Shelter Me (25 page)

He was just looking at me with a hint of a smile on his face, and it chilled me to the bone.
 

"That's right," he said, softly. "You were such a little firecracker before we were married. I could barely keep you off of me. One night you insisted I give you wine, and we both got a little tipsy...you started getting undressed...I never should have taken those pictures, Mari, you know. That was wrong. I should have let you forget about that particular transgression. After all, we all make mistakes. And the pictures were mine. But I'm sure you don't want anyone else to see those, do you, Mari?"

"Are you..." My voice shook. I didn't know what the hell was happening anymore. "Are you
threatening
me?"

"
Threatening
?" he repeated, like he'd never heard the word before. "Mari, I just want to have a family with you. I want you to stop taking those pills." He smiled slightly. "And now, I know you've been hiding from me. I'll know to keep an eye on you. And if you try to keep them a secret from me again, you won't just
feel
like a whore anymore." There was a cold glint in his eyes, though his mouth kept on smiling. "The whole town will
know
you are."

I almost wanted to pinch myself because a part of me couldn't believe this was real. But on the other hand, my head was startlingly clear. I saw Mark in sharp relief for the first time since we'd met, and I suddenly knew that everything he presented - everything he pretend to be - was nothing more than a lie.
 

I'd wanted to believe in him, because of the way he looked at me. Because he bothered to talk to me, when everyone else had given up on the sad, strange little girl. In spite of everything, in spite of the way he treated me, I wanted to believe he was a good man.

How could I have been so stupid?

I turned and hurried towards the stairs. Before I even reached the top step, he reached out and grabbed my arm, yanking me back.

"Where on earth do you think you're going?" he asked, with a hint of laughter in his voice. Like the idea that I was going to
leave
was just a big, stupid joke.
 

I felt sick.

"Let me go!" I shouted, trying to jerk my arm out of his iron grip.
 

"Mari, Mari, Mari," he said, soothingly, his fingers digging so hard into my skin I was sure they'd leave bruises. "Come on, sweetheart, be reasonable."

 
"I
am
being reasonable," I said. "I'm being very reasonable. Let me go."

His grip was unflinching.
 

"I'll scream for help," I said.

"I'll give you something to scream about." His grip tightened even further. I could feel my own pulse pounding under his fingers.
 

"If you don't let me go," I said, "I'm going to tell them everything." I let that sink in for a moment. "
Everything
."

"I'm not afraid of you," he said, but his eyes told a different story.

"You think you can hold those pictures over my head forever?" I jerked my arm one more time, and I thought I felt his grip loosen, just a tiny bit. "You think you can keep me quiet? Everybody's got a breaking point. You can't control me. I won't let you. Not anymore."

His nostrils were flaring with every breath. When he spoke, it was through clenched teeth. "When I came here," he said, "you had nothing. A dysfunctional family, no friends, no future. I gave you
everything
. Do you have any idea what kind of debt you owe me? And here you are, threatening
me
. I wish I could go back in time and erase the first day I ever talked to you - you selfish,
vindictive
little ingrate."

"I wish you could, too," I heard myself say, very calmly. "But here we are."

He was staring at me - angry, yes, but astonished too. Like he couldn't believe that I wasn't throwing myself at his feet, begging for forgiveness. After everything he'd done.

He didn't expect this.

So much for "the gift of discernment."

Finally, slowly, he let me go. I ran down the stairs and didn't turn back, not even once.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Jacob

Sara had been completely stable for a few days now, doing so much better that they wanted to release her tomorrow, as long as her scans all came back clear. It was my last night taking care of the house alone, and I was celebrating by wasting time on point-and-click shooters and not thinking about loans, or Lily, or anything or any
one
else.

The pounding on the door shook me out of my half-stupor. I was parked in front of the computer, as usual, but I wasn't really looking at the screen. I should have gone to bed hours ago, but that would be admitting defeat.

I groaned, dragging myself up out of the chair. Who on earth could it be? I didn't know why, but I had a feeling it was going to be something ridiculous that I'd regret even standing up for.

