“Will you be all right?”
Cathy smiled wanly. “No. But I need to be alone… with him… to say my final goodbyes.”
After she went upstairs, the house seemed inordinately quiet. As Jade went through the rooms collecting napkins and glasses, she thought how glad she would be to have Graham back, generating noise, creating his little whirlwinds of activity. That might alleviate the emptiness that Mitch had left behind.
She wasn’t sure she could ever go into his study again
without envisioning him there, slumped over in his chair. That would never do, she thought with self-admonishment. She must force herself to picture him perusing one of the books he loved, or walking down the sidewalk hand in hand with Graham, or telling one of his wonderful stories.
The doorbell intruded on her thoughts. She gave her reflection in the hall mirror a cursory glance before pulling open the door.
“Jade—”
She tried to slam the door, but Lamar’s hand shot out and caught it.
“Please, Jade. Let me talk to you for a minute.”
She glared at him, her breasts rising and fall with each agitated breath. “Go away.”
“Please, Jade. I tried all day to find the right time to speak to you.”
“There will never be a right time. Certainly not today.”
Again she tried to close the door, but he insinuated himself between it and the frame. “Jesus, Jade, do you think it was easy for me to come here?”
“I wouldn’t know, you see, because I’ve never raped anyone. I wouldn’t know how difficult or easy it is to face a victim afterward, although you and your friends didn’t seem to have any trouble seeing me at school every day. Which is why I can’t fathom why you found it so difficult to come here tonight.”
He looked miserable. “Whatever you say to me isn’t as bad as what I deserve, Jade. I can’t undo what we did, God knows. But please let me talk to you—for just a few minutes. That’s all I ask.”
She let him inside—perhaps because he acknowledged that what had taken place beside the channel had been against her will. When she thought about it later, that was the only reason she could provide for having let him in.
He quietly closed the door after stepping inside. “Where’s Mrs. Hearon?”
“Upstairs.”
“Can we sit down somewhere?”
“No.” In a subconsciously defensive gesture, Jade folded her arms across her middle. “Say what you came to say, Lamar.”
He was better-looking than he had been during high school, but no more self-assertive. He didn’t argue with her. “Jade, what we did to you—”
“You forced me down into the mud, held my arms and legs, and took turns raping me. That’s what you did, Lamar.”
“Oh, Jesus,” he groaned.
“Apparently your recollections of that night are cloudy. Mine are not. Neal slapped me several times while telling me to shut up. Hutch was the roughest. He hurt me the most.”
Lamar’s skin took on a greenish cast beneath the hall chandelier.
“You were hesitant, but you did it just the same.”
“Because I had no choice, Jade.”
“No choice? What choice did I have?”
“If I had wanted to stop it, what could I have done? Beaten up Neal and Hutch?” He gave a short, barking laugh. “Sure. I can see it now. Don’t you understand?”
“No,” she retorted, her eyes blazing. “Because even if you couldn’t stop it, you didn’t have to participate. You could have stayed behind to help me. You could have come forward and backed up my account of what happened.”