Don't Make Me Beautiful

  “Yes. And Liam and Helen and even Agnes.”

  “Agnes will be happy to know that. She’s very worried about you. We all are.”

  Nicole smiles at the memories of their coffee talks. “She’s a nice lady.”

  “She’s a very nice lady. I’m going to miss her.”

  Nicole frowns. “Why would you miss her? Is she leaving?”

  “No, we are. You and me and Liam. I’m going to sell the house and buy one far away.”

  “What?” Nicole almost chokes trying to get that one word out.

  “I’m serious. I want you to live with us. And I know you can’t live around the corner from that asshole, so the only solution is to move. I already contacted a realtor I know.”

  “But I can’t do that,” she whispers.

  Brian gets instantly angry. “Of course you can! Don’t tell me you don’t want to leave John! That you want to go back there!”

  She lifts up her hand and waves it in the air to stop him, to diffuse his misplaced anger. “No, no, no, that’s not what I’m saying.”

  He huffs out a strong breath. “Okay, then. Fine. Explain it to me.”

  “Sit down first. It’s … not an easy story to hear. Or to tell.”

  Brian sits down, never breaking eye contact with her. He says nothing, waiting for her to talk.

  “So, like I said, I was thinking a lot about you guys, the people who mean something to me in my life.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “And there’s someone who’s very, very special to me at the house. At John’s house.”

  “Not John, I hope.”

  “No, not John.”

  Brian remains silent. She can’t read his thoughts, but she’d give anything to know what he’s thinking right now. She was brave in the car with John, but this confession is going to take every ounce of courage she’s ever had and then some. What if he decides he hates me? What if he thinks I’m a monster on the inside too?

  “Who is it?” Brian asks. “Who’s so important that you can’t leave town and start a new life?”

  “Kitten.”

  Brian frowns. “You have a cat over there? Why didn’t you say so? We could have broken her out of jail weeks ago. I love cats.”

  Nicole’s face flames with shameful redness. “Kitten isn’t a cat.”

  “Is it a dog?” he says in a smaller voice.

  She shakes her head. “No. Kitten is not an animal. Kitten …” Her eyes fill with tears and her voice catches on the last words. “She’s … my daughter. John’s daughter.”

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  BRIAN FEELS HIMSELF GO PALE as the blood drains from his face. It takes conscious effort to swallow. Empty your mind of pre-conceived ideas. Just listen and don’t judge.

  He wants to understand, to give her time to explain the way she needs to, but it’s going to take every ounce of control he has. After all, he has a son. He can imagine what it would be like to have a child in that house of horrors one street over. Maybe. He suddenly feels itchy, like he has to run out of the hospital and go over there to rescue an abandoned child. Surely if that were the case, though, she would have told him sooner…

  “I don’t understand,” he says, trying with everything he has to keep his expression neutral. She’s finally opening up to him, and he doesn’t want to scare her off before she tells the whole story. If there’s a child that needs rescuing, he needs to get on that immediately.

  Nicole is crying again, big fat tears rolling down her cheeks. When he stands to help her, she holds up her hand. “No. Stay over there. I don’t want you to touch me while I’m telling the story.”

  “Okaaay.” He sits back down, staring at her face. She’s obviously feeling tortured, and it’s killing him that he can’t help her, that she won’t let him.

  “About a year ago, or maybe a little longer, John raped me and I got pregnant. He raped me many times, but this time, there was more fallout than just me being his victim.”

  Brian clenches his teeth together, trying to keep his anger under control. He suspected this was happening over there, but now he knows for sure the guy has twice as much to pay for.

  “I didn’t tell him I was pregnant. I was going to wait until I couldn’t hide it anymore, and then I was going to run away. I couldn’t do it for myself, but I felt like I could do it for my baby.”

  “Why wait?” The question is out before he can stop it. It sounds judgmental and he doesn’t want to be that man, but it’s too late. He grinds his teeth together to keep from saying anything else.

