Better Left Buried (6 page)

“
Let go of me!” She tried to shake him, but he was much stronger than he looked. “Help! Someone help me!”

Panic replaced anger and the man
shoved her backward, hard, into a brick wall to shut her up.

“
Shhh
. Stop your damn yelling!” Her head ached like he’d split her skull and all she could see was white light and the edges of shapes forming in her peripheral vision. “You stay quiet. You shut the hell up or I’ll kill you, you hear me?” He shoved her again, this jolt to her head harder than the last, and her knees buckled as she fought passing out.

Something hard, like a gun, jabbed her side as
the man hooked her arm around his neck. He dragged her into a nearby alley and spun her around to face him. She was propped up against a dumpster that smelled of spoiled food. Saliva filled her mouth and she thought she’d be sick. She dry heaved.

The man
laughed.

“Leave me alone,” she
mumbled, praying to regain her strength.

Her vision cleared,
though her ears rang loudly, and she was able to get her feet firmly under her.

He held onto her with one
hand and unzipped his pants with the other, reaching inside his tattered boxers with a hand he’d spit on. “Come on, come on.” He was trying to work himself up and failing. “You see what you did, you little bitch?”

He pulled her hair to force her gaze downward
. She pinched her eyes shut, easing her hand toward her pocket.

The man kept at himself
. “You see? You see what you did?” He’d become obsessed with his inability to perform, his focus almost entirely off of her.

She had to play things right because chances were, even
drunk, the man was faster and stronger than she was. He groaned and tugged, closing his eyes, imagining God knows what. She waited for him to reopen them and blasted him with an ill-placed stream of pepper spray that rained down on them both. A clear thread poured from the man’s large nose and his eyes watered, but whether it was the booze keeping him from feeling the pain or something else, the irritant didn’t deter him.

I
t angered him.

“You stupid little whore.
Fight all you want.
Please
. That just makes this better.”

He pushed her to
the ground, grinning with malicious intent as he exposing her breasts and tore out the crotch of her stockings. His eyelids were swelling, but he kept blinking, determined to take what he wanted. “You think that’s the first time I’ve ever been sprayed?” His laugh bordered on maniacal.

She
coughed, her chest tightened, and she could scarcely breathe, but she kept her knees pressed tightly together even as he tried to force them back apart. Her eyes burned, watering heavier as the spray worked its way between her lids. The man mistook that for tears.

“Stop crying.” His
calloused hands scraped her skin as he clawed at her. He was hard now. It was only a matter of time.

She fought for all she was worth, kicking and punching, but she couldn’t match his strength or intensity.

None of this would have happened if she had let Adam take her to the appointment.

She screamed, each word burning her
constricting throat.

“Help.
Help. Help!”

Tires squealed and the smell
of burnt rubber moved as a cloud through the alley.

Adam appeared;
his face tight with anger. He pulled the man off her and delivered a single solid punch to his jaw, knocking him into the dumpster. The half-dressed drunk collapsed, one arm over his head, revealing a gun in his waistband.

Harmony
froze from shock.

“Are y
ou all right? Are you hurt?” Adam backed away and looked her over like a parent examining a child who had fallen. “Oh my God. I’m so sorry. Harmony, can you move?”

She forced herself to sit up,
her shoulders and hips hurting, gravel ground into the skin on her back. She shook the trash from her hair and adjusted her shirt, unable to stop staring at the man who had attacked her.

A pool of blood s
eeped from his temple, matching a spot on the dumpster where his head had slammed into the metal edge.

Adam followed her gaze.
“Come on. We have to go.” She didn’t answer. “Harmony, we have to get out of here. Now!”

Her mind played out the inevitable police scenario.
She looked around for anything she may have dropped. “We have to get my things. They’ll trace this back to me. We have to get everything.”

Adam eased her onto her feet and into the passenger’s side of his truck. “I’ll make sure I
grab it all.”

She
watched as he scurried to put things right, praying the man she’d have killed herself five minutes earlier wasn’t dead.

“Check.” Adam got into the driver’s seat, sweaty and spattered with blood
, and set her stuff between them. “Check to make sure that’s all of it.”

She did as much of an inventory as her strained mind could manage. “I think so.”

“Shit, Harmony. This is bad.” He was hurt. There was blood on his hand and at least some of it was his.

She wanted to dote, to ask if he was okay, but all she kept thinking was why
had he shown up in the first place.

“How did you find me?”
She stared ahead, dazed, hurt, and scared.

“That’s what you have to say to me right now?”
He squeezed the fish mouth wound closed to help it clot, but he was bleeding pretty hard. “I got what I could get done at the shop, but I told Walter I had to go to your appointment. I went to Bennett’s office and when you weren’t there, I just started circling the bus stop near 9th. When I saw that broken bottle, I was afraid something was wrong.” Blood spilled over the back of his hand. “Then I heard you screaming.”

“Just my luck, right?”

“I’d call it pretty lucky.” Adam unclenched his jaw and pointed to the glove compartment. “Hand me a napkin.”

She
passed him a wrinkled stack. “Why did you think you had to come to Bennett’s?”

He wrapped the napkins around his knuckles and started the truck.
“How about ‘thank you for saving me from the rapey pervert’?” He pulled out onto 9
th
Street, heading back toward Bennett’s.

“
You still don’t trust me.”

