Karin Slaughter - Blindsighted

"He-" She stopped, a guttural sound coming from her throat. "He made love to me."

"He-"

"He made love to me," she repeated, a whisper that echoed in the room. "Do you know what that means?" she asked. "He kept saying he didn't want to hurt me. He wanted to make love to me. He did."

Lena felt her mouth open, but there was nothing she could say. She couldn't be hearing what she thought she was hearing. "What are you saying?" she asked, aware of the sharpness in her tone. "What do you mean?"

"He made love to me," Julia repeated. "The way he touched me."

Lena shook her head, as if to rid this from her mind. She could not keep the incredulity out of her tone when she asked, "Are you saying you enjoyed it?"

A snapping sound came as Julia disengaged the safety. Lena felt too stunned to move but somehow managed to reach Julia seconds before the girl pulled the trigger. Lena looked down in time to see Julia Matthews's head explode beneath her.

The water from the shower came like needles against Lena's skin. She was aware of the burning, but it was not uncomfortable. She was numb to all sensations, numb from the inside out. Her knees gave, and Lena let herself slide down into the tub. She pulled her knees to her chest, closing her eyes as the water beat down on her breasts and face. She bent her head forward, feeling like a rag doll. The water pummeled the top of her head, bruised the back of her neck, but she did not care. Her body did not belong to her anymore. She was empty. She could not think of one thing that had meaning in her life, not her job, not Jeffrey, not Hank Norton, and certainly not herself.

Julia Matthews was dead, just like Sibyl. Lena had failed them both.

The water started to run cold, the spray pricking against her skin. Lena turned off the shower and dried herself with a towel, feeling as if she was just going through the motions. Her body still felt dirty despite the fact that this was her second shower in the last five hours. There was a strange taste in her mouth, too. Lena wasn't sure if it was her imagination or if something had gone into her mouth when Julia had pulled the trigger.

She shuddered thinking about this.

"Lee?" Hank called from outside the bathroom door.

"I'll be down in a minute," Lena answered, putting paste on her toothbrush. She looked at herself in the mirror as she tried to scrub the taste out of her mouth. The resemblance to Sibyl was gone today. There was nothing left of her sister.

Lena went down to the kitchen in her robe and bedroom slippers. Outside the kitchen door, she put her hand to the wall, feeling lightheaded and sick to her stomach. She was forcing her body to move, otherwise she would go to sleep and never wake up. Her body ached to give in to that, ached to cut off, but Lena knew that as soon as her head hit the pillow she would be wide awake, her mind playing back the sight of Julia Matthews just before she killed herself. The girl had been looking at Lena when she pulled the trigger. Their eyes had locked, and Lena did not need to see the gun to know that death was on the younger woman's mind.

Hank was at the kitchen table, drinking a Coke. He stood when she entered the room. Lena felt a flush of shame and couldn't look him in the eye. She had been strong in the car as Frank drove her back to the house. She had not said a word to her partner, or commented on the fact that despite her efforts to clean herself at the hospital, she had gray matter and blood sticking to her like hot wax. There were pieces of bone in her breast pocket, and she could feel blood dripping down her face and neck, even though she had wiped it all off at the hospital. It was not until she had the front door closed behind her that Lena let herself go. That Hank had been there, that she had let him hold her in his arms while she sobbed, was something that still brought a sense of shame to her. She did not know herself anymore. She did not know who this weak person was.

Lena glanced out the window, noting, "It's dark out."

"You slept awhile," Hank said, going to the stove. "You want some tea?"

"Yeah," Lena said, though she had not slept at all. Closing her eyes only brought her closer to what had happened. If she never slept again, Lena would be fine.

"Your boss called to check on you," Hank said.

"Oh," Lena answered, sitting at the table, her leg tucked underneath her. She wondered what was going through Jeffrey's mind. He had been out in the hallway, waiting for Lena to call him in, when the gun went off. Lena remembered the expression of absolute shock on his face when he burst through the doorway. Lena had stood there, still leaning over Julia, flesh and bone dripping from her chest and face. Jeffrey had forced her out of this position, patting his hands down Lena's body, checking to make sure she had not been shot in the process.

Lena had stood mute while he did this, unable to take her eyes off what was left of Julia Matthews's face. The young girl had put the gun under her chin, blowing out the back of her head. The wall behind and over the bed was splattered. A bullet hole was three feet down from the ceiling. Jeffrey had forced Lena to stay in that room, drilling her for every bit of information she had gotten from Julia Matthews, questioning every detail of Lena's narrative as Lena stood there, her lip trembling uncontrollably, unable to follow the words coming out of her own mouth.

Lena put her head in her hands. She listened as Hank filled the kettle, heard the click as the electric starter on the gas stove kicked in.

Hank sat in front of her, his hands crossed in front of him. "You okay?" he asked.

"I don't know," she answered, her own voice sounding far away. The gun had gone off close to her ear. The ringing had stopped a while ago, but sounds still came like a dull ache.

"You know what I was thinking?" Hank asked, sitting back in his chair. "Remember that time you fell off the front porch?"

Lena stared at him, not understanding where he was going with this. "Yeah?"

"Well." He shrugged, smiling for some reason. "Sibyl pushed you."

Lena wasn't sure she had heard him right. "What?"

He assured Lena, "She pushed you. I saw her."

"She pushed me off the porch?" Lena shook her head. "She was trying to keep me from falling."

"She was blind, Lee, how did she know you were falling?"

Lena's mouth worked. He had a point. "I had to get sixteen stitches in my leg."

"I know."

"She pushed me?" Lena questioned, her voice raised a few octaves. "Why did she push me?"

"I don't know. Maybe she was just kidding." Hank chuckled. "You let out such a holler I thought the neighbors were gonna come."

"I doubt the neighbors would've come if they'd heard a twenty-one-gun salute," Lena commented. Hank Norton's neighbors had learned early on to expect all kinds of commotion coming from his house night and day.

"Remember that time at the beach?" Hank began.

Lena stared at him, trying to figure out why he was bringing this up. "What time?"

"When you couldn't find your kickboard?"

"The red one?" Lena asked. Then, "Don't tell me, she pushed it off the balcony."

He chuckled. "Nope. She lost it in the pool."

"How can you lose a kickboard in the pool?"

He waved this off. "I guess some kid took it. The point was, it was yours. You told her not to take it and she did, and she lost it."

Despite herself, Lena felt some of the weight on her shoulders lifting. "Why are you telling me this?" she asked.

Again, he gave a small shrug. "I don't know. I was just thinking about her this morning. Remember that shirt she used to wear? The one with the green stripes?"

Lena nodded.

"She still had it."

"No," Lena said, surprised. They had fought over that shirt during high school until Hank had settled it with a coin toss. "Why did she keep it?"