The Red Hunter(94)
“You go first,” said Josh, as if he heard her. “I’ll hand the bag up to you.”
The two men stood staring at each other, a stand-off. The way the light fell on them, she could see for the first time that they each had black eyes and bloody noses.
“Have it your way,” said the stranger. His lips curled up in a nasty un-smile. Raven knew somehow, she just knew, if Josh left her and Troy down here with the other man, he’d kill them both. Her whole body was tense, lungs tight.
The other man put the bag down and climbed up quickly. He reached down for the bag; Josh handed it up. It disappeared from view.
Josh turned quickly and whispered.
“Go,” he said. “Fast. The door on the other side is open and your mom needs a doctor. Don’t tell anyone what happened. They will kill you; I won’t be able to help you.”
Before they started to run, the door above them slammed closed, leaving all three of them down there. They heard the click of the lock, then boots running.
“That fucker,” Josh said.
The flashlight flickered, browning out then coming back on. Josh turned and ran back into the darkness of the tunnel from where he came. Raven and Troy followed, terror a big knot in her throat. The closer they got, the narrower the tunnel became until they had to get to hands and knees. Raven could see the light up ahead.
“Mom!” Raven yelled. “Mom!”
Troy panted behind her. They got closer and closer to the light; they were almost there. Then the light ahead started to die, and the door, their only way out, closed and locked, as well.
“No.” The word came out a hoarse and desperate yell.
Josh banged pointlessly on the door. “Don’t do this,” he yelled. “Rhett!”
The flashlight chose that moment to die completely, and they were cast into pitch-black. Raven started to scream.
thirty-eight
Claudia dreamed about Ayers.
“Get up, Claud,” he was saying. “You can’t just lie there. She needs you.”
“I can’t,” she said. God, her head was pounding; her limbs were so heavy. “I’m sorry.”
She wasn’t apologizing for not being able to get up. But for everything else.
“Don’t be sorry, darling” he said. Cool, rational, like always. “Just wake up.”
It was actually her fault. The reason she and Ayers didn’t make it. She could see that now. At the time she thought it was him. Most people assumed that it was him, that he couldn’t handle what had happened to her, that he couldn’t accept Raven, that maybe on some primal level, he didn’t want Claudia after she’d been violated. Or maybe, they assumed, she didn’t want him, or any man ever again. People made a lot of assumptions about trauma, about rape, about men and women. Old ideas and attitudes clung to the DNA, even if intellectually or culturally we think we’ve moved on.
But really, when she looked at it in moments of clarity, it was Claudia who was to blame for how it all fell apart. She thought he couldn’t understand her pain. Ayers wanted so badly for her to move on, for them to go back to where they were. But nothing in Claudia’s body, mind, or spirit could allow that, and there was no way back to the person she was before Melvin Cutter raped her. Ayers wanted her to forget. But every time she climbed the stairs, or the room got too dark, she saw Melvin Cutter lurking in doorways. Ayers wanted her to stop writing, stop posting, stop talking about it, but that was the only thing that made her feel better, that gave her any power.
Claudia grew to hate him for his distance from the rape. She hated him for not being the first man through the door. She hated him for being able to forget—from her perspective—what happened. She even hated him—darkly, secretly—for loving Raven with his whole heart as he clearly did. She was ashamed of that more than anything else; it was baser than she knew herself to be. Because Ayers had promised Claudia that he could love the baby completely, that he would convince himself that there was no way she might not be his. The universe would not punish them in that way. And he did that. And somehow, even though she did exactly the same, she hated him for it. She’d have had more compassion, hated him less, if he’d had to work at it.
Ayers wasn’t raging, holding on to anger, filled with a desire for revenge against the man who hurt her. He forgave; he moved forward. She’d been beaten and raped in their home. She’d lost her freedom, her identity, her sense of safety. And Ayers was as evolved as a monk. That’s what undid them, she realized much later, how easily he got past it all. She saw it as a kind of betrayal.
She confided in Martha when, after so much therapy, she finally got it.
“It’s primal,” her sister said. “You want him to beat his chest, turn back time, and protect you. You want him to be in the house with you that night and stop all of it before it happened. But you didn’t fall in love with Ayers because he was a tough guy. You married him because he was everything Dad wasn’t.”
Dad. Distant. Strict disciplinarian. Ruthless businessman. Never showed either of them an ounce of affection. Claudia could never remember him even kissing their mother. He was gone most of the time, a fearful stick figure in their lives. Mom was the soft one, the loving one who was always there—hosting sleepovers, going on field trips. If Mom was unhappy with Dad, she’d never showed it.