"Hey, come here a minute."
She'd opened Dell's office door, peeking in to see Caroline drawing with the crayons on Dell's desk.
Caroline looked up in shock. "What's wrong? Am I hemoragging internally due to that spill down the stairs?"
She tried to smile but failed. "The proper way to phrase that question would be, "Do I have internal hemorrhaging due to my fall?"
Caroline laughed. "I don't know. I didn't know you fell."
Charlotte looked at her in confusion. "What- oh, I get it. Ha, ha ha." She was able to smile a little more as she grabbed Caroline's hand and pulled her up to standing and escorted her down the hall.
"I wanna talk to you."
She opened an exam room door, knowing no one would be in there, as the practice hadn't opened for business yet any more than hers had. Well, William White's practice. Small technicality.
She locked the door. "Sit down."
"What's wrong?"
"Just sit down, Luanne. You're not in trouble."
"Then why do you look so upset? I didn't make myself fall down the stairs you know. I told you you'd have to push me. And I changed my mind. Don't push me down hard stairs. Push me down stairs that are soft or have carpeting."
Charlotte smiled as she pushed aside a lock of hair from Caroline's face, and could see a bruise forming on the side of her forehead, as well as an indent from the side of the stair.
With a sigh, she sat down on a rolling stool, and waited until Caroline did the same in the nearest chair.
"I wanna ask you something, okay?"
"Okay," Caroline looked more worried than before.
"You won't get in trouble, and I won't be mad. You didn't do anything wrong." To distract herself she began absently examining her niece's extremities for signs of trauma, just as she would any patient. It was calming.
"But something is wrong, isn't it?"
Charlotte just stared at her.
Caroline sighed. "What is it? What's your question?"
Charlotte took a deep breath and let it out. She tried to look her niece in the eye, but couldn't, so she directed the question to a spot on the wall above her niece's head instead.
"Did your daddy rape you before this whole thing with him and your uncles?"
Caroline's eyes became huge and round, but no other part of her body even moved.
She stood up. "I haveta go."
"No, we're talking about this."
"There's nothing to talk about!"
"Yes, there is! I just defended you to Addison Montgomery saying you weren't a brat, so you owe me! You will sit down," she gasped choking back a sob, "and talk to me!" She finished.
Caroline swallowed and looked at her aunt warily. "I'm not a brat," she insisted sullenly.
"I know that."
Regain control. Compose yourself. Just ask the questions and be done with it.
"When were you raped the first time-" Then it alarmingly occurred to her- "Were there other times?"
Caroline looked away and sighed. "I don't want to talk about this," she hissed.
"I don't want for this to have happened to you, but it did. Now answer the questions."
"No."
"I take it that's the answer to my last question?"
Caroline glared at her, sullen. "I'm not answering your questions."
"Then you won't leave this room." She answered evenly. "Now, when did you daddy rape you, and was it the first time he'd done such a thing to you? Or were there other times? Did you uncles rape you other times-"
"Shut up Charlotte!" She yelled. "I told you I don't want to talk about it! It's none of your business and the answers don't matter anyway! They won't change anything!"
Charlotte was on her feet. She slapped Caroline across the face hard enough to send her stumbling across the room.
"Don't you ever address me that way again!" She snapped. "Sit your sorry ass down and do as you're told! I won't take anymore lip from you. I don't care what you're feeling or what your opinion is, I want answers and I want the truth. Now. So stop your bitchin' and fess up, or you'll get a hellofalot more than a slap next time."
Caroline looked as though she wanted to punch her. And she probably did.
"You try it, and you'll be pickin' yourself up off that floor. Now you tell me what that son of a bitch did to you."
"Well that's a really loving and compassionate way to get her to open up," Violet whispered.
"If she didn't snap on her, she'd start crying." Cooper clarified.
Caroline glared at her. "Which time?"
"So it was only twice."
"No."
Charlotte looked at her in worried confusion.
"Luanne, just tell me, when did he rape you the first time. What month?"
"It was before Christmas," she whispered. "Mama kicked him out of the house, and he was pissed cuz she wouldn't sleep with him."
Charlotte puckered her mouth and swallowed, but the taste in her mouth remained. "So, he took you instead?" She tried to keep her voice flat, like she didn't care. Like she was talking to a nurse about bedsheets. Didn't work, her voice cracked hard over the word instead.
"Pretty much." Her face was hard, her jaw tense. Her eyes were dark and reflected nothing.
Caroline walked to the door and unlocked it.
Cooper and Violet scattered at the sound.
"Take it that's all you need to know." It was statement, not question.
"Luanne," Charlotte called to her before the door opened.
"This ain't your fault. Not telling, it- it didn't," she sucked in a breath, "you were pregnant when they all raped you. Not telling about your daddy isn't what caused this. You were pregnant before." She felt like she was going to faint. "You been pregnant much longer than we all assumed."
