I took a step back. I paused and thought. It couldn’t be that she had used my name and not her own and not even told him that she had a twin, an identical twin, could it?
“You know about Haylee and me being identical twins, right?”
He threw his head back and laughed harder. “This is great,” he said. “I knew you would come up with something special for our first real meet. My van’s parked right there.” He nodded to his right.
It was in the shadows, but I thought it was dark brown and looked a little beat-up.
“I was going to bring you flowers or somethin’, but then I thought I should just have something special for you at the house.”
I stared at him. He wasn’t believing me. He refused to believe that I wasn’t Haylee. This was very confusing. My heart was starting to pound under my breast like some jungle drum transmitting warnings. I stepped farther back and shook my head.
“This is not a funny story. This is true. I am Kaylee, but I’m not the one who’s been talking with you over the Internet. That’s Haylee. She’s back at the movie theater. Our mother dropped us off there. Haylee got sick in the theater before she could leave and wanted me to tell you in person that she can’t be here. Our mother is coming to pick us up after the movie, but if Haylee gets sicker, we’ll call her to come earlier. I’m sorry,” I said. “That’s the truth. I’ve got to get back to her now.”
I started to walk around him, but he reached out and seized my left arm.
“You are a very entertaining young woman,” he said. “We’re going to the farm now, just as we planned. I’ve cleaned things up for you.”
“No,” I said, tugging my arm away. “I told you. I’m not the one who was supposed to meet you. That’s Haylee. I am Kaylee, but you have us confused.”
“Enough,” he said, losing his smile, his voice more raspy, almost inaudible. “You carry things too far sometimes. I meant to tell you that. Let’s go.”
“I’ve got to get back to my sister. If you touch me again, I’ll tell the police.”
My voice was shaking now, trembling along with the rest of me. When I looked around, I saw how deserted the street was. There were no houses with lights on, no stores, and, right now, no traffic. Where were we?
I started to walk away.
“Stop it, Kaylee,” he called after me.
I walked faster, my legs trembling so hard that I thought I might trip before I reached the curb.
I never did.
He was behind me quickly, and I felt a tremendous shock to the back of my neck.
Then everything went black.
14
I thought I was in a pitch-dark room and then realized there was a hood over my head and my face. I was seated in a chair, a rocking chair, and there was a chain attached to a bracelet fastened around my left ankle. The hood smelled of grease and gasoline. It made me cough, and then I was in the middle of a scream when the hood was pulled off and I was looking at Haylee’s Anthony.
He stood under the dull light of a hanging black metal fixture shaped like an upside-down bowl. His shoulders were hunched up, and he was smiling so hard that his lips lost color and resembled rubber bands ready to snap. Now he was wearing light blue pajamas and a pair of black slippers. He was cradling a cat with eyes that looked tinted yellow. It gazed at me with interest and was so still that I thought it might be a stuffed toy cat.
“Hello there,” Anthony said. “I’m sorry about how I got you here, but that didn’t really hurt, did it? It was more like anesthesia.”
“Where am I? Why have you done this to me?”
“Oh, where are my manners? This is Mr. Moccasin,” Anthony said. “See his paws, the white lines? They look like moccasins, don’t they? Mr. Moccasin, meet Kaylee.”
I didn’t think I could breathe, much less speak. I realized I was no longer wearing my own clothes, including my bra and panties. I was wearing a thick, faded pink flannel nightgown. I gazed around. It looked like I was in a basement. The only two windows were boarded up on the outside. The walls were paneled in a light wood, and in front of me was an old, heavy-cushioned brown sofa, a small coffee table, and a bookcase on the wall behind the sofa. Besides books, there were little figurines and toys on the shelves, model planes, and model cars. Next to the shelves were drawings pinned to the walls. They looked like the drawings a child would make of mountains and trees. In all of them, there was a cat.
