Page 48 of Watch Her Bleed
We go into the kitchen and I start cooking for everyone. Kaia’s phone starts ringing and she answers.
“Hello?” Kaia says. “Uhhh yeah. Hi… No, she had a situation that required her to turn her phone off… what do you mean her blood type doesn’t match? … Okay… Wow. Okay, so we have to go up to the police today because she disclosed to them who assaulted her. We will stop by there and get a copy of that to give to the detective… Yes. Anything from her medical records. Everything, if you can manage it… Yes, she will be there to sign for it… Okay… Yeah, she’s okay… Alright, see you soon, Dr. Williams.”
“What was that?” I ask.
“They got her medical records. He shares a system so it’s an easy switch. He said that her records say she has B+ blood but she has O-,” she says. “It’s all the way back to when she was a kid. It’s started multiple times over the years.”
“I don’t feel good about this,” Luca says.
“Me either,” I say. “It’s an odd group of things happening, but they’ve got to connect somehow.”
“She doesn’t even look like them,” Kaia says.
“Does she not? I wasn’t paying much attention to them,” I say.
“No. Her parents and Enzo are blonde with blue eyes and she’s dark brown with green. Green eyes aren’t common,” Kaia says.
“Yeah, that’s true. If this goes back to two years old, should we be looking for someone else?” I ask.
“What do you mean?” Luca asks.
“Well, if Aurora Anderson is a fake name, what’s her real name?” I ask. “Someone has to know who she really is. She was too young at the time to remember.”
“You don’t think she was kidnapped, do you?” Milo asks.
“It’s the only thing that makes sense,” I say. “Traffickers often go after young children, because they won’t remember who they belong to. They’re easier to manipulate if they don’t know or remember what they miss.”
“She has a blanket with her name on it. She’s had it the whole time I’ve known her,” Kaia says.
“That doesn’t mean Paul and Rita didn’t have it made when they first got her,” I say.
“Yeah. What if it was a botched adoption? I’ve heard of that happening where people adopt a kid and then they find out later that it was illegal and they never knew. Some people are desperate enough to have a kid to look past the red flags.”
“Why would you go through that entire process just to turn around and let your oldest son rape her for her whole life? That’s what’s not adding up. Why would they go through the trouble of getting a daughter just to treat her like shit?” I ask.
“The same reason foster parents who end up adopting are still abusive,” Luca says. “Humans are absolutely terrible sometimes. Evil doesn’t stop just because they sought out to have a child.”
“Yeah,” I sigh. “I’m sure the cops will figure out pretty quickly if she is actually their child or not.”
“They’d have to do a DNA test to confirm,” Kaia says.
“Well, you can get paternity test results in as little as two days. It would just be a matter of them doing the test. They won’t have anything to worry about if they don’t have anything to hide,” I say.
“Yeah, innocent people still refuse DNA tests though,” Milo says.
“True,” I say.
“From what I saw, everything was fine until she hit puberty at ten,” Kaia says. “I never stayed the night there again after that. She’d always come to my house. The only exception to that was when Enzo was out of town.”
“Yeah. She didn’t want to chance him hurting you,” Luca says.
“You know… all of the signs were right there and I missed it. I knew that he got handsy when she was younger, but I never knew that he raped her. Molestation is just as bad, but I didn’t think it was still going on. I didn’t know,” she says as she becomes emotional.
“It wasn’t your job to know, Kaia. You were a child,” I say. “Even as an adult, you wouldn’t have known until she was ready to tell you.”
“I could have helped her though. My parents would have helped her,” she says tearfully.
“We are here now,” I say. “All you or any of us can do is help her heal. It’ll never heal fully, because wounds like that go too deep, but we can make the memories more bearable. We can help her navigate through all of it.”
