Body and Bone (7 page)

 

Chapter Ten

Wednesday, June 8

S
HE DREAMED SHE
was being crushed, a dead weight on top of her, being unable to breathe through her broken nose, smothering. Until last night, she hadn't had this nightmare for years, but it stirred up past terrors, those feelings of despair and futility she'd hoped she'd escaped, back when suicide entered her fevered, grief-­stricken mind on a regular basis. She longed to go to sleep and never wake up, but there was Daltrey, her brown-­eyed boy, who she couldn't leave. She was selfish, but she wasn't that selfish.

She woke before it was light and went into the kitchen to make coffee and wait. She couldn't read or watch TV. She couldn't concentrate. She should do something productive like Lauren would—­maybe make apple dolls with dried corn husk skirts or bake vegetarian lasagna or make artisanal sheep's milk cheese to sell at the local food co-­op.

Since Nessa couldn't do any of those things, she caught up on laundry. Finally at a little after six, Daltrey came padding into the kitchen, his beautiful thick taupe hair an apostrophe over his head, rubbing his big round eyes with one hand and dragging his Timmy Chicken behind him. Then he glanced at the door to the garage and back at her, his eyebrows a question mark. He signed “Daddy
.
”

She didn't know what to say. The only thing now that redeemed their doomed union was standing before her clutching a colorful stuffed chicken.

“You want some eggs for breakfast?” she asked him.

He nodded, and she got busy cooking.

Isabeau came into the kitchen tentatively, worry etching her face. “You okay, boss?”

“Yeah,” Nessa said. “Sorry about the meltdown last night. I'm all right.”

“You want to talk about it?”

Nessa turned her eyes toward Daltrey and shook her head, hoping Isabeau would catch on that she didn't want to talk about any of this in front of her son. What Isabeau wouldn't know was Nessa had no intention of talking to her at all.

After breakfast, Isabeau turned the television on to
The Octonauts
for Daltrey before sitting on the floor next to Nessa's desk to work on her computer.

Nessa opened her own laptop. Isabeau had added a new search term to their Google Alerts—­DeadJohnDonati—­and this morning, Nessa's inbox was stuffed full of alerts from the comment section on her blog. This was the first one:

Nessa Donati steals cars and kites checks.

Interesting that this particular comment was spelled perfectly. And something else . . . who used the phrase
kites checks
? That was an archaic term, wasn't it? She called Isabeau over and showed her.

“Before you delete anything,” Isabeau said, “we need to screenshot everything so we have a record of what's going on. It's a good thing you use this spam plug-­in, because each commenter's IP address appears next to their comments. I've started a spreadsheet.”

“Even if we delete these things, stuff on the Internet is forever, right? Daltrey will see this one day, and he'll—­”

Isabeau put her hand on Nessa's arm, a first. “Just hold on. He'll know this is a lie. But in the meantime, I need you to remain calm. It doesn't help to get all freaked out.”

Nessa went through her email. Another sponsor asking for reassurance that the odd comments on her blog would be stopped.

The clothes dryer buzzed, so Nessa folded the last of the laundry and lugged the full basket upstairs. Her first stop was her own room. After she'd unloaded her things into her closet, she went to Daltrey's room, where she filled his dresser drawers. And then she lingered over Daltrey's treasures atop his bookcase.

She lifted the things one by one: the Tesla Model S, the little green army man with a bazooka, the amethyst geode, the Fender guitar pick. As she grabbed it, she heard Isabeau gasp downstairs and say, “Oh, my gosh.”

Nessa ran down the stairs, the pick still in her hand, and when she got to the living room, Isabeau's expression stopped Nessa dead. The now-­familiar feeling of alarm filled her stomach.

“Oh, shit,” Isabeau said. “Oh, this is so bad.”

“What?” Nessa demanded. Isabeau rose from the floor and pulled out Nessa's desk chair in front of her desktop computer.

“Go to NessaDonati.com.”

“But—­”

“Just do it!”

