Alafair Burke - Never Tell

Ramona rolled her eyes. “Of course she’d have to bring them up. That’s Casey. He went to Julia’s, like, once with a couple of friends, but like I said, he’s really more my friend. If Katherine’s trying to blame him-”

Rogan cut her off. “No one’s blaming anyone at this point. That’s why we investigate. On that note, would you mind giving us a quick DNA sample? Just a cheek swab so the lab can eliminate any stray hairs you may have left behind at Julia’s house.”

Now that they were working this case as a homicide, the lab would be busy eliminating known samples to focus in on any unidentified DNA found in the house.

After Rogan took the swab, they had Ramona run through her final conversation with Julia one more time, but the girl had no new revelations to offer, only more regrets about the unspoken feelings, which led to more crying. As they reached the bedroom door, Ramona said she was sorry she hadn’t been more helpful.

But as far as Ellie was concerned, Ramona had helped plenty.

W itnesses never seemed to realize that what seemed to them like an idle observation could make a case look entirely different to the police-or, in this particular case, could be construed entirely differently by two different police detectives.

Rogan started in on his interpretation as soon as they hit the car. “I don’t buy for a second that Julia Whitmire had calmed down recently. A weekend home alone?”

“Exactly what a depressed girl might prefer,” Ellie said.

“No way. The type of girl who bangs personal trainers and hands out blow jobs at the beach in exchange for transportation doesn’t suddenly calm down because she’s depressed. Julia’s mom said she hated being alone. If Julia had leveled out, I bet you anything she had a new man on the side-someone she was being hush-hush about, even with her best friend.”

“Either way, we’re still looking at a depressed bulimic whose parents had abandoned her. No forced entry. Nothing missing. Don’t forget the slit wrist and suicide note. On the other side of the ledger, we’ve got a missing notepad. Plus that stuff about Julia saying that Ramona’s mom had been a better mother to her than her own? One more indication that Katherine Whitmire was a cold, crappy mother, and that her daughter, Julia, wasn’t quite as tough about it as she let on. Who could blame her for drinking herself numb and checking out?”

“We still owe it to that girl and to those parents to be a hundred percent positive before we take her name from the board.”

The car fell silent once again. Ellie finally reached for the radio but Rogan blocked her hand.

“None of your new wave Devo Flock of Seagulls shit when I’m driving.” As far as Ellie could tell, Rogan thought any music by white people between 1983 and 1997 was either Devo or Flock of Seagulls.

But then the silence must have gotten to him, as well. He turned on the stereo and stopped the dial on a rap song she actually recognized. She muttered the lyrics as she looked out the window. “Ain’t nothin’ but a g-thang, baby.”

It was enough to get a laugh out of her partner. “You kidding me with that?”

“What? I grew up in Kansas, not on a commune.” She put a little more swagger into her performance, swaying in her seat. “And now all you hookas and hos know how I feel.”

“Damn, woman. You got to ruin everything for me, don’t you? I won’t be able to listen to that again without picturing your bony butt bouncing around.”

She placed a hand on her hip. “Ain’t nothing bony about this. You just want a small piece of some of that funky stuff. ”

He shook his head, but he was smiling. “This mean we’re all right?”

“We’re always all right. You should know that by now.”

“But you still think you’re right and I’m wrong.”

“Yep.”

“Want to go talk to this homeless kid, Casey?”

“Nope. But I will. Last time I checked, that’s what we do.”

Second Acts: Confessions of a Former Victim and Current Survivor

“MAKE IT STOP ”

I’m continually surprised at the way ordinary events trigger revelations about abuse and survivorship. This morning, my daughter awoke to the sounds of jack hammers thanks to a construction project on the street below her bedroom window. She wandered from her bedroom bleary-eyed and bed-headed, her palms pressed against her ears. “Make it stop. That’s all I want right now: Just make it stop.”

Make it stop. It’s a perfectly rational reaction, isn’t it? To want to put an end to whatever unpleasant stimuli one is experiencing? To crave the exact opposite?

Ear-shattering noise? Give me total silence instead. Blisteringly hot food? Hand me cold water. Blinding light? I shut my eyes to enjoy the darkness.

Rape? Make it stop.

But what does it mean to crave the opposite of rape? No sex? No physical contact? No men?

But rape, we must always remind ourselves, isn’t about sex. It’s about power. Our abusers want to exercise dominion over us. They want to steal our agency.

And so what do we do? We take our agency back, however we can.

I couldn’t force that man out of my house, but I could choose not to go to school. I couldn’t bar him from my bedroom at night, but I could get a fake ID and a six-pack at three in the afternoon. I couldn’t stop him from eyeing me every time my mother averted her gaze, but I could start hanging around the people my mother had always called “bad influences.” I needed to know I could make choices that belonged to me.

We have all read about some rape case that goes uncharged or unpunished because of evidence that the victim engaged in consensual sexual activity with another man (or men) immediately after the rape. Why in the world, prosecutors and jurors ask, would a woman who had just been raped go out and have sex with someone else? They assume that a desire to “make it stop” necessarily translates into a lack of interest in sex.

But, once again, I thought we all knew by now that rape is not about sex. If “make it stop” means a craving for the opposite, then isn’t it perfectly predictable that some of us respond to rape by exercising agency over our own sexual intimacy?

In my case, I couldn’t protect my body from him, but I could choose to start sharing it with someone else. And of course I chose an unacceptable “someone else”-at once too old and too immature. That decision in turn led to its own forms of damage, self-inflicted in some sense and yet, it seems to me, still wholly attributable to my abuser.

Part of survival is getting to a place where we are able to exercise true free will, not just a reaction or rebellion against the abuse. Yesterday I wrote about forgiveness, not of our abusers, but of the people who enabled them. We must also forgive ourselves for reacting to the abuse in destructive ways, harming ourselves and others in response to our loss of power. We have to learn how to accept our pasts and determine our own futures. It’s the only way to really “make it stop.”

This evening the blog was being read on a display laptop at the Apple Store in the Meatpacking District. The reader made a point to stand close to the computer, blocking the screen from view of the crowds of shoppers who provided further anonymity.

It did not take long to type a reply to the post:

“I will show you damage. I will show you loss of free will. I will show you harm. And you will never make it stop.”

The typist did not know that on a different computer, at a public library in the suburbs of Buffalo, an ex-convict named Jimmy Grisco was doing some online reading of his own.

Ellie loved the arch at Washington Square Park. Serving as a frame for the view up Fifth Avenue to the Empire State Building, the arch had an impressive historical pedigree, with origins dating back to George Washington, but Ellie would always think of it as the spot where Harry dropped off Sally after their road trip home from Chicago.