John Lescroart - Guilt

Because the autopsy report he was looking at listed the cause of death as poisoning.

And what the hell was that about?

The woman was waiting at the door to the Rape Crisis Counselling Center when Sam arrived at 9:00 on Monday morning. Slightly matronly though not unattractive, she wore jeans, hiking boots, a brightly colored sweater jacket and a purple beret. She held a designer purse, out of the top of which peeked an Amy Tan paperback. Sam stopped in front of her.

'Hi.'

'Hello.' A cultured voice.

'Are you waiting to get in here?'

Behind the self-conscious expression, not all that unusual in this setting, she projected a strong attitude of resolve. Even as she nodded, her eyes surveyed the street in both direction. 'I thought this would be a good place to start.'

'It often is,' Sam said. 'Let me get the door.'

Diane Price had removed her sweater and beret and sat easily in one of the wingbacks in the tiny room behind the reception desk. Thick gray hair fell over her shoulders. The natural woman, Sam thought, she wore no makeup and, with a gorgeous mouth and gray-green eyes, really didn't need any. Her nails looked professionally manicured, but they were clear.

She'd waited while Sam put on the pots of water and coffee – told herself that she'd waited long enough, a few more minutes wasn't going to hurt. The bell over the front door tinkled again as Terri, the first of the day's volunteers, came into work.

Sam brought the mugs – black coffee for them both – back into the room where Diane was waiting and sat across from her.

'I feel a little awkward about this, but I didn't know where else I should go-'

Sam waited. It would come out.

Diane sipped her coffee and took another moment. Exhaling then, as though satisfied with something, she began. 'I imagine you know why I've come here?'

Sam inclined her head. 'You've been raped.'

'Yes.' Diane took another sip of her coffee, repeating it. 'Yes,' she said, 'I've been raped.'

Sam leaned forward. 'It's difficult to say the words, isn't it?'

'Yes.' The monosyllable hung between them. 'It's been a long time now. I didn't know if I'd ever say it.'

'How long?'

Again, Diane's eyes raked the small room. Sam had the feeling she was trying to decide whether or not she should continue with this, whether it was too late to back out. All the staring around, putting off bringing the rape into focus.

She put her mug down and crossed her hands on her lap. 'A long time ago. Twenty-seven years ago.'

'And you've been silent about it?'

Diane folded her arms, self-protective. 'Now it's called a date rape. I knew him. He seemed so nice. I've been living with it all this time. I don't think I've denied that it happened. I suppose mostly just feeling that it happened so long ago, what difference can it possibly make, you know?'

'But it has, of course.'

A nod. 'I don't really know how I feel about it all anymore. Not clearly. All the parts of it.'

'That's all right. Why don't – as you said – why don't you just start somewhere. What do you feel the most, right now?'

'It changes. That's what's funny. I guess now, today, it's all resentment because I've been thinking about it so much. First, though, when it came up again, it was just this overwhelming anger, this rage. But for such a long time before that, you know, living my life with my husband and being the school mom and doing soccer leagues and just living – I didn't see what good it would do to bring it all up again.'

'Does your husband know about it?'

'Don. He does now, but…' A lapse into silence. 'He's a great guy, but I'm not sure he understands. Not completely.' The cultured voice was flattening by degrees, losing what had appeared to be a natural animation. 'What I'm trying to deal with now is, I guess, my anger over this sense of loss, of having lost so much of my life over this one… this one episode.' A wistful smile. 'It's funny, you know. You don't really believe that one day can change everything, I mean if you'd just done one little thing differently…'

'Everybody feels that, Diane. If that's any consolation, it's one of the mechanisms we use to blame ourselves. Somehow, at least a little bit, it's our fault.'

This didn't seem to help. 'But I really wonder if it was my fault -I don't mean just the rape, where okay, no doubt I led him on, but I really believed… I didn't know anything then. I mean, I was a virgin. You said "no" and it stopped, right?'

'That was the theory,' Sam said.

Diane sat back in the chair, put her head all the way back and closed her eyes briefly. Opening them, she abruptly reached for her mug of coffee. Something to do that wasn't this recitation of history. She forgot to drink from it. 'Even now,' she said, 'even now I wonder how much of it was my fault.'

'Diane, if he forced you…'

'He said he'd kill me.'

'Well, then, you-'

But she was shaking her head. 'No, not just that. Not just the rape itself. Everything after that. My whole life.' Another silence, another shake of the head. 'No, not my whole life, that's an exaggeration. Only most of a decade. Only.' Suddenly, she slapped the arm of the chair. 'God, I hate this victim thing! I'm not a victim. I don't want to be a victim.'

Sam waited.

'Before, I was going to be a doctor.' The brittle laugh shook her. 'It wasn't ridiculous – you don't get into Stanford if you're dumb, and I'd never gotten a "B" in my life. I was fun, smart, pretty. And now I tell myself – have for years – I've had to tell myself that it was this… this thing that made it all change. That it wasn't my fault.'

'That wouldn't be so unusual, Diane. In fact, it would be more normal if it was.'

'I know that. I'm still not stupid. But don't you see, it makes me sick, that victim excuse. I should have just risen above it, put it behind me. Instead, it just ate me up, and I let it. I just let it.' Her fists were clenched on the chair's arms, and one of her eyes overflowed. 'I'm sorry.' She reached into her purse, pulled out a handkerchief, dabbed. 'There's no reason to cry about it. This is stupid.'

'No, it isn't.'

She managed a condescending smile. 'Well, of course you're trained to say that.'

Sam wasn't going to fight her about it. Yes, she was trained to say that, and that was because it was the truth. It wasn't stupid to cry about it. Almost everyone did. 'So what happened, Diane? What do you blame yourself for?'

'Everything! Don't you understand? I'm mad that it happened! I'm mad that I do blame myself, I don't care what the proper modern response is supposed to be. I could have been… I don't know, more somehow. Who I was really meant to be. And instead,' she visibly deflated, 'instead I'm who I am.'

'And is that so bad?'

'I don't know. That's what I'm trying to figure out, I suppose. That's why I'm here. I can't believe… it seems so small a thing, somehow.'

'The rape – a small thing?'

She nodded. 'I know that sounds crazy, but it's what I tell myself when I'm just so full of loathing. It was one small thing, and I let it change the whole direction of my life. I mean, one day I'm in pre-med pulling "A"s, I go to football games, I'm kind of ra-ra and carefree, and the next day, the next time I turn around, I'm a mess. I'm taking every drug in America. And this was the sixties, remember, there were a lot to choose from. I survive another year or so before dropping out of school. And sleeping with anybody, not caring. Losing touch with my mom and dad and family and not caring at all.'

'So what happened finally?'

She brought the handkerchief back to her eyes, left it there a minute, pressing. 'Finally, I woke up. I don't know how else to put it. I just woke up. I guess I didn't want to die. And I never thought about that until my mother did. That's the thing I regret the most, I think. I mean, if she could see me now, it'd be all right. But I was still that other way, that other person, when she died. So she never knew.'