Missing Hart (4 page)

It was a catch twenty-two because I wanted Marissa to have her new friend in her life, but I also wanted the girl desperately. I wanted to bury my head in the sand and pretend that I felt nothing out of the ordinary for Dominique.

Having known me for more than half my life, Marissa picked up on the fact that I had feelings for Dominique that weren’t just friendly pretty quickly.

“I know you like her, Dill. I knew you would. Heck, I hoped that you would. You two would be perfect together. I think that if you give it a few years, you two could make a real go of it. She’s too young for something real right now, but someday… You more than have my blessing.”

I tried, damn hard, to tell Marissa that she was being silly, but when you know someone the way she knows me, it’s pretty damn hard to pull a lie like that off.

I felt horrible guilt that I looked forward to hanging out with Dominique. Nothing could happen between us at this point, and I damned myself to hell for being so weak that I couldn’t entirely block her out of my mind. My marriage might not be conventional, but I was in it until Marissa decided that she didn’t need me as a crutch anymore.

Of all the people in the world that I could feel such a solid connection to, did it really have to be Dominique? I wished a thousand times that I didn’t feel the way I did, but the more I got to know her, the more I liked her. I felt protective of her and I went out of my way to earn her smile. Minnie was one of the most beautiful girls I’d ever seen, but I could see that she didn’t understand that about herself.

What made her special wasn’t her external beauty; it was the purity and kindness within her. She cared about everyone, and I noticed that she went out of her way to engage people that seemed lost or alone. It was obvious what it was about Minnie that had opened Marissa up, and I was beyond grateful to her for that.

Dominique was out of my reach, and she would remain that way because I wasn’t about to cheat on or divorce my wife. There were no immediate plans for my divorce-no plan that didn’t keep us married for at least three or four more years, and that meant Minnie was off limits. No matter how attracted to her that I was, no matter how much I wanted to know everything about her, I had to shut it all down.

Sometimes the things that you know you should do are the hardest things to accept. As hard as I tried, I didn’t want her any less. She had gotten inside my head and set up permanent residence, and there was no hope of evicting her.

The truth is that in my heart of hearts, I didn’t want to.

I had gotten up late and I was having a hell of a morning. At the moment I hated my coffee maker, even though once it got going it always made the perfect pot of coffee. The problem was that it was a pain in the ass to clean and it was especially annoying on mornings that I would find that I’d forgotten to clean it the night before. Anything that stood between me and that first cup of hot heaven was on my shit list, and right now, the coffee pot was seconds away from getting thrown out the window.

Breezing into the room, Marissa laughed when she saw me at the sink struggling with getting the grounds out.

“Aww Dillon, you have such a love hate relationship with that filtration system. I’m sorry I didn’t check to see if it needed to be cleaned last night after I got home from dinner with Dominique.”

I would take a clogged system over having her out and about with her best friend any day, no doubt about it. Seeing her blossom the way that she has over this last year has made me happy at the deepest level.

“It’s my own fault that the damn thing wasn’t cleaned yesterday, not yours. You’d think I would learn my lesson, but this has to happen once a week. Where did you girls end up eating?”

Grabbing a box of cereal from the cabinet, she turned to me and smiled. “This amazing little Thai food place. It’s right down the road and I’m taking you tomorrow after work. You are going to love it! They’ve got the best pad Thai that I’ve ever…”

Her sentence was interrupted by a knock at the door. Setting the filter system down on the counter, I was heading toward the door when Marissa put her hand on my arm and stopped me.

“Oh no, you keep right on cleaning that thing. I fear for the people you work with if you don’t get coffee into you soon.”

She laughed as she turned to walk out, and I watched her retreating form with a smile. She’d just been able to touch me without any build-up or anxiety and that was huge. I couldn’t wait to tell Leah how much progress Marissa was making.

