Chapter 9

Once the letter to Rhonda was emailed, it didn’t take Rhonda long to send a reply; a reply that was hardly unexpected, given the lady’s volatile nature. It started off with something like “Why, you sleazy little two-faced bitch! How dare you! You’ve got 24 hours to get your ungrateful ass back to Chicago and retract everything you said or I’ll make sure your life isn’t worth living!”

Then, it got rough.

For just a moment, Rachael felt intimidated by her mom’s diatribe, but Nadia just laughed. She pulled her younger friend into a hug and said, “Okay, this is an obvious threat, so it gets filed for future reference in our Ben and Rhonda war file. We can expect your mom is going to rant and rave for a couple of days before reality sets in and she capitulates. What we don’t want to do is respond to any of her rants, at least not in writing. We don’t want any dialogue going on here because we’ve made our statement and we’re sticking to it. This is not the time to be explaining yourself. The good news is that the more your mom writes, the longer the paper trail has grown if the law gets involved.”

Rachael wasn’t absolutely convinced her mom would buckle, but she bowed to Nadia’s wisdom. She had thrown down the gauntlet and now had to accept the consequences.

Later that evening, Eric’s mom got a strange phone call from his Aunt Rhonda. Her sister, with saccharine politeness, asked that Rachael be packed up and sent back home ASAP; that all was forgiven and that the family should be together.

Eva knocked on the door of Rachael’s room, then opened it. Her niece was sitting at the small desk perusing something on her laptop that might have been a map of California.

“Rachael, dear, I just got a call from your mother. She says she wants you to come home right away. Do you know anything about that?”

Rachael looked up from her computer and shook her head. “All I know about it is that it’s not going to happen, Aunt Eva. In fact, I’m never going home again.”

Eva Siegler was shocked. “What? But why, Rachael? Why ever would you say such a thing? What was the fight with your mother about that makes you think such thoughts?”

Rachael took a deep breath and sighed, “You really don’t want to know.”

“But I do want to know! You are my family, dear, and family members confide in each other. If there’s something that serious going on between you and Rhonda, then I want to know about it.”

Rachael closed her eyes and shook her head before going on. “Look, Aunt Eva, if I told you about everything that’s been going on in my family, I doubt you would believe me. And if you did believe me, your relationship with your only sister would never be the same. I don’t want to be responsible for that.”

Eva, now even more resolute, sat on the bed with her hands clasped and said, “I really must insist, Rachael. Now, tell me what this fuss is all about.”

Rachael sat quietly for a long, pregnant minute before looking up and nodding her head. “Okay, but just remember, you asked for it. It begins back when I was eleven years old.”

It took quite a while to wade through the details of Rachael’s adolescent years to date, and she didn’t spare her aunt’s sensibilities when it came to language and details. She did, however, leave out the seduction of Eric, since it really wasn’t relevant to the question and would have stirred up some unnecessary shit. Eva sat quietly listing, growing more heartbroken as the tale progressed. By the time her niece’s astounding tale came to an end, they were both wiping tears from their faces with their hands.

After a long silence, Eva stood and said, “Rachael, dear, swear to me that everything you just told me is the God’s honest truth!”

“For fuck’s sake, Aunt Eva, why would I make up a story about something like that?”

Eva walked across the room, urged Rachael to her feet and pulled her into a loving embrace, saying, “I want you to consider this your new home. I’m going to talk to Mr. Bloom, our lawyer and ask him to begin proceedings to have you emancipated, or better yet, to name me and your uncle as legal guardians.”

Rachael pushed away, shaking her head, “No, Aunt Eva, I don’t want you to do anything. I was going to tell you later, but I guess I may as well say it now. I’ve already found a guardian of my own choosing and I’m moving to California with her in two days. I’m going to be living with Nadia Berman.”

Eva was confused. “Nadia? You mean Nadia from next door? But she’s just a child!”

“She’s hardly a child! She twenty-one years old and a hell of a lot more grown up than either of my parents! Anyhow, it’s already decided. Please don’t make a big fuss about it.”

“But...”

“No!” Rachael practically shouted, “I’m going and you can’t stop me! Please, Aunt Eva, just don’t interfere!”

Without another word, Eva turned and left the room.

Eric had eavesdropped on his mom’s side of the conversation with his Aunt Rhonda and was now outside Rachael’s room with his ear to the door. He quickly tip-toed back to his room before his mom, clearly upset, left Rachael’s room and went back down the stairs. As soon as the coast was clear, he slipped into Rachael’s room and closed the door.

He sat on her bed, reached out to take her hand and patted a spot next to him for her to sit. He said, “There was a lot of that story I hadn’t heard before. I’m really sorry you’ve had to go through all that. Granny Sonya used to rant and rave about the way you were being raised, but I don’t think she guessed everything that was going on. In fact, I know she didn’t because she wouldn’t have hesitated one second to have Uncle Ben arrested.”

“What? You were listening at the door?”

“Um, yeah. Sorry.”

Rachael looked like she was about to let loose on him, but then she shrugged and conceded, “No reason to be sorry, I guess, since you already knew most of it. What’s that old saying? ‘Life’s a bitch and then you die.’ I knew things were way out of the ordinary at home, but I never realize how absolutely fucked-up my life was until Nadia and I had a very long and serious talk this afternoon. Damn, Eric, I’m so sorry for what I did to you. As if what I was doing to myself wasn’t bad enough.”

Eric didn’t catch her meaning. “To me? What do you mean?”

“You know! All the sex stuff!”

“Um, jeez, Rachael, that opened up a whole new world to me. How is that a bad thing?”

She shook her head in frustration. “It wasn’t the sex that was bad, Eric; it was reason I did it. All that stuff about being in heat for your dick was just B.S. I didn’t have any feelings for you, I was just proving to myself that I really was nothing but a wanton, sleazy whore. It’s what Mom and Dad have been telling me, or at least implying since the asshole brought my virginity to an abrupt end five years ago. You were just another conquest, another notch in my gun, a checkmark on my calendar. Then I made it worse by bragging to Mom about taking your virginity and breaking in your oversized dick to make her jealous, knowing damn well she wouldn’t let it pass. I knew she’d come after you to get her share.”