The concrete floor was partially covered with thick, tightly woven area rugs. To my right was a metal sink, a counter with a linoleum surface, and a small two-door refrigerator. Beside that was an oven and a range with a teapot and a pan. There was a cabinet above this, and beside it was a closet without any doors. The shelves were stocked with boxes of cereal, rice, cans of soup, and other things, and on the counter was a bread box.
I turned slightly to look at the rest of the basement. Just behind me was an area meant to be a bedroom. There was a double bed with a metal headboard, two large light blue pillows, and a light blue comforter. There were two wooden side tables and a dark wood dresser with half a dozen drawers. There was also another area rug. A second similar hanging fixture lit that area. On my left was a table with four chairs, and on that wall was a framed poster that read “Home is where the heart is.” The words in script were inside the outline of a heart, like what you’d find on greeting cards.
On my immediate left in front of me was a small room with a toilet, a bathtub, and a sink. There was no door. It, too, had an area rug, but this one looked softer.
“I know it’s not much,” Anthony said, watching me. “But I have many good memories. I moved down here when I was only twelve. I told some of my friends at school, and they were jealous that I had my own place. I couldn’t sneak anyone in, though. Anyone who came here had to go through the house and get past my mother and father, but you know a lot about all that. I did show you some pictures, but it’s different when you actually see it, right?”
He put the cat down, and it walked slowly around his legs, rubbing its body against him but keeping its gaze on me.
“He’ll get to know you, and then he’ll be your buddy, too,” Anthony said. “Cats are naturally suspicious and afraid. That’s why we have that expression, scaredy-cat. Right? Thanks to Mr. Moccasin, there’s never been a mouse or a rat down here.”
I moved my leg and looked at where the chain ran back to the wall. It was attached to an embedded metal clamp. I quickly saw that the chain had enough length for me to reach anywhere, including the bathroom. I was a prisoner.
I was swallowing back my utter hysteria, but I felt as if a hole were forming in my chest. I realized I needed to take deep breaths to keep from fainting.
“You hungry?” he asked. “I can make us some tea, and we can have homemade biscuits with jam. I made the biscuits myself, and not from some ready mix. My mother taught me how to cook and bake when I first moved down here. She said, ‘You’ve got to learn how to be independent, Junior.’ She always called me Junior because my father’s name was Anthony, too. She could have called me Tony. Dad didn’t want anyone to call him Tony, but my mother thought it would make my father angry if she called me that. ‘Junior,’ she said, ‘you’re going to be on your own sooner or later in this life. We’re not going to be around forever.’
“They were both much older than most parents when they had me. My mom was forty-one, and my dad was fifty-two. My mother was surprised she got pregnant. She thought it was change of life and didn’t realize I was inside her until the sixth month.” He smiled. “I started knocking on the door. But you know all that. Anyway, I’ve been making my own food for years. It’s not easy going to restaurants when you’re alone, you know. People look at you, and you can see it on their faces, the question: ‘Why is he alone? Where’s his girlfriend, or even a boyfriend?’ It’s always easier to eat at home. But I told you all that. I just like telling you things face-to-face now. It’s better this way, right?”
“You’re going to get into
very big trouble for this,” I said, gasping after every word. “My sister will tell my mother, and they’ll have the police here soon. I was supposed to go right back to the movie theater and get her because she got sick.”
“Still talking about a sister, and a twin to boot,” he said, smiling. “How come you never mentioned her before? You can make up stories faster than . . . than Scheherazade. You know her, the One Thousand and One Nights. It’s on the bookshelf there. I’ve got lots for you to read. I promise. You’ll never be bored down here, even though there’s no television. My mother wouldn’t let me have a television, and I haven’t bothered hooking one up. I’ve got lots of good board games and magazines. You’ll take care of this place, too, clean it daily. It gets dusty somehow. After tonight, you’ll wash all the dishes and keep the kitchen as spotless as I do, okay? You said that would be okay because you were so used to doing it at home. There’s a vacuum cleaner in the corner there,” he said, nodding to my left. “And in the bathroom, in the cabinet, you’ll find dust cloths and cleaning fluids, polish. The bathroom has to be extra clean. This is a germ-free place, and we don’t want that to change, right? Oh,” he added, moving toward the cabinet over the counter, “I got a dozen bottles of that vitamin you said your mother gives you every morning. So,” he said, pausing to rub his palms, “I’ll fix us some tea, okay?”
