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LEXIE GRIPPED HER CELL phone in her hand, listening to the hushed murmur of her parents’ voices in the room next to her. They were no doubt discussing her, or perhaps more specifically, the scene at the dinner table. She didn’t care though; she didn’t have the inclination to.
Her brother had every right to be angry with her. After all, weren’t the things he said about her true? She left home almost ten years ago, without a second thought. At the time, she wanted to get away from her existing life, the one already mapped out for her as if etched in stone. She wanted more for herself. More than their small town had to offer. Was that so wrong?
Though it had been ten years since she last saw him, she still remembered the day Elliot Anderson walked into her life. Only a couple weeks into her freshman year of high school, he transferred into the Pymatuning Valley School District. They didn’t often have transfers, so such a rare occasion took notice. He was a sophomore, and he took the small school by storm.
The girls gushed over him—his tall, lean build, the tan skin, caramelized from time spent in the sun. He had hair spun with gold, which brushed the back of his neck and softly curled behind his ears. With captivating blue eyes, his contagious positivity and charm swayed everyone he met. And he wasn’t one to discriminate. He socialized with everyone who came his way: the geeks, popular crowd, farm, and 4-H kids, cheerleaders, jocks. Made for the sort of careless small talk and easy banter most envy, he was at ease in anyone’s presence and content to be himself; the type to consider everyone he met a friend. This, Lexie thought, was the biggest reason why everyone wanted to be around him. Simply put, he was magnetic.
Elliot Anderson quickly became the person to aspire to. All the boys started growing their hair out, while the girls brushed off their fathers’ fishing poles, in lieu of their normal after-school activities, to practice one of Elliot’s favorite pastimes. Like neodymium in a magnetic field, even the adults in town couldn’t escape the Elliot charm.
Despite his popularity, he seemed oblivious to the effect he had on people. Ignorant of the way heads turned when he walked into a room, or how the lunch ladies smiled in his presence, giving him larger portions than the rest. All the while, he remained surprisingly humble, only adding another facet to his endearing nature.
Naturally, when Elliot took notice of her and went out of his way to talk to her, she found herself falling for him. It was hard not to be enraptured, making the eight years they spent together as natural as breathing.
The way she left had been brusque, damaging to an extent her relationship with her mother and obliterating the one with her brother. At the time, she saw no other way. She remembered how suffocated she felt, how stifled by small-town life and the farming legacy of her family. One night she went to bed with a family and fiancé she loved, if anything, feeling overwhelmed, and the next morning she woke up, unable to breathe. Trapped.
Were her circumstances, the events of the last two and a half months, penance for hurting her loved ones? Was she simply paying for her sins?
Lexie sighed and shook her head. No one deserved this kind of punishment.
Moving her gaze to her window and the pastures beyond, washed in the silvery glow of the moon, she struggled to shake her thoughts of Elliot...how different her life would be now had she stayed.
They had plans to marry. They wanted a life together, but after they graduated high school and time passed in the slow, lazy country days, she found the future he wanted for them together and the one she wanted for herself had somehow torn and moved in opposite directions. A side effect of young love coming apart at the seams.
He wanted a family, a life in small-town Andover, while her mother pushed for her help on the farm. With this communion of desires, her mother and Elliot’s plans coincided perfectly, creating a ready-made life which Lexie came to resent.
Tired of the restrictions put on her by rural life and having someone plan her future for her, she needed to find her voice. She wanted freedom, to take the reins of her own life. Late nights spent surfing the web, left her lusting after a real career, the city, and the promises that came with a different way of life: a chance to create a new image for herself. One where she wasn’t simply the farmer’s daughter or Elliot’s girl.
Her pocket vibrated, shaking her from her thoughts. Reaching into her jeans, she pulled out her cell phone and glanced at the screen. A text from Sienna.
Apparently, they had plans for tomorrow. Ones she had forgotten about until now—a starving artist sale in Pittsburgh.
Crap. She needed to call her.
With a trembling hand, she dialed Sienna’s number and waited for her to answer.
After several rings, she Sienna’s voice, flush with worry, poured over the line. “Lexie, I’ve been worried about you.”
“I know. I called to tell you that I’m fine. I just decided to spend some time at my parent’s farm. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you before I left. I should’ve come to say goodbye, but it was sort of a last-minute decision.”
“Goodbye? How long do you plan on staying with them?”
“I’m not sure.”
Silence followed her admission, and Lexie could think of no way to fill it.
“Fine. I’m giving you a few weeks before I’m coming out there, and so help me, you are going to tell me what’s going on. I think that’s only fair.”
“Okay,” Lexie said, because there was nothing else to say.
“What’s happened to you?” Sienna said, her voice thick with emotion. “I feel like I’ve lost you.”
