Page 60 of In the Air Tonight

“Someone saw him…”

“Yes.”

He never blinks.

I look away. I can’t bear this.

“Neisy—”

“Please don’t call me that. I’m Denise now.” I want to tell him Neisy died a long time ago. Denise was forced to pick up the pieces of her life and carry on, to find love, meaning and joy, things Ryder Elliott tried to take from Neisy.

“I’m sorry, Denise.”

“What do you want from me?”

“I’m the police chief in LE now. The attorney general may be willing to reopen the case based on this eye-witness testimony.”

“No.”

“No?”

“I’m not reopening the case. The first time almost killed me. I can’t go through that again.”

“I understand how you feel, but—”

Rage, the kind I haven’t felt since that summer, boils up inside of me. “Unless you were attacked, assaulted and robbed of your virginity by the local hero and called a slut by his friends, you can’tpossiblyunderstand how I feel. Unless you miscarried the baby you were left with after that night, you can’t possibly know the journey I was forced to take to get my life together or how long that journey took. It tookyears, Houston. I can’t go back to that place again because someone who failed to do the right thing then wants to clear their conscience. There’s nothing in this world that could make me revisit that time.”

“Not even to get justice?”

I shake my head. “Who’s the witness?”

“I suppose it doesn’t matter because if you’re not willing to participate, we have no case.”

“It matters to me. I want to know who left me in the woods after I was raped and then sat on that for all these years.”

“Blaise Merrick.”

It takes me a second to put a face with a name. I remember Arlo Merrick because I had a class with him, and he was one of the boys who signed that hideous affidavit full of lies. Blaise didn’t stand out to me, which means she wasn’t one of the tormentors.

“Why didn’t she come forward?” As soon as I ask the question, I hold up my hand. “Never mind. I know why. She grew up with him. I was nothing to her.”

“You weren’t nothing to her. I took her statement. This has weighed on her soul every day since it happened. She explained that she had close ties to him through her brother, who’s still one of his best friends. Her best friend at the time was dating his brother. And she wasn’t allowed to be in LE with the car. A lotof things conspired to keep her quiet, and she regrets that very much.”

I find that hard to believe. “So why now?”

“Ryder is running for Congress. Blaise said she couldn’t bear to think of him running for office, knowing what she did about him. She said the minute she heard about his campaign she couldn’t hold on to this secret for another second. She drove straight from her home in New York City to LE and asked to see me.”

My insides twist into knots.

Ryder is running for Congress.

Blaise saw him rape me and is willing to testify to that or Houston wouldn’t have come all this way to find me.

Houston puts a business card on the table in front of me and then stands to leave. “Think about it. If you change your mind, give me a call.”

I want to tell him I won’t change my mind.

As I walk him to the door, my mind races with thoughts, emotions and memories that’ve been buried for years. It took a long time, a very long time, not to think of that summer every day anymore. I can’t revisit that dreadful time and continue to care for my family. I know that as sure as I’m breathing. It would undo me all over again. I survived it once. I can’t do that a second time.

---