Nessa sat, put the pick in her pocket, and typed the URL into the address bar, then watched the website materialize. The home page of the site was a fairly generic splash page with the following menu items: Show / Blog / Appearances / Game / Photos. Had Altair put this site up without her knowledge?

She looked at Isabeau, whose expression was tense and worried, her eyebrows knotted.

“You better look,” Isabeau said.

On the Show page, it listed the times she was on the air. Under Blog, it said Coming Soon. She was beginning to think it was Altair, until she clicked on Photos.

There she found dozens of nudes: her legs spread-­eagle, having sex in every position imaginable and some she couldn't imagine, and even grosser things.
Hustler
-­grade stuff. Of course her head had been Photoshopped onto the airbrushed bodies. She didn't look anything like that. But it was more than a little unsettling to see herself in that context.

She glanced again over her shoulder, and Isabeau met her gaze.

“That's not the worst of it,” she said, reaching for the mouse and clicking on Game. A headshot of Nessa appeared, filling the screen. Beneath the headshot were instructions:
Use your mouse buttons to punch Nessa's face. If you knock out a tooth, you win!

Just to see what would happen, she clicked the mouse, and fists shot out, punching the face. Each punch made her eyes swell a little more, bruising develop, blood come out of her nose, eventually knocking out a tooth. Fireworks exploded on the screen, accompanied by the words
You Win!
The effects were spectacularly realistic.

She scrolled further.

*New Rape Game Coming Soon!*

“This is beyond trolling,” Isabeau said in a hushed voice. “This is menacing. It's threatening. It's
personal
.”

Yes, it was. Nessa turned the pick over in her hand, and the silver BIG written on the back of it suddenly grew in her brain, filled the room and her consciousness as “Dead Wrong” blared in her mind. That song. It was by Notorious B.I.G.

BIG.

She had to do an Internet search. Alone. Now.

“I'm going to take a bath,” Nessa said, snatching up her laptop.

Isabeau's eyes traveled from the computer in Nessa's hands to her face.

“I'll be back down in a little while. I need to calm down. Okay?”

“All right,” Isabeau said.

Nessa went upstairs and locked herself in her bathroom and opened her laptop. She navigated to the California state prison website. After almost an hour of searching and being bounced from one worthless, confusing, badly designed website to another, she finally had to plunk down $4.95 for seven-­day unlimited access to governmentsearch.com. Then Nessa finally had the information she needed and dreaded.

He'd been paroled fourteen months ago.

Nathan. Her high school classmate who'd served seven years in Chino, effectively blowing his full-­ride football scholarship to USC. For raping Nessa.

She sat shaking in her bathroom using her vape pen. It was a poor substitute for what she really needed, what her very cells cried out for, which was a shot. She kept having to swallow to keep up with the constant salivating, to tamp down the germinating nausea that mimicked withdrawal.

It was clear to her that Nathan had posted the Rosie trivia question to let her know he knew who she really was. But did he know
where
she was? That she was in the middle of Kansas?

No, she reassured herself. If he did, he'd have shown up in person.

Right?

He was terrorizing her to try to flush her out, to expose her, or more specifically, to make her expose herself. So the cops would find her and haul her off to prison now that he was out. He would finally have his revenge.

Nathan was a rapist, but was he also a killer? Maybe not before prison, but very possibly yes after doing his time. He'd had seven years to learn. To allow his bitterness and acid-­rain hostility to build. To think about his stolen future, his life playing college football and then the NFL, all the money, all the women, the fame he'd been robbed of. By Nessa.

She didn't like to think about what had happened after the rape, because it was nearly as bad. Nessa had just wanted it all to go away. But Joyce had insisted on pressing charges, overriding Nessa's terror at testifying at trial and facing her attacker. Joyce gave Nessa a touching speech about empowerment and justice and saving other girls from this monster, and when Nessa still resisted, Joyce showed her a contract from a television producer. She had actually contacted the man with an idea for a reality show—­mothers of rape victims sitting around rapping about how their daughters' lives had been destroyed. The deal would only go through, Joyce said, if Nessa participated, if she outed herself.

