Girl Last Seen Page 24

  At the edge of my hearing, his voice is calm now. Deadly. “You wanted to die so badly? Well, you’re about to get your wish.”

  He throws me against the wall, and more pain explodes in the back of my head, in my side. A cracked rib?

  Through red fog, I see him reach behind his waist and come back with a gun. Its black eye points at me, level with my face.

  In the background, Jacqueline screams at the top of her lungs, and for just a moment, he falters. He half turns, his gaze slipping from me to her—

  I don’t know where I find the stamina to move. I kick out with all the strength I can muster, slamming my boot into his shin.

  The gunshot explodes inches away from my ear. He howls, falters, pinwheeling his arms, and topples backward. His head smacks against the concrete with a sickening thwack, and the gun flies out of his hand and clatters to the floor.

  My right ear is filled with high-pitched ringing, and something wet runs down the side of my jaw. Disoriented, I slide to the floor and reach into my other boot where I find the smooth handle of my knife.

  Just as he starts to scramble up, I flick the knife open and lunge for him. I’m still weak from the drug that I’ve ingested, but he’s hurt too. Blood gushes from a cut at his hairline, streaming down his face and flooding his eyes.

  He swings at me and misses. His eyes widen when I loom over him.

  My wish? “I changed my mind, asshole. I’m not going to die. I’m going to kill you, and I’ll dance on your grave.”

  And I drive the knife in, just above his collarbone where the veins are.

  At first I’m terrified—did I stab hard enough, was the blade sharp enough? What if I screwed up, blew my only chance? But when I pull the knife out with a sickening sucking sound, red wells up, so much red, pulsing out in little bursts like a fountain. More of it in the corners of his mouth, turning to red foam. His hands scratch at the floor uselessly until he presses his palm over the wound, but it’s not enough to staunch the flood.

  Jacqueline is still screaming.

  I push myself up to my feet, looking around for my phone until I see it, or what’s left of it. I can’t use it to call anyone anymore. I have to get out of here. I have to get upstairs. I have to call for help.

  He flails, trying to crawl, and grabs for my ankle with his free hand. But even in my drugged-out, pained state, I sidestep him with ease. A steep stairwell leads up, back into the house. I start to climb but can’t keep going after two steps. I get on my hands and knees, like an animal or a child, and crawl up. Toward the dark rectangle of the door.

  Jacqueline’s screams fill my ears.

  I want to yell at her that I’m going to get help, that I’m not leaving her down here, but I don’t have the strength to speak. The inside of my cheek is swelling up quickly. I feel around with my tongue where he chipped my teeth. My nose might be broken too, because I can’t breathe and all I smell is blood.

  Only a little distance left to the door. I’m almost there.

  The gun blast explodes at the same time as an unseen force slams me forward. My face connects with the stairs, and my vision explodes with red. What—

  I can’t see out of one eye. My cheekbone feels like it is cracked in two, and another, persistent ache is working its way into my shoulder blade. Like a bee sting.

  The stinging spreads. Turns into fire. Something hot and sticky runs down my back. Oh fuck.

  It drips down my legs. I look down and see shiny black drops on the stairs, almost invisible against the dark paint. I want to raise my hand, to feel my back, but it won’t move. My arm hangs at my side, a limp piece of meat. And the numbness is spreading.

  I turn and glimpse him crawling forward in a pool of blood. He’s clutching the gun, but it slips from his fingers with a clatter. He grabs for it, pulls it toward him, but doesn’t quite make it. His hand goes limp, twitches, then stops moving.

  I turn back to the door. Only two, three steps away, and I realize I’ll never get there. My eyes burn with the tears I won’t get to cry.

  Jacqueline is still screaming, but now it’s not just that inhuman wailing sound; it’s words. A word. My name, over and over and over like a stuck record.

  I want to tell her I’m okay. I want to tell her that he’s dead, that it’s over. But when I open my mouth, only a rasp comes out. So I do the only thing I can. I push myself forward and up. Forward and up.

  One step. Two. I press against the floor with my good arm, and my jaws open in a silent howl of pain. Forward and up.

  I reach for the door, push myself up, and manage to get on my knees and feel along the rough wooden surface until I find the handle. I turn it, and it swings open with the smooth whisper of oiled hinges.

  The light of the hallway is enough to blind me, and I collapse onto the carpet, the softest, most comfortable thing in the world. All I want is to stay here, curl up, and rest. Maybe even close my eyes. But I can’t, not yet; there are things I have to do. I need to find the phone. Where’s the phone?

  I crawl on my hands and knees, ignoring the pain that shoots through my arm with every movement. The door. The front door.

  Tears pour from my one good eye and drip down my face, mingling with the blood.

  The front door.

  In the windows, lights flashing. Blue and red. Blue and red. I know what they mean, but I can’t remember. My mind hurts.

  The front door. It’s not locked. He thought no one would bother us. I get it open and topple onto the porch.

  It’s raining in a thick, solid wall of water that whispers against my skin, washing off the blood and tears and grime.

  And, lying sprawled at the door of my kidnapper, of the father of my child, I start to laugh. I won’t make it out of here. I spent the last ten years looking for death, and just when I stopped looking, death found me.

