Night, Forgotten: Draft 1

Chapter 12: Then

            

"Get me out of here," Carmen moaned, collapsing into a folding chair with her mason jar of chilled beet juice. "I don't think I can stand another week of this."

A group of men emerged from the garage on the far side of the Dolans' home. I was sitting across from Carmen, enjoying the spring afternoon with my own glass of freshly pressed beet juice (courtesy of the Dolans' fancy new vegetable juicing apparatus) balanced on my engorged belly. Some of the men carried cameras over their shoulders, others lugged light stands and sand bags around, rearranging the film set they were working on.

Every few months, Marcus would convert the house and yard into a film set for one of his educational video essays. Carmen used to tease him by referring to him as a "YouTube star" when it became clear that he could make some real money with his videos, which he called "short films." They were 10-minute, live-action reenactments of historical events from unusual perspectives and, given how nerdy the whole endeavor was, his social media following was enormous.

I had to hand it to him: it was a lucrative use of a Bachelor's degree in history.

I watched the crew work for a moment, nodding. "It will be nice to have your privacy back!"

"Right?!" she exclaimed, relieved at the confirmation that she deserved to complain. She took account of the men from over the rim of her glass and her face softened slightly. She sipped the bluish-red liquid carefully. "I mean, they're fun. They can party." Her eyes darted to my belly, then up to my face to see whether I'd caught her looking at it, whether I'd also made the connection. She cleared her throat. "Sorry."

I shrugged. She had nothing to be sorry for. "Don't be. How's everything else going?"

Carmen sighed dramatically and stretched her bare legs out in front of her. She rotated her ankles, flexed and pointed her feet mindlessly, the way dancers do. "Not so well. Marcus and I..." she trailed off, watching her feet as she moved them in slow, lopsided circles. "It's not even that he's working so much right now, it's just still not happening."

As awkward as it was, it didn't really surprise me that she would bring up their struggle to conceive in front of me, now, given my situation. Carmen isn't usually rude, but she does have a habit of speaking without thinking.

Still, I was caught off guard. I knew that the whole process of trying to conceive a baby was incredibly stressful for a lot of women and I wanted to be there for Carmen while she went through it. But at the same time I resented her for getting to make the decision at all. Oh, how I wished I could have been the one who wanted to get pregnant.

I swallowed my discomfort, reached over, and squeezed her hand. "It must be so difficult," I said, infusing my voice with empathy. "It will happen. And when it does, you are going to be such a great mom." The last word – mom – broke in my throat.

Carmen looked up, suddenly self-aware.

"Oh my god, Julie, I am so – I'm so sorry," she stammered, using her fingers to blot her eyes, which were damp. "I can't believe I just brought that up with you. How stupid of me."

"It's fine," I told her, but it wasn't. Nothing was fine.

"Did you end up reporting it?" Carmen asked in a low voice, sitting forward and taking my other hand in hers.

When I nodded curtly, she gasped. "Julie – why didn't you tell me?! What happened?"

I hadn't told her because the truth was, nothing had happened.

After that long night we'd stayed up talking in the parlor, Owen and I had decided finally to report the rape, two months after it had taken place. I had been hesitant, but part of me felt an obligation to report the crime so that in case there was a man wandering through the Rhode Island woods attacking and raping women, he wouldn't be able to do it again to someone else.