“What do we always say?” she'd said to Nessa. “When life hands you lemons, make lemonade, right? We need to turn this sad situation into a blessing.”

“What does that mean?” Nessa said.

“This is our one shot,” Joyce said. “We'll be set for life. This show will make us famous and rich. Don't you want that?”

“Or,” Nessa said, “you could get an actual job.”

Joyce had given Nessa the death stare, the one that used to scare Nessa into silence, but after the rape, it had no effect. Then her mother had pulled out her trump card, the one that always worked.

“What happens the next time Brandon gets pneumonia or an infection? Or he goes into anaphylactic shock? Do you want him to have to go to County? He almost died from a staph infection the last time he went there. If we do this show, Brandon will have the best care.
You
can make that possible.”

Joyce had had the contract in hand. Nessa could save her brother. She shouldn't be selfish, although she couldn't shake the feeling that if it were Joyce who had to do what she was asking Nessa to do, Brandon could damn well go to County.

The trial was just like Nessa had read and heard about. The questions about her sex life, about her sluttiness and her drug use. It really was like getting raped all over again, but in front of a judge, jury, and lawyers. The two bright spots were Candy's testimony, which was heartfelt and strong, and the testimony of the kid who'd walked into the room and saved her. That was pretty much what put Nathan away. Not Nessa's testimony, not the testimony of a slut.

And then they did the reality show, and they got five grand a month apiece, plus a signing bonus, plus a ratings bonus if they were high enough.

Nessa could imagine Nathan watching this show on the prison TV, his rage growing, his revenge plot coalescing in his mind, becoming his life's focus and goal.

At the same time, Nessa's focus and goal had gelled, bankrolled by the allowance Joyce gave her out of their show earnings. And that was heroin.

Thursday, June 9

“
J
EEP'S
B
LUES” PLAY
ED
on Nessa's phone, waking her from a sound sleep.

“Hello?”

“Mrs. Donati? This is Detective Rob Treloar from the Riley County Sheriff's Department. How are you doing today?”

She tried to sound like she'd been up for hours. “Great,” she said. “I'm fine. How are you?” Although why he'd care if the call had awakened her, she didn't know.

“Doing well,” he said. “I'm calling because I have a request. I wondered if you might have an item that would possibly have Mr. Donati's DNA on it.”

Nessa gasped, and it sounded showy and theatrical to her own ears. “What did you find?”

“I'd rather talk about it in person. Could you come down to the station with a hairbrush of his or a toothbrush? Do you have anything like that?”

“John took all his—­”

“Or a close relative.”

Nessa's breath caught. “You mean my son?”

“Was—­is Mr. Donati your son's biological father?”

For whatever reason this question rattled her propriety. “Of course he is!”

“Well, ma'am,” Detective Treloar said, infinitely patient. “Would it be possible for you to bring him to the station for a cheek swab?”

“What did you find?”

“Let's talk when you come in. Tomorrow about ten? Would that work for you?”

Nessa was unable to breathe. “Okay,” she said, but no sound came out until she cleared her throat and repeated herself.

“I'll see you then.” He clicked off.

Nessa sat up and gazed out the window across from her bed, which looked out on the fields beyond her property. She'd been right. John had jumped into the river, drowned, and the police must have found his body, and it was unrecognizable. The carp and catfish must have stripped most of his flesh off his bones, and now the only way they could make sure it was him was with DNA.

What had she expected? Had she really expected for John to live that long after he started using again? No, she hadn't. But this reality, the idea that he might really be gone, made her realize her little girl's heart had hoped for a storybook ending, where John would clean up, sober up, grow up. Come back to her, never to use again. What an idiot she was. That's not how this worked. She'd read all the literature. Only about twenty percent of crack users were able to stay clean, it was that addictive. It ate holes in the brain, destroyed the pleasure center, made life without it seem colorless and joyless.

Nessa wept, imagining John's torment. Unable to fight off the insatiable predator that had subjugated his life, surrendering to the river's current.