At the sound of the crash, he came awake immediately to find himself still alone in bed. It was three thirty-two A.M. He walked into the hall, flipping light switches as he passed. “Laura,” he called, “is that you?”
The hardwood floors felt cold beneath his bare feet. Nothing seemed to be out of the ordinary downstairs, yet by the time he reached the kitchen he had nearly convinced himself that he was about to come face-to-face with an intruder. An old wariness rose in
him, a muscle memory of fight or flight that he'd thought he'd long forgotten.
There was no one in the cellar, or the half bath, or the dining room. The telephone still slept on its cradle in the living room. It was in the mudroom that he realized Trixie must have come home early: Her coat was here, her boots kicked off on the brick floor.
“Trixie?” he called out, heading upstairs again. But she wasn't in her bedroom, and when he reached the bathroom, the door was locked. Daniel rattled it, but there was no response. He threw his entire weight against the jamb until the door burst free.
Trixie was shivering, huddled in the crease made by the wall and the shower stall. “Baby,” he said, coming down on one knee.
“Are you sick?” But then Trixie turned in slow motion, as if he were the last person she'd ever expected to see. Her eyes were empty, ringed with mascara. She was wearing something black and sheer that was ripped at the shoulder.
“Oh, Daddy,” she said, and started to cry.
“Trixie, what happened?”
She opened her mouth to speak, but then pressed her lips together and shook her head.
“You can tell me,” Daniel said, gathering her into his arms as if she were small again.
Her hands were knotted together between them, like a heart that had broken its bounds. “Daddy,” she whispered. “He raped me.” 2
She had kissed him back. They must have both fallen asleep for a while, because Trixie woke up with him leaning over her, his lips against her neck. She'd felt her skin burn where he touched her.
She was jerked back to the present as her father reached for the controls of the heater on the dashboard. “Are you too hot?” Trixie shook her head. “No,” she said. “It's okay.” But it wasn't, not anymore, not by a long shot.
Daniel fiddled with the knob for another moment. This was the nightmare that sank its teeth into every parent's neck. Your child is hurt. How quickly can you make it better?
What if you can't?
Beneath the tires, he heard the name that he couldn't get out of his head, not since the moment he'd found Trixie in the bathroom.
Who did this to you?
Jason. Jason Underhill.
In a tornado of pure fury, Daniel had grabbed the first thing he could lay hold of - a soap dish - and hurled it into the bathroom mirror. Trixie had started shrieking, shaking so hard it took him five minutes to calm her down. He didn't know who'd been more
shocked at the outburst: Trixie, who'd never seen him like this, or
Daniel himself, who'd forgotten. After that, he'd been careful which questions he asked his daughter. It wasn't that he didn't want to talk to her; he was just afraid to hear her answer, and even more afraid he would again do the wrong thing. He had never learned the protocol for this. It went beyond comfort; it went beyond parenting. It meant transforming all the rage he felt right now - enough to breathe fire and blow out the windshield - into words that spread like balm, invisible comfort for wounds too broad to see.
* * 8
Suddenly, Daniel braked hard. The logging truck in front of them was weaving over the median line of the divided highway.
“He's going to kill someone,” Daniel said, and Trixie thought, Let it be me. She felt numb from the waist down, a mermaid encased in ice. “Will Mom meet us there?”
“I hope so, baby.”
It was after her father had wrapped her in a blanket and rocked her and told her they were going to the hospital, when Trixie was still crying softly for her mother, that her father admitted Laura wasn't home. But it's three-thirty in the morning, Trixie had said. Where did she go? There had been a moment where the pain had stopped belonging to Trixie and started to belong to her father instead, but then he'd turned away to get her another blanket, and that was when Trixie realized she wasn't the only casualty of the night.
The logging truck veered sharply to the left. HOW AM i DOING?
read the bumper sticker on its back door, the one that encouraged motorists to report reckless driving to an 800 number. I am doing fine, Daniel thought. I am hale and whole, and next to me the person I love most in this world has broken into a thousand pieces.
Trixie watched the side of the logging truck as her father accelerated and passed it, holding down his horn. It sounded too loud for this hour of the morning. It seemed to rip the sky in half. She covered her ears, but even then she could still hear it, like a scream that sounded from inside.
Weaving back into the right-hand lane of the highway, Daniel stole a glance at Trixie across the front seat. She was curled into a ball. Her face was pale. Her hands were hidden in her sleeves. Daniel bet she didn't even know she was crying. She'd forgotten her coat, and Daniel realized this was his fault. He should have reminded her. He should have brought one of his own.
Trixie could feel the weight of her father's worry. Who knew that the words you never got around to saying could settle so heavy? Suddenly, she remembered a blown-glass candy dish she had broken when she was eleven, an heirloom that had belonged to her mother's grandmother. She had gathered all the pieces and had glued them together seamlessly - and she still hadn't been able to fool her mother. She imagined the same would be true, now, of herself.
If this had been an ordinary day, Daniel thought, he would have been getting Trixie up for school about now. He'd yell at her when she spent too much time in the bathroom doing her hair and tell her she was going to be late. He'd put a cereal bowl out for her on the breakfast table, and she'd fill it with Life. From the moment it was over until the moment she entered her own home, Trixie had said only two words, uttered as she got out of his car. Thank you.
Daniel watched the logging truck recede in his rearview mirror. Danger came in different packages, at different points in a lifetime. There were grapes and marbles and other choking hazards. There were trees too tall for climbing. There were matches and scooters and kitchen knives left lying on the counter. Daniel had obsessed about the day Trixie would be able to drive. He could teach her how to be the most defensive driver on the planet, but he couldn't vouch for the moron truckers who hadn't slept for three days, who might run a red light. He couldn't keep the drunk from having one more before he got behind the wheel of his car to head home.
Out the passenger window, Trixie watched the scenery stream by without registering a single image. She couldn't stop wondering: If she had not kissed him back, would it never have happened?
* * *
The phone rang ten times in Laura's office, a room the size of a walk-in closet, but Daniel couldn't seem to hang up. He had tried everything, everywhere. Laura was not answering the phone in the office; she was not at home; her cell automatically rolled over to the voice message system. She had disconnected herself, on purpose.
Daniel had made excuses for his wife on his own behalf, but he couldn't make them for Trixie's sake. Because for the first time in
his life, he didn't think he could be everything his daughter needed right now.
He cursed out loud and called Laura's office again to leave a message. “It's Daniel. It's four in the morning. I've got Trixie at Stephens Memorial, in the ER. She was . .. she was raped last night.” He hesitated. “Please come.”
* * 8
Trixie wondered if this was what it felt like to be shot. If, even after the bullet went through flesh and bone, you would look down at yourself with detachment, assessing the damage, as if it wasn't you who had been hit but someone else you were asked to appraise. She wondered if numbness qualified as a chronic ache. Sitting here, waiting for her father to come back from the restroom, Trixie cataloged her surroundings: the squeak of the nurse's white shoes, the urgent chatter of a crash cart being rolled across linoleum, the underwater-green cinder block of the walls and the amoeba shapes of the chairs where they had been told to wait. The smell of linen and metal and fear. The garland and stockings hung behind the triage nurse, the afterthought of a Christmas tree that sat next to the wire box holding patient charts. Trixie didn't just notice all these things, she absorbed them, and she decided she was saturating herself with sensation to make up for the thirty minutes she had blocked out of her consciousness.