That makes two of us. Lexie closed her eyes and swallowed, trying to fight the pulsating wave of grief, threatening to consume her. Maybe she should tell her?
A wave of relief swept through her at the thought. She opened her mouth to say it.
“I’ll call you soon.” The words tumbled out before she could say too much, and she clicked off her phone without waiting for Sienna’s reply.
On a shaky breath, she leaned her forehead against the wall beside her. For the first time since her rape, she felt the sweeping desire to confide in someone. There, in the ache of her throat, the relentless fear, the endless questions roaring inside her head—would she ever be the same again? The woman who wasn’t raped? When a man passed her on the street, would she always shirk away, as if everyone were a monster in disguise? All those things threatened to tumble out. But at the last moment, she kept them safely under wraps. The truth remained hidden as the words lodged in her throat.
Pressing her eyes closed, a sharp pang throbbed in her chest. How could she tell her best friend that her husband raped her? How could she tell her, despite years of trying desperately to conceive, Lexie carried the child she always wanted but could never have?
She couldn’t.
Sienna’s husband’s spawn grew inside of her, and the guilt of that alone trumped all else. The discovery of what Brent did would end their marriage. Sienna would be scarred beyond belief when she discovered her own husband was the one to cause Lexie such pain and, in many ways, ended her life.
All these things formed a pit of guilt she may never crawl out of. And with guilt came responsibility. She should’ve done something to prevent her rape. To stop him. She should’ve fought harder, screamed louder. Something. Anything. It didn’t matter that she pleaded, struggled. Her cries that night had been futile. The moment he threatened her, a paralysis only victims alike understood, took over her body.
Had there been a way to prevent the nightmare? Part of her thought so, while the more rational side of her knew better. There was nothing more she could have done to prevent it. The rape was not her fault, but an irrepressible shame consumed her anyway.
Guilt wasn’t the reason for keeping everything inside. It was the debilitating feeling of worthlessness that stole her breath in the night and settled in her chest like a ton of bricks. Shame—the most incapacitating of emotions—caused her to keep everything inside, wrapped like a sinister present until there was room for nothing else except the poison of her disgraceful thoughts, her unworthiness.
She sunk onto her bed and curled up on her side, tucking her knees up to her chest. The emptiness in the room suddenly seemed ominous, the silence deafening. The tones of her parents’ hushed conversation no longer seeped through the walls.
She wrapped her arms around her body, hugging herself as exhaustion took over and she drifted off to sleep. Moments later, she woke with a start, as she always did.
Her heart thrummed in her chest as she surveyed the darkness around her. Each shadow sent a trickle of fear through her veins like an IV drip. She tried to cast off the feeling of someone watching her, but she couldn’t. The hair on her arms rose, and the familiar pinprick of sweat beaded her brow.
Someone was here. Someone...
She tried to push away the paranoia, but her thoughts couldn’t be silenced. She inhaled in shallow puffs as she waited for someone who may or may not even be waiting in the dark to pounce from the shadows like a jaguar. Just like Brent. Like the night he raped her.
Lexie sat up slowly, bracing herself for anything. She tiptoed to the door, careful not to alert anyone hiding in wait.
At the creak of the old floorboards, her knees threatened to buckle. She swallowed hard, willing the rapid thrum of the pulse in her neck to slow, but the moment her hand touched the cool metal of her doorknob, she plunged herself into the hall.
Forcing down her nausea, she blinked in the darkness. She had expected to step out into the bright hallway of her sterile apartment, with its floor-to-ceiling white, save for her artwork on the walls. Instead, she let the familiarity of her surroundings, her family home, wash over her.
Her gaze traveled the space. The small console table, topped with the glass lamp her mother had gotten from her grandmother years ago, the grandfather clock, the wide plank hardwood floors, and black and white photos of the farm framed on the walls, taken lovingly for her mother last year.
“You’re home,” she murmured to herself. Squeezing her eyes closed, she let the words sink in. You’re home.
Stepping into the bathroom, she retrieved a small blanket from the linen closet, and then padded her way across the cool floor to her parent’s bedroom. The familiar sound of her father’s soft snores floated into the hallway like a forgotten lullaby, and she remembered the nights tiptoeing into their room as a child after a nightmare. They’d welcome her with open arms, and she’d slink under their covers next to them, asleep in seconds. Their presence magically melted away all fear in the way only a parent could.
She may be too old to sleep in their room, but instead, Lexie curled up on the hard floor just outside their door and pulled the blanket tighter around her shoulders. She wished she had her pillow, but there was no way she was going back in that room alone. Though she knew she was safe and was merely being paranoid, her fear was alive and well. It was a part of her, like a scar on her side, and she wondered if it always would be. If she’d have to carry this forever.
