Truth and Consequences, page 22
“Everybody wanted to go. I did, too. It was heady stuff. So we all agreed, and I considered myself in charge and that I’d keep everything under control. I couldn’t have been more wrong.
“We got to the mansion—it was really almost a castle—it looked medieval, ancient. Only the agent and the count and the older men were there. There were seven of them.”
“Penny—” Craig said, his brow furrowed in concern, but she held up her hand to silence him.
“No,” she said, shaking her head. “Let me say it. There weren’t any sisters. There weren’t any other women at all. Only we five girls. I was oldest—just turned eighteen. The youngest was thirteen. The place was creepy, the atmosphere was creepy. We’d been shown our room before supper. It was huge, upstairs, several gigantic beds, all very lavish. A chandelier, our own fireplace, oil paintings, antique cases full of books.
“We were supposed to stay the night, and I’d noticed our door was very big and heavy, with a key on the inside and a bolt lock, too. We should be safe. But I already wished we hadn’t come.”
She’d started to tremble, and she hugged herself to stop. “Things went all right until the desserts course. Then the thirteen-year-old said she felt dizzy, and so did one of the other girls. I had a buzzing sensation in my head, and I was frightened that we’d been drugged. There were often stories of models being drugged.
“I said I was tired and didn’t feel well, and that maybe we should go up to our room. I think we’d all begun to feel strange by then.
“Oddly, the men didn’t seem to care. The count walked us upstairs to our room, and I locked both locks. I wanted to fall to my knees in thanks. I thought we’d just missed a very bad scene.
“Nobody felt well by then, and Annette, the next oldest, asked for help opening a big window so we could get fresh air. We put on our pajamas and were starting to get into the beds, feeling fainter by the moment. Another, the thirteen-year-old, Lacy, was just turning out the light when one of the bookcases creaked and started to move, just like in a horror movie.
“And the men came in. One slapped Lacy’s hand off the light switch. She ran for the window, and…just…jumped. As if she was on the first story. I heard her hit the ground below. I was scared she might be dead.”
Her voice trailed off. At last, she said, “I should have done the same. We all should have. But by that time, I couldn’t move. My arms and legs felt like they didn’t belong to me. I lost track of what was happening…. I couldn’t fight….”
Craig’s eyes narrowed in some emotion she couldn’t name. “You were drugged and then—forced…?”
“It happened to four of us. Yet I really don’t remember what happened. Or who could…I don’t know. I can’t name who did it. I just woke the next morning and the sheets were bloody, and I hurt all over. The other girls were the same. The key was gone from our door. We couldn’t get out. We looked out the window for a sign of Lacy. She was gone.
“Later that morning, the chauffeur came and told us to pack. He was taking us back to our hotel. Then he locked us in again.”
She’d kept from crying, but her lower lip quivered almost uncontrollably. Craig tried to reach for her hand, but she pushed her chair farther back and hugged herself harder. She shook her head and went on.
“We didn’t know what happened to Lacy. When the chauffeur came for us, he wouldn’t answer any questions, would barely speak to us. Annette was crying so hard that I thought she was going into hysterics. The chauffeur finally stopped the car and made her drink something that put her to sleep.
“He dropped us off at the hotel, warning us not to tell anybody or something ‘very bad’ would happen to us.
“Lacy joined us the next day. She’d twisted her ankle, but she somehow walked to a nearby village. She tried to tell the police what happened, but they wouldn’t listen. The count was too powerful. She was badly scratched, and her ankle needed surgery. She’d limp for the rest of her life. Her career was over. All she wanted was to go home.
“There were rumors about what happened to us, but none of the other girls wanted to talk about it. I didn’t, either. Lacy dropped out of modeling, and so did Annette. The two other girls eventually developed problems—drugs, alcohol. One died later of an overdose. And I…I got pregnant.”
“So,” Craig said softly, “you had an illegitimate baby? Is that it?”
