“He can’t help you,” Rosa said. “Darwin has been away for years. He’s doing his own thing, being his own person. Whatever Flora was up to, she wouldn’t have told him. She’s hurt him enough already, and she knows it. Now if you don’t mind, it’s getting late. I’m tired. I need a place to stay, and I’d like to use my daughter’s apartment, if that’s possible.”
“You’re not heading back to Maine?” Keynes asked.
“No.”
D.D. had to glance at her watch, get her bearings. Sunday, 7:00 P.M. Where had the day gone? Just this morning she was working a dead rapist case, and now . . . She had to think about it.
D.D. said, “Apartment is off-limits for tonight; we’re still processing. How long do you plan to stay?”
“How long will it take you to find my daughter?”
D.D. didn’t have an answer for that one.
“I’ll do my best to stay out of your way, Detective.” Rosa Dane gathered up her things. “But don’t expect me to remain on the sidelines. My daughter isn’t the only one who learned some hard lessons seven years ago. You have your job. And now, I’m going to do mine.”
Rosa swept out the door, Samuel Keynes following close behind.
“Hang on,” D.D. tried to say.
But neither one of them turned around.
Chapter 26
THE GIRL IS CRYING.
I can’t see her, only hear her in the pitch black. I should do something. Move, talk, assist. I can’t. I just . . . can’t. Somehow, I’ve retreated to the far wall, sitting on the mattress with as much distance from the girl as I can get, knees curled to my chest, bound arms looped around my knees. I’m too stunned to react. I know how to take care of myself. Are you in pain? Are you hungry? Are you thirsty? Are you uncomfortable? No? Then you’re all right.
I’m uncomfortable, I think wildly. I have training and preparation and experience. But I never saw this coming. I’m supposed to take care of myself, fight to save myself. Not . . . this.
Her cries are quiet. More whimpers than sobs. The kind of crying done when you’re exhausted and dehydrated. When you’ve already used up your supply of real tears and this is all you have left.
I recognize this kind of crying. I’ve done it myself.
Water. Somewhere along the way, I dropped the water bottle. I should crawl forward and find it. I should crawl forward and . . . help.
It’s not easy to do. In fact, it’s excruciatingly difficult. Why? I’m the one who collects images of lost people. I’m the one who assigned myself as personal savior of Stacey Summers. So now, faced with the opportunity to really, truly lend a hand . . .
I don’t want her to be her.
I don’t want her thinking I can actually save her.
I don’t want her, I don’t want anyone, depending on me.
She’s a resource. Is that a cold thought, a callous thought? But it comes to me. She’s a resource. Her clothing, items she might have in her pocket, clips from her hair. Who knows? And if she’s been allowed more freedom and privileges, say, a belt buckle—oh, the possibilities.
Now I must move forward. I have to engage. She’s a resource, and a victim must use all resources available to her.
I pitch forward onto my hands and knees. Using my inchworm crawl, weight on my elbows, I wiggle forward in the dark.
She’s fallen where I attacked her, sprawled in front of the suddenly appearing, disappearing door. Pulled shut, locked tight. I can’t make out any sign it was ever there. The wall has gone back to being just a wall, the crying girl the only evidence anything happened at all.
“Stacey?” I whisper as I crawl forward.
She doesn’t answer. Just whimpers.
My bound hands connect with the water bottle, knock it sideways. I pause, feel around more gently, until I can clasp it between my fingers. I wriggle forward, then bump against the girl’s body.
Leg. Clad in denim. Blue jeans. She’s in real clothes, versus my silly nightgown. The realization gives me hope. If she has pants, then maybe she also has a belt. With a metal buckle. That would be perfect. Oh, the locks you can pick, the things you can do, with the tongue of a belt buckle.
“Stacey,” I whisper again.
Still no response.
It doesn’t feel right to simply pat her down, as if she were a suspect at a crime scene. But she won’t talk to me either. I try to think of what I should do.
That last day, when the police found me, pouring through the hotel door and windows like a swarm of black armored ants, what had I been like, what had I wanted?
