I try to swallow, but my throat is too tight. All of a sudden that ghost of a suspicion that’s been drifting back and forth in my brain, haunting my subconscious, begins to crawl into my conscious mind. But I don’t want that suspicion to be founded. I want to be wrong so badly I can’t even bring myself to ask the question.
“I’ve got to go,” Mr. Collins says. “Sam’s on her way. Just respect her wishes, Danny. The last thing my daughter needs right now is more stress.”
He hangs up before I can say another word. I stand staring at the phone, sweating in the increasingly warm summer day, feeling like I’m about to have a heart attack. Every muscle in my body is clenched and my ribs are doing their best to crush my heart into juice inside my chest. My pulse is racing and my hands begin to shake so hard I have to try three times before I can type “Sterling University rape scandal” into the search window without half a dozen typos.
There hasn’t been time since I got back to jump online or watch the news. We’ve all been in survival mode, so focused on Caitlin and the baby that the rest of the world has faded into the background. But that world hasn’t stopped moving, and there are six new links to articles reporting developments in the case. I open the first one and start to read.
By the second paragraph, I’m slamming my fist into the stone wall of the balcony hard enough to shatter three bones in my hand, but it’s not the physical pain that makes me cry out loud enough to bring security rushing out onto the balcony.
* * *
They say that God doesn’t give you more than you can handle and that the best things in life are free.
But so are the worst things. They come in the door without paying a cover charge, take out a machine gun, and mow down every beautiful thing in sight.
I try to call Sam’s dad a hundred times that afternoon alone, but he doesn’t pick up. I send Sam an email begging her to forgive me, telling her how much I love her, and promising I’ll be there as soon as I can, but the email bounces back. She’s closed her account. I can’t get to her. I have no way to tell her I’m so sorry, no way to tell her all I want is to be with her and help her through this.
I spend the rest of the week in hell, torturing myself by reading every article I can find about the case, imagining what Sam must have gone through until I make myself physically ill, then soothing away the pain by imagining what I’m going to do to the monsters who hurt her. I sit next to Gabe by Caitlin’s bedside and plot four perfect murders and one dose of poetic justice for Alec, who apparently wasn’t an active participant, just one of the many frat boys who turned a blind eye while a girl was gang-raped on their pool table.
While my girl, my Sam was treated like a fuck toy for their amusement, while they savaged her so brutally she left a blood trail as she ran from the house.
The police had been confused as to why the blood type didn’t match Deidre Jones’s, but once Sam came forward, that confusion was cleared away. She’s making their job easy for them now. It’s going to be a short trial and the maximum sentence for every one of those arrogant fucks. There is hard evidence, and witnesses who saw Sam run across the quad to her car wearing nothing but a tee shirt. And there is the video that the monsters hacked into the campus website to post while they were still drunk. You allegedly can’t see Sam’s face clearly—just the back of her hair, which for once she’d straightened—but surely it will be clear to anyone who’s watching that the girl in those videos wasn’t a willing participant.
It doesn’t matter that Sam was the one who started the rumor that Deidre was the girl in the video. I know Sam well enough to know she blames herself for the other girl’s suicide, but no jury in their right mind would see that as a reason not to believe Sam’s story. She was traumatized. She was the victim of a violent crime. She wasn’t in her right mind. Deidre’s blood doesn’t belong on Sam’s hands, it belongs on the hands of the men who raped her, and I have no doubt a jury will see that.
The only thing I doubt is if I’ll ever see Sam again, or if she’s going to keep running from me forever.
* * *
But I forget that things can always get worse and it isn’t always darkest right before dawn.
* * *
By the time Caitlin finally starts to get better and she and the baby come home from the hospital three weeks later, the trial has already started. I’ve been able to read all about the defense’s claims that Sam was not only a willing participant, but the one who’d orchestrated the “New Year’s Eve Orgy.” I’ve heard news anchors say that photos from Sam’s room showing a variety of sex toys spread out on her bed confirm her “deviant sexual tastes.” I’ve watched the smug monsters who did this to my best friend walk past the news cameras looking innocent and victimized, like they’re the ones who were attacked and then forced to stand in front of a courtroom and beg people to believe “sluts” can still be victims of rape.
They’ve called the woman I love a slut and a whore and before that night, the only man she’d ever been with was me.
It’s so wrong, I can’t fathom how any rational person could go along with the defense’s accusations, but as the days tick by it becomes more and more obvious that the assholes might get away with it. They might walk free, return to their frat house, and live to do it again to another girl next New Year’s Eve.
But Caitlin is still so weak she can only hold the baby when she has pillows propped under her arms and Gabe hasn’t fully returned to the land of the living, either, spending all of his time hovering near Caitlin’s bed or taking the baby out for long walks while she sleeps. Meanwhile, Emmie’s seeing a shrink for anxiety, Sean stumbled home drunk two nights ago, and Ray isn’t equipped to handle it all. He’d snap under the pressure if I left. I can’t go to Sam yet, I still haven’t found a way to reach her, and I’ve never felt so helpless or filled with impotent rage in my life.
Still, I think I’m hiding it well enough until Caitlin reaches out and takes my hand one evening when we’re sitting out on the porch, watching the fishing boats chug back to the harbor.
“I know you have to leave soon, Danny,” she says in that huskier voice she’s had since she spent so many days with a tube down her throat. “I would have told you to head out a week ago, but I’m scared to let you go.”
I fold my fingers around hers. “Don’t be scared. You’re getting better every day and Juliet is going to be a porker before you know it. You guys are out of the woods, I know it.”
“I’m not scared for me or Juliet.” Her intense look is even more piercing with her eyes so large in her painfully thin face. “I’m scared for you.”
“I’m fine,” I say, slipping my hand from hers as I turn to look out at the boats. “It’s Sam you should be worried about.”
“I am. I’m worried she’s going to end up trying to recover from all this alone because the man she loves is serving a life sentence in prison.”
I press my lips together for a long moment, but don’t look at Caitlin and don’t answer.
“You will be the very first person they go looking for if one of those monsters has an unfortunate accident, let alone all five of them,” Caitlin continues in a calm voice, proving she can still read my damned mind. “You and Sam’s dad. And you’re way too upset to plan a perfect crime right now.”