Read All Is Not Forgotten for Free Online Page A

And, overall, she had lost her “verve,” her bounce, her smile. I think Charlotte would have seen, had she been honest with herself, that she didn’t want anyone to see Jenny until the rape had been erased from her appearance the way it had been erased from her mind.
    Charlotte won this fight as well.
    The Kramers took a summer house on Block Island. It was a big sacrifice for Charlotte, who had to give up her spot on the pool committee at the club, but it had been her idea, a way of pressing the “reset” button. I imagine it was also a welcome break from one another. The fault lines in their relationship had now been stressed, and both of them feared the fracturing that seemed imminent. Tom came and went on weekends, then spent two weeks there in August. Lucas attended a local summer camp. He had been told about the attack (the word “rape” was not used), and he had not given it much thought beyond the impact it might have on his life. That is very normal for his age. Jenny finished her schoolwork and exams to complete tenth grade. She invited Violet to come for a week. They went to the beach and celebrated her sixteenth birthday. There were some smiles. Tom saw them as forced. Charlotte believed they were genuine, and as it had become her job to watch over Jenny carefully, journaling her moods, her eating habits, her disposition, her sleep, she felt very in tune with her daughter’s emotional recovery. In either case, the summer ended without incident. Of course, this was just the calm before the storm.
    Jenny was told about the rape by the counselor and psychiatrist at the hospital before her release. There had been very little follow-up with any mental health professionals. No therapy, no counseling other than routine checks. It had been recommended, but both Charlotte and Tom were against it. For Charlotte, what was the point of talking about the rape when they’d gone to such trouble to forget it? For Tom, who had not been in favor of the treatment in the first place, therapy sounded like another way of avoiding what needed to be done—and that was to find the rapist.
    When the professionals and the Kramers convened at the start of the school year, there was a consensus that the treatment had been enormously successful. Jenny did not remember the rape. She had returned to her normal eating and sleeping routines. Her parents were hopeful she would join the flurry of college preparation that dominates junior year—SATs, AP classes, volunteer work, and sports. She showed no signs of PTSD, no flashbacks, no nightmares, no fears of being alone, and no physical reactions when she was touched by others. Her case was deemed so successful that a military doctor from Norwich, who was conducting an ongoing study of the treatment for combat protocol, had asked for her records.
    There was just one thing—and that was the carving.
    How was school?
    Charlotte Kramer asked Jenny the question one evening in the following winter, eight months after the rape. The question broke an uncomfortable silence that was, apparently, present at any dinner when it was just the three of them. On this Monday night like the others all season, Lucas was at hockey practice. He was showing himself to be a natural athlete, and his mother had enrolled him in the holy trinity for suburban Connecticut—football in the fall, hockey in the winter, and lacrosse in the spring. This left Charlotte, Tom, and Jenny alone to bear each other’s company, something that had not been easy since the rape. Without Lucas’s adolescent chatter about the state of the boys’ bathroom at school, which of his friends liked a girl, or his flawless sports performances, the silence that had infected their house was always sitting at the head of the table.
    Jenny recalled that the dinner was her favorite, a roasted chicken, rosemary potatoes, French green beans. But she had no appetite—something she had been