I’d been crying. I can remember that, but it feels far away and distant, something that happened to another person another lifetime ago. There was a female agent there. She kept saying “Florence Dane” over and over again. The name confused me. Tickled the back of my throat, as if I should know it.
“Flora,” she tried again.
I think I spoke then. I think I said, “My name is Molly.”
They exchanged looks, whispered responses. She placed her hand on my shoulder. “My name is Special Agent in Charge Kimberly Quincy. I’m with the FBI. You’re safe now. Okay? You’re safe.”
I flinched when she touched me. Then felt myself go incredibly still. I wasn’t shocked, I wasn’t elated, I wasn’t relieved.
I was suspicious. I was steeling myself for the blow to come.
She let go of my shoulder. She offered me water. Introduced me to a couple of EMTs who wanted to check me out.
“Would you like me to call your mom?” she asked.
But all I could think of was Jacob. Poor, poor Jacob.
And the blood all over my hands.
I couldn’t respond to the Kimberly agent. I never talked. Or screamed. Or cried. I simply held myself very still. That day, and the next, and the next.
A girl who’d been born and raised in a coffin-shaped box.
I’m not that girl, I remind myself now. If I’m not that girl, then I must be the FBI agent, the Kimberly person. So what did she do? Spoke briskly and moved with authority. She ushered me through a flurry of medical exams and necessary questions, while keeping up a steady flow of conversation, whether I chose to answer or not.
She was normal, I decide. Sounded normal, acted normal. That’s what she was trying to give me. After four hundred and seventy-two days, she offered normalcy.
I take a deep breath. Begin.
“My name is Flora.” Is it just me, or did my voice falter at the sound of my own name? I repeat myself, this time for my own sake. “My name is Flora.” Not Molly.
“I’m sorry I attacked you.” Am I? Maybe. I don’t know who she is yet, or her role in all this. Only a fool rushes to judgment.
“I’m going to try to help you. I’m sorry if it hurts, but I have to feel out the wound. I have some water. Would you like water?”
Her crying has puttered out. She appears to be listening to me. Her breath is still shaky and fluttery. Shock? Fear? Anything is possible.
She doesn’t say yes or no to water, but whimpers again.
“I’m going to touch you,” I say now. “I’m sorry. You probably don’t want to be touched anymore.” I hadn’t wanted to be. “But I can’t see you. This is”—I shrug, feeling a helplessness I already hate—“the only way I can figure out what’s wrong.”
I don’t know what else to do. She’s not talking, but at least is holding still. Is that an implicit yes or a mental hell no? I wonder if this is how the FBI agent felt five years ago. Less like she was saving a terrified girl and more like she was dealing with a feral cat.
Bare feet. That’s my first discovery. The girl is clad in jeans, but no socks and shoes. Evidence she’s not allowed to leave the house? I allow myself a small moment of mourning for the opportunities shoelaces might have presented. Resources, resources, resources. But no sense in
mourning what you never had to lose.
Next, I move my bound hands up her leg, fluttering my fingers across the line of soft worn denim. Old jeans. Her personal favorites? I tug experimentally, not sure if that’s appropriate or not. But it’s as I expected. The jeans are loose on her. If these were her original pants, she’s recently lost a lot of weight.
She must be lying on her side because next I come to the faint curve of her hip. She hisses in a breath, and I suspect I’m close to the wound. When the door first opened and I lunged forward, I was aiming for the stomach, a gut job. I’m hoping, for both our sakes, I hit her ribs instead.
I feel weird, my cheeks flaming in the dark, as I come to the waistband of her jeans. Low-riders, frayed to the touch. I can’t help myself. I’m not trying to stroke a sliver of bare skin at her waist, but of course I do. She shivers, flinches in response, and I blush even harder in the dark. I have to force myself to continue. I need to determine if she has a belt. Leather belt, corded belt, anything with a buckle . . .
No such luck.
Okay, this is it. The stab wound. I have to be close. And I’m no longer embarrassed. I’m petrified. I can’t see. Not an inch, not a bit. What if I hit a piece of wood and drive it deeper? What if I hurt her worse?
