Damage Done (3 page)

Mark stood with the bloody paper towels and shook his head,
"You don't need any stitches, but let me clean it up. Rachel, where's the
First Aid kit?"

Rachel directed him to the cabinet under the sink in the
bathroom and waited for him to leave the room, "Lana, he punched you?
Nobody called the police?"

"Of course not, dollface," Lana said, her pudgy
fingers pinching her nose, "We were in the parkin' lot, those two boys who
work for him were the only ones who saw it. They made him get in the truck and
as soon as Megan drove off, they did, too. I think she's almost ready to leave
him. She was finally openin' up and tellin' me she'd started her own bank
account, she's put about three hundred dollars in there. And I ain’t gettin'
the police involved, they just ask too many questions and I don't want Russell
knowin' we're workin' with her."

Rachel watched her thoughtfully.

 "Lana, if we don't report it, and something else
happens to Megan, then what? If we let the police know, then she can have that
on record if she finally decides to leave or get a restraining order. It will
help protect her in the future."

"Rachel," Lana snorted defiantly, "It's my
face, my choice. I didn't leave after thirty years of gettin' pushed around by
my old man so I could get told what to do by you or anybody else. You know the
best thing we can do for Megan is to let her make that decision. If she wants
to report it, then I'll report it."

Jake came back from setting Lauren up on the laptop, and
Mark walked in with a bag of cotton balls and a bottle of hydrogen peroxide,
resuming his seat next to Lana.

"This was all I could find," he said, “It’ll only
sting a bit.”

"Don't worry, Sugar,” she laughed, “I've been dealt
worse.”

Jake took a seat in the overstuffed chair across the room,
his face concerned, "Lana, my oompaloompa, what happened?"

Rachel jumped in while Mark held Lana’s busted lip open to
clean it, summarizing, "Megan's husband dragged her out of Brewster's this
morning and Lana mouthed off to him.  And now she's arguing with me about
self-determination and why she doesn't want to get the police involved."

"You're damn right," Lana snorted loudly, pushing
Mark’s hands away.

Jake crossed his legs and gave Lana a thousand watt smile,
"That's why I love you, you loud-mouthed lunatic," and looking to
Rachel, "She's right, Rach. If she doesn't want to get police involved,
that's her call. And Megan gets to choose what's safest for her, she knows her
situation better than any of us ever could."

Rachel could have argued, but she was outnumbered. And
anyway, they were right, getting the police involved might create more problems
for Megan, and their ultimate goal was to help her leave safely. Lana had been
working with her to leave for months now, and she'd never let Rachel hear the
end of it if she interfered.

"Fine," she agreed, "But I want pictures of
your face and a detailed incident report to keep in Megan's file. And go get it
notarized. It might not be admissible in court, but maybe it’ll help if we need
to sway the judge down the road."

She made her way towards her office and turned to point her
finger back to the old woman, "And Lana, next time you meet with a client
in person, you need to give us a head's up. If you wind up in a ditch somewhere
I want to be able to tell the police what you were up to."

"I’ll keep you informed, dollface."

"You do that," Rachel said, walking into her
office and calling behind her, "Now leave me alone for awhile so I can
find some money to pad Megan's bank account."

She resettled Lauren on the sofa with the laptop so she
could overlook the numbers for the Courier article. If she was lucky, the
article might bring them a few thousand dollars to help with the gala, but it
still wouldn’t be enough to keep them out of the red.

Running a non-profit organization is a paycheck to paycheck
kind of job unless you're lucky enough to head up a charity like the Red Cross.
Most barely scrape by, and with the economy in such bad shape, donors weren't
exactly eager to part with their money. Rachel spent all of her time digging
around for grants to pay the bills, when they could, help the occasional
battered woman start her life over.

But the hardest work was done by the volunteers, like Lana.
She and another two dozen former victims of domestic violence hung out online
in their spare time, offering support to victims desperate for a safe place to
chat, hoping to connect with people who understood how hard it was to leave, how
few resources there were out there to help, how much it hurt to be victimized
by the one person who is supposed to love you the most. Rachel was grateful for
people like Lana, women who'd come from such dark and terrifying circumstances
and still found the strength to want to help others.