“I don’t trust anyone
, Harmony.” The truth was hard to hear. “Do you have any idea what could’ve happened to you back there?”

“I had it handled.”

“Sure looked like it, too.” He rolled his eyes. “You can take care of yourself. I get that. I’m just trying to help.”

“I
 
help
 myself.”

“You’re going to help yourself right back into the system going to Bennett dressed like that. You don’t get it, do you? You have to do what they want. Six months from now you can tell them all to go to hell, but if you don’t want to end up in a group home, away from me and Brea and anyt
hing else you care about, then play by the rules for once in your life.” He reached behind the seat and handed her a plastic grocery sack with a pair of jeans and a t-shirt inside. “Here, put these on.”

“I’m not going to change how I dress for these people. I am who I am.”

“This isn’t a negotiation.” He pulled into Parker Center—an old, brick school converted to office space that housed most of the county’s programs—and parked at the far end of the lot. He flipped down the visor for her to get a good look at herself. Her clothes were torn, her skin scraped, and her hair a mess. “How are you going to explain this to Bennett? Don’t make this worse on yourself than it has to be. Change your clothes and clean up in the bathroom.”

“Fine.”

There was no other choice.

She
changed, cleaning up the best she could with what was in the glove compartment, and eased out of the truck wearing a pair of faded jeans and a pink t-shirt with glitter lettering that read “Tough Girl”.

“Where did
you even get this ridiculous outfit?”

“Goodwill,”
he said. “You needed something in your wardrobe that didn’t come from Hot Topic.”

“I really hate you right now.”

He ste
pped in front of her and kissed her. “I know, but I still love you.”

Adam stood behind Harmony in the doorway of the overfull waiting room, his arms wrapped around her
, their fingers knitted together at her waist. There were pieces of napkin stuck in his now clotted wound and his hands were stained grease black.

No matter how often he washed them, they never came clean.

A white noise generator hissed under the chair next to them, masking the behind closed doors conversations. The phone rang nearly non-stop and a red-headed girl with Down’s syndrome pleaded with her elderly mother to go home.

“Pease,” she begged. “I
wanna l-e-a-v-e. Pretty pease.”

Harmony
understood the sentiment. Nervous sweat dripped down her sides and back, filling her nose with the scent of lavender deodorant.

“I should ha
ve cancelled.”

Adam shook his head. “It’s going to
be fine. You’re cleaned up. You look the part. Just go in there and act the shit out of this thing. Whatever he says, you do.”

“Harmony Wolcott?”
Dr. Bennett stood in his office doorway, his wrinkled khakis an inch too short and the tails of his button-down shirt hanging beneath the waistband of a food-stained sweater vest.

She
walked toward him with her head down. Her eyes burned and were no doubt still red, despite her rinsing them. She could smell and taste the pepper spray and refused to make eye contact.

“Good to see you again,” he said.

“Thanks.” She collapsed on the lumpy couch, still warm from the previous patient, and coughed.

Therapy wasn’t like in the movies—no high-end leather or panoramic views from the
forty-sixth floor of a high rise—at least, not at the kind of places Social Services refers you to. The flattened, red-on-blue plaid cushion sucked her in and she tucked her leg underneath her for balance.

“Are you all right? Would you like a glass of water?”
He leaned his head to get a better look at her.

“No, thank you
. Let’s just get this over with.” Adam’s voice in the back of her head told her to be nice. “I’m sorry. I just mean I’m not feeling that well.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”
Bennett lingered in the doorway.

“You can close the door,” she said. “My mother’s not coming.”

“Oh?” He closed the door, took a seat behind his laminate oak desk, and opened her voluminous chart. “I thought I was clear when I said that her attendance was mandatory.”

His close-set eyes reminded her of a pig’s and were magnified by the coke bottle horn rimmed glasses perpetually sliding down his
narrow nose. His thinning salt and pepper hair was tied back in a low ponytail and his breath reeked of onions.

“You were, but she had a job interview she couldn’t miss. She asked me to tell you. I’m sure Sylvie has already told you about the power situation.” Sylvie Herr had been
Harmony’s social worker for the past two years. “It’s back on now, but my mother has to work for it to stay that way.” The admission about the power situation was her attempt at looking cooperative.

“I see.” Bennett scribbled down the excuse, but she could see he didn’t believe it.
“How are things otherwise?”

“Otherwise?
Fine.”

“I’m not sure that was the word Ms. Herr used when she contacted me about the power being shut off and a number of other things.”

“What other things?” The phrase made her nervous. She coughed and sniffled, reaching for the box of tissues on the table next to her.

“Are you sure you’re all right?”

Sooner or later she was going to have to explain her condition. “I think I’ll take that water now.” She drank down two cups from the water cooler in the corner and settled on her cover story.

“Better?”

Harmony sat back down. “Much. I’m sorry. I stayed at a friend’s house last night and I think I’m allergic to her cat or something. I woke up and my eyes were all swollen and itchy and I can’t stop coughing.”

“
You should try some antihistamine for that.” He shifted in his chair and took off his glasses. His expression became severe. “Harmony, we need to talk about your mother. She missed the last several appointments and again she’s unable to attend. I have no choice but to notify family court of her non-compliance. I hope you understand that. And I’d like to talk to you about the situation your mother was involved in several days ago.”

“Situation?”