He went to the stove. The cat suddenly ran past me.
“I’m sorry about the chains,” he said as he filled the teapot with water. “I don’t expect you’ll have to have them forever, of course. Someday in the not-so-distant future, you’ll never want to leave.” He turned and smiled at me. “I know. I could tell from all you told me about yourself. I told you what I missed and needed, and you told me much of the same. We were meant to be, huh? The Internet is the new Cupid. There are companies that advertise matchmaking. We just bypassed them.”
He opened the stove and took out a platter of biscuits.
“These are perfect. Look at that,” he said, holding them up for me to see. “I know you’re not much of a cook, but no worries. I’m a great cook. Before they died, I used to cook dinner for my parents, and I always made them lunch before I left for work. On weekends, I’d do a breakfast to die for, things like French toast, pancakes, poached eggs. You name it, I did it, and I’ll do it for you.”
He put the biscuits on the counter and waggled his right forefinger at me.
“You’re a bit spoiled, I know. You admitted it. I don’t think you should have taken advantage of your mother like that,” he added with a scowl. “Mothers are precious. Until . . . they’re not,” he said, and laughed. “What do you prefer? Strawberry, orange, or grape jam?”
He looked at me and waited.
I slowly rose. “Where are my clothes?”
“Those? They’re going to that bin for poor people. I’m surprised your mother let you wear something like that. You told me she was once a fashion model.”
“Why are you doing this?”
“I’m hungry,” he said. “I didn’t eat much tonight. I was so excited about meeting you.”
“Why are you keeping me here?”
“Why? Because we should be together. You said that many times, Kaylee.”
“No, I never did. That was my sister, Haylee. I’m not Haylee!”
He shook his head. “We’re not going to get along if you keep that up,” he said.
“This is kidnapping. You can go to jail for a long time for doing this.”
He thought for a moment and then shook his head. “No. Think of it more as convincing. Kidnapping is not the right way to put it. That sounds like I’m doing it for ransom or something.”
The teapot whistled.
“You like milk in your tea or honey? Or both?”
“I don’t want any tea. I want my clothes, and I want you to unchain me.”
“Why are you acting like this? I’ve done nothing you didn’t expect.”
“Nothing I didn’t expect? How can you say that?”
He shrugged. “We agreed we should live together. You said your mother would stop us from even just seeing each other and that you wanted me to come up with a way to make it possible. Voilà!” he said, holding out his arms. “It’s all right. You have nothing to fear. I don’t intend to hurt you in any way. I’m going to make you happy, not sad. Oh, for a little while, you might be sad, but that goes away. Believe me, I know.
“I’ll tell you a secret. There are lots of secrets I’ve never told you, but we’ll have plenty of time for them. But here’s one. Sometimes, when my mother thought I was being nasty or disrespectful, she would lock me in down here. One time, she did that for almost ten days. She cried about it afterward, and I didn’t hate her for it. I got over it. So don’t worry. You’ll get over it,” he said, putting biscuits on a tray.
“Listen to me, please. I do have a twin sister. I’m not the one who was on the Internet with you. I am Kaylee Fitzgerald, and my sister is Haylee Fitzgerald. Our address is Seventeen Wildwood Drive in Ridgeway. It’s about fifteen miles from here. If you go there tomorrow, you’ll see my sister. I’ll make sure either she steps out with me or we look out a window together. Okay? Please! Okay?”
He ignored me and continued preparing two cups of tea and fixing a biscuit with jelly.
“Let’s sit at the table,” he said, nodding toward it. He carried the tea and biscuits there on the tray and sat. “C’mon. It will be the first time we’ve sat and eaten something together. Very special. Everything we do for the first time together will be very special.”
