“You lied to the police.”
Trixie rolled over, stricken. “You're going to listen to some stupid detective instead of . . .”
“What were you thinking?” Daniel exploded. Trixie sat up, taken aback. “What were you thinking?” she cried. “You knew. You had to know what was going on.” Daniel thought of the times he had watched Trixie pull up in Jason's car after a date, when he had moved away from the window He'd told himself it was for her privacy, but was that true? Had he really turned a blind eye because he couldn't bear to see that boy's face close to his daughter's, to see his hand graze the bottom of Trixie's breast?
He'd seen towels in the wash smeared with heavy eye makeup he couldn't remember Trixie wearing out of the house. He'd kept silent when he heard Laura complain because her favorite pair of heels or shirt or lipstick had gone missing, only to find them underneath Trixie's bed. He'd pretended not to notice how Trixie's clothes fit tighter these days, how her stride shimmered with confidence.
Trixie was right. Just because a person didn't admit that something had changed didn't mean it hadn't happened. Maybe Trixie had screwed up ... but so had he.
“I knew,” he said, stunned to speak the words aloud. “I just didn't want to.”
Daniel looked at his daughter. There were still traces of Trixie as a stubborn little girl - in the curve of her chin when her jaw clenched, in the dusky length of her lashes, in her much-maligned freckles. She wasn't all gone, not yet. As he pulled Trixie into his arms and felt her unspool, Daniel understood: The law was not going to protect his daughter, which meant that he had to.
“I couldn't tell them,” Trixie sobbed. “You were standing right there.”
That was when Daniel remembered: When the doctor asked Trixie if she'd ever had intercourse before, he'd still been in the examination room.
Her voice was small, the truth curled tight as a snail. 'I didn't want you to be mad at me. And I thought if I told the doctor that Jason and I had already done it, she wouldn't believe I got raped. But it could still happen, couldn't it, Daddy? Just because I said yes before doesn't mean I couldn't say no this time
. . . ? ' She convulsed against him, crying hard. You signed no contract to become a parent, but the
responsibilities were written in invisible ink. There was a point when you had to support your child, even if no one else would. It was your job to rebuild the bridge, even if your child was the one who burned it in the first place. So maybe Trixie had danced around the truth. Maybe she had been drinking. Maybe she had been flirting at the party. But if Trixie said she had been raped, then Daniel would swear by it.
“Baby,” he said, “I believe you.”
* * *
A few mornings later, when Daniel was out at the dump, Laura heard the doorbell ring. But by the time she reached the hallway to answer
it, Trixie was already there. She stood in her flannel pajama bottoms and T-shirt, staring at a man standing on the porch. Seth was wearing work boots and a fleece vest and looked as if he hadn't slept in several days. He was looking at Trixie with confusion, as if he couldn't quite place her. When he saw Laura approach, he immediately started to speak. “I've got to talk to you,” he began, but she cut him off.
She touched Trixie's shoulder. “Go upstairs,” she said firmly, and Trixie bolted like a rabbit. Then Laura turned to Seth again.
“I cannot believe you had the nerve to come to my house.”
“There's something you need to know . . .”
“I know that I can't see you anymore,” Laura said. She was shaking, partly with fear, partly because of Seth's proximity. It had been easier to convince herself that this was over when he wasn't standing in front of her. “Don't do this to me,” she whispered, and she closed the door.
Laura rested against it for a second, eyes closed. What if Daniel had not been at the dump, if he'd opened the door, instead of Trixie? Would he have recognized Seth on sight, simply by the way his face changed when he looked at Laura? Would he have gone for Seth's throat?
If they'd fought, she'd have sided with the victim. But which man was that?
Gathering her composure, Laura walked up the stairs toward Trixie's room. She wasn't sure what Trixie knew, or even what she suspected. Surely she had noticed that her parents barely spoke these days, that her father had taken to sleeping on the couch. She had to wonder why, the night of the rape, Laura had been staying overnight in her office. But if Trixie had questions, she'd kept them to herself. It was as if she instinctively understood what Laura was only just figuring out: Once you admitted to a mistake, it grew exponentially, until there was no way to get it back under wraps.
Laura was tempted to pretend that Seth was a Fuller Brush salesman or any other stranger but decided she would take her cues from Trixie herself. Laura opened the door to find Trixie pulling a shirt over her head. “That guy,” she said, her face hidden. “What was he doing here?”
Well . . .
Laura sat down on the bed. “He wasn't here because of you. I mean, he's not a reporter or anything like that. And he's not coming back. Ever.” She sighed. “I wish I didn't have to have this conversation.”
Trixie's head popped through the neck of the shirt. “What?”
“It's finished, completely, one hundred percent. Your father knows, and we're trying . . . well, we're trying to figure this out. I screwed up, Trixie,” Laura said, choking over the words. “I wish I could take it back, but I can't.”
She realized that Trixie was staring at her, the same way she used to gaze hard at a math problem she simply couldn't puzzle into an answer. “You mean . . . you and him . ..” Laura nodded. “Yeah.”
Trixie ducked her head. “Did you guys ever talk about me?”
“He knew you existed. He knew I was married.”
