The Altar Girl (4 page)

With the fire blazing, Nadia built her shelter. She took three long branches and placed them beside a pair of sturdy young saplings that were growing parallel to each other. She tied one branch perpendicular to the two saplings, making sure it was at neck height.

She secured the other two branches at the same height, one to each sapling, letting them fall to the ground at forty-five-degree angles. A lattice of smaller branches created a nice roof for her home. Nadia also stuck a few sticks in the ground on the sides of the lean-to so she could seal those holes up, too.

When she was finished with the skeleton of her shelter, she spread her poncho on top and connected it to the branches with twine. The poncho had holes in each corner for exactly that purpose. She wove ferns into a roof over the poncho, and did the same along the sides where she’d put the sticks. She also spread ferns on the floor of the lean-to, creating a mattress for her sleeping bag.

Her shelter built, Nadia sat down by the fire’s edge. The heat from the flames penetrated her clothes and dried her uniform and her body.

She ate a small piece of the buckwheat bread and went to sleep. She was so exhausted she packed it in after dinner and slept through the night. When she awoke the next morning, the sun’s rays poked into the entrance to her lean-to. Nadia stuck her head out and saw that her feeding mechanism was working well. A total of three logs had rolled successively into the fire. Its yellow flames still reached two feet high.

Awesome. She and her fire had both survived. That was key because they were both dependent on each other.

The sound of human feet bounding through the brush toward her broke her concentration. They didn’t sound like her brother’s and father’s long strides. They were short, crisp, and purposeful. They echoed through the forest.

Mrs. Chimchak.

Nadia pushed herself up and burst out of her lean-to, a smile already etched on her face. It would be good to see a familiar face, even if that person was there to remind her she was the only hope for one person or another, or some such painful thing.

She saw the strangers and realized there had been no echo of footsteps. She’d assumed one person was approaching, but there were actually two of them. A man and a woman.

They were both young. The woman reminded Nadia of a giraffe, a towering beauty with outrageously long legs, an elongated neck, and golden hair with streaks of caramel halfway down her back. She’d probably been popular in school, like the girls that terrorized Nadia on a daily basis. The man looked more like a kangaroo, much shorter with smaller features than the woman. He fidgeted beside the woman, wired with nervous energy. Both of them wore knapsacks on their backs and frowns on their faces.

Nadia’s survival instincts sent a wave of fear through her body. There was something wrong about these two. They looked scared and out of place. More than that, they looked desperate.

Either something bad had happened, or was about to happen. And Nadia didn’t come to this conclusion based on the strangers’ faces.

It was the gun the man pulled from behind his back that told her this.

CHAPTER 5

B
LOOD DRAINED FROM
my face. I realized my breathing had turned shallow.

I focused on extending my exhalations. Cursed at my self-delusion. I’d fooled myself into thinking I was managing a man who could not be managed. Then I cursed at myself for cursing at myself. I needed to relax. There was still a way out of this van with my life and body intact.

There is almost always a way out of trouble. The woman who keeps her emotions at bay can find the way.

Donnie looked down at me with a concerned look. I had no idea if it was mock or real. It was time to give up trying to read him, and buy time until a means of escape occurred to me.

“You okay?” he said.

“Yeah, I’m all right,” I said.

I closed my eyes and pictured myself walking through the local park, my brother at my side, both of us in our teens. Nothing could touch us. We were young, resilient, and most of all, a pair. We could rely on each other.

“You want a glass of water?” Donnie said.

“No. I don’t want any water. I don’t need anything. You want to ask me more questions? Let’s get on with it.”

He pointed a finger at me. “Hey. You don’t know how lucky you are. Be nice. I’ll get you some water.”

The biggest joke of all was that his first name wasn’t Donnie. It was Bohdan. Most Ukrainian-American kids were tolerant of their given Ukrainian names. Most grew to be proud of them over time. But those who couldn’t handle childhood abuse often adopted other English translations to assimilate into American society more easily. For instance, a Pavlo might become a Paul. But how a Bohdan became a Donnie was beyond my comprehension.

