That is why the day a paper airplane struck her in the head, her entire life changed. It was English class, her senior year, and the airplane had been thrown by a muscle-bound, smart-mouthed cutup sitting a couple of rows ahead. Inside the airplane was a note. “You and I have to happen.”
Jessica and Trent began to date soon after. Within Trent’s arms she was all she had never been before. She was smart, funny, talented and beautiful, and the more he told her, the more her body responded to him. She couldn’t hear it enough. The young lady who had lived a drought now bathed in a downpour of total affirmation. She thought she was in heaven.
It would soon turn to hell.
For behind the roses, love letters, poems, sex and devotion was a young man who was being severely mistreated by his father—and the mistreatment of Jessica was about to begin.
It started slowly, as Trent placed controls on her time and dress, and demanded all friendships be severed. He questioned her endlessly about any boy she might come in contact with while in other classes, even though she was careful to talk to no one.
When Jessica went to college 90 minutes away, the only thing that would calm him down about their time apart was if Jessica left class every day and drove back to her hometown where Trent was. There they would sleep together and then she would drive back to school the next morning. Her parents thought she was away enjoying the college life. She was actually living with Trent right under their noses.
The punching began when Trent felt she got out of line—a matter of management. Sexual violence began soon after, a response to what appeared to him to be flirtatiousness with a sales clerk or the mailman. He tortured her at his whim. He lifted her by her hair. He deprived her of sleep.
In her young, desperate-for-meaning mind, the violence seemed to add a dash of daring and importance to their love, a sickening but exciting blurring of the lines. Until the day she had been hurt one too many times and suddenly she found herself considering something she never thought possible. She was going to leave him.
But as her confidence grew, and breaking up with Trent was just a matter of finding the right time to do it, fate stepped in. It happened when her mother asked her to step into her room and have a seat.
“Jess,” she said, trying not to sound alarming, “the doctors have determined that dad’s back pain isn’t from a racket ball injury like we had always thought. It’s cancer.”
The look on her mom’s face seemed to suggest that she didn’t believe her own sunny tone.
If Jessica had tried to win her dad over in the past, it was nothing compared to the full court press that came next. Every moment was spent tending to her dad, looking into his eyes or rubbing his hands as he lay resting. All the while, she was silently pleading with him to open his mouth and speak the words she needed to hear. She wanted to hear him say that she was always at the center of his heart, the apple of his eye, the love of his life. Just say it! Just say it! she would silently plead.
As the days and months passed and the effects of her father’s slow demise crushed the entire family, Jessica felt her meaning slipping away. If he died, she died. He held the keys to her. But in the midst of her emotional collapse, Trent stepped in to care for Jessica in a way that changed the course of her life. He offered her comfort from the pain. He held her with his massive arms and wiped away her tears, speaking reassurance that he would always be there.
The end would come soon. Jessica’s father died without giving her what she longed for.
Jessica clung to Trent for survival. In her world of uncertainty, he brought rock-like stability. Breaking up was no longer even a thought. And now that she was completely his, he was free to unleash even more of who he was: a damaged soul looking for someone to take it out on.
Over the next six years, Trent punished Jessica relentlessly. Slapping, punching, verbal beat downs, blindsided attacks, choking, spitting, rape. He followed her wherever she went. He checked her phone calls. He installed cameras in the house. They got pregnant, got married and had a child. It only seemed to fuel his dementedness and slave-ownerlike control. She stayed in with the drapes drawn. She worked herself to exhaustion. She talked to no one.