“No,” she said bitterly. “I had a miscarriage. I didn’t even know I was pregnant. I exercised a lot and I was always dieting. I was used to missing periods. But three months later, I was on a shoot for beachwear. In the Caribbean. It was on an island that was poor, not developed at all.
“In the middle of the night, I started having pains and bleeding.” I beat on Cedric’s door. He was the photographer. We were next door to each other in this run-down beach hotel. He got me to the only hospital that was near.
“The doctor could hardly speak English. He told me what was happening, and I couldn’t believe it. But then, when it was all over and after I’d slept, he came to me and said there was more bad news.”
Penny could no longer meet Craig’s eyes. She stared, unseeing, at the braided rug. “Again, I could hardly understand him. H-he said the baby was ‘not right, not right.’ He said what was wrong, but I couldn’t understand. Then he got a nurse who could explain. And she said…she said…”
She couldn’t go on without breaking down.
Craig stared at her in concern. “Penn? Penn? It’s okay. Just tell me. Please.”
So she took another deep breath. She felt this was the end of everything.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CRAIG SAW HOW DEEPLY HURT AND humiliated she was. He was ashamed to put her through this. But he had to know.
Penny sat straighter in her chair. “The nurse said—I still remember it exactly—‘Your baby died because it’s deformed. It’s better this way. He would have been a freak. And he would have died within days anyway.’
“It sounded brutal, but later I realized she didn’t mean to sound cruel. There was the language problem, and she was upset, too. She said it was a genetic defect—very rare. She gave me a name, but I’d never heard of it. I asked her if I had other children, would it happen to them, too? She said it could. I got hysterical. And they gave me a shot and knocked me out.”
“Good Lord, Penny,” Craig said. “But couldn’t the genetic defect come from the father? Why think you were the blame?”
“I don’t know who the father was!” she said bitterly, angrily. “And research shows that it’s almost always the mother who has the problem.”
Penny took a drink of her champagne, and he saw how her hand shook. “I never wanted my mother and Hilton to know. I couldn’t face their knowing. Hilton had always warned me against ‘getting in trouble.’ He said if I did, I didn’t need to come home, he’d disown me.”
Craig looked outraged. “Disown you? What a hypocrite. Penny, if he made you feel—”
“It wasn’t just that. I’d been a fool. I learned I couldn’t be a real woman. I couldn’t chance having children. Couldn’t gamble on bringing another child like that into the world. Other people might think I had a good body. But I felt broken, incomplete, flawed beyond repair—and dirtied.”
Craig, stunned, could only stare at her, not believing this beautiful woman could think such a thing of herself.
He leaned closer to her, knowing he probably looked too intense, too angry. But he wasn’t angry at her, only at her circumstances.
“But how do you know it wasn’t a fluke?” he persisted. “A terrible accident? A one-time thing?”
“Because I went to a doctor in New York, as soon as I got back. He said the same thing. That the genetics of this thing weren’t fully understood. That they seemed to be multifactored. But a woman who’d conceived one such baby could have another. Or one with other serious, debilitating defects.”
He felt numbed, helpless. “There’s no treatment for it?”
She shook her head. “No. If a child like that lives long enough to be born, it’ll die within a few days. I went to the library. I looked at photographs. I wish I hadn’t. I still see them in my nightmares.”
“B-but that was a decade ago,” Craig argued. “More—fourteen years. Science is always making progress. Maybe something’s changed.”
“Nothing’s changed,” she said sharply. “The child can be tested early in the pregnancy. But if the defect’s there, there’s no cure. Most doctors recommend abortion. And I couldn’t face that, either.”
“But how do you know nothing’s changed?” he asked. “Shouldn’t you go to another doctor?”
“I went to another doctor. As soon as I quit modeling. She said precisely the same thing. She can’t guarantee the child will be healthy. And she can’t guarantee that it won’t. And if it isn’t healthy, I can’t face it. Maybe some women could make the choice. I can’t. Just can’t. Call me a coward. I am a coward.”
