My house suddenly felt very exposed, all these windows and doors and glass. All this darkness.
“Want me to make a fire?” he asked as I stood there.
“Yeah.” I gave myself a mental shake, then went downstairs to the kitchen, calling my dog so I wouldn’t be there alone.
It would be easy for someone to break into the house. I checked the sliding glass door to the porch . . . it was unlocked. Of course it was unlocked! This was Cape Cod. We didn’t need to lock our doors. I locked it now, but the porch just required a knife to cut through the screens. Someone could wait out there until I was home. Someone could smash the glass on the slider. The kitchen door out to the patio? I could kick it in myself. What about the door in the guest room? Also glass.
I’d get an alarm system. Yes. That wasn’t just a reaction to seeing . . . him. It was smart. I was a woman living alone on a remote dirt road.
“You good down there?” Ben called.
“Yep! Be right up.”
Should I make coffee? No. Bourbon. I poured some into two glasses, automatically checked the cookie jar—I had some spare snickerdoodles that hadn’t fit into the package I’d sent Dylan yesterday. I put them on a plate, set everything on a tray with a couple of napkins and took a deep breath.
Chase Freeman was back in town.
I suddenly bolted for the guest bathroom and threw up.
I had not thought of him, or that night, in a very, very long time. That night had become a blank spot, dominated by the car accident. But the body remembers, doesn’t it? I vomited again, caught my breath and flushed. Stood up and splashed some cold water on my face. I brushed my teeth, gargled, brushed again and went back to the kitchen, and carried the tray upstairs. Set it on the coffee table, sat on the couch and took a hearty sip of bourbon. It burned at first, then settled in my now-empty stomach with a much-needed warmth.
Ben had the fire going pretty good now. God, I was glad he was here. Zeus jumped onto the couch next to me and put his head on my lap. “I’m glad you’re here, too, buddy,” I told him, touching the heart on his nose. “Very glad.”
Ben sat in the chair across from me and eyed the tray. “So . . . something happened back there. Want to tell me about it?”
My hand found Zeus’s silky head, and I took another sip of my drink.
I had never told anyone about what happened that night. Not even Beth. It had all been overshadowed by my many injuries. Sometimes, though not so much in the past decade, I’d jolt awake from a nightmare of being chased （God, the double entendre）， being lost, unable to run fast enough, hiding in a place where I knew I’d be found . . .
“Lillie?” Ben asked.
I took another sip of bourbon. “Remember . . . uh, that night? Of the accident?”
“Of course I do.”
“Remember how I was muddy and . . . alone?”
He leaned forward. Nodded.
“Chase had a party that night, and I got . . . drunk and stoned and . . . he . . . he tried to rape me.”
Ben’s jaw turned to granite and his eyes narrowed. Otherwise, he didn’t move or speak.
Another big breath for me. “Yeah. So. I got away and ran. Hid in the salt marsh on Town Cove, because I wasn’t thinking clearly, and . . . and they came looking for me.” Suddenly, I was crying. “With flashlights, and I just stayed where I was and didn’t even breathe, just hid in the reeds. When the house was finally dark . . .” I grabbed a napkin and scrubbed it across my eyes. “I ran down to Route 6 and started walking home. And then you picked me up.”
He rubbed a hand across his face, then came over to sit next to me. He put his arm around me and pulled me a little closer, and with Zeus on one side and Ben on the other, it was impossible to not cry. All that . . . kindness.
“Did you ever tell anyone about it? File charges?” he asked, his chin on my hair.
“No. I was drunk and high, I went to his room willingly, a zillion people saw me. And then . . . well, then there was the accident.” I wiped my eyes, blew my nose and stuffed the tissue in my pocket.
Ben was silent, and the only sound was the fire, snapping and hissing. I had never even told Brad about that night. About the accident, sure. But about Chase Freeman’s party? No. I didn’t want him to think of me as a stupid girl, even if I had been only seventeen. That sense of superiority he had, that faint disapproval when someone did something not entirely smart. I hadn’t wanted a lecture about something I’d learned the hard way.
Ben, on the other hand, said nothing, and nothing seemed like the right choice.