  She toys with the edge of her covers, her scraped hand making the movements look stiff. Her lips tremble a little as she keeps her emotions in check. “My face. It made me think that no one would help me unless they knew I had a baby to protect. That they’d look at me and see a deranged monster or something. I have no friends, no family who could help. No money. No identification. And I’d gotten out once before, when my face wasn’t too terrible, and the police just delivered me back. I was afraid it would happen again, and then he’d not hurt just me but the baby too.”

  “What? That doesn’t … seem to … make sense.” Brian looks at the floor, angry at himself for questioning her, but unable to stop the common sense reaction from bubbling to the surface and spilling over. “Sorry.” He looks up at her. “I don’t mean to judge you, I really don’t.”

  “It’s a reasonable question. I know that now. At the time, though, it made perfect sense to be afraid of everyone, to expect to be ignored. John can be very charming when he wants to be, so he never looks guilty. I didn’t say the right things to the police the one time I did get away. My thinking was scattered, and I was scared out of my wits. I probably had a concussion at the time. In the end, I told them it was all a lie, that I’d been in a car accident. Everything I said about John, I recanted. They had nothing to go after him with, and to be honest, they didn’t really seem all that worried about it.”

  “Why would you do that? Take back all the things you said? They were there to help you.”

  She sighs. “I wish I could help you understand, but I know you can’t, really. Your brain is healthy. You have a sense of your own power, of your own place in the world. You’ve never been brainwashed before, and that’s what I was. You have family and friends around to support you. I had none of that. None of it. John made sure of that. I used to have friends. I used to have a family. But within six months of being with John, they were all gone. He somehow convinced me to get rid of all of them and I believed him when he said that they were trying to hurt me, to get in the way of our happiness.” She pauses and absently twists her finger around her sheets. “My entire world became all about John. He was like parents, friends, siblings, and God all wrapped up into one person who could be very loving when he wanted to be. And when he first started hurting me, it was because he was helping me. That’s what he said, and it made sense to me at the time. I didn’t do things well enough. I was sloppy, disorganized. Eventually it was the smallest things that would set him off - if there were water droplets on the kitchen counter, or if he found one of my hairs in the bathroom, or if I didn’t try to make him happy by bringing him beers or food. If I did anything out of line, I knew I was going to pay. He’s a very determined person. He feels like he owns me, like a piece of property - like his truck or his tools. And no one messes with John’s stuff. No matter where I went, or what I did, I knew he’d find me. So that’s why I stayed. That’s why I decided I’d leave when I could no longer hide the pregnancy but not sooner.”

  “But there are organizations out there for women like you. Like you used to be.”

  “People like me have a hard time believing that. I had a hard time believing that even if help came, John wouldn’t come and find me anyway. And I guess we can’t argue that I was wrong about that, can we?”

  “No, I guess we can’t argue it. I did everything I could to keep you safe and he found you anyway.” Brian feels sick to his stomach over that fact. He failed, and
he sees the results and the pain she suffered right here in front of him. He hates himself for it and the fact that he didn’t completely believe her or appreciate it enough when she said before how determined the guy can be.

  She gives him a watery smile. “But the good news is, you rescued me. You didn’t let me down, so don’t give me that look. You taught me about love and friendship and support. You welcomed me into your beautiful family. You showed me that I’m not alone, even though he tricked me for a long time into believing I was. You helped me regain enough strength to fight back. For the first time I really fought back hard, and now here I am.” She smiles, obviously proud of herself.

  “Fallen off a cliff and your whole body on ice,” Brian says, scanning her body and finally fully appreciating the miracle that happened. Sure, she’s banged up, but she’s not on life support like John is.

  “I’m alive. I’m alive because of you, Brian, and I’m never ever going to forget that. But you have to understand … I can’t leave. My daughter is at John’s house, and until she’s not anymore, I can’t go anywhere. That’s the reason I stopped trying to leave months ago. And it’s also the reason I haven’t left here yet.”