His last name wasn’t Angel, either. It was Angelovich. I liked shortening it. For obvious reasons.

“I don’t want any water, Donnie.”

He stopped near the refrigerator. Sighed as though I were being an uncooperative guest.

“Suit yourself.” He returned to the contraption. The stool was two feet off the ground. He towered over me. “So answer the question. What do you know about your godfather’s business?”

“He was known for his expertise in antiques all over the East Coast and beyond. Everyone in the Uke community knew who he was. And he had a good reputation. So whenever a Uke had an antique for sale, he got the call. Death in the family, house full of furniture for sale, he got the call. A farmer with a barn full of old stuff, he got the call.”

“What else?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing?”

I looked up into Donnie’s eyes to make sure he could see mine. “Nothing.”

It was the truth. I didn’t know anything else about my godfather’s business, though now I knew there was something else to know. Which struck me as a potential problem, because it made me a liability to Donnie and his organization.
Didn’t it?

“You’re lying to me again,” he said.

“I am not . . .” I infused some ferocity into my voice. It came easily under the circumstances. “I am not lying to you. Do you think I’m that careless? Am I in any position to be playing games with you? You ask the questions, I give you the truth. The truth. I don’t know anything else about my godfather’s business.”

He started nodding before I finished talking, in a mechanical way that suggested he didn’t believe a word I was saying. “The truth . . . right? You’re giving me the truth?” He grabbed me by the collar of my shirt and lifted me off the chair. “Then why were you asking people if his business was doing okay? If he’d had any disagreements with people at work?”

“Let go of me,” I said.

He didn’t.

“I’ll answer the question, if you let go of me and act like the boy my godfather said was good.”

My words might have sounded preposterous if it hadn’t been for the emotion that had flashed on his face when I made up the story about my godfather liking him. I knew it had left a mark. At least in this regard, Donnie was no different from any other person. No matter what our paths in life, we still remember moments from our childhood when we longed for a single word of praise.

His lips quivered, his eyes softened, and he lowered me gently back to the stool. Started fixing my collar but pulled his hands away before he could finish, as though he realized his touch was toxic.

I continued with my current strategy, telling him the absolute truth and looking him in the eyes as I did so. “I was asking if his business was okay because at the time I wasn’t certain his death was an accident.”

“Why not?”

“Because the story I heard at the wake was that it was raining hard and his cellar leaks. He went down to the cellar to check the flooding, slipped on the stairs, and hit his head.”

“What’s wrong with that story?”

“Nothing is wrong with it. Did you notice I used the past tense? I said ‘at the time I wasn’t certain his death was an accident.’ I’m certain now. I buy it. I’m a believer.”

“Why the change of heart?”

I glanced from Donnie to the machine and back to him again. “Because I understand the situation better now.”

“What situation?”

“My situation. I’m still thinking there’s a way for you to let me walk out of here in one piece.”

“You’re saying you asked questions then that you wouldn’t ask now.”

“Obviously.”

One of those questions was, what happened to you, Donnie Angel? Except that was a lie. I didn’t need to ask the question. Nothing Marko or I did was ever good enough for our parents, in school, at home, or in the community. I was sure Donnie had experienced the same single-minded pressure to excel. Only the exact details of what he had suffered were a mystery.

Donnie narrowed his eyes at me and then nodded. This time it was a slow nod, the kind that said he believed. He really believed. At least for the moment.

“You are going to walk out of here in one piece,” he said. “Answer me one more question, and you got my word on that.”

“Name it.”

“I get that you had a change of heart. Nothing will change a man’s mind faster than the sight of this here machine. But before you changed your mind, back at the wake, the funeral, the reception . . . why did you think the story of how your godfather died was bullshit? Didn’t his cellar flood when it rained?”

“Yeah.”

“Didn’t he drink?”

