Finding Claire Fletcher (24 page)

Frustrated, she threw her arms in the air and turned to leave. “Nothing,” she muttered. “You’re so paranoid.”

“With good reason,” I called after her. “Get the pervert to buy you milk.”

Pausing at the edge of the road, she turned. “You know, even if there was something going on, I wouldn’t tell you.”

“Oh yeah, right. But you have no problem spying on me all day and night and telling him every little thing I do.”

She stared at me and for once, she had no retort. Finally, she spun on her heel and stomped across the road, slamming the door to the house loudly. I stayed in the doorway for a few minutes, watching the inert structure across from me, holding all his secrets with utter silence. I wondered if something was going on over there and Tiffany’s request for milk was just a ploy to get me to talk to her so she could unload and get whatever was bothering her off her chest.

If so, I had spoiled my opportunity to ferret out an explanation for all the strange goings-on at the house and the stomach-churning unease I felt lately. I shut my door and placed the chair under the knob. In the kitchen, I boiled water and made tea. Getting information out of Tiffany might not have been that easy. Her loyalty to him was unyielding. I was better off keeping silent with both of them, as I had for years.

After the night she led him away from the dinner table, proving herself more worthy of his affection, I said as little as possible, quiet as always. I had never spoken to him except to ask for books, plead for my freedom, protest his advances, and beg for the life of a girl I did not know. With Tiffany working diligently to turn him against me, there seemed even less reason to speak. Anything I said could be used against me later, and even though I was starved for stimulation, I could not muster the energy to respond to her taunts or tricks.

On the day he came home and announced we were moving, however, I spoke loudly and firmly. I did not want to leave. It wasn’t that I had grown attached to the place. Some of the most demoralizing, desperate hours of my life had taken place in that house. I did not want to leave Rudy and Sarah alone in the backyard. The thought of being separated from their invisible presence ripped away the hazy gauze of numbness I’d wrapped around me.

He was in a great hurry to leave. He had brought piles of boxes for us to pack our things in. Tiffany was excited. For her, it was a new adventure, and I could see visions of a palatial estate welling up in her eyes.

“I’m not going,” I said, when he began packing up the kitchen.

“Good,” Tiffany said. “No one wants you around anyway.”

He turned to me, body half bent over a box. “You’re going whether you like it or not,” he said.

Beside him, Tiffany pouted. “I don’t want her to go.”

“I’m not going,” I repeated.

He straightened. Tiffany tugged at his shirt sleeve. “She doesn’t want to go. Let’s just leave her here.”

“Lynn,” he said. “You are going. You don’t have a choice in this matter.”

“That’s rich,” I said. “I haven’t had a choice in any matter since the day you kidnapped me.”

He was momentarily stricken. Tiffany tugged harder on his sleeve and stamped her foot. “Leave her here!”

He strode across the room and slapped me hard across the face. But I was almost as tall as him now and much stronger than I had been. Sucking the blood from my teeth, I raised my eyes to him once more.

I slapped him back with as much strength as I had. His head snapped to the side with the satisfying
thwap
of my palm. Tiffany gasped.

“I said I’m not going.” Dimly I wondered if anyone had ever hit him before.

He touched his hand to his cheek, which had gone pink. His voice rose up from his bowels, a high, shrill keening. “You bitch!” he shrieked.

He flew at me with his fists. I managed to avoid only one or two before ducking my head and barreling into him with the entire weight of my body. I knocked him back several steps. He tripped on a chair and fell on his behind. I toppled with him, my hands curled tightly into fists, hitting, hitting, and hitting. I swung blindly, hitting anything that felt like him.

Again I had the sensation of having left my body. I floated upward and hung as if suspended from the ceiling, watching it all. Tiffany stood a few feet away, too stunned to react. Her arms hung slack and useless at her sides. Her thin mouth was agape. I had straddled him and my fists swung wildly at his face, which he covered with his hands. He was gasping and bucking his hips weakly. It occurred to me that I had knocked the wind out of him when I sent him crashing to the floor. I was yelling something in a voice I barely recognized as my own.

It was no longer a girl’s voice but a woman’s voice. My disembodied self strained to make out the words.

“You fucking bastard. I hate you. I hate you. You took everything from me. I hate you. I hate you. I wish you were fucking dead. You piece of shit, pervert, sicko, pedophile bastard.”

Every curse word I knew, every derogatory thing I had ever thought of calling him spewed from my lips in a fury of blood red spit.

Finally, he caught his breath. He reached up between my flying hands and grabbed a handful of my hair. He yanked hard to the side, freeing himself. My hands kept flying, and when he pulled me to my feet, I kicked and stomped, my limbs searching for solid mass.

My disembodied self braced for his retaliation, for the possibility that he might beat me to death as he had Rudy or strangle me as he had Sarah. Perhaps he would drag me into the bathroom and drown me again. My body was beyond caring, so caught up in its visceral rage. But he did none of those things. Instead he dragged me to the threshold of my room and half pushed, half threw me inside, slamming the door swiftly behind me.

My body had gained such momentum that for several moments longer, it beat its arms and legs against the door, still screaming obscenities and working until its arms and legs were bruised and bleeding and several of its toes broken.

When the body pulled me back, it was exhausted and sore. But I had found my rage, a geyser of it, a wellspring. I resolved to hold onto it—keep it coursing through me until he came back.

He must have sensed this because he did not return for a very long time. It became impossible for me to stay awake, much less fuel my blessed fury for the next encounter. When I woke, I was still on the floor. I had curled up on the carpet, next to the door, hoping to spring at him when he opened it. I had failed.