I’m not cut out for this. I didn’t train for this. I’m supposed to be alone. I’m all right alone.
Because now I’m uncomfortable. And uncomfortable is not the same as okay.
My hands are shaking uncontrollably. I hold them right above her, but I just can’t do it. I will hurt her. I will make things worse. I’ll learn, once and for all, just how much damage I’ve done.
Fingers. Suddenly closing around mine in the dark. She doesn’t speak. Just the sound of her breathing, not calm and even but fluttery and frightened, as she takes my bound hands. And lowers them to the pool of blood at her side.
I’ve made a mess of things. I don’t need light to know that. I recognize the streaks of moisture, distinct in sticky feel and rusty scent. Blood combined with shards of wood. Slivers really. Pine is too soft to make a great weapon. As I’d hoped—feared—I’d missed her belly, gouging against her ribs instead. Unfortunately, upon contact with hard bone, the pine had given up the fight, shattering into countless slivers. The girl’s injury feels less like a stab wound and more like an encounter with a porcupine.
She is crying again, hiccupping in the shaky, shuddering pattern of someone in great pain.
I feel myself freeze up. I can’t do this. The Kimberly agent never had to do this.
All that blood. So much blood five years ago. My hands, my face, my clothes. But none of it was mine.
I’m rocking back and forth. No, now is not that time. There are tears on my cheek. No, there will be no crying.
I’m a survivor, I’m a survivor, I’m a survivor, and Samuel himself said survivors must never doubt what they had to do.
“I’m going to pull them out,” I hear myself say.
She has released my hand. Her body is quivering, definitely distressed. I try to move as gently as possible, but given that I have to find each wooden shard by feel, there’s no way not to jar the wound. She hisses and moans, but remains passive beneath my clumsy touch.
To the best of my knowledge, I’m not making any sound, but I can taste salt, so apparently there are tears on my cheeks as I gingerly pinch and pull each piece. Some of them are very small, definitely more like slivers. Two pieces are thick and bulky. Shards. Do they hurt worse? Does it matter at this point?
I stabbed up with two pieces of pine clutched together. The end result is a bloody, pulpy mess, somewhere between road rash and a pin cushion.
It’s not going to work, I think again and again. In the dark, I’ll never get them all, only the obvious ones. And as anyone who’s ever gotten a sliver knows, even the tiniest piece of foreign object embedded under the skin will eventually fester and inflame.
But I don’t know what else to do. So I keep at it, arms shaking from the strain of moving so carefully, salt coating my cheeks. Five minutes, ten, twenty. But eventually I reach a point that when I wave my hand right above the wound, I can’t feel any obvious protrusions. Surely she has wood still stuck in her side. How can she not? But under these conditions, with not even a flashlight to work by, there’s nothing else I can do.
We need light. And bandages. And hydrogen peroxide and, oh yes, a real doctor, not just me.
I press my fingers gently against the wound. It feels about two inches wide, four or five inches tall. But maybe shallow? Or is that just wishful thinking.
She hisses again. Shudders.
“Does . . . does anything else hurt?” I don’t know what else to look for. What else to do. My fingers are sticky. Covered in blood. Her blood.
She doesn’t answer. I continue speaking out loud, making the decisions for both of us: “I think . . . I think we should leave it unbandaged for now.” Versus shredding more of my satin nightie for the cause. “I don’t think it’s deep, but it’s . . . messy. It needs to dry out. Scab over.” Plus I’m worried that trying to bind the wound will drive remaining splinters deeper beneath her skin.
She still isn’t talking.
“I have some water. I’m, um, going to pour some over the area. Rinse it out.”
Waste of a resource? I don’t know. I launched an attack. Sure, I hit the girl, not my abductor, but my show of defiance most likely caught him off guard, maybe even pissed him off. He could pull resources. No more dinner deliveries or other presents wrapped in cheap pine coffins.
Which brings me to another question. The girl’s hands. Is she bound, like me? And why was she sent into the room?
