The sunroom.
My sunroom.
It wasn’t a sprinkler system. The monster was spray-painting the windows black, and he’d almost finished the job.
Before I could determine if my location was a good or bad omen for survival, something nudged my back.
The gag stifled my scream.
The monster worked at the window while the finger tickled my back, making circular motions.
Three of us.
Maybe this was his partner. Or vice versa-the man who plunged in the needle was behind me, and his partner was at the window. I steeled my body not to respond.
What if the thing behind me had a weapon? What if they were both just waiting for me to wake up to more fully enjoy themselves?
What if this rubbing thing on my back was a sexual prelude?
I fought down nausea, tried to calm my mind and remain perfectly still, watching the natural light and my hope disappear with each pass of the spray can. The finger continued to whirl away on my back.
Mike had been so careful for years, through every pregnancy, not to let me paint or change kitty litter, or touch any substance that could leach its way into my womb. And here I was, in an unventilated area with a sociopathic painter, and the fumes flooding my nose were the least of my worries.
Letters.
The finger was making letters.
Spelling something.
Rubbing it away with one pass of the hand, then starting over.
A game from elementary school days. I’d been good at this when I was little, when Robin, my Barbie friend, and I would lie on her bed and write silly messages on each other’s backs. We graduated to the Helen Keller game, where we shut our eyes and signed into each other’s hands.
The finger drew again, more insistently, a nail digging into my back.
The first letter was N.
No, M.
The second letter, i, the finger painfully punctuating the dot. The third letter was a snake. Easy. And then I knew. Misty. She kept going. Spelling her name. Rubbing it out. Spelling it again.
“Shit.” The man threw the can across the room, where it clattered against the wall. Instantly, the hand on my back stilled.
He’d run out of paint while working on the last window, black only half of the way down. He stalked purposefully toward us, and I squeezed my eyes shut, my heart twitching in my throat like a dying bird. He shined the blinding beam of a flashlight in my face and nudged my leg roughly with his foot. I kept my body limp, dead. He thrust a swift kick at something behind me. A groan. Misty. I felt a rush of guilt for thanking God that he kicked her instead of my baby.
“You girls have a nice time,” he said. “I’ve got a few things to do.”
That voice. It was the same, but different.
The sunroom door slammed and the deadbolt shot into place, the extra-sturdy kind I’d wanted to make sure nothing could get out.
Misty, not moving.
My eyes, heavy, unable to stay open.
It didn’t seem like this was the memory that should be bearing down on me. But there it was, running a loop in my brain. Four years after the rape, in a security line at the airport. Two men. Pierce’s roommate, Haywood. And a thinner, older version. His father.
I stared. The older man nodded politely. His son stood two feet from me and pretended I did not exist, even though he’d heard me that night. He’d heard me.
I’d heard him, too. I’d heard his feet hit the floor when he slid off the top bunk. Saw the streak of light when he opened the door, and black when he quietly shut it. That was the moment I stopped fighting Pierce.
That was the moment I gave up.
Still curled on my side. A sharp pain shooting down my back. Eyes open, legs like lead. Unsure what was real. The man with the needle. The man at the window. If Misty was lying behind me. Any of it, none of it.
The room spun. I closed my eyes, the boxes and blackened windows imprinted on my eyelids like a sick light show.
The sunroom door burst open, all those little panes of glass shaking and trembling. I opened my eyes.
He wore a black Nike T-shirt and black shorts. His legs were long, and lean. A runner’s. I imagined them pumping up and down Appalachian hills. He was freakishly strong, wiry muscle formed by hard labor, not sculpted at a twenty-four-hour gym. Why hadn’t I seen this before?
His mask was gone.
So were the scruff and the limp.
He didn’t care anymore if I knew.
He wasn’t the son.
He was the father.
37
Richard Deacon stared at me clinically, like I was a butterfly he wasn’t sure was pretty enough to put under glass. The small camping lantern he set on a box cast hideous shadows on the walls.
He knelt and rested his hand on my stomach, gently.
My breath snagged.
“Caroline got pregnant again.” His hand began to rub a circle. “I bet she didn’t tell you that. On the way out the door, she threw it in my face. That she’d killed my child. She aborted my child in my town.”
He bent over me, and whispered to Misty. I couldn’t hear what he said, but her whimper sliced me like a knife. His arm was inches from my face, while his hand was busy with Misty behind me. I could smell the dank sweat of his armpit. See the black hair growing over a purple bruise near his wrist. Maybe Misty had fought back.
He was wearing a watch with a glowing digital readout. Not an ordinary watch. An expensive GPS runner’s watch. It told me it was 12:43 a.m. Another set of numbers was ticking down minutes and seconds. Mike carried a similar watch, in that black backpack.
“Misty and Caroline, Caroline and Misty. Deciding to give a damn after twenty years.” He straightened. “I’m making a nice little surprise for your husband, Emily. Y’all are all going to heaven today.”
My mind was growing more alert; my body, still a beanbag.
“Don’t make a sound.”
He shut the door, taking most of the light with him.
The moon straggled through the only patch of unpainted glass.
Lie still.
Don’t make a sound.
Why was the house so silent? My body, so numb? What was he doing? How much time had passed?
Windows painted shut. Lock on the door.
Don’t make a sound.
I floated like one of the clouds in Misty’s glass house.
Over mountains. Trees.
Italy.
My parents’ car accident.
The girl in that frat house bedroom.
Helpless. Pinned. Confused.
History, repeating.
I used my foot, the one tingling, to kick backward. To nudge her, wake her up. But she was already awake.
“I’m… sorry about your baby,” she said dully.
“What is he doing?” I spat out the words, angry. At her, for sounding helpless. At Dickie. At God.
“He has Alice.”
She’s alive?
“I just wanted Caroline and Dickie to tell me where. Where their son took my sister. Where they have been hiding him. I love Alice so much.” She choked on a sob.
“Misty, we need to get out of here.” Trying not to scream it, urging my limp body to move.
“I didn’t think Dickie would recognize me after twenty years.” Misty’s voice trembled. “I told him I was a photographer. That I wanted to take pictures on his land. Lies, so I could search that hill for her.”
“Can you move?” I asked. Impatient. Seconds escaping.
No response from Misty.
I pushed myself up a little. The moon had risen. Its yellow gleam shone near the windows, spotlighting a broken antique lamp of my mother’s and an array of half-unpacked boxes. I could see the head of a blue stuffed dinosaur sticking out of one of them. Make out Mike’s Sharpie scribble: Baby’s Room.