The Shadow Box(79)

“You saw what he wanted you to see,” I said, picturing him at that age—at any age. “Charming, fun . . .”

“And he had a girlfriend,” Jackie said. “So you would never have thought he’d be dangerous to you.”

“What happened?” I asked. “After you called Ellen to help you?”

“Nothing,” Spencer said. “I heard Griffin say, ‘Let her go swimming if she wants.’ For some reason, that sobered me up. I realized if I stayed in the water searching for Marnie, I might not come back.”

“What did Ellen do?” I asked.

“She and the boys left me there. They went back to the hotel. As they drove away, I screamed for Ellen to send help. It took forever, but finally some police—so-called police—arrived.”

“They weren’t?”

“They were resort security,” Spencer said. “They had uniforms on, drove a car with a flashing light on top. I was too messed up to realize at first. They came running down the beach, wrapped me up in a blanket, and tried to get me to leave—without even going in to try to find Marnie. No rescue squad—nothing.”

“What about Griffin and Dan?” I asked. “And Ellen? What did they say?”

“They left the resort that night,” Spencer said. “Their whole party. The Lockwoods checked out and returned to Connecticut.”

“Wasn’t there an inquest?” Jackie asked.

Spencer shook her head. “We’d been drinking. Everyone said Marnie’s death was an accidental drowning—and it was, in the sense that nobody held her under. But she’d been terrified—she ran into the water to get away from Griffin. When I told them that he had raped her, that Dan had tried to rape me, they never even investigated.” She took a deep breath. “To them, we were just a bunch of kids partying, having fun.”

“Did anyone even examine you? Or Marnie . . . after she was found?”

“No. We were just chambermaids, and they were paying customers—no one was going to ask questions.”

“The Lockwoods paid them off,” I said.

“Of course they did,” Spencer said.

My skin was crawling as I thought of the vile thing Griffin had done to Marnie. My husband had raped a young woman. And Ellen had watched and done nothing. Dan Benson, now grieving for his wife, had assaulted Spencer. And the Lockwoods—my friends, Leonora and Wade—had whisked the boys away that same night, as if they had never even been there at all.

“Why did Griffin say to let you go swimming if you wanted?” Jackie asked.

“Isn’t it obvious?” Spencer asked. She stared at Jackie, then at me. I felt the blood rushing through my body.

“It is,” I said.

“I was inconvenient,” she said.

“He hoped you’d drown too,” Jackie said.

“Yes. Because if I had, there would be no one left outside their circle to tell the story,” Spencer said.

“Did you ever tell anyone?” I asked. “After that night?”

“For a long time, no,” she said. “I quit work—went home to my parents. All they knew was that Marnie drowned. That I was traumatized. I wrote her parents saying how sorry I was—they wrote back telling me it wasn’t my fault, that horrible accidents happened. The story, with our friends, became that Marnie was a daredevil, lived on the edge, took one risk too many. And I never contradicted them.”

“You never told about the rape?” I asked.

“What was the point? She was gone, they had to mourn her, and I didn’t see the point of telling them what Griffin did. What she went through. No one down there believed me—there was no proof, and no one was going to make Griffin pay. All I wanted to do was forget.” She paused. “I did a good job of that. Took a long time to go back to college. Found very effective ways to keep from thinking about what happened. But then I knew.”

“Knew what?” Jackie asked.

“That I had to help women who’d faced men like Griffin. I finished college, went to law school. But that wasn’t enough. I was only able to represent one woman at a time, so I established a foundation that can do much more.”

“I know you fund clinics and go after abusers in court,” I said. “But how do you raise the money?”

“I used part of what I inherited from my grandmother,” Spencer said. “She would have liked nothing more than to help this cause. We have a network of journalists that publicize specific stories, and those reports bring in donors.”

I nodded, taking that in. I felt a surge of energy, knowing that I wanted to be involved in this. I was already using my experience to tell my story—and Ellen’s—through shadow boxes like Fingerbone. But I wanted to do more.

“When I read about you,” Spencer said to me, “I knew it was time to focus on Griffin. He has such entitlement—prosecuting criminals when he’s worse than any of them. And now, running for governor. He got away with Marnie’s death for so long. I couldn’t let him get away with yours.”

“And you want to stop him,” I said.

“So do you, right?”

“Yes,” I said. “I didn’t know about you and Marnie. But I know about Ellen.”

“He killed her because she knew. She was the only one besides me. Once I started the foundation, I worried he might come after me, but I’m very careful. My house is in the name of my trust; he’d never find it,” Spencer said.