Free Dancers in the Dark by Charlaine Harris Page A

all the rules, and you’ll go to heaven. Social heaven.”
    â€œWhere you get invited to all the right places and hang around with all the right people,” Judith elaborated.
    Sean was beginning to have a buzzing feeling in his head. He recognized it as intense anger.
    â€œWhat happened?” he asked. He was pretty sure he knew.
    â€œCarver asked Layla out. She was only seventeen. She was flattered, excited. He treated her real well the first two times, she told me. The third time, he raped her.”
    â€œShe came over here,” Judith said. “Her mom wouldn’t listen, and her dad said she must be mistaken. He asked her didn’t she wear a lot of perfume and makeup, or a sexy dress.” Judith shook her head. “She’d—it was her first time. She was a mess. Will called the chief of police at the time. He wasn’t a monster,” Judith said softly. “But he wasn’t willing to lose his job over arresting Carver.”
    â€œShe shut herself in the house and wouldn’t come out for two weeks,” Will said. “Her mother called us, told us to quit telling lies about the Huttons. She said Layla had just misunderstood the situation. Her exact words.”
    â€œThen,” said Judith heavily, “Layla found out she was pregnant.”
    The buzzing in Sean’s head grew louder, more insistent. He had never felt like this before, in his hundreds of years.
    â€œShe called Carver and told him. I guess she thought something so serious would bring him to his senses. Maybe she imagined that his parents had brought on all his violence. Maybe she thought he would do right by her somehow. She was just seventeen. I don’t know what she thought. Maybe she wanted him to take her to a doctor, I don’t know. She didn’t want to tell her parents.”
    â€œHe decided to take care of it himself,” Sean said.
    â€œYeah,” Will said. “He lost his mind. Usually, he can act like a real person when other people are around.” Will Kryder sounded as detached as if he were discussing the habits of an exotic animal, but his hands were clasped in front of him so tightly that they were white. “Carver couldn’t maintain the facade that night. He pulled up in front of the LeMays’ house, and Layla came out, without saying anything to Tex or LeeAnne about where she was going. But Les was watching out the window, and he saw...he saw...”
    â€œAfter he socked her in the face a few times, he broke his soda bottle and used that,” Judith said simply. There was a long moment of silence. “Les got him off in time to save Layla’s life, by hitting Carver with his baseball bat...he was on the high school team, then.”
    â€œGo on,” Sean managed to say. They’d been lost in these tragic memories, but when they heard his voice, they looked up, to be absolutely terrified by Sean’s face. “I’m not angry with you,” Sean said, very quietly. “Go on.”
    â€œThe scene at the hospital was—you can imagine,” Will said, his voice weary. “She lost the baby, of course, and there was considerable damage. Permanent damage. She was in the hospital for a while.”
    â€œNo one could ignore that, ” Judith said bitterly. “But the Huttons got a good lawyer, of course, and he made a case for insanity. Here in Pineville, of course, a Hutton won’t get convicted of jaywalking. He was declared temporarily insane, and the judge sentenced him to time in a mental institution and ordered his family to pay all Layla’s medical expenses. He did grant Layla a restraining order against Carver ever contacting her again, or even coming within a hundred feet of her. I guess that’s worth the paper it’s printed on. When the mental doctors decided Carver was ‘stabilized,’ he could be released, and he had to go through so many courses of outpatient anger management and