  Brian stands and moves over to the side of the bed. “I know you told me to stay away, but I can’t. Tell me about her. Tell me what happened. I want to fix this.”

  More tears come to join the others. “This is something you can’t fix.” She takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly, as if she’s trying to find her center before continuing. “I made it all the way to seven months in the pregnancy. I didn’t eat a lot, so it wasn’t until she had gotten pretty big that it became kind of obvious I wasn’t just getting fat. I was wearing bigger shirts that were loose in front to hide it, but I knew it would be time to leave soon. I tried to come up with a plan. I was sneaking a dollar bill here and there out of John’s wallet while he slept, so I’d at least have bus money. I had almost twenty dollars when he caught me.”

  “He caught you? How?”

  “Yes. I think he must have known at some point that I was doing it, so he tricked me. He counted the bills and then in the morning when one was missing, he came at me, demanding to know where it was and what I was planning.”

  Brian takes her hand again. He can’t help himself. He feels like he’s there, in the room with her as the hulking form of John moves towards her, but he’s powerless to do anything about it. He’s never felt so panicked over a story before. It’s all past history, done and gone, but he can’t help but want to do something to stop it.

  Her voice is rough with tears and emotion. She’s tortured, that much is clear. “He asked me why I was taking money, since I never go outside. He asked me if I was planning on going somewhere. I denied it as long as I could but then I finally said I wanted to leave. He attacked me. He never admitted it, but I think he knew I was pregnant. He kicked me in the abdomen over and over, and that’s not something he ever did before…” She has to stop talking because her crying is getting worse. “I tried … tried to protect her. I curled up in a ball, but he got to her anyway.”

  “Oh, babe …” Brian leans in and brings her head to his shoulder, his own voice strained with holding back tears. “Babe, please don’t cry. I’m so sorry to hear this. What a horrible thing for you and her. It’s terrible. What happened to her? Can we go get her?” He wants to run out the door and find her. Bring her into this room and put her in her mother’s arms. No mother should be denied her child, ever.

  “I don’t know exactly what happened to her. Not like you mean,” Nicole says, pulling herself away and lying back in the bed. She takes her hand out of Brian’s and uses the sheet to wipe her eyes. “John had attacked me in the kitchen and then he went to bed. I was having cramps, so I went out into the garage with some pillows and blankets. I tried to hide myself behind a bunch of boxes and things.”

  “Why did you do that?” Brian asks, his own eyes filled with tears. He can’t hold them back any longer. He can picture her trying to hide, to survive in spite of all the odds against her.

  None of this seems real to him; it’s more like watching a horror movie playing in his head. All the blood is fake and the characters are wearing makeup. Things like what Nicole is describing don’t happen in his world.

  All he can picture is a wounded animal, finding a quiet corner to die in, and it’s killing him that she had this reaction, that she is the animal. It’s such a base-level instinctual thing, and it speaks volumes about where she was in her head at the time. What he wouldn’t give to have been aware of her sooner. To think he was sitting in his house one street over, probably eating a TV dinner and watching television, while she was being slowly killed. It makes him physically ill.

  “I went into the garage because the cramps kept getting worse. I had a feeling I was going into labor, but I didn’t want him to hear me. I thought if I could just relax and breathe through the pain, it would go away. It was too soon for her to be born. I just needed some more time.”

  “You could have left then. Gone to a neighbor’s.”

  “I could barely walk. And I could only imagine what a person would do if I showed up on their doorstep. I was bleeding from a gash on my forehead, both eyes black. I wanted to try and save her. I thought if I could lie down and just relax without John bugging me, I could calm my stomach down. Calm the baby down. Get healthy enough to leave. Besides, John had special locks on the doors. He locked me in all the time. The only way out would have been through a window, and I was in no shape to crawl out. I had no phone, no nothing. Except for the baby, I was completely and totally alone.” Her voice is hollow now, like she’s reliving the feeling of isolation. “I was his prisoner.”

