Sometimes, I returned to rationality long enough to understand that both my Mommy and Daddy were with me, whispering that I’d been a good girl, and that they loved me. I cried when Mommy kissed my forehead and told me I was beautiful. I cried harder when my Daddy told me about Ethan’s burial in the desert, and of the words they’d written on notebook paper and interred with him, as of course there could not be a stone. The paper read, Beloved Son, Beloved Brother. Had I been consulted, I might have added, Warrior.
When, after a couple of days, I came back to myself long enough to realize that the restraints had been removed, I sat up, reeled from the worst dizzy spell I’d ever known, and somehow managed to focus. The tiny bedroom had faux-wood paneling, aluminum trim, shelving bolted to the faux-wood panel of the walls, and a miniature pop-down vanity complete with a perimeter of tiny light bulbs. The space between the single bed I occupied and that vanity was a narrow strip of floor just large enough to stand in. There were no photos, no personal items anywhere in sight. There was a gallon jug of water. Daylight, though sealed off by the aluminum blinds covering the only window, rested on the opposite wall in a single glowing sliver. The air was warm, but cooler than it had a right to be.
I looked down at the bed and saw a sheet liberally peppered with flakes of skin.
I swung my legs over the edge of the mattress, winced at flesh that insisted on complaining from every move, and hauled myself from the bed to the chair adjoining the vanity.
The mirror depicted a patchwork girl. Some patches of skin were still lobster-red, or tanned to near-blackness, but the worst of the burns had peeled, revealing irregular patches of pale new skin behind the dried flaps and healing blisters. Two even paler bands, reflecting the places where the leather straps of my gag had protected my skin from the sun, extended from the chapped corners of my lips, across my cheeks, and around as far back as I could see. My jaw was a mass of faded gray bruises. My eyes were red and underlined with a pair of gray half-moons. My cheeks seemed gaunt. My hair had started to grow back, though it hadn’t established itself as more than a transparent blonde down, establishing the places where a full head of hair would appear once time and biology had done its work. Right now some of the bristles impaled loose flakes of skin, displaying them like butterflies on pins.
It could have been worse.
I drank some water from the jug. Slept. Then drank some more. Then slept.
After a while, I drifted back to consciousness and heard a woman laughing, somewhere right outside.
A few seconds of searching and I found the clothes they’d left for me, neatly folded on the dresser, with a note to the effect that I could come outside if I felt up to the walk. In addition to one of my bras and one of my pairs of panties, there was also an oversized white t-shirt that must have belonged to Ethan, an oversized Hawaiian shirt I also identified as his to wear over it, an ankle-length skirt with belt to cinch them tight, the sun bonnet my father had bought for me, and a pair of flip-flop sandals. The gestalt may have been random as fashion but it was all loose, all selected for maximum sun protection while offering the greatest degree of comfort for skin still so sensitive that it hated glancing contact with cotton sheets. This struck me as uncommonly thoughtful. I eschewed the bra out of reluctance to feel those shoulder straps but otherwise accepted the rest of the suggested outfit, dressing gingerly and some four times slower than I was used to.
The screen door slammed as I bopped down the steps of the mobile home. It was still hot outside, but not sweltering: maybe somewhere in the upper eighties, not all that much warmer than that. My parents, who were about twenty feet away occupying a pair of chaise lounges under a huge beach umbrella angled to catch the morning sun, both looked tanned and happy to see me. Both wore oversized amber sunglasses and big floppy straw hats. The Bitch was reading something by Carole Nelson Douglas, Daddy something by John Grisham. Both seemed delighted to see me. They waved.
“There’s the sleepyhead,” said Daddy.
“She looks better already,” said the Bitch. To me, she added: “Better hurry up and get under the umbrella. You don’t want to overdo.”
There was a mesh folding chair just inside the umbrella’s oval shadow.
I winced as I sat down, winced again as I edged the chair a few inches closer to my parents.
“You want something to eat?” inquired the Bitch. “I can fix something. You’ve been off solids for a bit, but you look like you’re ready to keep something down.”
My stomach bubbled dangerously. “Maybe later.”
“Don’t wait too long,” she advised.
“I won’t.”
“You have to keep up your strength.”
“Why?” I asked. “The fight’s over.”
“Just to take care of yourself,” the Bitch said. “We care about these things, even if you don’t.”
Daddy winked at me, retrieved his own mimosa from the gutter between their lounges, and sucked a single dainty sip through a bent straw before returning the glass to its resting place. “You listen to your Mom,” he advised. “She knows what’s best.”
I swallowed, wincing at the sudden surge of pain from a throat still too dry and raw. “Does she?”
The Bitch looked away, her right hand covering the fresh scowl twisting her lips. Daddy sighed, sat up, and removed his sunglasses so I could see his eyes, which were very pale and very blue and so very much like Ethan’s that everything since my birth took hold of my heart and twisted hard. “Now, pumpkin,” he said. “I thought you knew better than that. Your mother and I did need to settle our differences. We couldn’t do it by ourselves. We know that because we tried, again and again, and the more we argued the more we kept going over the same patches of ground. We couldn’t move on without settling who was right and who was wrong. It’s too bad about Ethan, of course, but now that everything’s resolved, there’s no reason for any more pointless animosity. We can get along. We can even be a family again, if you’d like. We could move your Mom out of this place and get a nice house somewhere with trees and a lake. We could even get a dog. You like golden retrievers, don’t you? I thought so. Just like I always promised you, I’ll get you anything you want. We’ll make it work.”
The impossible fantasy loomed before me, beautiful and horrifying and irresistible and repugnant all at the same time, drawing me in with a gravity greater than my own capacity to resist it. I’d missed so many things, but I still had a couple of years left before I turned eighteen. Maybe it wasn’t too late for me, to have the things other kids had.
I couldn’t help it. I wanted to cry. Daddy had been rough on me during my training, but if he’d been less demanding I might not have survived. And Mommy might not be such a Bitch anymore, now that Daddy and I had established the order of things. I could love them and they could love me. It could happen. Stranger things had.
Thirsting for more than just water, I licked my lips and felt the sting as they cracked. “What if you two have another fight?”
Daddy winced as if stung. “We’ve taken that into account.”
Mommy retrieved her mimosa and treated herself to another dainty sip, before returning the glass to the paving-stone by her side. “I went through the change already,” she said, with what seemed infinite regret at the lost opportunities of her youth. “But you can still bear children. And twins run in the family.”