Page 38 of Rainwater

Chapter

Fourteen

L ike a haunting litany, the words reverberated in his head. He touched the title of the book and a harsh strangled sound escaped his throat.

No one knew. No one. He’d managed to keep his secret from teachers, doctors, social workers and friends at great personal cost.

He went downstairs slowly. He’d kept it from everyone, but not Jennifer. Sweet, beautiful Jennifer knew his shameful, horrible secret. He wasn’t normal.

He’d had no reference point for what it was like to be normal, which frightened him because he was always so afraid he would do something wrong. He’d tried as a child. Tried comparing his family with others, but all he got was confused because other families didn’t seem to be quite so chaotic.

Jennifer was standing at the sink when he finally reached the kitchen. “How did you know?” he asked hoarsely, his voice breaking with disbelief. He hated it. His knees gave way and he collapsed into the nearest chair, his body feeling numb and distant, as if his brain were displaced.

“I noticed hints. The way you wanted to be touched, but were so terrified of it. Your fervent protective instincts. And when you said you hated your father, I had to wonder why. I already knew you were running from something painful. At the time, I thought it was the bull, but then I realized later that it was so much more. I wanted so desperately to understand. But I couldn’t find anything in that pathetic excuse for a library, so I called a friend in Houston.

She sent me the book and I read every damn sentence, and I ached, Corey. Please don’t be angry.”

He couldn’t speak for a moment. She cared enough to ask someone all the way in Houston to send her a book because she suspected that he had been abused.

She had cared enough to go to great lengths to understand him.

It was too much. Too much for him to take in.

“Angry?” His voice came out broken. “Angry?” he said again.

“I’m not angry, Jennifer. I’m stunned, ashamed, so many emotions I can’t even begin to tell you about them all. ”

“I’ll sit here all night if you want to tell me about each one in detail.”

“Oh, God, Jennifer.” It was too much for him to take in at one sitting.

He got up and bolted across the kitchen, his hand on the doorknob, so close to breaking down in front of her.

That would be the ultimate humiliation. The silence that had been so carefully maintained was now gone and he had to face it. But he feared that he could not.

“Don’t go. Please, Corey, don’t go,” she pleaded.

Her voice like a glass fetter to his legs. So easily he could break the fragile bonds, jump onto his bike and escape into the night. Ride until the fierce emotions eating at him like acid were blown away by the wind. Ah, but he could never forget. He would never forget her or her caring love.

Jennifer leaned forward. “I wanted to talk to you about this, but I didn’t know how. I didn’t know the right questions to ask… I went into town specifically to get a book so that I could understand. I remember that first day I met you. There was such pain in your eyes. Such loneliness and sorrow.

He leaned back, closing his eyes, trying to sort all this out.

He felt naked and exposed and at the same time, unbearably safe.

He didn’t know how to react. He’d expected to feel vulnerable and alone when the silence finally broke, not this warm place in his heart that radiated heat to all the dark, lonely parts of his body.

“I’m not the type of woman that trusts easily, since Sonny.

But there was something about you that reached out to me.

I just couldn’t ignore it. My heart is yours now, and I want to know everything there is to know about you.

Your past is part of you. What made you who you are today. I really want to know.”

“I remember lying on my bed as a small child trying to understand why my father hit me,” he told her.

“I can remember the stinging pain, the bruises, the swollen faces and blackened eyes I’d suffered.

I remember hurting on the outside and dying on the inside.

Hundreds of lonely nights that increased the emptiness and the anger inside me. ”

“And you thought it was all your fault?” she prompted. She moved forward, pressing her body against his back, gathering him to her.

His eyes opened, his breathing ragged. With an intensity that broke the sudden tense silence, he demanded, “How did you know?”

“You’re not alone, Corey. Ellie and I love you. We love you very much.” She held on to him. “Why don’t you tell me why you were going to slash that painting. Why you slashed all the others.”

He broke away from her, rounding on her with a growl, “ I don’t want to be like my father! ”

“What does slashing those paintings have to do with that?” she demanded in a tense voice, not flinching or budging an inch.

Corey felt sudden and glad relief. There was no pity in her eyes, just a savage protectiveness and unrelenting need to know.

