Page 125 of The Ring
“What are you talking about?” she says, confused, rubbing her temple.
“TJ—the night you two had sex. Whatever you gave him was strong enough to knock him out, but notyou.” She has a strong tolerance. It would take the same amount of drugs or alcohol to knock out a medium-sized horse to knock her out, and I know what she looks like when she’s passed out to the point of being completely out of it, and that night, she wasn’t. “You were conscious, and he wasn’t. That’s one of the definitions of date rape. And you were aware of that, weren’t you?”
TJ may not have said the wordrape,but as he explained what happened, I knew exactly what it was.
She rolls her eyes. “You’re serious? All of this is aboutthat?” she says, not looking evenslightlydisturbed by the topic.
“Answer me!” I yell, angry tears streaming down my face.
It’s not that I don’t believe TJ—I do, wholeheartedly—who wouldn’t after what I witnessed yesterday. But I need to hear it fromher.I need to know if she has a shred of remorse for what happened.
“I don’t remember exactly if he was completely conscious, but who cares?” She brushes it off with a casual wave, like we’re talking about something inconsequential, like forgetting to lock the front door, not raping someone. “Can you really tell meallthe sex you’ve had, you’ve beencompletelyconscious?”
I take a few steps back, putting distance between us—mostly for her protection. “Youcan’tbe serious,” I exclaim, my voice shaking. I feel like I’m in a madhouse. “Do you even hear yourself talking? You’re delirious!”
“It doesn’t matter how conscious he was. He wanted to have sex. It was obvious.”
Now I lose it completely. I rip off the ring—thering she gave me, the one I always wear—and throw it at her. I don’t want it anymore. I don’t wantanythingfrom her. It hits her in the arm, but she barely flinches. It’s light, so it probably didn’t even register.
“Fuck you!You should be in jail, and I hope, at the very least, you go to hell.”
If I could rip out half the DNA I share with her, I’d do it right now and throwthatat her too. But since I can’t, I grab the next best thing—my shoe. I’m in the same clothes from last night. After sitting on the chaise lounge crying with TJ for a while, we eventually moved to my bed and fell asleep there.
I hurl the shoe at her with everything I got. She dodges—surprisingly—and it slams against the wall, right by the door of Anthony’s office. At the exact same moment, he steps out. The shoe nearly hits him. Leave it to my brother to be awake at thishour, fully dressed, perfectly put together, and ready for a day at the office.
He looks at the shoe on the floor, the one that narrowly missed hitting him right in the chest. Then he lifts his gaze to me and finally to our mother. “What is going on here?”
I don’t answer him. My attention is yanked away by the sound of someone coming down the stairs. I turn and see TJ standing at the top of the last stair.
He looks shocked and confused. I can’t even begin to comprehend how TJ feels right now, seeing my mother again after everything.Fuck.Part of the reason I wanted to talk to her now was to throw her out of the house before he woke up. He shouldn’t have to see her—not now, not ever again.
“She’s just being dramatic,” my mother answers Anthony. “So fucking dramatic.” She turns to me and adds, “You get that from your mother.”
Because, of course, what this fucking mess was missing was her starting to refer to herself in the third person.
I let out a small, bitter laugh. “My mother? You mean you?”
I think she has lost the plot.
My mother looks at Anthony, then back at me. “I mean yourrealmother. The girl Anthony had unprotected sex with and conceived you.”
I freeze.
She uses that moment to slip past me, moving down the hall towards her bedroom. “Now, if you want to fight with someone about sex, do it with him,” she calls out, pointing at Anthony before entering her bedroom and closing the door. Just like that, she drops this bomb so she can go to sleep.
She… must be lying.
She—she just wanted to distract me so she could get to her room. She couldn’t have said something so monumental like it were something so mundane.
“She’s lying, right?” I whisper, turning to look at Anthony.
My brother—who always looks so poised, so put together, who, if you don’t know him, you’d think nothing can affect him—doesn’t look that way now. He looks… distraught. Like I’ve never seen in my life. And I don’t need him to say it to know it’s true.
Still, I repeat, “She’s lying, right?... Right?” I need her to be lying. I need him to tell me she’s lying. Because if she’s telling the truth, then it means that everything I have ever been told is a lie.
He doesn’t look me in the eye. He exhales a breath that sounds like he’s been holding it for over twenty-one years, then he says the words I wish he wouldn’t because they change everything between us. “It’s true.”
I shake my head as tears fall down my cheeks. “No, no, no, no,” I whisper, like by saying it might make it true. “You were the one person who never disappointed me. The only one who was always there for me.” I sniff, wiping my nose with the back of my hand. “The only person who I thought never lied to me. But it turns out you’re the one who has been doing it the longest.”
