Page 37 of When You Are Mine

“I wasn’t like Cam. His mom was…awful. Negligent. Horrible, but at least she tried for a while. I don’t know if that ended up being a blessing or a curse, but my mom left me on the porch of an orphanage like a bag of old clothes.”

Kerris swallowed, searching for courage behind her closed eyelids.

“The orphanage where I was abandoned,” she said, feeling the last word settle on her tongue heavily, making her pause under its weight. “That orphanage was private, like the Walsh orphanages, and when the money ran out, all the kids were sent into the foster system.”

“How old were you?”

“Three. I was kind of shuffled around until I was ten. In the third home, one of the older kids there burned me with a cigarette.” She stroked the sunburst-shaped scar on her wrist. “The social worker saw it, and got me out. That was when I ended up at Ms. Jessum’s.”

Kerris smiled and felt her insides soften like warm butter at the thought of Mama Jess.

“It was like having a mom and a real home. Mama Jess made sure I had clothes, food, and a bed to sleep in. I wasn’t only a check to her,” Kerris said, as certain as she’d ever been about anything. “I could tell shelovedme. Loved me like a mother loves her little girl. It was the happiest time of my life.

“For a while,” she added, lacing the two words with sudden bitterness.

“What happened?”

Kerris knew Walsh was keeping his voice calm and quiet to soothe her, but his hands gripped his knees.

“Her brother moved in. TJ.” She said his name like a curse.

Kerris’s words trailed into the silence of her memory. She had come home from school one day, somehow immediately sensing with her child’s intuition that a dark force had entered their safe haven. The curtains had been drawn, keeping out the bright after-school sunshine, casting shadows in the front room. TJ had been there, lounging in the corner, slumped in the lumpy recliner. His predator eyes had lingered on her long hair and her baby-fat cheeks. Kerris had clutched her backpack to her flat chest, feeling the hairs lift on her arms and the back of her neck. Feeling hunted for the first time.

But not the last.

At dinner that night, Mama Jess explained that her brother would be staying with them for a while. And wouldn’t it be good to have a man around the house? Kerris had pushed her peas around her plate, feeling TJ’s eyes on her like a tiger watching a rabbit. Waiting patiently to strike. She lived in fear of an unknown threat she could not articulate to herself or anyone else. Unknown, but real. Then finally he’d pounced, devouring her until the only thing left was the ravaged carcass of her innocence.

She had never spoken of it before; never been tempted to pull back the heavy covers shrouding this part of her past. Cam had unburdened himself to her today. She wondered if his office hadn’t called, would she have done the same? And why now? Why Walsh? She remembered her first impression of him. Dangerous, especially now with that sweet, wary, waiting concern on his handsome face.

“At first he only watched me.” She braced herself for the shame she knew would engulf her once Walsh knew the whole truth. “He watched me all the time, and I knew it wasn’t right. There were five girls in the house, but it was just me he watched all the time. He started…”

“Started what?” Walsh’s voice was warm and still, the eerie calm before a storm breaks.

“Started coming in my room at night.”

The words struggled their way up her throat, escaping in a tortured gasp.

“He was so quiet.” Kerris fixed her eyes on the gazebo floor, but didn’t really see it. “There was another little girl in my room, in the twin bed beside me. I wondered why she didn’t wake up; why she didn’t hear him. I thought maybe I imagined him, like the boogey man or a monster under my bed, but he was real. Just so quiet.”

A single tear streaked down Kerris’s face. She didn’t try to catch it.

“Ker, you don’t have to tell me—”

“He told me if I didn’t let him touch me, that if I told anyone, they would take me away from Mama Jess. And I didn’t want that.” She went on as if Walsh had not interrupted. “Someone finally loved me, wanted me, and I couldn’t risk losing that. So I didn’t tell. Iwouldn’thave ever told.

“Then he…he…” The ugly truth hiccupped in her mouth.

“Did he…”

“Yes.”

Kerris methodically stripped the confession of the pain she would never forget. She looked at Walsh for the first time since she had started.

“Yes, he did.”

The muscles in Walsh’s face tightened around his horror-washed eyes.

“He said it would be our secret.” Kerris shifted her numb bottom on the gazebo bench. “And I would have kept it. I just couldn’t leave Mama Jess. I know it was sick, but I thought I could put up with that, with anything, if I could stay where I was loved and wanted. I couldn’t leave her.”

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