More knocking. "All right, all right!" I shouted, as I pulled the door open. "What?"

Marissa was standing there.

I blinked, and briefly considered pinching myself.

"I'm sorry," were the first words out of her mouth. "I didn't know where else to go."

"I..." I stepped back. "You...what's..."

"Can I come in?"

"Of course. Of course you can come in." I shut the door behind her, still reeling. "Is...are you...is everything okay?"

She bit her lip, and I could see it begin to quiver. She'd obviously been crying, from the look of her eyes. "No," she admitted, finally. "Nothing's okay. Are your parents home?"

I shook my head, and she sagged with relief. "I just need to...I just need to think, you know? I can't go home right now. Mom and Dad...I just can't face them."

"Why? What happened? I mean - if you want to talk about it."

"I don't even know, really." She looked shell-shocked. "Can I - do you mind if I just get a drink of water? I ran most of the way here."

"Of course, yeah. I'm sorry. I should've..." I hurried to the fridge and fetched her a bottle. "Here. You want something to eat?"

She shook her head, taking a long drink and wiping her mouth before she continued. "I think...I don't know. Mark just..." She sat down on the sofa, hunching forward with her arms around her knees. She looked miserable. "I don't even know where to start. There's just so much...stuff."

I shrugged. "Start wherever you want," I said. "I'm happy to listen."

She took a long, shaky breath. "I've been...okay. I don't know if you remember a couple years ago when I was in the hospital. They asked for prayer for me in the service, I think."

"Yeah, no, I remember." How could I forget? "They said it was, you know, female trouble." I felt my ears grow slightly pink.

She half-smiled. "Yeah, that's one way to describe it. Anyway, they - the treatment they chose for me was to go on the pill. You know, birth control. It's not just for that. It changes the hormones in your body, you know, it helps...like...regulate everything. So they thought it would help me not get sick again."

I nodded. I had a bad feeling that I knew where this was going, but I kept my mouth shut and let her talk.

"I've been on it forever, it was just sort of...a part of my routine. And Mark, when we got married, he never said anything about kids. I guess around here, you just assume. Somebody's getting married, they start a family. But he never brought it up, so I didn't either. I guess that was wrong. I should have said something. Things would be different if I had, that's for sure." She let out another unsteady breath. "So he found out that I was taking it, and he got really mad."

A very unpleasant feeling was growing inside my chest. "What do you mean,
really mad
?"

"He..." her eyes darted from side to side. Oh, no. It couldn't be. Could it? She didn't have any bruises on her that I could see, but that didn't mean...

She swallowed, and finally finished her sentence. "He threatened me," she said, at last.

That just left more unanswered questions in my mind. "Threatened to do...what?"

She looked up at me like a cornered animal. "I can't tell you," she said, her voice barely above a whisper. "I did...I did a bad thing."

My forehead creased. "You did - what do you mean, you did a bad thing?"

Tears were starting to form in her eyes again. I quickly backed off.

"Mari, look, you don't have to tell me anything if you don't want to. I just...it seems like you really want to get it off your chest. You know I won't...judge you, or anything."

The tears were flowing freely now, and she talked through barely-restrained sobs. "You don't know, Jacob. You don't know what happened. What he...he made me...no, he didn't
make
me do anything. But I, you know, I just wanted him to be happy. He wouldn't stop. He wouldn't leave me alone. I knew we weren't married yet, but we were going to be soon, so what difference did it make, right?" Her eyes were pleading. I tasted bile in my mouth.

"Mari," I said. "What did he make you do?"

She must have heard something in my voice, because her eyes grew even wider. "Oh no, no, no!" she insisted. "Nothing like that, I swear. He's not..." She stopped, taking a deep breath. "He's not that kind of...well..."

I was slightly relieved, but confused. What had he coerced her into? Did I even want to know?

"It's too embarrassing," she whimpered, staring at the floor. "It's...you're never going to think about me the same way, if I tell you."

"I seriously doubt that." I sat down next to her, wanting very badly to take her hands in mine. But I didn't. "You can tell me. You know you can tell me."