And she was grateful for Jake who managed the technical
side of operations, yelled at her about staying on task, and a thousand other
things that made him invaluable to her. They worked hard, the hours were long,
and the pay was meager. Thank God neither of them was in it for a paycheck,
because there’d been several month stretches where they’d both gone without
one. Rachel had Kenneth and her mother to lean on, and shortly after they’d
started working together, Jake’s grandfather left him an enormous amount of
very coveted Texas real estate. Rachel was terrified he’d abandon her then, but
when she asked him about it, he laughed and promised she'd never get rid of him
so easily.

She jumped nervously when he squealed from the doorway,
"Oh my God, Rachel! I almost forgot! You'll never believe who I saw last
night at the Booster Rally!"

The Harrison Township Booster Club was always putting
together some party or another to celebrate their five time State Champion high
school football team. The game against the Ellis Eagles tomorrow marked the
beginning of the season, and Jake had gone to the rally to take photos for the
local paper.

"Tony Homo?" Rachel smirked.

"No, smartass. I wish. Anyway, I'm not sure what he
was doing there, he had to be with one of the kids from Ellis, but he had the
sassiest haircut and a hand tailored business suit, I almost didn't recognize
him without some khaki pants hanging off his ass? You know, it's a shame I
wasn't out back in high school, because he was fine as hell, but you know what
they say about -"

"Jake!" she interrupted, drumming her fingers
impatiently on her desk, "Just tell me already."

"Are you ready for this? It was Dylan!"

Rachel felt the blood drain from her face and she watched
the smug look on Jake's face evolve into worry as he took quick strides toward
her desk.

"Hey hey hey! Honey! It'll be okay, let's get you a
piece of chocolate!"

Rachel held Hunter’s hand through the crowded maze of
over-sized pickup trucks in the parking lot, worried he might scratch
somebody's paint with his toy robot. Lauren sat on Kenneth's broad shoulders
giggling, "Faster, Daddy, faster, Daddy!" while he held tightly and
galloped towards the stadium entrance.

He was still in his uniform, the black tactical paramedic
pants showing off his muscular legs, a touch of sweat glistening on his
forearms as he held their baby girl. The margaritas at dinner helped him relax
some, and he was never sexier than when he was playing the devoted father. Or
loading the dishwasher, but he hadn’t loaded the dishwasher in years. Rachel
wished she had another margarita, or two, but somebody had to drive them to the
game.

The brand new million dollar stadium behind the old run
down high school flooded with people, teenage girls with tiny paw prints
painted on their cheeks holding handmade signs that said things like, "Go
Bulldogs! Destroy the Eagles!" and “Hustle, Hit & Never Quit!”

Rachel hated football, but she never dared tell people
that. Fridays in the fall are a big deal in small town Texas, and football
might be revered in small towns across the country, but in small town Texas,
high school football is the lifeblood of a community. She was enough of an
outcast already, so when the whole town could be found at the field watching
the first game of the season, she showed up and pretended to care.

They made their way to the bleachers and she spotted tiny
Megan sitting quietly with her husband. At least Megan didn't have any visible
evidence of the morning's episode with Lana, hopefully Russell hadn't taken it
out on his wife when they got home. They made eye contact and Rachel braved a
nod of the head, but turned away when Megan looked down at her weathered shoes
and nervously twisted her long unkempt hair. Rachel knew better than to attempt
conversation with a client while their abuser was nearby. Everybody knew what
Rachel did, and acknowledging her at all would only have served to tip Megan’s
husband off.

She continued the ascent up the bleachers, nodding her
greeting every few seconds to friends or neighbors. The town had grown in
recent years to more than thirty thousand people, but for people like Rachel
who'd grown up there, it was still small enough not to go anywhere without
running into somebody she knew. She never learned how to handle those run-ins
with ease, she was too stiff, and worried she'd seem rude or unfriendly. It
wasn't unusual for her to hide from people she knew in the grocery store, or to
put off filling up her car so she could avoid a lengthy gossip session with
somebody she'd seen at the pump when she drove by.