“Nightly.”

“So why don’t you believe it happened that way?”

“He was too careful.”

Donnie laughed. It sounded more like a condescending and derisive sneer. “What?”

“He was too careful to ever go down to his cellar once he started drinking.”

“That’s all? That’s the reason you were suspicious?”

“That’s all.”

Donnie screwed his face tight. “That can’t be all. What are you not telling me?”

“He suffered from bathmophobia.”

“Bathmo what? He was scared of bathrooms? What the hell does that have to do with anything?”

“Bathmophobia isn’t a fear of bathrooms. It’s fear of steep slopes. For people who suffer from it, it’s very, very serious. It’s fear of stairs.”

“You’re saying your godfather was afraid to climb stairs? That’s the biggest bunch of bullshit I ever heard.”

“Not to him it wasn’t. No one outside the family knew about it. It wasn’t the sort of thing you want to get out in a community. You know how people are, Donnie. People are always looking to feel better about themselves by seeing weakness in others.”

“So he didn’t climb stairs?”

“No, of course he climbed stairs. But it made him nervous. Even during the day. When there was plenty of light.”

“And at night?”

“He lived in a ranch-style house for a reason. All his rooms were on one floor for a reason. Walk down the stairs to the cellar? At night? No way, especially if he’d been drinking, and it was raining and he had to worry about water at the base of the stairs. But hey, what do I know? People do stupid things all the time. Maybe he got so drunk it loosened him up and he forgot about his phobia. Like I said, I wanted to know before. But that was then, and this is now.”

Donnie stared at me with a blank expression. There were two possibilities. First, he’d killed my godfather, and he was disappointed to hear
there was a case to be made that his death was not accidental. Second, he wasn’t involved in my godfather’s killing, but he’d been in business with him. Perhaps there was an unresolved element to their arrangement. Maybe Donnie was owed money. If he’d heard me asking questions about my godfather’s death, he might have assumed my godfather and I had been close, wondered what else I knew. But now that he realized I didn’t know anything, he might consider me dispensable. Had I been a fool by speaking honestly? Had I written my own death certificate?

“You were honest,” he said. “I can tell. I appreciate that.” He patted my shoulder. “You were a woman of your word, and I’m going to be a man of my word.”

Donnie wasn’t reacting like a man who’d committed a murder and was worried about someone outing him. A man like that wouldn’t take any chances, I thought. He’d have killed me by now.

“I’m free to go?”

“Almost.” He moved next to the adjustable brackets. “Give me your left leg.”

“Why?” I choked on the word.

Donnie looked incredulous. “Because you’re right-handed, which means you favor your right leg, too. It’s not like I don’t care about you, you know.”

“No. I mean, why do you need either of my legs?”

“Because you’ve got to give me something.”

“What do you mean, give you something?”

“You’ve got to give me something to prove to me that you’re going to keep your mouth shut and not interfere with my business.”

I knew what he meant even before he pulled a rubber mallet from beneath the contraption. He was going to break my leg. My left one, that was, because he was a nice guy and he cared about me. And there was nothing I could do about it.

I had no hope of overpowering him physically. If I made a run for the rear exit he’d wring my neck before I got one foot out the door. Even worse, if I tried to escape, I knew he might hurt me in a way that time and a cast might not heal.

“Don’t worry,” he said, as he handed me a mouth guard. “I’ve done this before. It’ll be a clean break.”

I barely heard his words. I was too busy repeating the ones I’d spoken to myself less than five minutes ago.

The woman who keeps her emotions at bay can find the way out.

Black splotches dotted my vision. Bolts of panic paralyzed me. All I could imagine was the sound of a bone breaking, an excruciating pain unlike any I’d felt before.

But I didn’t fight the panic. I let my vision right itself. Surrendered to my wandering mind and let the visions slide. The experiences of my childhood had brought me face-to-face with fear before. I still had time. I still had a few seconds left.

I can find the way out.

I will find the way out.