He leaned his elbow on the table and put his forehead in his hand. Tears were forming in her eyes, and he couldn’t watch. “You’re not a coward for that. No woman would want to face such a dilemma. But you could have told me, Penny. If you’d told me from the start, we wouldn’t have gone through all this hell.”
“When should I have told you? The first date? ‘Oh, by the way, somebody drugged me in Milan, don’t know who. Got pregnant out of wedlock. Baby miscarried because it was a freak. Any other children I have might be freaks, too. Say, want to go steady?’”
“Don’t be flippant,” he snapped. “And stop saying ‘freak.’”
“Craig, I hoped the same as you. That there’d be some kind of medical breakthrough. That’s one reason I was always coy about children. I was deluding myself.”
“Coy is a euphemism,” he said, not looking at her. “I always believed we’d have kids. If only you’d told me.”
“I wanted to pretend it never happened,” she retorted. “And that’s what I did as much as I could. I hated thinking about it. It made me despise myself. I thought you’d despise me, too.”
He looked up accusingly. “Did you think I wouldn’t love you? Wouldn’t want you?”
“That’s exactly what I thought,” she said, blinking back tears, her face rigid with emotion. “I’m not what I seemed. I’m damaged goods. And it’s not bad enough that I got raped, I’m to blame for what happened to those four other girls. I thought I could take care of us all. That night changed us all forever, and now one girl’s dead. And it’s my fault.”
“It’s not your fault,” he argued. “Stop beating yourself up. How could you know? And those girls’ parents were ultimately responsible for them. You were all young and pretty and naive—all of you. It’s not your fault. What about the men who did this?”
“Craig, I’m just trying to explain how I feel. And I feel guilty about that, too. That I was afraid to go after them. But we were threatened, we were scared.”
“How you feel is wrong,” he said, almost fiercely. “You were victimized. And then biology played a tragic trick on you. Did you think I was too much of a lunk to sympathize with you?”
“I loved you too much to tell you,” she said with an air of desperation. “I thought you’d turn away from me—lose any respect you had for me.”
“So instead you turned from me. And left me pining like an idiot. Why did you lie? And lie? And lie?”
She pushed her way from the table and stood up abruptly. “See?” she flung at him. “You don’t understand. You’re angry and disgusted.”
“Yes, I’m angry. Yes, I’m disgusted. Because you purposely misled me. You didn’t—”
“You wanted to know the truth. Now you do,” she shot back. “And now you’re free. The woman you thought you loved was an illusion, as phony as Hilton. I’m like him, you know. I don’t want people to know the real me. I want them to think I’m better than I am. And so, as you said, I lied. And lied. And lied.”
“That’s not what I meant,” he countered. “I meant that—”
“I’m leaving. I’ll find a cab. And you? Will you finally sign those divorce papers? I want to be free myself. From all this deception and shame.”
“That’s what you want? For me to sign them?”
“Yes. It’s for the best. Everything we had was built on untruth.”
“But you were the only one who knew it.” He sneered. “You never trusted me. Without trust, how could we make it work? I’ll sign them, all right.”
“Good,” she said, grabbing her handbag. “Let’s get this over as soon as possible. You fly back with E.A. I’ll rent a car and drive.”
She slung the strap of her bag over her shoulder. “I’m sorry, Craig. I’ll catch a cab and go back to Bart’s. Let’s just stay out of each other’s way. You should go back to South Dakota and find some pure young woman with a perfect past who can give you perfect children, lots of them. And she’ll never, ever try to deceive you.”
And she was out the door, taking the flagstone path that led from the cabin to the street. She turned, flipped her hair almost rebelliously, and walked swiftly down the sidewalk.
He watched her go. “I said all the wrong things,” he muttered unhappily. “I’m a jerk.”
Some rational part of his mind said, She’s right. You wanted the truth, and she told it to you. You weren’t just a jerk, you were a total jerk. Don’t sit and sulk like an idiot. Go after her. Now!
And he did.
