan since the night of the party?” Margot gasped.
“You’d think that. But no.” I smiled and leaned back, hugging a lacy pillow to ward off the early evening chill. “I’ll tell you how serendipitous luck stepped in and everything that happened next, but I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s go back to the police station and the night where I shattered Ethan’s hold over me, once and for all. I grew stronger than I’d ever been, and I not only accepted what Ethan had done but I was also...strangely grateful.”
“Wait, what? You can’t be saying you’re grateful for what he did?” Dylan scoffed, his face twisting with disgust. “That’s just wrong on so many levels.”
“Oh no, sorry, that came out incorrectly. I didn’t mean to say I was grateful for the abuse. I meant I was grateful for the lesson of overcoming it. Grateful to learn, early on, that I was stronger than I thought. Thankful to learn how to find myself, to trust myself, to be ready to fight when it mattered, because when that last domino fell, I didn’t buckle and die. Even though I begged for death and fully believed I would die from a shattered, haemorrhaging heart, I survived. Barely.
“Without Ethan teaching me my own power, I would never have lived past the worst day of my life. I know that without a shadow of a doubt. That adversity gave me the strength to survive because no matter the pain Ethan gave me, it was nothing, absolutely nothing to what came next. He was a mere thorn, a sting, a silly little splinter.”
“Oh God.” Margot shook her head. “I don’t think I can take much more. You know...it’s getting late. I think. I think we should stop and—”
“I’m not stopping until it’s over.” I picked up my phone to text Tiffany to bring another tray of drinks and some food, along with a cosy blanket or two. Once I’d sent the request, I settled back and studied the faces of the reporters who were no longer strangers.
Their features blurred and blended, spinning with the dark, the beach, and the sky until the stark walls of an interrogation room and the detective I’d seen throughout my childhood filled my mind’s eye.
Chapter Three
*
Nerida
AGE: 17 YRS OLD
*
(Love in Finnish: Rakkaus)
“YOU’RE SURE THIS STATEMENT IS AS TRUE and as accurate as you can make it? I know you said you don’t know Ethan’s last name, but you made sure his description is as detailed as possible?” Wayne Gratt, my father’s friend and our next door neighbour four houses down, steepled his hands on the cold metal table and gave me a forlorn look.
“It’s true and accurate, and yes, I don’t know his last name.”
He rolled his shoulders. “As a cop, I shouldn’t say this, but as a friend of your father’s, I’m so sorry, Nerida. What he did to you. What you’ve told me here tonight.” He shook his head, his lips curling into a snarl. “I want to murder him myself.”
You’re too late.
I hung my head, clinging to the performance I’d given of a distraught, abused little girl who hadn’t watched her soulmate beat Ethan within an inch of his life and then toss that life overboard.
