The Lost and the Found (28 page)

I
don't understand. I take a step backward, knocking the backs of my calves on the sofa. I feel dizzy all of a sudden. The stench of blood is thicker and heavier, and I feel like it's suffocating me. I want to sit down, but I can't sit down here. Not in this place.

“I don't…But you made that stuff up. About Smith and the basement and…”

I follow her gaze to a door in the hallway. I didn't notice it before. The only door in the house, apart from the one we came in. There's nothing particularly noteworthy about this door, but Sadie is staring at it with a look so intense that it burns. I walk over to the door, a little unsteadily. My legs feel like they belong to someone else.

The door has a lock with a key in it. It's a Yale lock, big and sturdy. I turn the key and open the door. I look back at Sadie, still rooted to the spot next to the stain on the carpet. She nods at me.

I think I'm starting to understand.

In front of me there are stairs leading down. The stairs are rough concrete. There is a bare lightbulb overhead with a cord hanging next to the door. At the bottom of the cord there is a doll's head. The cord is tied around her hair. The doll's eyes are closed, as if she's sleeping. Or dead. I don't want to touch the head, so I grab the cord just above the doll and pull. The light comes on, illuminating the rest of the stairs.

I want Sadie to come with me, but something tells me I can't ask her.

I count the stairs. Seventeen. One for each year of my life.

At the bottom of the stairs, there is another door, identical to the first. Another lock with another key. I unlock this door and push it. Darkness beyond.

I fumble around on the wall inside, searching for a light switch. I could use the light from my phone, but I'm too scared to go inside unless I can see every corner. You never know what could be lying in wait in the darkness. I look around me and realize there's a light switch at the bottom of the stairs, outside the door, almost too high for me to reach. There is no good reason to have a light switch that high up. I manage to flick it with the very tips of my fingers.

I step into the room. I know this place.

The cot against the opposite wall. The small stainless-steel sink with a red bucket next to it. The bookshelf—again, almost too high for me to reach—with different-colored folders lined up neatly. Labels on the spines with neat black writing.
Math. English. Science.

There's a rickety chair and a Formica-topped table against the left-hand wall. On the table sits an ancient desktop computer. The keyboard in front of it is missing three of its keys.

There's a pile of what look like old clothes and blankets in one corner.

Then I look up. Above the door, there is a tiny video camera, pointing at the cot.

This is not a room. It's a cell.

T
he walls seem to close in on me. I've been standing here less than a minute, and the door is wide open behind me. If someone was to lock me in here and turn out the light, how long would it be before I lost my mind?

I turn and go back up the stairs as quickly as I can, not bothering to turn out the lights or close the doors. The front door is open. She's sitting on the steps. I sit down next to her.

“How long?” I ask, staring at a patch of pink heather clinging to a rock.

“Fifteen years.”

“You killed him.” Not quite a question, not quite a statement.

She nods.

“And then…?”

“I had nowhere to go.”

So she came to us. She needed a family. We fit the bill.

I can't get my head around it. It's too much, too crazy. It doesn't make sense….There's so much that doesn't make sense.

“I'm sorry,” she says, before I can even manage to form a coherent thought.

What is she expecting me to say? That's it's all okay and I forgive her for what she's done to us? Because it's not okay and I do not forgive her. She tricked us all. Lied to us.

“So all that stuff about Smith…the things he did…”

“All true.”

I wait. The sky is red. If I concentrate hard enough on the pretty garden in front of me, maybe the house of horrors behind me will cease to exist.

Sadie starts to talk. Slowly, haltingly at first. Then faster and faster, as if she's racing to get the words out before darkness falls.

She is twenty-three years old now. She was eight years old when she was taken. It happened in a mall, lots of people around. She can't remember much about her life before. “There were men,” she says. “Bad men.”

I ask about her family. Her
real
family. She tracked them down. It was the first thing she did when she escaped. Her mother is dead. Overdose.

“What about your dad?” I ask.

“Don't have a dad,” she says.

I ask about Smith. “Is he the one in the picture?”

She nods.

“So you lied to the police about what he looked like?”

She nods again. “I couldn't have them finding out who he really was.”

I think about this for a moment. If she had accurately described Smith, there would have been a good chance someone out there would have recognized him. Even if he did live like a recluse, someone would surely have been able to identify him. Then the police would have come here. Found the bloodstain on the carpet. “Where is he?…Did you bury him?”

