supplies. She supported herself but for room and board. At graduation Julie’s mom handed her a check; she’d saved every penny of support Cassie’s stepdad had sent, from the piddling fifty dollars to the rare two or three hundred. “If you decide to use this for college, you can stay here rent free as long as you’re in school. If you do something else with this, we’ll work out a reasonable rent for you.”
It was an unexpected opportunity for Cassie; her mom and stepdad didn’t have a cent to spare. Birthday and Christmas presents had always come in the form of plane tickets to visit the family. So she went to college, studied nursing and got her R.N. degree, working while she went to school to support herself.
Julie went to college, too, but didn’t make it through a whole year. She got pregnant, dropped out and married Billy, the love of her life. When Jules and Billy got their first little apartment, Cassie stayed on at Julie’s parents’ house, finished college and landed her first job in emergency room nursing.
And then Cassie’s mother died. That left Frank with three kids to support on his own. The plane tickets stopped coming; they were replaced with gift cards from Starbucks or Borders.
When Cassie was twenty-five, she managed to buy her little house, not coincidentally real close to Julie and Billy’s. And she got Steve, her Weimaraner.
She briefly considered going back to the house to pick up Steve and ask Jules if she could sleep on the couch tonight, but quickly decided she’d brave going home, after a glass of wine and a little decompression time. She’d never leave Steve alone all night—he was such a baby. Right now she wished she’d taught him to bark and snarl menacingly, just in case she ever needed him to be protective. But he was so sweet just the way he was.
It was a long time before Julie finished with the kids, getting everyone settled, though it was obvious she’d hurried through bedtime rituals. Instead of picking up the house, she passed Cassie and went immediately to the kitchen, pouring herself an apple juice in a wineglass. She brought the bottle of chardonnay to Cassie, offering to top off her glass. Then she plopped herself on the other end of the couch, with her legs tucked under her, facing Cassie.
“Tell me what happened,” Julie said. “You’re actually a little pale.”
“You won’t believe it. I don’t believe it. He attacked me—right in the car, right in the parking lot of the bar where I met him for our date.” Julie gasped and covered her open mouth with a hand. “It was bizarre. Otherworldly. It took me by such surprise, for a minute I couldn’t even move, couldn’t even push or yell.” She went through the details, right up to the breaking of the window and the cup of coffee with Walt, her friendly neighborhood thug.
“He climbed over the console?” Julie asked.
“Yeah. That threw me, but I realized later, there was an awful lot of room in that front seat. He had both bucket seats back as far as they’d go. And where he parked—real far away from most of the cars—he must have done that deliberately before we met for the evening.” She shook her head with a short, unamused laugh. “I remember thinking he was worried about dents and scratches. But no—he planned it. He was prepared to take matters into his own hands if I insisted on going to the concert.”
“God! You must have been terrified! How did that biker guy know you were in trouble?”
“He said he heard me, that the car was rocking. I was fighting so hard, it made the car wobble.” She showed Julie her knuckles. “I don’t know if I got this from banging on the window or punching him in the face.”
“Holy shit, Cassie. You think about calling the police?”
“I thought about it, yeah. Thing is, I’ve run rape kits on victims for detectives, and even when they’re banged up, torn apart and hysterical, the police can hardly make a case. What am I going to say? A guy I accepted a date with—who I let kiss me in the parking lot and again in the car—held me down while he kissed me? He never hit me, never got to my clothes, never unbuttoned his pants…The fact that we both knew what he was going to do will be completely irrelevant.”
“But you’ve got that guy—”
“Yeah, Walt. He called it assault. It was an assault, but it only got as far as an attempt.” She shrugged. “Although it still scared me half to death.”
They heard the sound of the garage door opening and Julie threw an unmistakable look of disgust over her shoulder toward the door. Billy came in, wearing his jeans and T-shirt covered with sawdust, putting his tool belt on the washer in the laundry room, which connected the garage to the kitchen. He looked pretty wiped.
“You’re early,” Julie said.
“I finished up. I could’ve found a little more to do, but I thought maybe you could use some help.”
She laughed. “And what the hell kind of help were you going to give me after the kids are already in bed?”
“Jesus, I don’t know, Jules—want me to paint the house or sand the floors?”
Cassie put her fingers against her temples and rubbed. “God. Do you two have to do this right now?”
“You’re a witness, Cass. You can see all I did was walk in the goddamn door!”
“After nine at night, to help!” Julie said.
“Okay, I’m going home to Steve,” Cassie said, starting to get up.
“No,” Julie said, grabbing her hand. “No, you’re absolutely right. We’ll stop. Besides, you need to tell Billy what happened.”
“Why?” she said wearily, sinking into her place on the couch.
“Because the guy said he was a paramedic, Cassie,” Julie said.
“Who said he was a paramedic?” Billy asked. He pulled a beer out of the refrigerator and brought it into the family room. He sat down on the coffee table and faced Cassie. “Something wrong?”
Cassie went through the story again. Billy leaned forward, his elbows on his knees, holding his beer with both hands, and several times he just looked at the floor. He ignored his beer till the end of the story. Then he took a long drink out of the can.
“The only thing I’d really like to know,” Cassie added, “and there’s no way to find out, not even by going to the police, is if he’s attacked other women. I don’t know if I drew the wild card or if he’s a chronically dangerous guy.”
“Maybe you can’t find that out, but we can check if he’s a paramedic,” Billy said, getting to his feet. “If he’s even with the fire department. I’ll tell you what, if he’s a firefighter and he’s doing this to women, he’s going to be sorry.”
“I have a feeling if you make him sorry, I could pay the price.”
“But, Cass, I gotta know. We have some bad apples sometimes, but I never heard anything like that before.”
“It’s not like you introduced us,” she said. “It has nothing to do with you.”
“I feel like it has everything to do with me. I don’t love everyone in the department, but it kills me to think one of our boys would do something like that to a woman. Kills me. I’m going to find out right
