Page 126 of Cuffed (Everyday Heroes 1)
Closed File #713920: Emerson Reeves – Sexual Abuse – 10/23/1997
But I know what it is.
This is me. The old me. The little girl I was and don’t want to be. It’s the past I don’t want to be reminded of, and yet, my file is sitting here—in Grant’s family room—hidden in plain sight so I wouldn’t see it.
These are the answers that could simultaneously cure all the doubt that plagues me and knock me so far down the rabbit hole I might not be able to find my way back.
Fuck having ownership of memories should they come. This is proof. Proof in ways I can’t comprehend. There is no ownership of it now. There is only falling victim to it when I’ve been a victim enough in my life and . . . Oh. My. God.
Shock burns its way into anger. The fuse is so short it’s combustible.
My hands tremble as I throw it down on the table like it’s burning my skin. It hits the wooden edge and falls to the floor, causing a few items to dislodge.
Every part of me screams to turn around and run out of the house while my feet remain rooted. A little voice in my subconscious tells me, “Look at them.”
Trepidation courses through me as I take the dare and bend over to pick up the piece of paper that taunts me.
What am I doing?
I turn it over, and it takes me a few seconds to have the nerve to open my eyes and look. What I see has a sob falling from my mouth as I sink to the floor.
The top of the page is labeled “Child Assessment – Emerson Reeves – Age Eight.” Memories ghost through my mind of when I drew this—the light blue room that was cold, the nice lady with the gentle voice who asked me to draw a picture to show her what happened, my tears hot on my cheeks as I looked around for my mom.
The drawing depicts what I saw through my innocence. Now, I look at it with the knowledge of an adult. Tears well as I take it all in. There is a bed where two stick figures lie, one bigger like an adult with short brown hair and the other smaller with red hair. The red-haired figure, me, has blue dots falling from her eyes and making a puddle on the floor. The brown-haired man, my dad, has his hand over where the legs on my rendition meet. There’s a black L-shaped thing on the top of the bed, a gun, and words line the left side of the page: No, stop, hurt, all my heart, I love you, daddy.
It hurts too much. This hurts too much.
I want to cover my ears and squeeze my eyes shut and block this all out so I can forget that I remember that day.
In haste and with a scattered mind determined to get the drawing out of my sight, I shove the piece of paper under the file’s cover where it is on the floor. I pick it up to put it on the table, and when I do, I see the Polaroid beneath it.
I forget every intention I just had when I’m met with a picture of myself in a hospital gown. There is no smile on my lips. There is no happiness that every eight-year-old should have. Everything about me—my posture, my expression, my eyes—look defeated and scared.
I stare at the little girl in the photo and tell myself I am not her anymore. I will never be her again. But every part of me feels like her right now. Lost. Withdrawn. Petrified.
Betrayed.
A tear drops on the picture, and I realize for the first time that I’m crying. Tear after tear tracks down my cheeks as parts inside me I thought were whole again slowly crumble to rubble.
I tell myself to close the folder because I don’t need to see this. I don’t need to know more details. Don’t I already know them somewhere in my mind?
It’s as if my day just keeps getting better and better. I nailed my interviews and now I come home to find Emerson’s car in front of my house and music floating out of the windows.
Grady’s cryptic text earlier of “I let her in” makes perfect sense now.
Tonight seems like it’s going to be even better than today.
What did I do to deserve this?
“Emerson?” I call when I open the door, but I see her before the word cuts through the room.
When she hears my voice, her body stiffens where she’s sitting on the floor behind the coffee table. Her head rises slowly and the look in her eyes—a mixture of devastation and anger—is enough to have the hairs on the back of my neck bristling.
“Em?”
“So, what? I don’t tell you what you want to know, so you figure, fuck my privacy. Fuck my need to quiet my own mind and deal with my own shit as I see fit . . . and take it upon yourself to figure it out on your own?” Her voice escalates in pitch with each word and warns me to proceed with caution.
“What are you talking about?”
