Page 42 of I Will Ruin You
“An accusation.”
“Yeah. A serious one. Life-altering. Career-destroying.”
“Can you even give me an idea of the nature of the accusation?” A pause. “Hypothetically speaking?”
I hesitated. “Interfering with a student.”
Trent raised an eyebrow. “Interfering?”
“Molesting. Sexual abuse. Hypothetically speaking.”
Trent went quiet. He looked at the barbecue’s temperature gauge. “Almost time to put these on,” he said. He opened the lid, a wave of heat hitting him in the face, and took a brush to scrape down the grill while he thought about what to say next.
He put the lid back down and said, “Go on.”
“Let’s say this person offered to keep quiet in return for a substantial sum of money.”
“How much?”
“Ten thousand.”
“Not pocket change.”
“What do you do?”
Thoughtfully, he said, “Whether there’s any truth to the accusation might have some bearing on the issue.”
“Does it matter?”
“What do you mean?”
“Even if it’s unfounded, if it goes public the person’s reputation will be ruined. There will always be people who believe it to be true. And for the record, it’s not.”
He glanced again at the temperature reading. “Why now? After all this time?”
“Guessing? He saw the news reports about Monday. Memories rekindled. Saw an opportunity.” I managed a wry smile. “Who am I kidding? This guy’s saying I assaulted him when he was on the Lodge wrestling team.”
“The wrestling team,” Trent repeated.
“I wasn’t the coach, but I filled in some when he was away. Anson Reynolds was on that leave.”
Trent did some recollecting. “His wife was ill.”
“Right. A few us picked up the slack. This guy, I told him it wasn’t me, that maybe it was somebody else. And, Trent, if somebody did do this to that kid, efforts should be made to find out who it was. Not just to save my ass, but to do the right thing.”
“Not much can be done if it was Anson. He’s dead.”
“Still, be worth maybe asking some questions. I don’t like smearing a dead guy more than anyone else does, but if that’s what happened...”
“I don’t see how someone could get that wrong,” Trent said. “I mean, if it happened when you were, like, five or six or even a little older, you could end up accusing the wrong person. But we’re not talking the distant past.”
I told him I had thought about that, too. “Maybe it was Anson, and this guy knows it, so he’s decided to go after someone else. He wants payback, and doesn’t care who he gets it from.”
“That’s just not right.”
I couldn’t help but laugh. “No kidding. I didn’t know whether to tell you. But I don’t know that I can solve this on my own. I haven’t told Bonnie for, well, a whole bunch of reasons.”
“Can’t you just give me a name, Richard?” Trent asked.