Secret Whispers

  “I guess I’m babbling,” I said.

  “No, no. You do sound proud of your heritage. I don’t hear much of that. I imagine you people in Southern states have it more.”

  “If you met my father, you’d understand,” I said. “He used to teach my sister and me our family history as if it were a subject in school.”

  “You didn’t tell me you had a sister,” he said.

  I looked away toward the window in front of the restaurant. There was Cassie looking in at us.

  “She died in a tragic, freak accident,” I began, and pushed the button that played my programmed explanation of my mother’s death and Cassie’s.

  Like everyone who heard it, he looked sorry that he had asked. But then he said, “So, there’s only you and your father now?”

  “And my uncle Perry, my father’s younger brother.”

  “He’s not married?”

  “No.” I paused and added, “And won’t ever be, to a woman.”

  He raised his eyebrows.

  Our food was served, and he quickly changed the topic of conversation, describing his plans to go to graduate school for business—but first, he thought he might get out into the real world and experience some of it firsthand.

  “That way, when I learn theory, I can either accept or reject it and explain why.”

  “That sounds very smart, Ethan.”

  “And you?”

  I shook my head. He was surprised I had no plans, no ambitions, and hadn’t even applied to any colleges.

  “You’re going to work in your father’s business, then?”

  “I don’t know. I’m not sure what I could do.”

  “Sometimes it’s good to take some time off to think things out carefully,” he offered. “You can do it, so you should.”

  After dinner, we went for a walk and talked some more. Actually, he did most of the talking, but he was always interested in what I thought about something he had said. On our way back to my campus, he told me he had enjoyed being out with someone who was not an airhead. When we drove up to the dorm, he got out quickly to walk me to the door.

  “How about we go to a movie tomorrow night?” he asked.

  “All right,” I said. “As long as I get permission.”

  “Permission? To go to a movie? What kind of school is this? Ellie might not have been exaggerating when she said there were practically bars on the windows.”

  “They take guardianship seriously,” I said as an abbreviated answer. I certainly didn’t want to get into why Collier was populated mostly with girls who’d had serious problems at one time or another, and I especially didn’t want to mention my own.

  “Well, you’ll let me know. I’ll come by at six so we can grab a quick bite to eat at the mall first. Is that okay?” he asked when I didn’t respond.

  I nodded. This was beginning to feel more like a dream I wished would never end. I’d stay asleep forever to keep it going.

  He looked at me and smiled. “You’re a very beautiful girl, Semantha. I’m glad you’re shy,” he said. “That way, no one got to you before me and stole you away.”

  I started to laugh, when he kissed me. My first reaction was that fear that always lay just under my heart whenever a boy had looked at me with interest or had gotten too close since my pregnancy, but those feelings seemed to recede as he held me longer and then kissed me softly again. I felt myself relax and then respond. It surprised me more than it surprised him. He pulled back but held me.

  “Good night,” he whispered.

  I watched him walk back to his car, where he paused to wave before getting in.

  As he drove off, I felt Cassie at my side. She had been trying to step between Ethan and me all night. I had refused to let her get a word into me and, except for when I had seen her looking in the window, had avoided looking at her wherever she was.

  I could feel her rage. At the moment, she was very angry, too angry to say a word, which was very unusual for Cassie. She always had something to say.

  But I really didn’t care.

  “I thought you would never be jealous of me,” I said. “I thought we would never be those gunslingers you described,” I added.

  Which only made her angrier.

  Exposed

  I NEVER BELIEVED the friendship between Ellie and me would last much longer than our time together at Collier, so her indifference and coolness toward me as the school year drew to an end weren’t particularly upsetting or surprising. Ethan and I were seeing each other every weekend now. Mrs. Hathaway not only approved but commented about my improved disposition. Ethan and I went to movies or to dinner and often spent entire weekend days together, having picnics or going for drives.

  The New York spring this year was far warmer than the previous two I had experienced. The trees and foliage were lush, and the lawns actually compared in rich green color to some Kentucky grass. When I told that to Ethan, he laughed and said, “I can see you’ll measure the rest of the world against your precious old Kentucky home.” He quickly added that he thought there was something wonderful about having such a sense of home and admitted he wished he had the same passion for the world in which he had been raised.

  I really enjoyed and looked forward to being with Ethan. At times, I felt as if he knew my deepest secret and skirted and avoided anything that might upset me. We kissed and held each other, but he never pushed me to have sex with him. Anyone might have thought he was someone who lived in an earlier time, when relationships were more formal and women held on to their virginity.

  On the weekend before graduation, however, we went for a ride and came to an out-of-the-way motel. We were about twenty miles west of the city. He didn’t drive in, but he pulled the car to the side of the road in front of it. For a few moments, he didn’t say anything.

  “What’s wrong, Ethan?” I asked.

  “I don’t want to lose you,” he said.

  “Why do you think you might?”

  He turned to me with as serious an expression as I had ever seen on his face. “Women have always been a puzzle missing a few pieces for me,” he began. “So, I’m not quite sure what I should do next, what you expect of me.”

