Chapters (57)
- Books by Gregg Olsen
- Dedication
- Prologue
- One
- Two
- Three
- Four
- Five
- Six
- Seven
- Eight
- Nine
- Ten
- Eleven
- Twelve
- Thirteen
- Fourteen
- Fifteen
- Sixteen
- Seventeen
- Eighteen
- Nineteen
- Twenty
- Twenty-One
- Twenty-Two
- Twenty-Three
- Twenty-Four
- Twenty-Five
- Twenty-Six
- Twenty-Seven
- Twenty-Eight
- Twenty-Nine
- Thirty
- Thirty-One
- Thirty-Two
- Thirty-Three
- Thirty-Four
- Thirty-Five
- Thirty-Six
- Thirty-Seven
- Thirty-Eight
- Thirty-Nine
- Forty
- Forty-One
- Forty-Two
- Forty-Three
- Forty-Four
- Forty-Five
- Forty-Six
- Forty-Seven
- Forty-Eight
- Forty-Nine
- Fifty
- Hear More from Gregg
- Books by Gregg Olsen
- A Letter from Gregg
- Acknowledgements
“Look, I can see you don’t really understand. Not every criminal is caught. Not every victim is believed.”
“I know that, but I still don’t understand. It’s worth a try, right?”
“Your mother did file a report. And she had her body probed and scraped for evidence. She said it was nearly as humiliating as what he’d done to her. She even told me once that she felt the police and the doctors were almost an extension of her captor’s crimes. Their questions were like acid poured over her wounds. They didn’t think that she had been abused, raped, whatever. Our mother—your grandmother—didn’t believe her. Even I wondered about it.”
“But why didn’t anyone believe her?”
“Because she’d been captured once before.”
A pause.
“Or she said she was.”
Now I am confused. Completely.
“The year before she was raped,” she goes on, “your mom disappeared. She claimed she’d been kidnapped, well…” I can tell by the way she’s wringing her hands that this part is hard for her to disclose. The torture of my mother was, oddly, easier. “She’d run off to be with a boy. She had gone to the coast. She was afraid she would get in trouble, so she made up a story.”
My aunt catches the look on my face. She pounces. “She was kidnapped. She was brutalized by that monster who raped her. She wasn’t lying about any of that.”
Her explanation placates me only a little. “So, if she made a complaint to the police, why did he carry on stalking her? If it was all out in the open, he had to know that even if he wasn’t arrested that the police would be watching his every move.”
* * *
I go back to the kitchen table and fast forward through the last bit of the tape, the words that changed my life.
And made me do what I did.
Me: Aunt Ginger said the police didn’t believe her… past incident… might have been more to it…
Dr. A: …must have been painful… how could it be?
Me: …friends in the sheriff’s office… made evidence disappear…
Dr. A: Why didn’t the rapist just leave her alone?
Me: … got away… he is.
* * *
I speed to the end of the tape. Much of it seems blank, just hissing. I’m almost to the point of flipping over, when I hear my voice say my mom had something my biological dad, her attacker, wanted.
I hold my fingertips to my lips. Tears tumble down as they did that evening in Aunt Ginger’s darkened living room, and later, in Dr. Albright’s room.