The Girl She Was by Alafair Burke

Author:Alafair Burke [Burke, Alafair]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Faber and Faber
Published: 2022-02-14T16:00:00+00:00

Lindsay felt a jolt of energy as she reread the message. The woman who posted it was named Katy Barnes. Lindsay clicked on Katy’s photo, but the resulting profile page was set to private.

She hit the back button and read the replies to Katy’s post.

WTF are you talking about? That camp saved my life.

OMG I heard a rumor YEARS later but had no idea it was true. I’m so sorry if that happened to you.

And a final message from the camp administrator who had organized the reunion groups. We are distraught and saddened to hear this allegation for the first time. We have no knowledge of any current or prior misconduct at the Community Oriented Police Youth Camp and are eager to listen to you fully and to complete an investigation. I am also sending you a private message with contact information for both myself and the police department’s bureau of internal affairs.

The message was posted two days after the original remark. Lindsay had no doubt the camp administrator had been waiting for guidance from the city’s legal department.

If Katy Barnes had responded to the post, she hadn’t done so publicly, at least not on this page.

What did any of this have to do with Hope? She pulled a legal pad from her bag and started jotting down every piece of information she had gathered.

The blood at the camp den mother’s house. Sexual abuse at the camp. Lindsay’s long-held suspicion that Hope’s amnesia could be the result of psychological trauma.

Lindsay had only once asked Hope directly whether she believed she might have been sexually abused. It was after Hope’s longest relationship—almost two years—had ended. Carl Walsh was Hopewell’s best mechanic, the older brother of one of Lindsay’s childhood classmates. He was nice and loved Hope like crazy. Lindsay thought he’d be around for the long haul. Instead, Hope showed up at Lindsay’s apartment in New York City, saying she needed to get out of Hopewell for a few days. She and Carl were over.

Only after three nights of avoiding the subject did Hope finally tell her that the problem was sex. Carl needed it. Hope hated it. He’d been patient, and she had tried, but frustration had evolved into resentment and, at least in Carl’s case, sufficient blame and rationalization that he had started up with the garage office manager. There was no going back.

Lindsay’s immediate response came in the form of twenty ways Carl could fuck himself, but then the conversation took a turn. She and Hope never spent much time talking about sex or men, whether there were boyfriends in the picture or not. “Was he just bad at it or something?” Lindsay had asked. “Like a jackrabbit on meth? Because I could totally picture that.”

Instead of eliciting the expected laugh, the question made Hope break out in tears. She explained that she was utterly incapable of enjoying sex. She thought of it as a chore. She’d try to feign pleasure, but she must have been a bad faker, because with time, men always realized she wasn’t into it.

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