SHE HEARD FOOTSTEPS BEHIND HER and turned to see Craig coming after her with such swiftness and determination that she almost broke into a run to flee him. But he was already at her side, and he seized her by the shoulders. “No,” he said, his breath ragged. “No. I’m sorry. Everything I said came out wrong.”
She looked at him apprehensively. He said, “It hit me hard. But when you walked away it hit me harder. I do understand, Penny. It’s just all new to me. What happened in the past makes no difference to me. And we can create what happens in the future. I love you. I’ve loved you from the start. I can’t imagine not loving you—ever.”
He pulled her closer and kissed her so thoroughly, so completely, so passionately that she knew he’d told the truth. She wound her arms tightly around his neck and held him as if she never intended to let go.
He pulled her nearer to him still and laid his cheek against hers. “I was hurt that you didn’t trust me enough to tell me sooner, that’s all.” He took her face between his hands and stared down into her eyes, his own so full of pain and caring that she felt weak.
“Why would I hold it against you that these awful things happened to you? You made a wrong decision. One wrong decision. Look at Dena, my own sister. She made a wrong decision. Fell in love with the wrong guy, got pregnant and married. Had Angie and April, who have birth defects. Her husband was too weak to deal with it. He left her and shamed her. Do I hate her for it? Does she disgust me? No. I love her and I love the girls.”
“W-wait,” Penny stammered. “Are you saying that you’d still want to try to have children with me?”
“No,” he said impatiently. “God, I can’t say anything right. I just mean that it’s not her fault that she had children with problems. It was the hand fate dealt her. It was no fault of hers, no horrible thing that she did. And fate dealt you a hand just as hard. We’ll work it out. Together. I apologize for sounding so stupid.”
“I’m sorry for being so defensive,” she said. “I’ve hidden this for so long….”
“We’ll work it out,” he vowed. “That is, if you still can love me.”
“I never stopped,” she said, tears filling her eyes.
“Come back to the house,” he said, taking her hand to lead her back.
“I think our supper’s cold by now,” she said.
“Supper’s not what I’m hungry for,” he said, his gaze on her lips. “How about you?”
“Me, either,” she said, stroking his hair.
They walked, their arms around each other’s waists. When he reached the cabin’s porch, he picked her up and carried her over the threshold and into the bedroom, just as if she was his newlywed bride.
She looked up at him, suddenly uneasy, although she wanted him more than she’d ever wanted anything. “We’ll need to be careful…”
He smiled at her, took his wallet from his hip pocket and laid it on the nightstand. “I came prepared for any possibility. I figured you were off the pill.”
She propped herself up on her elbows and watched with pleasure as he drew off his T-shirt. “I don’t know that I like that,” she said wryly. “It makes you sound a little too confident of your charms.”
“No,” he said, lying down beside her and taking her in his arms. “Just a hopeless romantic. Who believes love conquers all.”
He paused, kissed her deeply, then whispered, “Now let’s rip each others’ clothes off.”
SHE CALLED BART TO TELL HIM that she wouldn’t be back tonight and that neither would Craig. She imagined there would be hoots and high fives in the motor home tonight, and later she learned that in a moment of exuberance, E.A. gave Kayellen a celebratory kiss. Bart said she looked as if she loved it.
They flew back to Dallas, and together Craig and Penny told Maeve they were reconciling. Her eyes got misty and she hugged them both. “My prayers are answered,” she said, then turned so they wouldn’t see her blow her nose.
Gerty learned soon after and sidled by Penny. She whispered, “So you came to your senses, eh?”
“I hope so,” Penny murmured.
Gerty smiled to herself and moved on.
Penny told Maeve that she and Craig would stay on with her for as long as they were needed, but Maeve would have none of it.
“No,” she proclaimed. “Gerty’s offered to stay at least another month. She’s having work done on her place, and this arrangement suits us both. And you and Craig need time alone. You don’t need to share a house with two older women who watch soap operas half the day.”