Rachel craved an urban sprawl where her social awkwardness
wouldn't be as much of a problem, where she didn't have to fake a smile and
pretend to be interested in small talk. But living in the city hadn't been
practical, and they weren't going anywhere any time soon, so she'd learned to
suffer through it when she had to.

She looked up and waved when Sarah called her name,
thankful to be saved from any more long winded neighbors. Settling in, she
turned her long skinny legs towards her friend so her bony knees wouldn’t poke
the man sitting in front of her. She hated her chicken legs, she was too pale
and it hurt sitting next to the petite doe eyed beauty with perfect skin and
perfect hair and the perfect smile that she'd never had to work for. Rachel
smoothed her ponytail self-consciously and pulled the lip gloss out of her
pocket, annoyed that pretty had never come as naturally for her as it had for
Sarah.

"Hunter! Don't stomp on the seats!" she yelled a
little more loudly than she wanted.

Kenneth sat with Lauren and gave her his 'don't be such a
bitch' look. If it were up to him, the kids would do whatever the hell they
wanted. They could yell for twenty minutes and he’d never say a word until
Rachel screamed at them to quit, and then he’d miraculously recover his hearing
and ask, “God, why are you screaming?”

"What took y'all so long?" Sarah asked, "I
thought you were right behind us."

"I had to take Lauren to the bathroom."

That was a lie, she'd walked around to try and kiss Kenneth
after he buckled Lauren in, and he'd pulled away to make a call on his cell. It
was a good ten minutes before he got off the phone and joined them in the car.
No apologies. No explanations. He just said, "Alright, let's go."

She’d only been trying to thaw the ice, she hadn't really
wanted to kiss him to begin with. But her feelings were hurt nonetheless.

Sarah nudged, her face proud, "Can you believe Caleb
is starting varsity this year?"

"No, it’s crazy. It makes me feel old."

Rachel had known Caleb practically his whole life, she and
Sarah show jumped together growing up, they'd shared a love for horses. Rachel
never had many other girlfriends, but Sarah got pregnant their sophomore year
of high school, back when having a baby so young wasn't socially permissible,
and ever concerned with other people's opinions, Savannah disapproved of what
she called, "Sarah's predicament." So when the pregnancy became
obvious, the school district demanded Sarah's parents withdraw her, and
Rachel's mother refused to allow them to have any contact.

Sarah left for Houston then, humiliated, where she lived
with an aunt who'd taken care of Caleb so she could finish high school. She'd
gone to one of those alternative education centers for knocked up teenagers and
kids with homemade tattoos or blue hair, all those kids who refused to conform.
After she left, Sarah’s boyfriend hadn't been allowed to see her either, but it
didn't bother him as much as it had Rachel. In a town where football stars can
do no wrong, he'd escaped the snickers in the halls and the haughty judgment
over his part in getting Sarah pregnant, and it hadn’t taken long for him to
find some new girl to corrupt.

Sarah married a guy she met in college, and Nathan was the
only father Caleb had ever known. He sat happily next to her in the bleachers
waiting for their son to take the field.

"So is Caleb nervous?" Rachel asked.

"I think Nathan is more nervous than Caleb,” Sarah
laughed, “You know how he is about this crap."

She leaned over and cupped his face with her hand, kissing
him on the mouth.

"The hell I'm nervous," he pulled away in
protest, "It's only the first time my kid is hitting the football field as
a varsity player, what father would be nervous about a thing like that?"

"The kind of father whose been twittering around like
a lunatic for three days, asking his son if he's studied his plays or eaten his
broccoli."

"Stop telling on me," he teased, kissing her
quiet.

Rachel looked to Kenneth who sat playing with their kids
and wondered when they'd stopped kissing. She couldn't remember the last time
they'd kissed privately, much less in public. A small kind of guilt crept over
her, realizing she didn't even miss it. It always felt more like an obligation
than an instinct.