Behind Closed Doors. Tara Quinn Taylor
he could no longer stay still, Harry slid from the bed, careful not to disturb his wife. Moving barefoot across the carpet in the guest room to the hall, he glanced at the closed master-bedroom door before walking into the great room with its walls of windows and vaulted ceilings. Laura had painted it in off-whites with beige trim. Light and tranquil, he’d always thought. Just like her.
Today tranquility eluded him.
Harry stared out the window. Saturday. A sunny day with brilliant blue skies—not a cloud to be seen. Perfection. But things were rarely what they seemed. Beneath the surface hid an evil that cut so deeply hearts would be forever marred.
Out there, among all the moms and dads and kids enjoying a day off on that cheerful-looking Saturday morning, two heinous men existed.
Were they close? Maybe on the next street? Sleeping in? Or having coffee?
Did they have jobs? What kind of jobs? Would they go to work today, mingling with coworkers who thought they were normal guys—who trusted them?
Maybe they were married. At home in bed with their wives—women who hadn’t been emotionally damaged. Women who had no idea that the men they took into their beds, their bodies, had forced themselves on an innocent woman, leaving her stricken and lost.
Did they have children? Trusting little people who looked up to them? Who relied on them for all of life’s necessities—both emotional and physical?
Could they strip a stranger of her emotional safety, possibly forever, and at the same time provide it for their kids?
No! He couldn’t accept that. Couldn’t accept any of it.
Rubbing the back of his neck, Harry wondered if the tension would ever disappear. He needed aspirin. Lots of it.
So where did scum of the earth go on a Saturday morning? What did they do? Eat eggs in a dirty diner while assaulting the tired waitress with inappropriate innuendos? Wake up in old beds with stained sheets, suffering from hangovers that would be gone as soon as they stumbled to the kitchen for a beer?
Did they live together? Brothers, maybe?
Or did they live completely separate lives—except for those occasions when they got together to destroy the lives of people who’d never knowingly hurt anyone?
Eyes watering from all the brightness outside, Harry fell to the couch and, in an attempt to escape thoughts that were a slow torture, grabbed the phone.
He listened to the dial tone for several seconds, allowing it to soothe him with its monotony. And then he hit the third speed-dial button—for his parents in Oregon, where his father owned an accounting firm.
“Hi, son, how are you?”
The calm voice made him feel more tense because of what his father didn’t know.
“Not good, Dad.”
“What’s up? Laura’s not sick is she? Or you?”
No, but… What did you call what they were? Sure, they were sick, but their disease wasn’t something that could be detected in a lab. It wouldn’t show up on a microscope slide or respond to antibiotics. It couldn’t be healed with holistic remedies.
“No, we’re…not,” he said, after a failed attempt to say they were fine.
“What’s going on?” He could hear his mother in the background. “Kaleb? Is something wrong with Harry or Laura?”
“I don’t know, Alicia,” Kaleb’s voice held no impatience as he answered his wife. “Harry, what’s wrong? Did one of you lose your job? Was there bad news from the fertility clinic?”
What Harry would give to be a boy again, safe under his father’s care, always knowing that no matter what befell him, his father could fix it.
“Laura was raped.”
“What?”
Harry couldn’t repeat it.
“Oh my God.” Kaleb Kendall’s voice dropped—and filled with a horror Harry had never heard before. Not even when his father had first shown him a documentary about Martin Luther King’s assassination and told his young son about his black heritage. “When? Is she all right?”
“What happened to Laura? Where is she?” Alicia’s voice, closer now, brought tears to Harry’s eyes. If ever a woman personified the word mother, it was his mom.
“It happened the night before last—at home. Laura’s here now. Asleep. Other than…they…she wasn’t…there were…”
When the words just wouldn’t come, Harry stopped, stared at the grain of the polished wood floor. “Other than rope burns on her wrists, she’s physically uninjured.”
“He broke into your home? Were you there?” Kaleb’s tone rose only slightly, but Harry knew that his father was seconds away from rage.
A rage he would contain—and use in any way he could to right a wrong.
“Who did? Kaleb! What’s going on!”
“I was here.” The sun shining in the window seemed to mock the darkness inside him.
“In the room?”
“Yes.” He bit out the word, his self-loathing and anger clouding every thought, every feeling.
“I see.”
What did his father see? A broken woman? A man to be pitied?
“Did he have a gun?”
“A gun? Kaleb, you talk to me right now. Put him on speakerphone. Tell me!”
“No gun,” Harry closed his eyes. “Just rope. There were two of them.”
“Good God in Heaven! Did they both—”
“Yes.” Harry interrupted before his father could verbalize the image still persecuting him.
Kaleb’s sigh said more than any words could.
“Just a second, Alicia,” he heard his father say a moment later. “It’s bad and I need to help Harry first.”
Help him. And how did his father propose to do that? This wasn’t a lost position on a Little League team, or a failing grade. Could his father travel back in time, wipe out the grueling events? Could he clear away the sense of violation Laura would feel for the rest of her life?
Kaleb asked the same questions Harry would’ve asked, questions the detectives had asked. Alicia was strangely silent and Harry knew she’d pieced together enough to guess what had happened.
In his mind’s eye he saw the tears streaming down her face.
“It was because of me, Dad.” He said aloud what he’d known since those whispered words had struck his heart.
“Don’t you even start thinking like that, boy.” The sternness in Kaleb’s voice contrasted sharply with the compassionate outrage he’d shown Harry thus far. “Two against one? There’s nothing you could’ve done—except get yourself killed.”
Yeah, well, if they’d killed him, maybe they wouldn’t have gone after Laura. Without him in the picture there’d been no need.
“It was a hate crime—because I’m black and she’s white.”
Silence fell on the line. And then… “Times have changed, son. The world today is different from the one your mother and I grew up in. You know that. You’ve always known that. Look at us—two black people living in a white neighborhood and your mother’s president of the homeowners’ association. We live in a society of freedom and acceptance. At least as far as the color of our skin is concerned.”
Kaleb didn’t really believe that. And he knew Harry didn’t either. But it was the edict by which they lived.
And