He ordered their favorite meal from the Mexican restaurant nearby, and Kimberly showed up at eight o’clock wearing a skin-tight white sweater dress that was startlingly short, and high-heeled white platform shoes. She was a beautiful girl, had been a model briefly, and worked in a dress shop on Rodeo now. She beamed when she met Vivienne.
“Your dad has told me so much about you,” she said, and went to help herself to a glass of wine, came back barefoot and snuggled up to Vivienne’s father, which felt awkward watching them. She talked a lot, and Chris seemed enchanted with her. “We had some great poolside parties here this summer. You should have been here,” she said to Vivienne, and when they sat outside, she went upstairs and came back with a sweater. It was obvious that Kimberly had been living there, and the clothes in her mother’s old closets were hers. At one point she talked about going to Mexico with Chris last year, and he gave her a quick look and she changed the subject. But it wasn’t lost on Vivienne that her parents weren’t separated last year, they were still married and living together. She realized that this was the girl who had broken up their marriage, and the reason her mother had run away to New York and filed for divorce. And she had never told her about it. It gave her new respect for her mother.
When her father was out of the room, Vivienne casually asked her, “So how long have you known my father?”
“Three years,” Kimberly said breezily. She wasn’t very bright, but she was sexy and beautiful, and she was clearly very much in love with him. He looked crazy about her, although he was old enough to be her father, which didn’t seem to bother either of them, but made Vivienne uncomfortable.
Vivienne said she was tired after dinner, went to her room, and left them to enjoy each other. She wasn’t angry at him. It was too late for that. He seemed happy with Kimberly, which was hard for Vivienne to believe. But she felt sorry for her mother, and impressed that she had never said anything bad about him, and could have. A lot of women did, bad-mouthed their ex-husbands to their kids, but Nancy never had.
Vivienne looked at the time, and realized that her mother was probably still awake in New York. It was only midnight there. She called and told her that she missed her, and then she asked her the question that had been eating at her all night.
“Why didn’t you ever tell me about Dad and Kimberly? Did you know about her?”
Nancy hesitated before she answered. “Yes, I did. You didn’t need to know.”
“I thought you were so mean when you left him. I think she’s been living here with him since we left.”
“I think so too,” Nancy said sadly, and now Vivienne was there also.
“I want to come home after Christmas. It’s nice being here with Dad, but I miss you,” Vivienne said and her mother smiled at her end of the line.
“See how you feel then,” she said, trying not to feel jubilant. Viv told her about seeing Gwen then, and giving her a statement, the truth this time, all of it. She told her mother that she didn’t remember everything because she was so drunk, which Nancy had suspected. But she did remember Rick on top of her, rapidly plunging into her and shuddering almost at once. She would never forget it. “How do you feel about giving her the statement?”
“Really good. I think it was the right thing to do. I kept thinking that somehow I caused it all to happen. But Gwen says I didn’t, and I believe her now. It’s just too bad for everyone that it did.”
“Yes, it is,” her mother agreed with her. They talked for a few more minutes and then they hung up. Vivienne went to bed after that. She could hear her father and Kimberly laughing at the pool. He seemed so silly with her. Then she fell sound asleep and woke up the next morning. She had slept like a baby. Gwen was right. It was her first night without nightmares since the rape. And she felt more like her old self again.
Chapter 14
Gwen took the red-eye from L.A. to Boston, after she saw Vivienne, and went straight to work when she landed in the morning. She saw Dominic when she walked in, and he looked up from his desk.
“So did you get what you went for?”
“I did,” she said quietly, opened her computer case, and handed him Vivienne’s statement. He read it, and looked up at her, impressed. Vivienne’s account of what had happened didn’t surprise him, but he was stunned that Gwen had gotten it from her. Vivienne had flatly refused before, and insisted she didn’t remember anything. She remembered a lot.
“How did you do it?”
“She was just ready,” Gwen said modestly.
“You are masterful.”
“Thank you.”
“Are you going to send it to their attorneys?” he asked her.
“I’m sending it to the DA. I already did. We can wait a little while before sending it to the defendants’ attorneys. That’s really up to the assistant DA.”
“I see six guilty pleas in our future. They’d be crazy to go to trial with a victim statement like that. Everything about it rings true, and corroborates the rest.”
“I think it is true. She thought something she did made him do it.”
“You set her straight?”
“Of course.” She headed to her office then, glad that she had gone to Los Angeles to see Vivienne. It had been so much the right thing to do. And aside from strengthening the case, she knew it would help Vivienne in the end. She was slowly finding her way back.
* * *
—
Matthew Morgan flew in to New York two days before Thanksgiving. He had post-production work to do there on the film he’d shot in Spain, and Merritt was flying in the next day. Chase had been there since the arraignment waiting for them, and they had agreed to spend Thanksgiving in New York. Matthew was thrilled to see his son. They had a lot to talk about. He hadn’t seen him since everything had spun out of control in Chase’s life. Matthew was heartbroken over all that had happened and Chase seemed somber and quiet the night Matthew arrived and they went to dinner at a neighborhood deli near their apartment.
“I don’t understand how it got so out of hand, and Rick went so crazy,” Matthew said to his son. Chase was a good boy, and had always been levelheaded and sensible. And Rick had always seemed like a decent kid too. Nothing he had heard from the attorney made sense. It was an ugly case. The attorney had told Matthew that if convicted, Chase would go to prison, as an accessory, and for obstruction of justice, and he admitted that it would be a hard case to win. The evidence was damning, and he said there was a recent eyewitness report from another student, tying all six of them to the scene of the crime at the right time, and testifying about how drunk they’d been.