All Is Not Forgotten by Wendy Walker Read Free Book Online Page B

off fat without exercise or diet. Trauma cannot be cured by a pill.
    Jenny had no memory of her rape, but the terror lived in her body. The physical memory, the emotional response that was now programmed into her, had nothing to attach to—no set of facts to place it in context. And so it roamed freely within her. The only tangible thing that was left from the rape was the scar from the carving.
    It is easy to say that she should have sought help. But she is a teenager. And to her teenage brain, eight months was “too long.”
    She went to her bathroom, opened the drawer beneath her sink. She took out a razor, a pink disposable. Using the tools from her nail kit, she pried it open until the blades popped out. She set them on the sink counter, then returned to her bed, where she sat. Waiting.

 
    Chapter Five
    I feel I’ve gotten ahead of myself. Let me go back just a bit.
    Tom Kramer was in his own kind of hell. The feeling that he had failed to protect his daughter haunted him day and night.
    It was completely irrational. We can’t watch our children every second of every day, and bad things happen. That’s reality. As a society, we have gone through various trends of protective parenting. It seems to me that it was the proliferation of information over the Internet that resulted in the last wave. Any abduction, any molestation, any sexual misconduct, pool drowning, sledding accident, bike crash, or choking incident was instantly known by every parent from Maine to New Mexico. It felt as though these incidents were on the rise. There were campaigns and infomercials, new safety products and warning labels. Babies could no longer sleep on their tummies. Kids could no longer walk to school or wait alone at the bus stop. It makes me laugh to think of my mother ever driving me down the street and parking behind other cars to wait with me for the bus. She wasn’t even out of bed when I left for school as a child. But that’s what people do now, isn’t it?
    There has been some backlash, the “free range” movement, admonition of “helicopter” parenting. The conversation is starting to shift from the danger to children from negligent parenting to the damage done to those who are overprotected.
    It’s all just noise. If someone really wants to hurt your child, he’s going to find a way to do it.
    The summer after the rape, Tom became obsessed with finding the rapist. With his family gone to Block Island, he spent his time looking. He did not see friends. He did not go to the gym. He stopped watching television. From eight to six, he worked his job, but the obsession only followed him. Being in car sales exposed Tom to new faces every day. Cranston is a modest city, but it has over eighty thousand residents. Add to that the fact that his employer, Sullivan Luxury Cars, had the only BMW and Jaguar showrooms in a sixty-mile radius, and you can understand that every day brought a new face in front of Tom Kramer, and every new face, to Tom’s mind, could be the face of his daughter’s rapist.
    The police had done all they could, within reason. Every kid who had been at that party was interviewed. The boys, in particular, were questioned formally and at the police station. Many were accompanied by an attorney. Tom had wanted all of them examined. He’d wanted DNA and skin samples. He’d wanted their cars and rooms searched for the black mask and gloves. He’d wanted them inspected to see if any of them had shaved themselves. Of course, none of that was ever going to happen.
    The neighbors were questioned as well, families who had all been at home, or out together, or out with others. Every person had an alibi. Every alibi checked out. One of the neighbors, a twelve-year-old boy named Teddy Duncan, had gone outside at eight forty-five. His dog, a curious beagle named Messi (after the soccer player), had found a hole in the fence and escaped because that’s