Sea of Suspicion by Toni Anderson

table and rested her forehead in her fingers. “I must have dropped it.” She felt violated, and as stupid as a cement block.
    “Hey, don’t beat yourself up.” Leanne smoothed a hand over her shoulders and then went to fill the coffeemaker. “Mistakes happen.”
    That was for damn sure. “That rat you sent me home with last night kissed me.”
    Scoop in hand, Leanne twisted to face her, eyes gleeful. “Was it fabulous? I bet he’s an amazing kisser.” Dimples flashed. “And don’t tell Dougie I said that.”
    “I don’t want to talk about it.” Susie groaned then started laughing. “I don’t want anything to do with him.”
    “Why not?” Leanne looked baffled.
    “Because I finally figured out what I was doing wrong with all my past relationships.”
    “You were dating losers because subconsciously that’s what you figured you deserved.”
    Susie looked up across the bright kitchen space and shook her head. “I hate you, you know that, don’t you?”
    Leanne snorted. “I’m a psychologist. You think I didn’t work this out years ago?”
    “And what? You couldn’t fill me in?”
    Leanne came over and sat beside her at the table. She took Susie’s hands, which had somehow become twisted together like pretzels, and prized them apart. “Sometimes we have to work it out for ourselves. You told me you’d done years of therapy after the rape…”
    Susie flinched and shifted in her chair. “It wasn’t rape.”
    “You were fifteen.”
    “It still wasn’t rape. I led him on.”
    The memories were distinct. Her tinkling laugh and flirtatious suggestion to take a walk by the lake. His eyes unable to look away from the skimpy skirt she’d worn to tempt him, because her breasts were non-existent. She looked down. They were still non-existent.
    Leanne squeezed her fingers a little too hard. “He was forty-two,” she stated quietly. “Old enough to know a kid like you was off limits.”
    Susie closed her eyes against the light of reason in her friend’s eyes because Susie knew the truth. She’d been there, she’d led him on and everything that happened had been her fault. And now it was impossible to make it up to Clayton because he was dead.
    “I thought I loved him,” she admitted. A laugh came out like a sob. “I thought if I gave him what I’d heard men wanted, he’d love me back.”
    “For the love of God, he was forty-two years old , Susie!” Leanne planted her hand on her hip and raised her voice. “Would you seduce a teenager?”
    “Of course not,” said Susie.
    “You’re only in your thirties, yet you know it would be taking advantage and downright wrong to have sex with an underage kid, right?”
    Susie nodded but she could never fully shrug off the responsibility, because everything had gotten so screwed up after that day.
    “He knew what he was doing with a child whose parents were too busy to notice.” Leanne stroked her hair. “You never dealt with it because your mother let the bastard get off.”
    “You can’t blame her for that.” Susie wiped her eyes, pulling away. She hadn’t come to rehash the past. “I told her if she reported it I’d kill myself.”
    The memory wasn’t funny, but right now it made Susie laugh.
    “Oh, the drama of being a teen.” Leanne rolled her eyes and Susie knew her friend understood.
    “Stupid, huh?”
    “Dumb as a rock,” Leanne agreed. “But she could have reported him without your name being made public, she knew that.”
    Susie shuddered, remembering her despair during that awful time. Her brother had discovered them in the boatshed and he’d beaten the crap out of Clayton. Weeks later, when she’d realized she was pregnant, humiliation had morphed into a defiance that had gone nowhere and spiraled into depression.
    “Your mother used what happened to gain political power.” The passion in Leanne’s voice undid Susie, and even though she tried to hold them inside, tears fell on their joined hands. “She squeezed every