“How can I assist you?” the operator said.

“Please,” I mumbled; my throat was so dry that no sound came out. I cleared it and spoke more loudly: “I need to speak to—”

The phone booth door was pushed open abruptly, hitting me painfully in the shoulder. A hand reached inside and pressed down the receiver to disconnect the call. I turned around slowly. It was Bobby’s friend, one of the boys who stole candy from Rick when they gave us a ride home that first time. He stank of liquor. It was so overpowering that I leaned as far away as I could until my back pressed painfully against the telephone console.

“Well, if it isn’t the little sister,” he snarled. He curled his hand into my hair and pulled me close to his hot drunken face.

47

Rachel

They met at the boardwalk at dusk. Dan and Christine Moore approached Rachel arm in arm, baseball caps pulled low to obscure their faces. They were dressed like twins in matching jeans and tees under unbuttoned shirts. Denim for him. White linen for her. Their shirts blew in the wind like parachute canopies.

The three of them stepped off the boardwalk onto the beach, passing stragglers shaking sand off their towels before flipping them over their shoulders and heading home. At the far end of the beach, surfers were paddling to shore, pushed out of the ocean against their will by the ebbing light.

Dan had told Rachel when they’d set up the meeting over the phone that he and Christine were happy to talk with her, but not in the house. Mitch Alkins had been there the night before. It upset Kelly to know that she was being discussed downstairs while she stayed in her room, with her grandmother looking in on her intermittently. They never left Kelly alone for long.

Meeting at a restaurant was out of the question. So was Rachel’s hotel. There was so much publicity around the case, so much scrutiny, that Kelly’s parents hadn’t gone out in public since the trial began. Dan told Rachel they were going stir crazy. His strained voice indicated that he was neither joking nor exaggerating.

Kelly’s name had been withheld by the media but nothing could suppress the town’s rumor mill. It was common knowledge in Neapolis that Kelly Moore was the girl at the center of the rape trial. She’d had to leave her high school, and then a second school, because of the constant buzz of gossip as she walked down the halls. Her mother had taken to ordering groceries online long before the trial started. She didn’t dare go into a supermarket, let alone a restaurant. Kelly had anonymity in name only.

Rachel had suggested she meet Kelly’s parents at the beach at twilight. It would be dark enough that nobody would recognize them and deserted enough that they’d be able to talk privately without being overheard. They’d agreed their discussion would be off the record.

The farther they walked from the marina, the fewer people they saw, until it was just the three of them strolling on the edge of the shore, their outlines dark against the intermingling ink blots of sea and sky as night began to fall.

“How’s Kelly doing?” Rachel asked.

“Not great,” said Christine. Her sigh said more than her words. “She goes into full-on panic mode at the thought of returning to court.”

Christine explained that Kelly was on high doses of anti-anxiety medication to keep her calm. The medication made it hard for her to think coherently. When her doctor lowered her medication, Kelly became anxious. “It’s a vicious cycle,” Christine said. The exhausted dark rings under her eyes told their own story.

“Christine doesn’t want Kelly to go back on the stand,” said Dan, looking down at the pattern the soles of his shoes made in the sand as he walked.

“You don’t agree. You want Kelly to finish testifying,” Rachel surmised.

“Yes.” He looked up. “Mitch Alkins told us that he won’t get a conviction without Kelly. I was up all night thinking about what he said. Kelly needs to do it. She needs to do it so that son of a bitch goes to prison. She needs to do it so she can move on,” he said firmly. “She’ll regret it for the rest of her life if she doesn’t finish the job. If Scott Blair gets to go free and enjoy his life unpunished.”

Christine shook her head as her husband spoke. It was clearly a major point of contention between the two of them. Time was running out and they still hadn’t reached any joint agreement.

“What do Kelly’s doctors think she should do?” Rachel asked.

“Her therapist is against it,” said Christine. “She worries that it could tip Kelly over the edge. She is emotionally fragile right now. But Dan—” She looked at her husband. “Dan wants blood.”

She fumbled in her pocket for a Kleenex and wiped her wet eyes. “He doesn’t understand that we might lose Kelly in the process.”

Dan put his arms around his wife and hugged her to his chest as she sobbed, their backs to the darkening sea. He looked over Christine’s head at Rachel, pleading for her to break the deadlock. She lowered her eyes and turned away, walking ahead along the beach to give them privacy.

“What’s your view, Rachel?” asked Dan, when, composed again, they’d caught up to her. “You’ve been in court every day. You’ve seen the evidence and heard the testimony. Do you think the jury will convict if Kelly doesn’t return to the stand?”

Rachel looked into the far distance, where she could see the distinctive shape of the Morrison’s Point jetty stretching into the water. Kelly’s parents huddled, together waiting expectantly for her answer. Rachel considered sugarcoating it. Then she remembered what Mitch Alkins had told her. They needed the truth. Raw and unvarnished.

“If Kelly doesn’t take the stand, Dale Quinn will argue that Kelly’s testimony should be struck from the record. All of it. Because she’s a material witness and he wasn’t able to cross-examine her properly. Without Kelly’s testimony, I don’t believe there’s enough evidence for the jury to convict.”

They both flinched at the brutal honesty of her words. Christine wrapped her arms around herself, chilled. “Kelly didn’t make it up. He raped her. Why does the burden have to be on Kelly to prove it? She’s a kid. She’s the one hurting.”

Rachel didn’t have an answer. There was no answer. She’d collected shells as they’d walked, and paused now to toss them into the ocean, one shell at a time. The crash of the surf muffled the soft splashes of the shells hitting the water.

“You think that Judge Shaw will go for that?” Dan asked. “Strike all of Kelly’s testimony from the record.”

“He won’t have much choice,” said Rachel. “He can’t allow her testimony to stand if Dale Quinn didn’t get a decent shot at cross-examining her.”

Dan and Christine stood with their arms around each other’s waists. Rachel knew that Mitch Alkins had said something similar, although perhaps less diplomatic, the previous night when he’d come to their house. Alkins had told Rachel that he’d been blunt with Kelly’s parents before he’d left their home. “If Kelly doesn’t testify then there’s a real chance that Scott Blair will walk,” he’d said.

Rachel hoped that Alkins was right, that hearing the same conclusion from her would carry more weight. After all, she didn’t have a vested interest in the outcome. It wasn’t her reputation as a prosecutor on the line. Plus, she knew the evidence inside and out; she was in court every day, listening to testimony, taking notes, reporting on the trial for the podcast.

They faced a terrible choice. Putting Kelly on the stand could destroy their daughter. Letting Scott Blair go free could destroy her even more. A gull cried as it flew over the beach, looking for a place to roost for the night.

“We can’t do this to Kelly.” Christine turned to face her husband.

“We have to. How can we let him get off? His name untarnished. His reputation intact. He needs to suffer. He deserves to be punished,” Dan shot back. “Let someone do to him in prison what he did to Kelly.”

Christine pummeled his torso softly with her palms, sobs wracking her body. “Every time Kelly talks about it, and I mean every single time, she relives that night. Over. And over. And over again. It’s eating into whatever is left of her spirit. We can’t make her do it. We are her parents. We have to think beyond getting justice. Or revenge. It’s our job to help her heal.”

“Testifying is what will help her heal. It will be painful at first, but it will be worth it. He’ll be punished and her name will be cleared. She’ll be vindicated,” said Dan, kicking a clump of seaweed across the sand until it flopped into the water.