  Brian is thinking that anyone in her right mind would have left the minute John was asleep, taken his key and gone out; but at the same time, he knows that there’s no way Nicole was in her right mind at the time all of this was happening. She wasn’t just a prisoner in reality; she was a prisoner in her own head. John had mind-fucked her in the worst possible way.

  “So what did you do then?”

  “I laid down on the blankets and tried to will the pain away. But the contractions got worse. A few hours later, she was born. Born in the garage in the middle of a pile of junk.” Nicole tries to smile through the tears, but instead her face trembles and spasms. “I had a baby, Brian. She was so tiny, but she was beautiful. She tried to cry, but it sounded so much like … like…” She can’t finish. She’s crying too hard. Dropping her face into her hands, she shakes with sobs.

  Brian pulls her into his arms again, ignoring the tears that soak through his shirt. “Shhh, shhh. Just take a break. Take a break, babe. You can tell me when you’re ready.”

  “No, I need to say it now,” she says while still crying. “She sounded like a kitten, so I just called her that. I was going to change her name after we left. I didn’t want to name her there. I know it sounds crazy, but I thought that if I waited to name her when we were gone, maybe she could stay gone. Maybe she’d never have to go back.”

  Brian swallows the huge lump in his throat. He will not break down. Not in front of her. She needs his strength. He can hold in the pain until he’s alone. He’d rather fall off a cliff right now than make her feel bad about the choices she made while suffering such extreme distress.

  “You did the right thing,” he says, not sure he believes it but absolutely certain it’s what she needs to hear. “You did the best you could under the circumstances.”

  “Not really.” She leans back in the bed again and stares at the ceiling, hiccuping back the newest sobs. “I fell asleep with her in my arms, and when I woke up, she wasn’t breathing very well. I don’t know how long it was after she was born. Maybe it was five minutes, maybe a couple hours. I didn’t have a watch.”

  “Oh my god.” The words slip out of their own accord.

  Nicole acts as if she didn’t hear them. “She was too little. I knew it when she was born, that she was too little to surviv
e, but I pretended we were going to be okay. I couldn’t move. There was so much blood coming from inside me. Every time I even shifted, a little more would come out. I was dizzy and sick. I don’t think I slept as much as just passed out from all the blood loss.”

  “What did John do?” Brian doesn’t really want to know the answer because he’s sure it’ll be terrible. But he prompts her anyway because she needs to tell her story, and he wouldn’t be much of a man if he didn’t support the woman he loves.

  Nothing has changed about how he feels towards her. Maybe he even loves her more, knowing the extent of the pain she’s been through. It takes a special kind of woman to survive a nightmare like John and come out a loving, caring person on the other side.

  “He found me the next morning, maybe a few hours after she was born, I don’t know. He took her from me. I don’t know if she was alive or dead then. I was so out of it. I couldn’t get up, and he left me there to die. I do remember very clearly one thing that he said; he told me he was going to go dig my grave in the backyard.”

  “Holy shit.” A chill moves down Brian’s spine. He’s so angry right now, he could strangle John with his bare hands. For a moment he considers finding the guy’s room and doing just that.

  “I got up that night after John was asleep. I could barely walk I was so weak. I made it to the kitchen where I could look out the back window. I saw two graves. One was big and empty and the other one was tiny and covered with dirt.”

  “He buried her … Kitten … in the backyard?” Brian’s voice barely works. His chest feels like it’s caving in. All he can picture is his own sweet child, swaddled in blankets and laid to rest in the cold earth behind a house just one street over. It can’t be real. No one could be that cruel.

  “Yes.” Nicole is crying more quietly now. Her eyes are blood-red and her face puffy. “And I saw my spot right next to hers. If I could have, I would have gone and laid down right in it and covered myself with the dirt.” She pauses as the sobs take over. “I wanted to die. I tried to die. But John wouldn’t let me.”