“He painted, Jennifer. I think he hated me for my talent. He used to tell me I was better than him. I haven’t painted for years, but when I came here, I so desperately wanted… ”

“What?” she asked softly when he didn’t continue, caressing his jaw with her fingers.

“To be normal. To have you. God, you scared the living daylights out of me.”

“You would have left if it wasn’t for Jay?”

“Yes,” he hissed. “I’ve been running a long time, darlin’. I was running so fast so that I wouldn’t stop long enough to fall in love. How did I know it would only take a split second and hair so red it defined the word? And a precocious child so like her mother.”

Jennifer smiled and it hurt so bad. “The book says that people react to abuse in different ways, Corey. It says that some people abuse substances and others look for what they need in activities. When you lost the rodeo, you did feel like you lost yourself.”

How could she know? How could she understand him so well? “I couldn’t save my mother and sister and when I was gored, I totally lost my balance.”

“And after the goring?” Her words rushed out on a note of understanding.

“Everything came crashing down like a house of cards. After I got gored, I felt like I was starting from square one again. Then the news came. They told me my mother and little sister were dead. I didn’t give a damn about my father.”

“While you were in the hospital?” she prompted.

“Yes,” he whispered. “My father was a drunken bastard. He blamed everything on the Anglos. And every one of his failures he battered into my skin, and my mother’s, and when she had Marigold, hers, as well.

I tried to stop him, but I was too young, and then, as I grew older, I saw that she wouldn’t leave.

No matter how much I pleaded with her. No matter how much money I sent her. She wouldn’t go.”

She touched his face lightly. “What happened?”

“He fell asleep with a lit cigarette and they all died.”

“Oh, God, Corey. I’m so sorry. I’m so very, very sorry. You blame yourself, don’t you?”

“I should have made her go, but she wouldn’t leave him. I failed her and Marigold.”

“No!” she shouted. “You did not fail her. It was your parents’ fault, Corey.

They were the ones who failed you. You were their responsibility.

They’re the ones at fault. You were a defenseless child in need of love and nurturing.

You didn’t get that because they were unable to give it to you.

You had no choice.” She wrapped her arms around him, holding him tight, rocking him gently.

The warmth and need he felt for this sweet, delicate woman overwhelmed him, a balm to his battered spirit. “I don’t ever want to let you go. Jennifer, my Jennifer. I don’t ever want to let you go.”

“Don’t then. Ellie and I need you.”

He looked into her eyes. Her words were like silken cords that wrapped around his heart, binding him. She loved him and his heart sang and soared. Yet he knew the truth. He didn’t know what it was like to be normal. That was why it was all a dream. Elusive. Out of reach.

“What made it worse was the silence,” he said after a moment.

“I couldn’t talk about what was happening to me.

I couldn’t ask my friends why their families were so different.

Asking questions would have opened up too many inquiries, and I felt too ashamed to talk about it to anyone,” he said quietly, his voice drifting into a hushed whisper.

“I wanted to be normal, Jennifer. I wanted it so desperately.”

He lay his head on her shoulder and she buried her hands in his hair, cupping and kneading his scalp.

“I thought if I could be good enough, it would happen. But there was no turning back for my father. The darkness ate him whole and in the end, the fire took him. I started fighting back at ten. I probably would have landed in jail by sixteen if it wasn’t for the rodeo.

I ran away from home and lied about my age.

The rodeo saved me, Jennifer. I had money and prestige and no one beat me anymore.

I started to send money to my mother. I told her I would support her and Marigold.

I even went home when I was eighteen to beg her to leave.

Her arm was in a cast and Marigold looked like a zombie.

But she wouldn’t go. My father tried to throw me out of the house.

I hit him, Jennifer. I hit him so hard I thought I’d killed him.

I was in such a rage all I wanted to do was stop him from hurting her.

My mother made me leave. She told me never to come back. I never did.”

“Corey.” She grabbed his face and held it between her hands. “You don’t understand, do you? You’ve been a father to Ellie. No one taught you how. You just did it because it comes natural to you.”

The silence stretched as she held him, her hand smoothing through his hair. “I want what I saw in that painting, Corey.”