“I want my clothes back!” I cried.
“I have clothes for you, lots of clothes. I kept all my mother’s things, and most of them will fit with some adjustments. My mother taught me how to do all that, too. She said, ‘Junior, these skills will come in handy while you’re still a bachelor.’ I have a sewing machine. ’Course, she thought I was going to marry a woman just like her. You’re far from just like her, from what you’ve told me. C’mon, the tea’s getting cold.”
“I want you to take off this chain,” I said. He was speaking so softly that I thought I could get him to do it if I demanded it. “Now!”
He held the teacup and stared at me. “You’re not behaving at all like we planned, Kaylee. We planned this for a long time. You were the one who wanted to do it sooner, so I don’t know why you’re acting like this. Were you lying to me all that time? That would be very bad. Lying is a kind of rot, my mother would say. The more you lie, the more your brain rots.”
“I’m not the one who was on the Internet with you! That was my sister, Haylee!” I screamed. I stood up and shouted for help at the top of my voice.
He calmly drank his tea. “No one can hear that,” he said. “The closest neighbor is a mile away. We’re on my family farm, not that we did much farming. We had a little vegetable garden and always had chickens for the eggs. When I was much younger, we had a milk cow, but it got to be too much for my father, so he sold it. Once it was a real farm, though. My great-grandfather and my grandfather ran it. We grew corn here. Everybody’s dead. I’m the last of the Cabots. Until, of course, we have children. We’ll keep going until we have a boy, right? You agreed.”
I sat again, covered my face with my hands, and began to sob.
“Hey. Is this one of your performances? You told me how good you are at fooling people. C’mon, stop it now, and have some tea and a biscuit. What do you think about our first breakfast being French toast? I’ll bring down clothes for you in the morning.
“Oh,” he continued, “there’s a brand-new toothbrush in there and toothpaste, lots of soap and shampoo, plenty of clean towels and washcloths, too. You sure you won’t have any tea and biscuits?”
I kept my hands over my face but then stopped sobbing and looked at my wrist. He had taken my watch, so I had no idea how much time had gone by since I’d first met him on the corner, but surely by now Haylee had realized something was wrong. Maybe the movie wasn’t over and Mother and Simon
Adams hadn’t come to pick us up yet. What I feared was that Haylee would believe I wanted to stay with Anthony, that I liked talking to him or something, and she wouldn’t panic about my not returning. She would probably be more angry than afraid for me. And I had no idea if she had gotten sicker and was spending all this time in the bathroom.
She couldn’t have told him she was me. He just had the two names confused. They were too similar. That had happened many times in our lives.
“Well,” Anthony said, “I’ve got to get to bed. I’m getting up especially early just to make you breakfast before I go to work. I don’t always work on Saturdays, but the schedule just fell that way this weekend. I promise, I won’t work next weekend. When I’m home, I’ll spend all my time with you.”
I watched him carry the tea and biscuits back to the counter. He washed his cup and wrapped the biscuits that remained as carefully as if they were precious jewelry. He placed them in the bread box and then, after washing down the counter, turned back to me.
“See how nicely I keep everything, how clean and organized? You have to do the same, Kaylee. Or you might lose some privileges.”
“What privileges?” I screamed. “You have me chained to a wall. You’ve abducted me. Someone surely saw you.”
“No, I was careful about that. They could turn that corner into a cemetery these days. And I really wish you would stop saying words like kidnapped and abducted. We’re not starting out on the right foot, as my father used to say. He said it about everything. It was as if you had a definite wrong foot and should be hopping all the time to avoid using it. Your mother ever say that to you? Now that you’re here, I’m looking forward to hearing lots more about your mother. I understood why you hated her comparing you with her all the time. Parents sometimes won’t let their children be their own person. My father was more like that to me than my mother, but she would often do and say similar things. You know, when you think about all we have to tell each other about ourselves, it will easily take years.”