poured another one. I recognized the smell from inside the car.
He did a “toast” to me and we clinked glasses and he made me drink. I didn’t really like it but I did like the way he was treating me, like an adult. Then he started to tell me how my uncles had him all wrong and that he’d come back to try and reconnect with all of us. He said he wanted to talk to me because I hadn’t been around long enough to be poisoned against him.
I guess at that point I was getting drunk, which is something I never want to do again. My head was really fuzzy.
Then Uncle Blake came around to my side of the table and lifted me up. He was strong. He sat me on top of the table and started kissing me. He has really fast hands and he was touching me everywhere. He stood there between my legs and held me in place.
I told him I didn’t want to do anything with him. He said not to think of it that way, but to think of it as a way to get closer to each other. He said he really liked my eyes, which is weird because I don’t think they’re anything special.
I didn’t scream because I didn’t know what to do and there was no one to hear me. I thought if I fought him with my fists, he might beat me up.
It happened really fast. He pushed me back and pulled my panties down and put his penis inside me. I’m not a virgin but it really hurt.
I didn’t know what to do so I just let him finish. When he was done, he said, “That’s what I think of this family,” and he just walked out. He said it really mean.
I stayed inside and cried because I didn’t want to go anywhere with him. He drove away just as it got dark, and I realized he still had my phone so I couldn’t call anyone for help.
I walked down the road in the moonlight until I could see lights in the distance.
That’s when I knocked on my uncle J. W.’s door and I told him what happened and he brought me here.
“You bastard,” Cassie said aloud. “I hope you rot in Deer Lodge.”
Before Cassie could reread Franny’s statement and start a fresh page with her observations, her phone lit up on the table with an incoming call.
The screen read bryan. She snatched it up and punched the icon to refuse the call.
“Another bastard,” she whispered while she reached for her glass of wine. “This place is full of them.”
Bryan Pederson was the sheriff of Park County and she’d known him—and known of him—for years. He’d been there for her after the shooting of the trooper and he’d been there for the final act of the Lizard King. She’d noted that some time between the two encounters that he no longer wore his wedding band.
He was a good man, an honest cop as far as sheriffs went, and she let herself start to feel comfortable around him off the job. And he was certainly attractive in a laconic cowboy kind of way.
Cassie became suspicious of him after the first night she stayed over at his house. She’d opened a closet door by mistake instead of the bathroom door and saw that it was filled with his ex-wife’s clothing. When she brought it up to Pederson he explained it away by saying his ex-wife had never come to retrieve her clothes and he’d forgotten about them since he never used that closet. He bolstered his case by saying she was such a spendthrift that she’d likely already replaced her old wardrobe. Bryan said by the next time Cassie came to stay for the night the closet would be cleaned out and all of the clothes donated to charity.
Cassie had let herself believe that, but there was a kernel of doubt in the back of her mind that remained there for months, waiting for another shoe to drop.
It dropped on that afternoon in June when she opened his office door and saw Bryan and his ex-wife grunting on the carpet behind his desk. He looked over his naked shoulder at the sound of the intrusion and their eyes locked. There was panic in his face but Cassie didn’t say a word. She had stepped back, closed the door, and walked straight out of the building to her car without looking back.
And