She laid her head on her arm and closed her eyes, willing herself to sleep, focusing on the image of her parents tucked into bed, only feet from where she lay. She tried to imagine the feeling of safety like a tangible object—something she could grasp and hold onto. Sleep seemed an elusive creature, meant for only those with a greater sense of security, but the snores from within the room, like the soft bellows of a morning dove, lulled her to sleep like a baby.
***
DAWN BROKE OVER THE Dodson farm like fire over the fields. Looking up from the soil where she crouched, Lexie held one hand to her forehead, shielding her eyes from the worst of the sun’s glare.
It was a beautiful day for planting, and she needed the distraction. These last weeks spent at her parent’s farm had not exactly been therapeutic, but she supposed they were as close to therapy as she was going to get. Helping with preparations for the new season kept her busy. With her hands in the earth and dirt under her nails, she could focus slightly better on the present. The sun on her back, the breeze in her hair.
The first morning she showed up to work the earth, her parents had protested, not wanting her to exert herself too much. “All of the crouching, squatting, and bending is uncomfortable in your condition,” her mother had said, but Lexie reminded her she had yet to start showing and her fatigue would be a small price to pay for something to do.
What she didn’t tell her was that she needed this more than anything, more than she needed to breathe. She needed a reprieve from the constant, toxic thoughts swirling through her head.
Earlier in the week, she had ridden with her father on the tractor, much like she had as a child. Large furrowing shovels attached to the tractor formed the raised beds now covered in thick black plastic and later punched with holes for planting. The whole family worked in the fields today planting cuttings to add to their strawberry crop. Soon, they would flourish into thick rows of green and, in more time, would be heavy with ruby-red fruit.
She took another strawberry cutting from her basket and planted it in the hole, then stood. Wiping her hands on the seat of her pants, she stretched her back and glanced down at her stomach. Her abdomen was slightly swollen. Only someone who knew her well would notice.
As she stared down at her growing midsection, she didn’t place one hand lovingly over the baby. She didn’t stroke the tiny bump with the affection of a mother-to-be. Instead, she eyed the spot below her belly button with distaste. She couldn’t imagine how she would carry herself months from now. Having to live with her shame was bad enough without having to wear it on the outside like the scarlet letter.
“I think we’re about done. You did a fine job.”
Startled, Lexie turned to her mother and then shifted her gaze back to the soil and her empty basket. She hadn’t heard her approach and realized, much to her chagrin, that her mother must have finished planting the remaining cuttings, which meant there would be little left they’d allow her to do.
“You sure planted a lot this year. You think everything will do well?” Lexie asked.
Her mother nodded, crossing her arms in front of her. “I think we’ll do just fine. Your brother’s done a great job turning us into a three-dimensional operation. The pick-your-own farm did splendid last year, and it’s expected to do even better this year. With the new stand, I’m excited to see just how well we do this summer.”
“Everything’s planted. All you have left to do is finish the store, right?”
Her mother nodded. She wiped a strand of hair out of her eye with her gloved hand, smearing a bit of dirt on her cheek. “Yeah. We hope to have the market done in the next couple weeks. You know I always wanted to have our own store. I love that we’re selling directly now. We owe this new success to your brother, you know. Not just because of all the physical work he’s put in, but Ed would never have agreed to do this if it weren’t for Phillip’s persuasion and know-how.”
Lexie removed her gloves and retrieved the bottle of ice water by her feet. She fought her annoyance at the reverence in her mother’s tone when she spoke of Phillip. Taking a long swallow, she asked, “When do you think people will be able to come and pick?”
“Probably not until mid-June. We’ll run the pick-your-own for two months, and then sell the rest in the following weeks. The overflow or battered berries will be made into jam and tarts, then sold in the store, as well. We’ll do the same with our blackberries and pumpkins when it’s time. Everything will be used, and nothing will go to waste, increasing our profit margin. It’s exciting times.” Her mother shook her fists in triumph, and her weathered skin creased into a smile.
“It’s really something, Mom.” Lexie shrugged. “I’m glad I’m going to get to be a small part of it.”
“You could be a bigger part if you’d like. You’ve always had the option of working with us here. You could talk to Phil, smooth things over. Tell him you’re staying for the long haul. In fact, he’s probably figuring you into the picture right now, in case you decide to stay. He’ll think of a position for you with a newborn,” she said.
Lexie sighed. She didn’t want to get into an argument and didn’t need the guilt trip. “I’d love to think Phil would be thrilled, but we both know that’s not true. The things he said the other night weren’t wrong, and now he’s just waiting for me to leave. He knows I’m not here permanently. I don’t think I’m in anything for the long haul these days, life included.” She balled her fists, frustration seeping into her words like a leaky valve.
