At some point, all of her must have fallen asleep, because she startled awake when Rufus leaped off the bed barking. He’d probably heard Isaac’s car come up the drive. She jumped up too, a bit dizzy, swept her hand over the bed to straighten it, then snuck downstairs.
Rufus had detained Isaac in an exuberant greeting. The man was kneeling, stroking the dog’s head. “Why so happy to see me, boy?” When he saw Evangeline, he frowned as if worried. “Tired?”
“A little groggy,” she said. “Guess I fell asleep.”
He stood and scanned the counters. No sign of food prep. “Rufus eat yet?”
She shook her head no.
“You eat?”
She shook her head again.
“It’s after nine. You really did fall asleep. Why don’t you feed Rufus. I’ll grill us turkey-cheese sandwiches.”
“You sure? I’m sorry. I didn’t mean . . .”
“You’ve made dinner the last couple of nights.”
Isaac looked tired too, a gray weariness around his eyes, but there he was, already pulling out what he’d need. Evangeline wondered if she’d been wrong about him, wondered if love could look like that, like a tired old man searching through his refrigerator for meat and cheese.
* * *
—
AFTER A QUIET MEAL EATEN AND CLEARED, she lay on her bed, Rufus in his usual place at the foot. Everything felt different. She hadn’t imagined the other presence in the room. Daniel had been there. She had, for a brief time, been Daniel with his pumped-up power and sense of destiny. But these entitlements seemed forced, as if not quite believed. And rumbling beneath them, she’d felt insecurity and shame and a nagging loneliness. Some great sadness too, as if his heart had been broken. Yet she struggled to believe this could be true for Daniel, to believe that a boy like that—the whole world ripe for his picking—could have suffered too.
She examined the clues for the millionth time. Sammy claimed she had dumped Daniel right before the murder. And that night in the woods, he’d said, “You want me, you want me,” his eyes watery and strange. She tried to create a new version of that night, one that caused her less pain. But nothing worked. Even if he hadn’t meant to hurt her, he’d been blind and reckless and indifferent. He’d treated her as if she were nothing more than a prop in some story of his own.
Daniel had raped her. There. She allowed herself the word. She might not have been screaming, but she had not been confusing or vague. She was no longer going to tell herself she had been. Lying to herself hadn’t made her feel better. Though she’d been his victim, she had not been weak. And she was not a victim still. She’d been strong. She’d taken the control she could.
It was strange how admitting this, seeing it for what it was, didn’t make it harder to forgive Daniel. In fact, she felt an opening she hadn’t before. She’d been battling herself, forcing herself to forgive him without admitting what he’d done, afraid that if she dared acknowledge the truth, even to herself, she’d be lost forever in anger at the boy who might be the father of her child. But now she understood. You can see the crimes that people commit, see them in their clear brutality, and yet someday, somehow, forgive. It might be the only way. How is forgiveness of what is not acknowledged forgiveness at all?
But knowing this didn’t mean she’d actually done it. So she tried one last thing. She pictured Daniel as a little kid, the boy who’d lain on that bed for years, his arm thrown over a foul-smelling pit bull. She didn’t mind that boy so much. Tomorrow, she’d take another stab at it and imagine him a little older. She’d build him day by day. At some point, he’d be the boy who tunneled her into the woods. She couldn’t fix that, but by then he’d be other things too.
It was weird how desperately she wanted to forgive him and weirder still that she almost could. This wasn’t for Daniel’s benefit. What use could he make of it now? She had to save her own heart. It came down to that. She’d been feeding herself poison for years, annoyances and resentments, bitterness and rage. Before, if she killed off her heart, so what? It had been nothing more than a ticking menace that stabbed at her, wanting, wanting, always hungry and angry and lost.
But now, now, it had to be saved for the baby. The baby needed her heart. One way or another, doesn’t a mother’s heart always end up beating inside her children?
So she would work on forgiving Daniel, and then she would turn to forgiving herself. And hadn’t she already made progress? No longer taking blame for Daniel’s acts? Which left the myriad small crimes and self-indulgences she’d engaged in all her life.
Of course, she’d be left with her trip to Bremerton. If she could forgive herself for that, she might find true relief. But how was that possible? She would always see herself opening that car door and climbing in, knowing full well what was on the other side. Where was the latitude in that?
Evangeline closed her eyes, trying to blot out the memory. She had forgotten about Rufus when he began crawling up the bed. He stopped halfway and lay with his nose inches from her belly, staring at the mound that was the baby.
It was as if he were seeing into someone’s eyes.
49
Once, in my late thirties, I kissed Abigail Groff. We were both married, and it never went further. But as the clearness committee continued, as Abigail raised her ever-thoughtful questions, I found myself wondering what my life would have been like if we hadn’t stopped things where we did. Increasingly my attention during these sessions was plagued by pointless fantasies of a life I hadn’t had.
Over the next few meetings, the focus of my concerns narrowed to my failure to protect Daniel from his friend. I convinced myself my greatest fault lay there. For the fourth meeting, I came prepared, having scavenged my memory for images and snippets proving the danger posed by Jonah. I described him at five, hysterical after losing a board game; at eight, holding Daniel’s model airplane, its wings cruelly smashed; at ten, standing behind Daniel in choir, knuckling him so hard he yelped. I didn’t feel anger at Jonah for these things. The rage I felt was at myself for missing the signs.
The three Friends listened with respectful attention, but I felt strongly that they were failing to see the urgency, were mistakenly interpreting these vignettes as the stuff of normal boyhood. This attitude was reflected in questions that seemed increasingly pointed: “Can you recall Daniel ever doing anything similar?” Ralph asked.
Grasping for something they’d understand, I said, “He hurt Rufus.”
Theirs heads darted up with new interest. They’d probably heard that psychopaths often practiced their sadism on animals. I told them another story. One I’d convinced myself was true. They hardly needed one more tale about Jonah. Nor did I. But I had created a thesis and become obsessed with marshaling evidence in support.
When the boys were twelve or thirteen, Jonah wanted Rufus to join them in the tree house. The boys tried to recruit me to hoist him up, but I declined, not seeing how any good would come of it. Sometime later, I glanced out and saw Rufus dangling in midair. They had rigged a sling padded with towels, created a harness out of rope, and tied it to another rope they’d tossed over a branch. Daniel was using his weight to offset the dog’s as Jonah, braced in the clubhouse door, pulled him up. By the time I got out, Rufus was barking away up there.