Free A Secret Rage by Charlaine Harris Page A

push had been in the previous weeks, when she’d been assembling committees, organizing the year, and smoothing ruffled faculty and staff who ran atilt during the anxious preopening month. She would have a brief lull now, she had explained.
    ‘How’d it go, Nick?’ she asked sympathetically.
    ‘Oh boy, oh boy. I’m going to have to work my tail off, Mimi.’ I threw myself down on the couch and accepted the wine gratefully.
    ‘Well, you knew that.’
    ‘Sure. But knowing and doing are two different kettles of fish.’
    ‘Did you see Stan?’ She settled opposite me, and Mao arrived to jump in her lap.
    ‘Yes, first thing this morning.’ I told her about my resolution.
    ‘You’re going to have to do that, all right. But what a bastard. I just can’t think of any other word for him, Nick.’
    ‘Well . . . yes. But I don’t think he dropped Barbara like a hot potato because he’s a
basic
bastard. Do you see what I mean?’ Attila materialized on the arm of the couch. I took a long sip of my wine and tickled the cat below his chin. He began cleaning my knuckles ardently. Maybe he’d missed me today? More likely he was hungry. ‘You know I don’t know them well, not nearly as well as you do. But I think he just
can’t
talk about it to her. And if he can’t talk about that crucial thing, they can’t have a relationship. He can’t even stand to see Barbara, he can’t face any part of what happened to her.’
    ‘Why not?’ Mimi had been especially sensitive to disloyalty ever since Richard left her.
    ‘I guess he just can’t.’ I lit a cigarette. ‘When I saw them together I thought they were a matched set, and you say they were in love for at least two years. But I guess Stan’s just weak, or something.’
    ‘Like it was her
fault!
’ Mimi interrupted.
    ‘I’m not defending him,’ I said gently. ‘I’m just trying to understand, because I need to. I have to stay in the class.’
    ‘I’m not mad at you. I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘But you know how broken up Barbara is, and Stan acting like this is all she needs, right? Now is when she needs him most. Now is when he bows out. Remember how she kept asking?’
    I didn’t want to remember our visit to Barbara. I’d suffered with, and for, Barbara Tucker as much as our limited acquaintance would allow, since I’d so naturally liked her at first meeting. Now I was weary of the pain and fear her situation had given me.
    But I couldn’t help remembering. I heard again her bewildered voice asking Mimi if she knew why Stan hadn’t been by. That had been the day after the rape, when Barbara was still disoriented and in pain.
    When Stan had dropped her at the door, she told us, they’d both been sleepy from too much to drink. Stan started back to his own place to collapse. Barbara had climbed the steps to the front door of her garage apartment as usual – probably making a lot of noise, since she was clumsy from the bourbon.
    The man had already broken in the back door. He was waiting for her in the dark. When she’d reached to turn on the light, she had instead touched an arm.
    We could scarcely bear to hear it, but Barbara went on and on in a shaky voice. She had finally fainted. After the rape. When he hit her on the jaw.
    But it wasn’t over when she’d come to. It wasn’t over for a while. Now it would never be over; never. That was what had shaken me to the core, so painfully that I’d recoiled from Barbara. What had happened to her could not be mended, healed, shoved aside, bought off, glossed over. It was irreparable.
    In New York, I’d known women and men who’d been robbed on the street or burglarized. But by chance I’d never been close to anyone who’d been the victim of a personal and violent attack by another human being.
    Like Heidi Edmonds, Barbara had never seen her attacker’s face. She hadn’t the slightest idea of what he looked like: eyes, hair, build, or anything.
    But he had called her Barbara.
    Mimi and I agreed