"Trauma doesn't excuse bad behaviour."
"No, it doesn't. I only mean that's not how you act normally, not how you think. You analyze, you strategize, you're very in touch with your thoughts and feelings. Except in situations like that. He said himself what happened was going to happen whether you wanted it or not."
She scoffed. "When you were torturing him? You know you can't take anything he said that night as truth, right?"
"He volunteered it. I only asked him what happened."
"Accused witches volunteered information too. It's something torture victims do, tell you what they think you want to hear so you'll stop. Volunteering information might make it end faster. Bill got me to the point where I'd have said and did anything if I thought it would make it stop. I did say things hoping it would stop. I'm not saying he wasn't telling the truth, but you have zero way of knowing one way or the other. What he did do was bad enough without assigning motives to other things. He's a bad person, I'm not sad he got the scare of his life. But he didn't do what he didn't do."
"You weren't there to hear him say it."
"Well, you made that decision, and you weren't at the bar or in his car that night."
"No. But I do know you, Anne. And I know that frame of mind you described. It was the same with Stuart, Jason, that other guy, and Ernest. It's where you feel you don't have the right to say no. Or don't feel you'll be able to defend it."
Blinking away tears she swallowed and successfully fought back a sob, but her stomach felt full of lead. She sat up and faced away from him, arms around her knees.
She heard him sit up behind her and he put a hand on her shoulder. "You do have the right to say no," he said softly.
"I know that," she said with a sigh.
"You know it for everyone else, but often not you."
She swallowed hard. "I invited that man over on the bus because I thought I recognized him. I was being friendly with Hubert. Did I lead him on to think a kiss was appropriate? Did I lead him on more because I started to kiss back out of instinct? And, Ernest, I...I felt bad about being late to the agreed time because I had been...talking to you and we weren't even dating. Felt like cutting it short would be rude. Stuart wanted to fantasize about going with no condoms and I did. Did I actually reiterate the last time that we still had to use them or did I let him think it was okay not to? I should have left immediately when Jason continued to hit on me after I told him I was seeing someone. And again I started to kiss back. And I went out around this time last year looking for male attention because I felt lonely. Just to turn it down when I got it?" Tears were falling again and she reached for the tissue box to blow her nose. "Why am I so fucked up?"
"You're not," he said. "You're responding to–it's conditioning or something, from your life circumstances, from society. You didn't seek this shit out."
"But I did. Last year I did."
"But you weren't obligated to do anything else and he had no right to push you. You always have a right to say no, even to me."
"I know that," she said again and squeezed her eyes against more tears.
"They knew, Anne. You didn't lead them on; they engineered it. I can't tell you what to call it. But you didn't cheat and you didn't bring any of it on yourself. Ever."
A sob escaped but she managed to hold back more. He gently leaned her back into him and held her. "Let it go, honey. You didn't do anything wrong."
YOU ARE READING
Impostor Syndrome
Mystery / ThrillerAnne has had a rough start to life, having experienced abuse in many forms. But after twenty years of marriage to the love of her life, with her two daughters approaching adulthood, she thought the pain of the past was behind her. Until her husband...