There was a plateful of food on the table beside my bed and a large glass of water. My first instinct was to hurl it into the wall and resume my battle with the door. Then I realized that I would need my strength if I was going to best him again. I ate and drank and soon after, a familiar feeling spread throughout my limbs.

I was suffused with warmth, my body so relaxed that I could hardly move. Lazily, my mind sifted through memories of my captivity, seeking to identify this feeling and the last time I’d had it. I was in the first place he had kept me, tied with one hand to a bed, wearing the shorts and tee shirt he’d given me, which had almost caused me to weep after so many weeks of being naked and cold. There too, there was food on the bedside table.

“Oh no,” I groaned, although I was no longer entirely sure that I had spoken the words aloud or merely in my head.

The last time, I woke up here.

My mind tried to keep me awake, alert.
The food
, it said,
the food
. He put something in the food. As though this belated realization might make a difference. I drifted off thinking of Sarah, Rudy, and finally, for reasons I could not articulate, my mother.

I woke for a short time what must have been days later. I was in my bed but not in the same room. Not in the same house. My right arm was bound again to the bed, giving me a jarring sense of déjà vu. Surrounding the bed were boxes marked Lynn. My mouth felt as if it was stuffed with cotton. A cloudy image of Tiffany’s face pressed against a car window flickered in my mind. I drifted back into sleep.

The next time I woke, Tiffany was sitting on the edge of the bed, filing her nails with an emery board. I shifted and moaned. She glanced at me.

When I began to sit up, she spoke. “He said if you don’t be good, he’s going to keep you like this.”

“Like what?” I said. My voice was a hoarse whisper.

“Drugged. Tied up.”

“Where are we?”

“You sound like a frog.”

I reached up and untied my hand from the bedpost. He had used only rope. My wrist was raw, the skin cracked and scabbed.

“How long have I been here?”

“Three weeks. He doesn’t want to see you. He made me take you to the bathroom.” She made a sound of disgust. “It was totally gross.”

I flexed my legs and moved into a sitting position, resting my dizzy head against the headboard. “Where are we?”

“Some shitty place in the middle of nowhere. It’s worse than the last place even though it has more rooms. He said if you ever hit him again, he’ll kill you. He said it like he really would, too.”

I had no doubt that he meant it. “How long did it take us to get here?” I asked.

She continued filing her nails. She had not looked at me once since we began talking. “What the hell do you care? You’re in a lot of trouble, you know.”

“Just tell me,” I said. My voice was raspy and my throat felt like sandpaper.

She rolled her eyes and blew on her nails. “I don’t know. Like a half hour.”

“Have I been sleeping the whole time?”

She shrugged. “Mostly. Sometimes you were like a zombie. Like you could walk and eat and stuff but you weren’t really there. Why does he care so much if you leave or not?”

I rubbed my hands over my face. “Because if I leave, he knows I’ll go to the police and turn him in.”

She looked at me finally. Her face was blank. “So what you said is true? He kidnapped you?”

I nodded. I tried to swallow but it hurt. “I need some water,” I said.

Her brow furrowed, lines creasing her face. “I don’t believe you,” she said. “You weren’t even tied up when I came. You want to stay. I don’t know why he cares so much about you. You’re just dumb anyway.”

Her entire body seemed to pout. She looked at her feet.

“Please just get me some water,” I said.

“I hate you,” she said softly, her voice sounding sad, lacking the malice she usually reserved for me.

I closed my eyes. “I know,” I said. “Tiffany, please. Water.”

She made a sound of exasperation and the bed shifted beneath me as she stood. My mind was working far too slowly to take everything in. All I could think about was water and when she finally handed me a glass, I drank it down in one long series of gulps. I held it out to her again. “More,” I gasped.

Wordlessly she left and returned with a full glass. I drank more slowly, and she settled back onto the bed.

“What do you want?” I said, my voice starting to sound more normal.

“Look,” she said. “I’m tired of taking care of you like you’re a cripple or something. It’s gross anyway. I’m just supposed to find out if you’re gonna be good or not so I don’t have to take care of you all the time.”

I sighed. Living death was almost too good to turn away from. I had lived for at least three weeks in a windowless sleep, a life with no memory, no images to haunt me, no effort and neither pain nor hope to assail me. I could live that way. Drugged. Asleep. Until one day I didn’t wake up. It seemed better than my present circumstances.

Then I remembered the small piece of Claire Fletcher that lived in me. Just a tiny ember, barely visible even when exposed to air but real and still harboring the smallest bit of heat. I didn’t know what it meant or if I could ever fan it enough to turn it into a flame, but I wanted it. I wanted to keep it. I owed the girl I used to be at least that. Not to mention Sarah and Rudy, whose lonely bodies I’d had to leave behind.

“Fine,” I said. “I won’t hit him again.”

“You’ll be good?” she asked.

“I said I wouldn’t hit him again, didn’t I?”

She stood up. “The bathroom is across the hall. You should take a shower. You smell.”

Connor loosened his tie and paced back and forth in the fourth-floor hallway of the police administration building. He hadn’t slept well. As he lay in his bed the night before, all the conversations, events, and the stress of the last two weeks had played out in his mind in a jumbled mess. He thought about what he was going to say to the review board the next day, a day that was coming faster and faster, leaving him with no hope of rest. He still had the blanket he’d shared with Claire, and throughout the night he pressed it to his face, trying to smell her. But the scent was fading and with it his sense of calm.

Now he stood nervously in front of the door, waiting for his name to be called. Boggs and Stryker sat on a bench beside the door, each one sucking on a lollipop since they couldn’t smoke in the building. They sat side by side like two small boys waiting outside a principal’s office, their heads moving in unison as they watched him pace back and forth.