Chapter 8: Everything About Danny Crell
We sat at her small kitchen table — Rosie and me and Grace, with Sylvia on the couch — and Rosie talked for almost two hours.
She had met Danny Crell when she was sixteen.
He was twenty-one, and he had seemed, at first, like the most attentive person she had ever encountered.
He remembered everything she said.
He showed up where she was.
He told her she was the only person who understood him.
"I know how that sounds now," she said.
"I didn't know then."
By the time she was seventeen, she had understood enough to want out.
She had tried twice.
The first time he had cried and she had stayed.
The second time he had told her that if she ended it, he would tell people things about her — things he had either invented or distorted — and that no one would believe her over him because he was older and everyone liked him and she was just a difficult teenager.
"He said that to you?" I asked.
"He said a lot of things." She wrapped both hands around her mug.
"The night I left, we'd had a fight.
A bad one.
He'd grabbed my arm and I'd gotten away and I ran home." She looked at the table.
"And then you and I fought about the tank top and I just — I couldn't explain it.
I didn't have the words.
I took the bag and I left and I told myself I'd figure it out once I was somewhere else."
"You could have told me," I said.
"I know." She met my eyes.
"I know that now.
I didn't know it then.
I thought you'd be angry.
I thought you'd tell me I was being dramatic.
I thought—" She stopped.
"I thought a lot of things that weren't true.
But I was seventeen and I was scared and I didn't know how to sort out what was true and what he'd put in my head."
Grace leaned forward.
"Rosie, what happened three months ago?
When he came back?"
Rosie's jaw tightened.
"He found me through an old mutual acquaintance.
Someone who didn't know the whole story.
He showed up at the shop one afternoon like sixteen years hadn't happened and said he just wanted to talk." She shook her head.
"I told him to leave.
He came back.
I told him again.
And then last week he said—" She stopped.
"He said he knew you'd been in contact with someone from your past," Sylvia said quietly.
"He said he had people who kept an eye on things for him.
He said if I made trouble for him, he'd make sure people here found out I'd been lying about who I was." Her voice was steady but her hands weren't.
"He knows I've built something here.
He knows what it would cost me."
"He's using your life against you," Grace said.
"Yes."
"Has he threatened you directly?
In a way that could be documented?"
Rosie looked at her.
"He's very careful about that.
He always has been.
He never says the thing that could be used against him.
He implies it.
He stands outside.
He smiles."
Grace nodded slowly.
She had her notebook out.
"Does he know you're still in contact with anyone from before Kellerton?"
"No.
I don't think so.
He was bluffing about the contact — I haven't spoken to anyone from before." She glanced at me.
"Until tonight."
"Good," Grace said.
"That means he doesn't know your mother is here."
"Not yet," Rosie said.
Grace set her pen down.
"Rosie, I need to ask you something and I need you to think carefully before you answer.
In 2011, Danny Crell was charged with harassment and violation of a protective order in Asheville.
Do you know anything about that?"
Rosie looked up.
"That was me," she said.
"I filed it.
I was twenty years old and I'd found out he'd tracked me to Asheville and I finally went to the police." She paused.
"He hired a lawyer.
The case dragged out.
I moved before it resolved and I didn't follow up because I was scared and tired and I just wanted to disappear again."
"That case is still on record," Grace said.
"It was never formally closed.
And what he's doing now — the showing up, the standing outside, the implied threats — that's a pattern.
That's documentable." She looked at Rosie steadily.
"If you're willing to talk to someone, we can build something that doesn't disappear when you move."
Rosie was quiet for a moment.
Then she said, "I've been moving for sixteen years."
"I know," Grace said.
"I'm tired of moving."
"I know that too."
Rosie looked at me.
I didn't say anything.
It wasn't my moment to say anything.
May you like
"Okay," she said finally.
"Tell me what that looks like."