Marissa’s piercing scream stopped my heart because I knew immediately that something was terribly wrong. Throwing the filtration system to the floor, I ran for the front door. I realized it had to be her stepfather before I saw him, purely based on Marissa’s reaction. She was shaking like a leaf, there was absolutely no color in her face and she was beyond terrified. His hand was on her arm as he tried to pull her out the front door, his raspy voice giving me chills as he told her, “You’re coming with me you filthy fucking whore.”

I reacted in an instant, running across the room and pulling Marissa back from him. I saw the knife in his hand but my rage was so all consuming that I didn’t give a shit. I yelled, “Call 911” even as my fist was flying through the air to connect with his face. We struggled on the porch as I got the knife from his hand and threw it across the yard. After that, I pummeled him mercilessly, my instinct to kill the miserable son of a bitch so in control of my brain that if the police hadn’t come, I would have gladly put an end to him.

I was still beating him when the police showed up, and I was so raged out that they had to pull me off of him. Once the police ascertained who the convicted pedophile was, they arrested him. He yelled loudly the entire time so that Marissa could hear as he called her slut and told her that she had ruined her stepsisters life. That made me want to murder him because she had really only just stopped obsessing about the sister that her mother had kept. I knew him screaming about her was going to do a number on Marissa’s head and I barely controlled my anger.

The discovery of duct tape, handcuffs and a length of rope in his car, along with the knife that he’d had in his hand when Marissa opened the door showed what his intentions had been, and the police didn’t waste a moment getting him taken away.

He was going back to jail for violating his parole, not to mention the additional charges he would now be facing, but none of that meant anything to Marissa. The second the police left the house I texted Leah and then Minnie, filling them both in about what had happened. Later that afternoon, both of them were in the house with Marissa and me, the three of us working together to try to calm her down. Nothing we said made any difference.

She cried non-stop for almost two days, and most of the tears she shed were because of her guilt about the fact that she had ‘ruined’ her sister Issa’s life. I failed to see how that was true because if anything, the discovery that Marissa had been horribly abused had gotten that maniac out of the house and away from her sister. He might not have touched Issa yet, but pedophiles couldn’t change what they were. At some point he would have raped his own child too, but Marissa truly believed that he had only raped her because she was bad.

I met with her therapist three days later, when I could see that nothing was working. She was as upset as the rest of us about the fact that Marissa’s stepfather had violated the safe place that Marissa had finally started to feel secure in. We discussed what would have to be done if Marissa continued on the way she was, and the main option involved having Marissa committed if she was unable to pull herself out of her funk. I knew that would destroy her and I hoped to god that I could bring her out of it before that happened. I assured her therapist that I would keep it in mind even as I prayed that it would never come to that.

The other option the therapist suggested was moving to a different house. We knew for certain that Marissa’s stepfather was back in jail, but being in the house that he’d found her in was detrimental. I agreed wholeheartedly that a change might do her good, and I found us a new house within days. I had to blow out our savings getting the money together to move, but I did it without reservation. There was nothing I wouldn’t do to help her get better.

Marissa is slipping away a little more each day. She has been like a walking zombie for almost four weeks now, and it’s to the point where Dillon is going to have no choice but to put her in the hospital. She doesn’t eat, she rarely sleeps and she refuses to leave the new house. I’ve only seen her perk up once when she was talking about a garden Dillon was working on.

I’m scared, so fucking scared. I’ve never had a friend that I love as much as I love Marissa. We were supposed to be on a new road, healing together. Now she’s trapped in the past and nothing any of us do is helping to bring her back.

Her therapist has been doing home visits every other day, and she called Dillon last night and told him that she needs to speak with him tomorrow morning. It’s pretty obvious that she’s going to ask for Marissa to be checked into a mental hospital, and it’s breaking Dillon and Leah because Marissa has always been adamant that she can never be locked up like that.

Leah is at their house every single day. I’ve grown close to her very quickly, and most nights after dinner she and I will lie on the bed on either side of Marissa and tell her how much we love her, begging her to find her strength and come back to life.

