From This Day On

Her hands moved fast, but clumsily, as she stuffed both items back into the envelope. Desperate to no longer be touching it, she put it in the canvas messenger bag at her feet.

She and Jakob sat in silence for a minute or two that felt longer. Her hands were balled into fists now.

“Amy?”

“I shouldn’t have opened it,” she said in a stifled voice.

“What do you want to do?”

She made herself look at him. “Will you take me home?”

“Yeah.” His voice was very gentle. “Of course I will.”

* * *

“DAMN IT, AMY.” Jakob had insisted on carrying her duffel bag in and now didn’t want to leave. “I can tell you’re upset. You don’t have to be alone.”

“I need to be alone if I’m going to look at it.” She knew she was begging for understanding. “It’s probably nothing. Some kind of joke.”

He didn’t look as if he bought that any more than she did.

“But, in case...” She stopped. “I need to respect her privacy.”

“All right,” he said after a minute, still sounding reluctant. His broad shoulders moved, as if he was uneasy. “Maybe you should call your mother instead. Wait and see what she says.”

“She’d tell me to throw it away.” Amy knew that, as if she could hear her mother’s voice, sharp and alarmed. She also knew that she couldn’t do any such thing. She’d come this far. She had to know.

He opened his mouth, and then closed it. She wondered what he’d been about to say, and why he’d had second thoughts about saying it.

“All right,” he said again. “Will you call me? Let me know what you found? Or at least that you’re okay?”

“Sure,” she said, having no idea if she meant it or not. “I’ll call.”

He left finally, not looking happy. Amy didn’t care. She was entirely fixated on the yellow-orange corner of the manila envelope poking out of her bag. She felt like she imagined a member of the bomb squad did as they carefully approached an IED. She couldn’t afford to let herself be distracted. Something bad would happen.

She waited until the sound of the engine diminished as Jakob drove away from the house. The street was quiet. Although evening approached, the heat of the day lingered and she hadn’t seen any neighbors out working in their yards. Later, when it cooled off, lawn mowers might be fired up. Right now, she had never been more aware of her aloneness.

She felt most comfortable alone. That’s what a lonely childhood did to you.

You know you’re going to do it, so why are you dawdling?

Good question.

Amy made a production out of pouring herself a glass of white wine first, although she kept a cautious eye on the corner of the envelope as if it might explode if she turned her back on it. Then she sat at the table, took a sip of wine and made a face. Ugh. Hanging out with someone like Jakob, who had good taste and plenty of money, could ruin you for real life.

She took another swallow anyway before reaching for the envelope, opening it and dumping the contents onto the table.

Staring at them, she was quite sure the panties hadn’t been clean when Mom put them in the envelope. The crotch was stained and sort of crunchy-looking. Amy’s stomach lurched. She turned her attention to the datebook.

It was, she discovered when she opened it, exactly what she’d assumed. It started in September, with the beginning of the academic year. Her mother’s handwriting was recognizable but immature, more given to rounded lines and swirls than it was now. Mom had liked exclamation points, too. She’d noted assignments, dates of quizzes, when papers were due, but also used it as a diary.

Maybe it was cowardice that had Amy starting at the beginning rather than going right to the end. She never read the last page of books the way some people did. That seemed justification enough for her choice to proceed chronologically.

Amy read the first entries carefully. Her mother had been really excited to be back for her sophomore year. Partly, she’d been glad to get away from home. She had hated, hated, hated her summer job—half a dozen exclamation points—waitressing. Amy made a face. Coincidentally, she had worked as a waitress one summer, too. Apparently she didn’t give off the right vibes, because she got lousy tips and she had vowed to dig ditches the next summer if she had to. Anything else.

Mom developed a crush on a junior, whom she didn’t remember having noticed the year before. He was a transfer student, she eventually discovered. Joel. No last name given. Amy had begun skimming by that time. Michelle Cooper and this Joel did some flirting. He kissed her at a frat party not long before Christmas break.

Amy was flipping pages more and more quickly. Joel’s name kept popping up. Another guy asked Mom out but she didn’t want to go.

He’s okay, she wrote, but I don’t like him that much.

By spring it was apparent that Joel was seeing other girls. Michelle wrote about how she was sure he liked her. She couldn’t understand how he could make out with her in his dorm room one night and then lie with his head on some other girl’s lap the very next day in plain sight on Allquist Field.

The other guy—Steven—was determined. He was in one of Michelle’s classes and always managed to sit next to her. He talked her into having coffee at the Student Union Building a couple of times. She still didn’t sound enthusiastic, but finally she wrote, It’s stupid to just sit in my room. Steven had asked her to have dinner with him and attend the opening night of the spring musical put on by the theater department.

Amy turned the page. Her heart clenched at the sight of blank pages. Nothing for the entire week, not so much as a note about a class assignment. That couldn’t be the end, could it? She turned the page.

The following week, there was two lines, the scrawled handwriting ragged.

He raped me. But who will believe me?

The next week: I can’t go to my Econ. class, not knowing he’ll be there. I’ve been to some of the others, but I watch for him all the time. Yesterday I saw him crossing the field and I felt so sick I ran back to my room and hid for the rest of the day.

Finally, I don’t think I can make myself come back to school here. I don’t ever want to think about what happened again. But I can’t completely pretend, can I?

She wrote about how what she put into the time capsule could be a kind of funeral offering for herself. The old me is dead. She had intended to throw away the panties that had his sperm on them, but when it came time to do laundry each week, she couldn’t make herself touch them. Now she had decided to stuff them into the envelope along with the diary.

There was one last line.

This, she concluded, is what happened to me at Wakefield College. This is what I choose to say: Steven Hardy raped me.

Amy stared at that last line, and at the date when her mother wrote it. Oh, God, oh, God. Heart drumming, she counted on her fingers. Her mother had always said she was premature, and she’d never thought much of it because it was true she was small at six pounds fourteen ounces. That was the weight on the little card that had come home from the hospital, so she knew it was true. But considering she had stayed small and skinny and matured into a slight woman, that wasn’t undersized for full-term, was it?

If her mother had lied, if Amy had in fact been full-term...the timing was right.

Steven Hardy was her father. The man who had raped the young Michelle Cooper.

She felt as if she’d walked into a plate glass window. Bang. Dazed, she knew.

No wonder Mom couldn’t love me.

Amy ran for the bathroom, and barely made it before the acrid bile rose from her stomach.

CHAPTER THREE

JAKOB WENT HOME to his condominium, wishing he’d been able to talk Amy into dinner, at least, before he left her. As scrawny as she’d always been, she wasn’t ever very interested in food. He knew damn well she wouldn’t eat at all if she was upset by whatever her mother had put in that envelope.

He swore out loud, then scanned the contents of his freezer. Pizza was easiest. He turned the oven on, continuing to pace restlessly while he waited for the preheat buzzer.