‘Why was he disfellowshipped?’ I ask. The elders don’t announce the reason. You have to rely on congregation gossip for that, and I was too young to be privy to it.
‘Because—’ Dad chokes up, and now I’m terrified of his answer. ‘It was discovered that he molested one of the younger sisters in the congregation.’
I blink, fingertips digging into my legs. ‘Tell me it wasn’t Bridget.’
I’m met with silence.
I feel hot and cold all at once. ‘How did… When?’
His hands knead the steering wheel. ‘He was living at home at the time. I’m sure you remember his sister, Karli. She was Bridget’s best friend. They slept over at each other’s houses all the time. And why not? The family were trusted brothers and sisters, after all.’
I remember Karli well. She used to come over a lot, until her family moved. Now I know why.
‘It was a Saturday night,’ Dad says. ‘Karli’s family would bring Bridget to the meeting on Sunday, like they normally would.’ He scratches his nose. ‘Karli woke up during the night, heard something. She probably didn’t really understand what she was seeing, but at sixteen, she definitely knew her brother wasn’t supposed to be there in that room. There was a lot of confusion initially.’
‘Karli was sixteen?’ She was a year above Bridget at school. ‘That means Bridget would’ve only been fifteen.’
‘And Derek was twenty-two.’
I close my eyes for a moment. ‘Did Bridget… did she want him there?’
Dad chews his lower lip. ‘We wondered the same thing. Young sisters get crushes on brothers all the time.’ He pauses. ‘But Bridget had no interest in Derek. She woke up, and he was there… She told us she froze.’
I can’t move, can’t breathe.
‘Karli woke before he…’ The pause is necessary. ‘But the damage was already done.’
My sister’s wary face comes to mind. ‘So he was disfellowshipped. Then what? No one blamed her, did they?’ It wouldn’t surprise me if they had. Maybe her knees showed at a meeting.
Dad shakes his head. ‘No. No one blamed her.’
There’s more. I can feel it, so I wait for him to continue.
‘I wanted to go to the police,’ he says quietly. ‘The elders wanted to deal with it internally.’
There’s the missing piece. ‘What did Mum want?’
‘She wanted it to never have happened in the first place. She wanted it over, forgotten about.’ He draws a shaky breath. ‘She felt the swift action of the elders and the support they gave us was adequate.’
I rest my head back. ‘Was that the thing that finally ended your marriage, do you think?’
‘Our relationship had run its course long before then, but yes. I suppose it did.’
I roll my head to look at him. ‘What did Bridget want?’
It takes him a moment to reply. ‘At first, she wanted to bury it. The less fuss the better. Then she could move on and forget all about it.’ He pauses. ‘But trauma doesn’t work that way. When she realised the memories couldn’t be buried, she got angry.’ The faintest smile comes and goes on his face. ‘Then she wanted blood.’ He indicates and pulls into the farm. ‘She wanted Derek strung up from the nearest tree. What she needed was her parents to act in her best interests.’
I understand then. ‘She never expected Mum to go against the organisation,’ I say, ‘but she expected you to.’
‘I was one foot out anyway at that point.’ He sniffs. ‘But I chose not to upset the apple cart.’
I probably should feel angry at him, but I don’t. We’re trained to trust in Jehovah, in the elders. And in their minds, they had done everything they could—except they hadn’t.
‘If you had your time over, would you go to the police?’ That’s what matters at this point.
He stops the car in front of the house. ‘That decision was a constant thorn in my side. A few months after I moved out, I phoned Bridget and said I’d pick her up and take her to the police station that afternoon. I told her it wasn’t too late, that we could still press charges.’
‘And?’