Of course, I’m out and out lying to my family about where I’m spending all of my time. They know about my friendship with Marissa, but I never told them that she was so much older than me, or that she is married. They think I’m hanging out with my friend, and that’s that. It’s nothing unusual, not really. I hide a lot from them, even though I know that sounds terrible. I love them all so much, but I can’t burden them with all of my crap.

They’ve given me some guff about spending so much time out and for missing family dinners, but I’ve basically shut them down by behaving like a brat and pointing out that I’m allowed to have a life. Pointing out that I’m an A student who has never done drugs didn’t hurt, and they’ve been pretty cool about me spending time with friends.

This is where I want to be, even though none of us really know what to do to help her. Leah came in this afternoon with bags and bags of Christmas decorations that she started showing to Marissa.

“See sissy? I used to make fun of you for decorating the day after Thanksgiving, but this year I’m saying we decorate now. Thanksgiving is only a month away. You love Christmas decorations! I went to the store and got all of the decorations that they had. Please get up and help me. You know I can’t do any of this without you.”

For Leah, Marissa got up off the couch and helped to decorate. Dillon didn’t complain about setting up the monstrosity of a fake tree that Leah had bought, and I could tell that he was hoping against hope that the decorating would bring Marissa out of her depression.

The process of decorating took hours, and by the time we were finished the interior of the house was festooned with lights and decorations. The happy appearance of the house didn’t do anything to change the unease that lived within. Marissa participated in the decorating, but she wasn’t all there mentally, something that was more than obvious to Dillon, Leah and me.

Being with Marissa at this point is like being with a hologram of her. There is no real feeling, no happiness, no personality, no joy and no real signs of life. She is scaring the shit out of me and I fear that she isn’t going to survive. Honestly, I don’t always think she wants to go on anymore. I’m afraid to say that to Dillon or Leah, but I suspect that they’re thinking the same thing.

After the decorations were up, the three of us sat down with her and discussed the fact that her therapist was coming over the next morning to discuss the next step. It broke my heart to watch Dillon and Leah begging her to focus on the positive, promising her that there was nothing they wouldn’t do for her.

When it was all over Leah had to leave and Dillon walked her out to the car. That left me alone with Marissa, and I was frustrated when she made her way right back to her bedroom and laid down on the bed. This was her default position these days, in bed with no TV or radio on-just her and the silence. If one of us insisted, she would allow the TV or radio to be turned on, but it was obvious that she had no connection with any of it.

Sitting down gently at the foot of her bed, I watched as she curled up with a pillow. She was skin and bones by this point and it was terrifying. I had to swallow over the lump in my throat several times before I could finally get words out.

“Please, you have to tell us what you need to feel better. You are quitting on us, quitting on yourself, and I don’t understand why! I won’t survive without you Marissa. We all need you. You have to find your way back. Can’t you see any of the good? You told me once that we are responsible for the thoughts we have, and that the way we think about things determines our future. I believe that and I know you do, too.”

Normally she just stared through us when we tried to talk to her about what was happening, but today she seemed a bit more alert. For the first time in weeks she looked me in the eye when she responded, and I felt a seed of hope take root.

“I do see the good, Minnie. I see it all around me, every single day. It’s in Dillon, it’s in Leah and it’s in you. But it’s not in me. It’s never been in me. I’m broken from the inside out. There isn’t a day that goes by where I don’t struggle with pushing memories of the things he did to me out of my head, and it’s been years since that happened. How long do you think it goes on this way? I’ve tried to be good. I’ve tried to be positive. But no matter what I do, the blackness inside of me is always there. Not only can I never forget what he did, I can’t even live my life because of it. Touching is out of the question. The one thing I’ve ever really wished for are children of my own. Do you know that because of how much damage he did to me that I can’t carry a child? No amount of therapy can fix that, Minnie. Broken is broken.”