noticed her a few times hanging around the nightclub the past several weeks. We believe she may be a companion of Isaac’s.” Isabelle folds the card she’s been holding close to her chest when I add, “I haven’t seen Isaac with a girlfriend the entire time he’s been under surveillance, but this lady has been in the picture more regularly than his standard dates, so she may be someone significant in his life.”
“All right.” Isabelle hops off my desk with a grunt. “I’ll see what I can find out about her.”
While she heads for her desk, needing distance before I see the unease igniting in her eyes, I send Grayson a text.
Me: The beekeeper has landed.
His reply weakens the knot in my stomach but only by a little.
Grayson: Never feel guilty about protecting your first love. I never have.
Talking about first loves, here comes one phone call I never saw coming.
10
Melody
“I don’t care if he has a baby face, Julian, he’s a monster.”
Julian, audiologist, wannabe defense attorney and my boyfriend, rests a box of noodles on his wash-board stomach when he slumps into my couch. He’s making a mess, but since it gives him an excuse to take his shirt off, and hopefully spend the night, he’s going for it. “How could someone that cute commit such horrendous crimes? It isn’t possible.”
I almost reply that you can’t judge anyone on their moral upbringing, much less their looks, but the bright light of my TTY telephone in the corner of the room catches my eye.
No one uses that phone anymore.
No one except Brandon.
I shoo away Julian’s nosey-nancying when he says, “Why do you still have that old thing, Mel? You don’t need it anymore.” I’m too busy scrambling to answer a phone call I swore I’d never answer again. I don’t have time to hold his hand through the safety nets twenty-six-year-old women like me have a hard time giving up.
The last time I accepted a call from Brandon, a decade worth of memories was deleted from my mind in an instant. I had convinced myself for almost two years that Joey didn’t do what he had done, that he was the lovable, sweet, brother-like teen I had remembered, and that my woozy head that night had me misconstruing what had actually happened.
Then Brandon called, and my entire world upended for the third time in my life.
His contact not only revealed how foolish I had been, it also proved that you can never judge someone’s motives on their looks and upbringing. Some people are born to be evil. They can be taught to act differently, but the instant the protective cloak is removed, their true self comes out, and more times than not, it isn’t pretty.
I didn’t want to believe the reports Brandon forwarded me. I was certain every single word on the official documents were false. My thoughts only changed when Brandon didn’t deny the claims. He had sex with an informant. He never denied that. The only thing he wanted to refute was the plaintiff’s claim that she slept with him under duress. That she didn’t believe she could safely turn down his advancement, so she had no option but to answer his every whim.
That hurt.
Seeing the name of the man I had loved, and still do love, written on the defendant’s side of a sexual assault claim hurt. I can’t put it any simpler than that.
Thinking back, I realize how immature it was of me to react to the news as I did, but in all honesty, could you say you would have responded differently if you’d been through what I had been through? I was raped in a house I had once called my home, by a man I had considered a brother. I wasn’t in the right frame of mind to repress my thoughts and look at Brandon’s case objectively.
I’m not even sure I am in the right mindset now. But I do know one thing, I swore I would handle things differently if given a chance again.
I’m going to keep my promise.
Brandon protected, loved, and cared for me after my parents died, but the one time he needed me the most, I ran instead of explaining what had happened. I hid things from him and used my ability to pass a lie detector test with flying colors to my advantage. Then, when he needed me again, I failed him for the second time.
I refuse to do bad things in threes. It’s time for the fear