She was silent for such a long time that I thought she might be angry with me. Then, finally, she looked right at me and said it:

"He took pictures."

The words settled in the bottom of my stomach like lead. "Pictures?" I repeated, as if I didn't know exactly what she meant.

"Nothing...it's not..." She was scrambling to clarify, now. "He didn't touch me. We didn't do anything. But he took pictures of me. He..." She stopped with a pained sound, and then finally continued, very softly. "...asked me to undress."

"Mari." I looked at her, forcing myself to stay calm. To stay grounded. She needed that right now; she needed that from me. If there was anything I was good at, it was being the solid rock in the midst of chaos. "Mari, it wasn't your fault."

She started sobbing outright, unable to hold it back anymore. "But I...but he...but...I could have said no," she managed. "I should have been strong, why couldn't I..." The rest of her sentence was lost in her tears.

I couldn't even begin to rationally process what I was hearing. I'd dismissed most of my odd feelings about Mark to jealousy, whether consciously or not, and now it was hitting me like a ton of bricks. I'd been right all along. He was preying on Mari's innocence, convincing her to put herself in a compromising position, and then making her feel responsible...

"I should've..." She had finally calmed down enough to speak. "He kept telling me the way I dressed was making it hard for him to...to think straight...I should've..."

"What?" I snapped so loud that she started. "I'm sorry," I said, more quietly. "But did you - he said something about the way you dress?"

"He said it was..." She sniffled. "Immodest. I don't know...I tried to wear stuff that was baggy, and plenty long. But I guess I didn't do a good enough job. I wish I'd, I don't know. I wish I'd tried harder."

"Mari, listen to me carefully. There is
nothing wrong with the way you dress
. Okay?" I locked eyes with her, just to make sure I was getting through. I had no idea how much Mark had been messing with her head. "He was just manipulating you. He took advantage of you. That's all this was. He's a snake, Mari. Part of me's known all along, I think." I took a deep breath. "I'm so sorry. I wish I'd - I don't know. I wish I'd said something to somebody. Not like they would have believed me." I forced myself to calm down, to think. "Has he done anything else? You were saying he - he threatened you."

"With the pictures," she said. "He was going to...show them to people, I guess. He said if I didn't stop taking the pills, the whole town would know I was a whore."

My stomach lurched.

"He said - he said
that
?"
 

She nodded, before bursting into tears again.

"I shouldn't even be telling you this," she sobbed. "We were just fighting, I'm sure he didn't mean it."

"It doesn't sound like you were fighting," I said. "It sounds like he was trying to blackmail you."

She was shaking her head vigorously. "No, no...he's not...he didn't..." She was trying to come up with some way to defend him, I could tell, but her heart wasn't in it.

"Please, Mari." I finally gave in to my instincts and grabbed her hands out of her lap. "Do not bend over backwards trying to justify what he did. You know I never liked that guy." I managed to smile, and she did too.

"I came here because I know you won't tell anyone," she said. "I'm not - I don't know. I'm not ready. I don't know where to start."

"Well," I said. The truth was, I didn't have the first clue either. The initial rush of righteous indignation had passed, and now I was starting to realize just how difficult this would be to tell...well, anyone else. Mark had positioned himself perfectly. He was well-liked and well-trusted, and Marissa was...

"Nobody's going to believe me," she said, as if on cue. "It'll just be the problem child making more problems."

"No, no," I insisted, even though I was thinking the exact same thing. "That's not...they have to believe you. He's hardly the first youth group leader to take advantage of a kid."

She made a face. "I'm not a kid."

"I know, I know you're not. But you know what I mean."

"I guess." She was tugging on the ends of her hair. "But really - when it comes down to it, shouldn't I have known better?"

"He manipulated you," I said, firmly. "We just...we just have to figure out a way to make other people see that."

Marissa sagged miserably on the couch. She had the overall demeanor of an empty soda can that had been stepped on, and I couldn't blame her. She'd been suffering silently all this time and there was no escape in sight. I felt no satisfaction at having been right, all along, in my misgivings. I couldn't congratulate myself for seeing her suffering and doing absolutely nothing about it.