Tessa's Escape to Athena's Ground Read Free

followed to college, the man she’d married two weeks after graduation. Their marriage wasn’t perfect, she knew, and she shared that with Shawntay. But she loved Mark and Mark had loved her. Tessa had always been an introvert, both socially and sexually. Mark had coaxed her and coached her, in both arenas, and he was the only thing she knew.
    “Mark quit on me, Shawntay,” Tessa said, surprised by the anger in her voice.
    “We’ve talked about this before, Tessa. Mark died on you and that’s not the same thing.”
    “It was to me! He shouldn’t have been in that Fiat.”
    “Because he went on a business trip without you? How realistic, how fair, is that Tessa?”  Shawntay’s tone was scalding water, blanching the skin off Tessa’s reserve.
    “The Milan police found him crushed in a sports car. The driver was a local woman.”
    “Oh come on, Tessa. You just finished telling me that Mark loved you. Because he died in a car with a woman while on a business trip you’re…”
    “It was a sports car, Shawntay. Mark was the passenger. I found online pictures of the local woman. She was a gorgeous, sexy woman.” Tessa was under a full head of steam and she wasn’t going to stop until she’d said it. All of it. “The police report said the Fiat rounded a curve too fast and the driver hadn’t slowed down because she’d probably taken her eyes off the road and, when or if she did see the problem, she couldn’t have braked effectively because her ankles were constrained.” Tessa took a breath and forced herself to say the next words. “Shawntay, her right ankle was twisted up in her underwear, which was found wrapped around both ankles.”
    Shawntay gasped softly. Apparently, like Tessa, she hadn’t seen that coming. Tessa had never put words to this story, at least not outside of her own head, but Shawntay needed to know what Tessa hadn’t shared, and this was a huge part of it.
    “The coroner’s report said the driver had been pinned at impact; she died slightly facing the passenger’s seat, with her hips tipped in an upward angle and her knees facing opposite directions.  She was naked from the waist down and missing her bra, which was found in the back seat. My husband’s skull was crushed at impact by the steering wheel. Think about that, Shawntay. Why was the driver’s naked, open legs turned toward the passenger and where would Mark’s head have been for it to be crushed by the steering wheel?”
    “Oh, honey,” Shawntay said.
    “Yeah. The woman lost control of the car because she was letting Mark do what I never would. And my husband, the love of my life, died with his head between some Italian slut’s legs. It would make a great Woody Allen movie if it wasn’t so horrible.”
    Tessa started to sob, and Shawntay made little “I know” noises until Tessa stopped.
    “I did grief counseling after Mark died,” Tessa said minutes later. “You know that. But I never could bring myself to tell the therapist exactly why that Fiat ran off the road. So we never got through the complexity of my feelings about Mark.”
    “And that’s what’s been eating at you all this time?”
    “That, and the rape.”
    “What!”
    “Another little thing I never told anyone. Eighteen months after I lost Mark, my therapist—who didn’t know the whole picture, pressured me to start seeing people. To be fair, he wasn’t suggesting I get emotionally involved, or even sexually active. He just thought I shouldn’t be so isolated, and I couldn’t disagree. I was a junior in high school the last time I went on a ‘first date’ and honestly, I didn’t know how to even begin. So when a friend of a friend set up a blind date I figured why not.”
    Tessa told Shawntay about Kent, the good-looking six-footer with broad shoulders and an athletic build. Kent was handsome, in a rugged way, but he was also well-spoken, well-educated and nicely employed. “We went out several times, everything was fine,” Tessa