All We Ever Wanted(40)

Almost immediately, Julie used the word rape.

“It wasn’t rape,” I whispered, huddled under my covers. “I was kissing him….”

“It was rape,” Julie insisted, ahead of her time, or at least ahead of my 1995 views of what constituted date rape. “You need to go to the campus police. Or better yet, the Nashville police.”

I told her that was crazy. Besides, I’d already washed away all the evidence. “Nobody would believe me.”

   “Yes. They will,” she said. “You were a virgin.”

I started to cry again. “I can’t go to the police,” I sobbed.

“Why not?”

Because, I told her, at the very least, I shared the blame. It was my mistake, too. My fault for leading him on. My cross to bear.

I also told her that the only fair punishment was for me to lose Teddy. I would break up with him in the morning—or after his classes and practice. I had to break up with him. It was kinder than telling him what had actually happened.

“But you’ll be punishing him, too,” she said. “Don’t do that, Nina. You have to tell him. You have to talk to him. He’ll agree with me—that you need to go to the police.”

“No. I can’t do that to him, Julie. It would ruin him. My drinking…the kissing…everything. He deserves better than me.”

“But he loves you. He wants you.”

“Not if he knew this,” I said.

“God teaches forgiveness,” she said, grasping at straws, knowing the way Teddy thought—and that I knew that was the way Teddy thought.

“No,” I cried. “Promise me, Julie. You won’t tell him, either. You won’t tell anyone. Ever.”

She made the promise, and she kept it, too. For all these years. Even between the two of us, we rarely spoke of it directly, although she made veiled references whenever a similar case arose in the media. Once, she even mentioned that what happened to me was part of why she was an advocate for women, her clientele almost exclusively female. She said she wished she had done more when she was younger.

I guess the bottom line was, I wish I had done more, too. Because I know that Zach Rutherford raped me. And although I truly believed that Finch hadn’t done anything nearly that horrible to Lyla, it was still terrible. Just like Zach, my son had taken advantage of an innocent girl who was in a vulnerable situation. He had exploited her. Used her. Treated her like trash.

   In many ways, Finch was Zach, and I was Lyla. And I didn’t want Finch to haunt her the way Zach had haunted me.

So I stood up, slinging my purse full of cash over my shoulder, and walked back to my car in the setting spring sun. I wasn’t sure what I would do next. But it would be more than nothing, that was for sure.





I’ve always considered myself lucky that I could mostly earn a living by doing what I love, but a bonus has been the sheer escape that comes with woodworking. What do they call it? Being in the zone or the flow? Whatever the case, I did my best to push everything out of my head that afternoon in my workshop. As I measured, marked, and cut shelves for a spruce bookcase, I felt myself start to relax for the first time in days, my mind going blissfully blank.

Unfortunately, the shelves were too basic—I could have made them blindfolded. So before long, I found my thoughts returning to Nina Browning. I had almost been looking forward to hating her as much as I hated her husband and kid, and I couldn’t wait to throw that goddamn pile of money in her face. Yet for some odd reason, I couldn’t quite muster anything stronger than a mild, theoretical dislike for her, which was frustrating and disorienting. The fact that I felt like I’d met her before didn’t help matters. Unlike Nina, I felt like I was pretty good with faces. But the full truth was I was good with certain faces, the same way I could remember an exceptional piece of furniture. Nina had that sort of vivid, memorable look. Very pretty but not at all generic.

   I glanced at the old-school clock mounted on the wall over my workbench and saw that it was nearly seven. Lyla had gotten a ride home from school with Grace, but I tried to make it a point to be home for dinner, even when I planned to return to my workshop or squeeze in a few late-night Uber trips. I texted her now and asked what she wanted to eat, knowing she’d say she didn’t care. Even when she wasn’t angry with me, she had trouble making decisions. A minute later the predictable reply came in. Don’t care. Not hungry.

As I swept up and put away my tools, my mind returned to Nina. Her face. Her legs, which I’d caught a glimpse of when she stood up to say hello. There was no denying she was attractive, which pissed me off almost as much as the fact that I didn’t hate her. I blew sawdust off my drill bit and told myself it didn’t matter. She was an asshole. I knew her type. Only an asshole married a guy like that, and only an asshole would raise a son who would do what hers did, especially when he had everything in the world going for him. Privilege, popularity, Princeton. She’d said it herself—she was his mother.

Women are just better at faking it if and when they need to, and clearly Nina Browning was either a good actress or just plain crafty. A regular con artist. She knew to ask about Lyla, feigning a little maternal compassion. Her ploy had very nearly worked on me, until she overplayed her hand. There was no chance she wanted me to pursue the Honor Council charges against her son, especially given that he’d just been accepted to Princeton. Zilch. Why would she risk that for a girl she’d never met? She wouldn’t, plain and simple. And to think I’d almost bought her reverse-psychology bullshit. I pictured her now, drinking a martini with her friends, feeling smug about how she’d manipulated another guy with her bullshit lines.