  “I don’t understand, Ethan.”

  “On the one hand, I don’t want you to think I want to be with you for a short, sexual affair and then never see or care about you again, but on the other hand, I don’t want you to think for one moment that I don’t desire and need you more than anything or anyone.”

  I smiled. I was expecting something far worse. “I don’t think either one, Ethan.”

  He reached for my hand. “I haven’t felt this way about any other girl, Semantha. I hope you believe that. Unless I’m reading an assignment or doing a paper or taking a test, I’m thinking about you. No matter what other girl crosses my path, I see you. When I close my eyes, I hear your voice only and smell the scent of your hair. I’m sure this is what they mean when they say someone is possessed.”

  All I could do was smile. His words were like soft butterflies finding and weaving their way into my heart.

  “In a little over a week, we’re going to be very far apart,” he continued. “Of course, I’ll come see you whenever I have a chance, if you want me to.”

  “Of course I do. I’ll look forward to it, more than I’ll look forward to anything else.”

  He drew closer to kiss me.

  “I guess what I really mean to say right now is that I’d like to spend more intimate time with you,” he said softly. “I mean, before we part. Would you like that?”

  I sat back. His gaze was on the motel. It wasn’t hard to imagine what he meant.

  “We’ll be safe,” he said, seeing me look at the motel, too. “I have what’s necessary.”

  “Don’t believe him,” Cassie whispered.

  If she hadn’t, I might have said we should wait, but I didn’t. I wanted to defy her, to prove her wrong, so I said, “Yes, I would like that.”

  He smiled and drove us up
to the motel office. I waited in the car. I could feel Cassie in the backseat, glaring at me.

  “You’re going to make another dreadful error.”

  “I never did,” I said. “You caused it. You were totally responsible, so don’t dare blame me.”

  “Nothing happened that you didn’t want to happen. It takes a willing garden to let a flower grow.”

  “Shut up,” I said. I shook my head and put my hands over my ears.

  Ethan came out and got into the car. He saw how upset I was getting.

  “You okay? Something wrong?”

  I looked back. She wasn’t there.

  “No, nothing. I’m fine.”

  He drove to our room. When I started to get out, I felt her holding my arm, holding me back.

  “Daddy would be very upset,” she whispered. “Very, very disappointed.”

  I pulled my arm away and got out, slamming the door behind me. I saw her face pressed against the rear window. Ethan opened the motel-room door and stood back. I was still looking at the car.

  “Is something wrong, Semantha? You can tell me.”

  “No, nothing’s wrong.”

  “If you would rather we didn’t . . .”

  “No, I’m fine, Ethan.”

  I entered quickly, and he closed the door.

  “I wish we had a more romantic setting,” he said as he put on the light and then closed the curtains, “but as long as I’m with you, any place is romantic.”

  I can’t say I didn’t want to change my mind. That thought zigzagged in my brain, but I held it back. I had never been more attracted to any other man, but I was also curious about myself. Would I shut myself off completely? Would I welcome his caresses and kisses and return them as passionately? Was I capable of loving anyone anymore? Had Cassie destroyed all that in me forever and ever? Was that what Dr. Ryan had really meant when we’d concluded our last session and he had said “somewhat normal”?

  Ethan stepped forward and kissed me. Then he brushed his hand through my hair and went to the bed to pull back the spread. I watched him do everything as if I had stepped out of my body and was observing. He undid his shirt, and then he unbuttoned mine, pausing to kiss me again. I stepped back and slipped out of my skirt. He smiled and undid his belt. We were both quickly naked. He kissed me again and lifted me into his arms to bring me to the bed.

  “Semantha,” he said, “I don’t know if it’s really possible to fall in love with someone as quickly as I’ve fallen in love with you, but I’d argue forever that it is.”

  “Yes,” I said. “It is. I know, because the same has happened to me.”

  He kissed me and very gently began to caress me. Suddenly, a shocking train of images began to travel on the rails of my memory. Once again, I saw Porter Andrew Hall, the young man Cassie had brought to our house, hovering over me naked. I could hear him talking to someone, but his voice was distorted like a recording being played way too slowly. I turned to look to my right and saw Cassie standing there, smiling and nodding. “Yes,” I again heard her tell him. “Yes, do it now.”

  For a long time afterward, I had wondered if it had all been a dream, a dream Cassie had said was more of a fantasy. When it had turned out not to be, she had claimed, as she was doing in my mind even today, that it had been something I had wanted very much. Yes, he had been very handsome and charming, but I hadn’t wanted that; I hadn’t fantasized about him the way she’d claimed I had. Later, of course, I found out I had been given what is called a date-rape drug.

  “Stop him!” I was suddenly screaming. “Stop him, Cassie.”

  “What?”

  I opened my eyes to see Ethan holding himself above me. He looked down at me with confusion.

  “What did you scream? Cassie? Wasn’t that your sister’s name?”

  I shook my head and turned away.

  “What’s wrong, Semantha?”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “A memory . . .”

  He sat back and gazed at me. “What memory?”