“Back there.” She gestures with her head, nodding toward a path leading around the side of the house.

I try to picture her dragging his body through the house and out the front door. The head, thunking on the steps we're sitting on. She must have wrapped the body in a sheet or something. There were no signs of blood on the carpet other than the stain next to the sofa.

I want to ask how she did it. What it was like to kill a man. Was it quick?

It's as if she reads my mind. “I only hit him once. I didn't mean to. I just wanted to knock him out. Give myself a chance to run. His back was turned. He was crying. I think he expected me to comfort him. I picked up the iron without thinking. It was just sitting there next to the fireplace. I'd never even noticed it before. It belonged to his mother, I think. Probably an antique.” She pauses and a ghost of a smile plays across her lips. “Caved in his skull. Didn't know my own strength.”

What do you say to someone who is essentially confessing to a murder? But does this even count as murder? I don't think it's self-defense. Still, it's hard to imagine a jury convicting her, after everything she's been through.

I ask her if she ever tried to escape before. “A couple of times,” she tells me. “Mostly in the first year or two.”

“And after that?”

Sadie shrugs. “I stopped trying. I got used to it. Got used to
him.
He took care of me.” She sees the horrified look on my face. “I know how fucked up it sounds. You don't need to tell me.”

“I'm sorry.”

“No one can ever understand what it was like. No one except…me.”

Something isn't quite adding up. Lots of things, in fact. “Why didn't you just go to the police? After you…after he was dead.”

“I didn't know
what
to do. I was alone. For the first time in my whole life, there was no one telling me what to do. I ate when I wanted and slept when I wanted and went on the computer and walked in the woods. It was…peaceful. It was only when the food started to run out that I realized I couldn't stay.”

This is the part that doesn't make any sense. The missing piece of the puzzle. Everything else I can sort of understand—or at least try. But how did she come up with the idea to pretend to be my sister? I wait for her to explain, but she says nothing.

It's almost completely dark now. I'm not looking forward to walking back to the main road. “I can call Dad, you know. He could come and get us.” I stop and think for a second. Yes. This could work. “We can explain everything. I know it won't be easy, and of course they'll be upset….” Understatement of the century, but I keep going. “But they'll…I think they'll understand. In time. And I'm sure we can find someone—a family member or whatever—to take care of you. You must have grandparents or aunts or something. And they will have been looking for you, just like we've been looking for Laurel. Just think what it will be like, when you turn up after all these years.” I know exactly what it will be like. A miracle. And for them, the miracle will actually be real.

“Faith,” she says, but I carry on gabbling about how everything will be okay and people should really know that this Smith guy is dead. Right now the police are wasting valuable resources looking for a guy who doesn't even exist when they should be looking for my sister. I keep talking, hoping that something I say will get through to her. I know I could just call Dad anyway—I don't need her permission—but suddenly it seems important that Sadie is okay with it.

“
Faith!
Stop! Just…stop.” Sadie gets up and starts pacing. Gravel crunches underneath her feet. She brings her hands up to her face and mutters something. When she moves her hands, there are tears in her eyes. She's biting her lip so hard that it's started to bleed.

I stand and put my hand on her shoulder, trying to reassure her. But she flinches at my touch. She backs away from me. “I need to…I didn't want to…There's something you need to see. I'm sorry.”

I follow Sadie around the side of the house. Her shoulders are hunched, and she's sobbing. I don't know what to say to her. I don't know what's going on here.

There's no backyard. The trees are so close that the branches brush against the windows. I have to get my phone out and use the screen to light my way. Sadie doesn't seem to have any problem seeing where she's going, though. She's used to the dark.

We walk past a mound of earth, about six foot long. She doesn't stop. She doesn't look down as we pass. She doesn't say anything at all to give me an idea of what is underneath that mound. She doesn't have to. I wonder what the body looks like. Decaying flesh, sunken eyeballs. Worms and insects.

Finally, Sadie stops in a small clearing. The moonlight shines overhead. It might be a nice spot for a picnic, in the daytime.

“I'm sorry,” she says again. Why does she keep saying that?

Then I see. I
see.

Another mound of earth, about the same size as the one we passed. Someone has placed lots of tiny stones around it, forming a border. A crooked wooden cross sticks up from the earth. There's something leaning against the cross. I move closer to see what it is.

A teddy bear, missing one arm.

I stare at the mound of earth.

I fall to my knees in front of my sister's grave.