My stomach is rolling. This person, this Mallory, he is the person Lacey spoke about the first time I took her to Pippa for treatment. He’s the sick son of a bitch who raped her over and over. The day she’d told Pip and me about that, her voice had been totally flat, lifeless, completely controlled. Now she’s the opposite; she’s distraught, her breath coming out in labored gasps. My heart is breaking for her. I rub my hand up and down her back, knowing what a small and inconsequential gesture it is, but doing it all the same.

“Every Sunday he would take me to church. He said I was dirty. He said—” Her words catch in her throat.

“It’s okay. Take your time,” I whisper, closing my eyes. This is so harrowing for her, but it’s also crushing me. I’ve never heard her like this before. Never. I’ve witnessed the way she can be—mood swings, depression, withdrawn into her own world—but this is different. This is so painful for her the both of us are shaking.

“He said,” she continues, “that I was a whore. He said that I seduced him. That I was wrong to lead him on all the time. I was a bad girl for getting him so excited and I had to go to church to repent and clean myself of my sins. He would wait outside the confessional every week. Every Sunday for three—” She gasps. Breathes in deeply. Exhales. Her sobbing quiets a little, though by no means stops. And then in whispers, she tells me the rest. “He would wait outside the confessional every Sunday for three years. I wanted to tell the priest I didn’t want to do it, that he made me do it every single time, but I knew he was sitting outside, listening. It—it made him excited to hear me say it all. He would get really hard while he was waiting for me, and then in the car he would cry and say I was evil and torturing him. He wouldn’t touch me, though. When we got home, he would touch himself and he would make me watch. It would be Tuesday by the time he came to me again. Wednesday if I was lucky.

“But this one week after church, Mallory didn’t touch himself when we got home. He was mad. The priest…the priest said it wasn’t my fault; he refused to give me any Hail Marys. Mallory made me tell the priest that his name was Curtis so he wouldn’t get into any trouble. But this time, the priest asked me how old I was. How old Curtis was. And I didn’t even think. I just—I just told the truth. I told him I was fourteen and that Curtis was forty-three.”

Lacey falls silent—a good thing, because I need a moment to process what I’m hearing. Fourteen years old. Fourteen fucking years old. I wasn’t allowed out of my mother’s sight when I was fourteen. I resented the restrictions at the time, but now, with the hindsight of adulthood, I was so lucky. So, so lucky to have someone to watch out for me.

“The priest wanted me to go to the police,” Lacey says. She sounds flat, and her shoulders have stopped shaking now. “But I said no. I knew Mallory would be mad I’d told the priest how old he was, but it was too late to take it back, so I did my best to keep my mouth shut. The priest said Mallory was sick in the head and needed help, and I needed to go away to a proper school or something.

“I didn’t even finish confession. Mallory snatched back the curtain and grabbed hold of me. Dragged me out of there. He said we had to sit and wait in the car for a while, just in case the cops showed up. They didn’t. Mallory kept asking me why I was trying to get him into trouble when it was me who’d been bad. I knew I was going to be in trouble when I got back to the house anyway, so I just clammed up. And when we got back, I couldn’t—I couldn’t get away,” she sobs. “He beat me. He tied me to a chair in the kitchen and cut my clothes off me with scissors. He told me exactly what he was going to do to me. I was so afraid I…I wet myself. He got mad at me for that, too—untied me and made me clean it up, naked, while he watched, touching himself.”

I can almost smell the urine and the cleaning products. I can hear fourteen-year-old Lacey’s frightened crying as she scrubbed, on her hands and knees, at the mess she’d made. I’m suddenly filled with such an overwhelming rage that I want to go and find this man and kill him. I want to hurt him badly enough that he can never use his manhood to pee again, let alone use it to hurt another poor little girl. I shuffle forward so I’m spooning Lacey, and I tug her to me so I can put my arms around her. She trembles against me so violently I can hear her teeth chattering.

“And then he…then he really hurt me,” Lacey says simply.

I want to know what she means, but I’m too revolted and hurt for the poor woman I’m holding in my arms to do it. I know enough. I know he hurt her so badly she’s still suffering at the memory of his hands nearly twelve years later.

“Have you told anyone else about this, Lacey?” I ask, trying to keep my own tears at bay now.

She shakes her head. “He was still asleep when I woke up the next morning. I had to make his breakfast. Every day, I had to make him eggs and grits and take them to him in bed. I was sore and I could barely walk, though. Everything was hurting me, and I just…I just snapped. I cooked his eggs and grits, and I put orange juice in his glass, but I didn’t fill it all the way to the top. I only filled it halfway.” She pauses as though she’s reliving the actions—sliding the eggs onto the plate, spooning out the grits, spilling some juice onto the countertop.

“The bleach was still out,” she tells me. “From the night before. From when he’d made me clean up. I saw the bottle and I just—did it. I didn’t even hesitate. I filled up the rest of his glass from that bottle, and then I took it into him. He was already awake. He was in a good mood. He called me his sweet thing and stroked my cheek over the bruises he’d put on my face, and told me to sit with him while he ate. I didn’t want to. There were these pictures all over his walls of Jesus and Mary and all these angels flying around in Heaven, and I remember I didn’t want to sit there while they watched down on what I’d done. Mallory wouldn’t let me go, though.”