  Cassie had once told me that no matter what the facts were, people would always blame me. If they didn’t believe it was something I really wanted deep inside me, they would accuse me of being too careless or too stupid. Somehow, it would end up being my fault, no matter what. I had used to think she was saying all of this so I would not reveal what she had done, but I had seen accusation on the faces of those who saw me pregnant afterward. Even if I were a victim, I was stained forever in their eyes.

  I had successfully kept anyone at Collier from knowing what had happened to me, but it was foolish of me to believe I could hide it from someone who fell in love with me. Eventually, he would know, and my worst fear was that he would think he had been somehow deceived, tricked, and betrayed. What had become loving and wonderful would turn into something distasteful, and it would end badly.

  I turned back to Ethan, took a deep breath, and said, “I was date-raped.”

  “What?” He grimaced as if it had happened to him and not me. “When?”

  “A little more than four years ago.”

  I waited to see what he would say, but he just stared, waiting for more information.

  “It happened in my house. My sister, Cassie, made it happen,” I quickly added. “She arranged for it all, planned it all, had me drugged.”

  “You traitor!” Cassie screamed from the doorway.

  “Your sister?” He shook his head. “I don’t understand, Semantha. What do you mean? Why would your own sister do something like that to you?”

  “It was after my mother had died. Cassie wanted a baby for my father. She was hoping for a boy, of course, only she couldn’t get pregnant, so she bribed a young man who had begun working for us and arranged for him to sexually assault me when I was under the influence of a drug. It was powerful. I wasn’t even sure it had happened, and when I . . . realized I was pregnant—”

  “Pregnant? You got pregnant?”

  “Yes.”

  He thought for a moment and then rose off the bed and walked to the window. Cassie stepped toward me, smiling.

  “Ethan?”

  He turned slowly. “Did you give birth? I mean . . . did you get an abortion?”

  “No. My sister tricked me. She paid someone to pretend he was a doctor who could diagnose me with something called pseudocyesis.”

  “What’s that?”

  “With pseudocyesis, women have symptoms similar to true pregnancy. They have morning sickness and tender breasts, gain weight, suffer abdominal distension, and many actually claim they experience the sensation of fetal movement, known as quickening, even though there is no fetus present. Some actually go into false labor.”

  “You’re kidding. This really happens?”

  “The most famous case of that is Mary Tudor, the queen of England, who believed she was pregnant more than once when she wasn’t. She needed an heir. I read up on it all once I was diagnosed with it.”

  “And you really believed this was what was wrong with you? How could you believe such a thing?”

  “I told you. My sister brought a doctor to me. I was hearing it from a man I thought to be an honest doctor.”

  He shook his head. “This is fantastic. So, eventually, you realized you were really pregnant, didn’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you really gave birth to a baby?”

  I nodded. “A girl.”

  “Well, what happened to the baby?” he asked.

  “My father arranged for her to be given to distant cousins. I’ve never seen her since she was born,” I said.

  “So, you have a four-year-old daughter? Will they ever tell her the truth?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t think so. I think that was part of the arrangement my father had made. He gave them money for her, of course.”

  “Yes, I’m sure he did. And this sister, Cassie? She had the fatal accident on the stairway?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well.” He wiped his face and shook his head. “I guess
all of that helps to explain why you’re so nervous when we’re together and I’m a little aggressive.”

  “I’m sorry, Ethan. I don’t want to be. Don’t say you’re aggressive. You’re just doing what any normal man would do and should do.”

  “Right.” He thought a moment as he stared at me. “Exactly what happened just now when we . . . when I was about to make love to you?”

  “The memory of the date rape was so vivid for a moment that I got confused.”

  “You mean, that’s what I did, caused you to relive it?”

  “It’s not your fault, but yes, that’s what just happened. I’m sorry.”

  “Does that happen often? I mean, not with other men, but just happen?”

  “Not often, but . . . it happens sometimes in the middle of the night.”

  “Have you been seeing someone about this sort of thing, a therapist?”

  “Yes.”

  “Recently?”

  “The last time I was home, but the doctor, Dr. Ryan, didn’t think I needed to see him again.”

  “Maybe he’s wrong. Maybe you’re not quite . . . ready,” he said. “Maybe you should still see this therapist, especially if this thing still happens to you.”

  I nodded, close to tears. I could feel the distance growing between us. Cassie was smiling wider and nodding her head. I wanted to scream at her, but I was afraid of what that would do to Ethan, so I kept my eyes down. He reached for his clothing.

  “Ethan . . .”

  “I’ll take you back so you can rest,” he said. “We’ll try again some other time,” he added, but he didn’t sound sincere.

  I said nothing. I got dressed quickly, too. We left the motel room in silence. When I looked back, Cassie was standing in the doorway, with her arms folded over her breasts the way they were when she was planted firmly in a thought or a decision.

  “You want to get something to eat?” Ethan asked.

  “No,” I said. “I’m not hungry.”

  He nodded and drove us away. After a few minutes, he began asking more about the date rape.

  “Who was the man? Was he arrested or anything?”