“And you seem to be forgetting, I’m not keeping this,” she said, pointing toward her stomach. It was the first time Lexie had mentioned the baby since her admission at the dinner table her first night home, and even the current acknowledgement felt as though it cost her something.
Swallowing over the burn in her throat, she tried to ignore the way her mother’s eyes flashed.
“At some point, you and your brother are going to need to get over this. You’re family, and family comes first. As for the baby,” she said, pointing to Lexie’s stomach. “It’s family too. How you can just throw this opportunity away is beyond me.”
“I know, Mom. You’ve drilled the importance of family into us since we could walk, but Phil doesn’t want anything to do with me, nor do I have the time or energy to make him care. He’s mad because I left, because I wanted something different than the life everyone laid out for me. None of that is going to change just because I’m here for five months. If he wants to hold a grudge, then so be it. I can’t make him grow up. As for the baby, it’s not my family. It’s nothing to me. It’s just something I have to deal with right now.”
Her mother gasped, flinching as though she’d been struck. Shaking her head, she turned away and began to stalk off, but after two steps, she paused, her hands flexing by her side, as if in some internal struggle. Only then did she swivel around and jab an angry finger in Lexie’s face. “I don’t know who you are, but you don’t sound like my daughter. Regardless, I get that you don’t want this baby. I get that you’ll only be here five months. I get it. You plan on giving birth to my grandbaby, then giving it away to some stranger to raise, as if it’s nothing more than some problem you can barter away. But as far as I know, you haven’t arranged an adoption yet. Heck, I don’t even know if you’ve seen a doctor, and for all I know, you don’t even know who the father is, considering the fact that you refuse to tell me who he is. So, you can sit there and tell me about these plans you have like they’re so simple. Give birth, and up and leave again, like nothing ever happened, but, quite frankly honey, it doesn’t work that way. Nothing in life is that easy.”
Lexie cringed, the words piercing her to the core. Because they were true. Every one of them, except one. She did know who the father was. She only wished she didn’t.
She said nothing as she blinked back at her mother, her eyes watering slightly, even as she willed them to remain dry.
“So, I’m right, aren’t I?” her mother asked. “You haven’t made any plans for the baby yet or gone to the doctor.” She shook her head with a bark of laughter. “Something’s not right about all this.”
Lexie’s stomach clenched. The last thing she wanted to talk about was the baby. She didn’t want to talk about what happened. All she wanted was to go back to the house, to her room, curl up into a ball, and pray for relief from sleep. Of course she hasn’t been to the doctor yet. Grief had made it impossible to see anything other than repulsion at her condition. She didn’t even value her own life, let alone the unwanted one growing inside her.
When she said nothing, her mother moved forward and put her hands on her shoulders. “You’re scaring the crap out of your father and me. You walk around in a daze. You hardly eat, especially for a woman who’s over four months pregnant. The life in your eyes is gone.” Her mother’s voice thickened. “And for the past couple weeks, you’ve been sleeping on the floor outside our room. You think we don’t notice these things you hide, but we do.”
Lexie’s face burned at being caught, so she turned away, unable to look her mother in the eye any longer. A thirty-year-old woman unable to sleep without her parents was far from normal, and her failed efforts to wake early each morning and move back to her bedroom was disheartening.
Lexie opened her mouth to speak, but, for a moment, nothing came out. What could she say that would explain away her actions? What could she say that would somehow make everything okay, when she knew nothing in the world—no actions, no words—would make anything okay again.
“I don’t know what to say.” Her words sounded more like an apology than an explanation.
“How about the truth.”
Her mother drilled her with a look, but even the deep, clear blue of her mother’s eyes did nothing to soothe her.
Fear fluttered in Lexie’s chest like a winged beast. Her throat ached, and her eyes stung with moisture because she knew there was no way out of this but the truth. She knew what she must do, and it nearly killed her.
“I was raped,” she rasped, nearly choking on the words. Each syllable sliced her throat like a blade.
Her mother’s expression froze. Then, as if hitting a play button, she stepped forward and gripped Lexie’s arms, her fingers digging into soft flesh, her eyes boring into Lexie as if seeking the truth.
But Lexie felt nothing. She was numb.
Only when she heard her mother moan, a wounded cry, did her actions sink in. She had confessed. She had told someone what happened, and even as she felt the weight of her secret lift off her chest, it descended into the pit of her stomach like a lead weight.
In one swift movement, Lexie toppled over, bending at the waist like a wilted flower as her stomach rolled. Covering her mouth, she dry-heaved once, before pitching forward onto her knees and retching onto the soil
She vomited until her stomach cramped and a sheen of sweat coated her entire body. Until there was nothing left. Not even the bond of silence.