"It's not my fault." Caroline whispered the words amazed at the revelation.
Charlotte looked up at her. Caroline still held the door handle with a shaking hand now, staring at the door with wide eyes as though she were watching someone being killed. She let out a shaky breath and asked in an oddly halting voice,
"Why did you tell me this? Why did you tell me?"
"I wanted you to stop blaming yourself," her voice had lost it's sharp edge and was soft, her guard down. She was willing to feel this pain if it meant the girl didn't have to. "To stop feeling guilty. You did not cause this, Luanne. Ain't none of this your fault. You blamin' yourself, it's not right."
Her lower lip trembled and she turned to look at her aunt with water filled eyes.
"But," she gasped, "if I had told," her voice squeaked and cracked with a sob as she sank to the floor, the feelings of guilt and self hatred too much for her to bear any longer.
She was on her knees, her forehead touching the floor as she sobbed.
Naomi stood with tears in her eyes. "My God, listen to her." Her mouth inverted, her face reflecting the pain in her. "Her heart is broken."
Violet nodded. "It's like someone died. You don't sob like that over just anything."
Caroline's sobs had the strength, pulse, and frequency of someone coughing up a lung, punctuated frequent the strangled inhalations and cries of agony that sounded with each exhale
Charlotte sank down from the stool and put a hand on Caroline's heaving back, then pulled her into her arms. "You don't know that," she answered her unfinished statement. "They might have come anyway. They were on drugs, Luanne. Your uncle in the slammer had blood work done. They were strung out as high as kites."
"So that makes it okay?" This time the girl's voice snapped with indignation and rage.
"No," she replied. "It sure as hell doesn't. Just thought you should know."
Caroline picked up sobbing again.
"Make it stop!" She screamed, fighting against Charlotte's grip. "Make it go away, Aunt Charlotte!" She begged. "Isn't there medicine you can give me to make it go away? Make it stop?"
She was holding her head as though it might explode, and Charlotte knew that for once she wasn't referring to her pregnancy.
"I don't wanna remember anymore," she bawled "Please do something," she begged through her sobs. "Make my brain stop. Make it stop!"
Charlotte held Caroline's sweaty head to her chest, holding her tightly, while rocking back and forth. Charlotte was shaking hard, as though she'd been left out in the cold, and hoped that her niece wouldn't notice it.
"I hate it! Every time I see something on tv that I recognize, I think of home, but as soon as I think of home I think of Daddy, and then I just think about what he did to me!" Her voice was high pitched enough to hurt dog's ears, but was still intelligible to Charlotte.
She gasped in a breath of air and continued, "Everytime someone here does something or says something that Daddy used to do or say, I get all happy and think that I miss him- until I remember he's why I'm here. I can't think of anything without thinking of him!" She screamed the last sentence with all the force and strength left in her little body.
Charlotte closed her eyes, willing herself not to cry. Not now. Not yet. She had no right to tears. She had no idea what the girl had been through, what it had been like, and that was the point.
She kissed the top of Caroline's head hard, inhaling the scent of her sweat mixed with the smell of shampoo. She held her silent, holding her to her chest so she could feel the steady pulse and strength of her breathing and heart beat, rocking her as she ran her finger's through her niece's stringy straight hair. Then she took another deep breath in.
"I want you to talk to Violet," she kept her voice low, though she was above giving a damn who would or would not hear her. Only Caroline mattered.
Caroline sat up straight and pulled away slightly, staring at her aunt.
"I don't wanna talk to Violet."
It took all her resolve to stay strong. Caroline's voice suddenly sounded exactly as it had when she was a wimpering scared five year old.
She gave her niece a watery smile. "Sweetheart, you have to. I'll go, I'll go with you," she nodded. "We'll talk to her together."
Caroline shook her head slowly, her eyes glued on Charlotte's.
"It's not her business."
Charlotte couldn't help giving a true half grin at the truth of it. "But it is," she corrected. "That's Violet's job honey. She's a shrink, but she specializes in trauma, when horrible people do horrible things to other people, she helps those other people get over it."
"Will you come with me to talk to her?" Charlotte repeated.
"When?" She was staling.
"Tonight, after I close the practice, and they close theirs. Violet told me she wanted to talk to you. And, I know what you're telling me here is only a thimble-full of truth. I want to hear tonight what the whole truth is." She exhaled, feeling dizzy, wondering whether it was from sheer disgust or her being so open with another human being.
" Luanne, I love you. You don't need to bear this truth, these memories alone. Let me carry them for you, or at least with you. You're angry at everyone cuz you haven't let out what's been holed up inside you all this time. You don't share a truth like this and it just eats away at you. Tell me tonight, Luanne. I want to know. I want to know what happened to you that awful night."
Caroline shook her head slowly, looking once again as though she were seeing something horrific. "No," she whispered with conviction, "you don't."