I finish what I started. Uncapping the water bottle and releasing a slow trickle over the girl’s side. I am sparing. I can’t help myself. Some lessons cost too much to learn.
I rub a little on my hands, then wipe my hands as best I can against the thin carpet. I replace the cap on the water, then sit back on my heels.
There’s no polite way to do this, so I just do it. Finish feeling up the girl in the dark. Cotton shirt, maybe a T-shirt. Chest, neck, face, thick shoulder-length hair. Her arms, which I trace all the way down to her handcuffed wrists. Then, because I know something about these things, I skim around the line of the metal bracelets, where I can feel the roughness of new scabs, interlaced with the smooth ridge lines of old scars.
“You were kidnapped too. A while ago. Long enough for your first wounds to have had time to heal.”
The girl doesn’t move. Nor does she speak.
“Are you Stacey Summers?” I ask.
Nothing.
“I know your parents. I met with your father. They haven’t given up hope. They’re still looking for you.”
A slight hiccup. Surprise? Shock? A twist of hope?
“My name is Flora.”
I wait. My fingers still on her wrists.
And then, just as I’m beginning to give up hope, I feel her hands curl against mine.
“M-m-molly,” she whispers in the dark. “My name is M-m-molly.”
Seven years later, that’s all it takes.
My blood turns to ice.
My hands flinch, recoil protectively to my chest.
And I know . . . and I remember . . . and I feel . . . and I . . . and I . . . and I . . .
“No,” I whisper.
But this poor girl, my pain, my punishment, has finally found her voice.
“My name is Molly. Molly. Molly. Molly. My name is Molly.”
I don’t look at the viewing window. I don’t look to the sealed-up wall where I now know there is a door.
I look down at the carpet. I look deep into myself. And I think, all these years later: Oh my God, what have I done, what have I done, what have I done?
Chapter 27
GO OVER TO HIM. Go on. Do it. Walk rig
ht over and tell that drunk-ass cowboy you’re a kidnapped girl. Let’s see if he’ll rescue you. No? Don’t think he’ll believe you? Or afraid that he will?”
Standing beside me at the bar, Everett’s voice held an edge. He’d already tossed back several shots, not that it mattered. He’d been on a streak lately. Angry, surly, demanding. Nothing I did was right, and nothing I gave him made him happy.
I didn’t know what had changed, but . . . something had.
Three days off before the next transport. He’d found us a cheap strip motel. In the beginning, I’d liked the time away from the rig. A floor that didn’t constantly rumble beneath my feet. A view of green trees that didn’t blur as they flew past on the interstate.
But Everett . . . Less driving meant more drinking. More sex. And none of it was ever enough. He just got angrier and angrier and angrier.
Tonight, he’d returned to the room with a bag in his hand. Thrown it at me.
“Clean yourself up. You look like a fucking loser and smell even worse. What’s with the hair anyway?”
Most of the time I wasn’t allowed to shower. Let alone shave my legs. But tonight, I’d cleaned up. Then looked in the bag to discover a dress. Kind of. Not a pink-flowered or yellow flowy sundress, like the kind I might have worn a lifetime ago, heading out on a summer afternoon in Maine or enjoying a spring afternoon in Boston.
No. This dress was red and slinky and very, very tiny.
I’d trembled when I held it in my hand. And for a moment, my gaze drifting up to the reflection of a girl in the steamy mirror . . . pale skin, gaunt cheeks, gray eyes so huge and shadowed in her face.
Ghost girl, I thought. Then my entire body shook.
Everett was waiting for me when I came out of the bathroom, tugging self-consciously on the hem plastered to the top of my thighs. No bra or underwear. Everett didn’t believe in such things.
He didn’t say anything as he eyed me up and down. Just grunted, drained the rest of his beer, then shouldered by me to scrub his face, slick back his hair.
I tried to practice sitting while he was gone. Fiddling with the halter top to cover more of my chest, plucking at the clingy fabric. In the bag, I found a pair of platform sandals, strappy black. Not right for the dress, I thought, before I could help myself. But in another life, with another outfit, I would’ve liked these shoes.