  But at least she will be okay. She is a little girl and she has a name, Olivia. Why have I never thought of her like that? Olivia will be okay. Olivia is hidden someplace safe, and she’ll be fine.

  I barely hear the steps through the rain. Steps hurrying down the neat gravel path, splashing through the puddles. A shadow falls over me, blocking out the red-blue lights.

  The shadow has a face. It’s a face I know well. I’ve thought about this face on many lonely nights, nights of pain and despair and hopelessness, when it was my only ray of light to lead me out.

  Maybe he’s here to take me to heaven or hell or wherever the fuck I belong.

  He’s saying my name. His hands are brushing my hair out of my face, the blood, the rainwater, and he won’t stop saying it, “Laine, Laine, Laine. Please. Stay with me. Please, Laine. Please don’t go.”

  I don’t care if I go or not. There are three things I need to say to him first. I can’t go until I do.

  First, I love you. You’re a manipulative bastard, but I love you anyway. It’s stronger than me.

  Second, it’s Ella. It’s Ella fucking Santos. I may not like it, but I’m not dying with a fake name. No way.

  And the third one is, I’m sorry.

  But I don’t have time to say any of these things. Darkness pulls me in, wraps me in a cocoon of painless bliss, swallows me up.

  And I am no more.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  I wake up.

  Not in heaven or in hell. I’m still not convinced I believe in that stuff. There’s heaven and hell on earth in abundance—I should know; I’m intimately familiar with them both.

  And this isn’t it. This is a hospital. I stay in that hospital for many weeks.

  It’s not like the other hospitals I’ve been in. Here I have my own room with a big window with no bars, and a view of a garden that I discovered when I was well enough to get out of bed. A little garden with lilacs and a fountain in the middle. The lilacs are blooming right now. If I get the nurse to open the window, the aroma wafts into the room, and it’s almost enough to mask the stink of disinfectant and medicine.

  Almost. This is a hospital,
after all. No matter how private or fancy or expensive.

  Besides the daily physiotherapy that’s supposed to make my left arm work normally again, I’m doing addiction therapy. I shit you not—that’s what they call rehab here.

  When I got well enough to understand, they told me what I was like when they brought me in. Besides my injuries, I was severely dehydrated, and my vital organs were this close to failing because of all the drugs. And Tom Shaw didn’t do this to me; I did it to myself. I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t sobering.

  It occurred to me that maybe, just maybe, I was tarnished. But not by what Tom Shaw did to me, now or thirteen years ago—by what I did to myself over these ten years. I thought finding my captor would redeem me, but I was wrong. The only person who could make me shine again was me.

  I haven’t seen Sean. Not since that night, since the blood and the rain and the red-blue lights. He hasn’t visited. Just like ten years ago. I can’t blame him.

  Jacqueline, however, comes to see me every day. She’s unofficially adopted me, I think. She brings me treats that the hospital won’t allow, Twizzlers and soda, and romance novels that I pretend to read out of politeness. It’s Jacqueline who’s paying for the whole thing, for the fancy private clinic, for the “addiction therapists” who treat me with kid gloves.

  Sean had made Sugar crack and admit I didn’t give him the laptop—a man did, a man who closely met the description of Tom Shaw. Without wasting another minute, he sent cop cars to the Shaws’ residence, and when he realized they were gone, he rushed to their summerhouse.

  Olivia was safe this whole time, hidden away with Jacqueline’s mother. Jacinta was the one who helped Olivia get away. Before Olivia was born, when Jacinta was her age, Tom Shaw abused her too. When Jacqueline told Jacinta she suspected he was molesting Olivia, Jacinta broke down and told her everything. They put together the plan.

  Jacqueline didn’t dare publicly accuse Tom. She was afraid of what he’d do to her and to her daughter and sister. She never guessed, she told me, crying, that it would turn out like this.

  I will never know now exactly how much my mother knew, whether she merely had her suspicions or whether she recognized Tom Shaw. Just like I will never know the real reason she pulled the trigger—was she genuinely sorry for what she’d done or simply afraid of the consequences?

  I’m trying to think it was the former. It’s something I need to learn to believe.

  A week or so after I got transferred to the rehab—sorry, addiction therapy—facilities, Jacqueline brought Olivia to visit. I wasn’t exactly brimming with enthusiasm at the idea, but it went okay. The moment she walked in, with a lost and somewhat bewildered look on her face, I knew it was going to be okay.

  Jacqueline hadn’t told her who exactly I was yet, hadn’t explained the whole sordid story to her—that’s a lot for a little girl to understand, and she’d already been through enough. But her mother won’t be able to shelter her from it forever. Too much has already been leaked to the press, so much that Jacqueline is considering moving someplace quiet for a couple of years. Until Olivia is old enough to understand.

  I looked into her serious, pale-gray eyes and knew that her life wasn’t going to be easy. Her father was a monster, her biological mother his victim. He’d already done things to her no child should have to endure. For all the private schools and nannies and toys, for all the things money can buy, her childhood was not what it should have been.

  And knowing it, I looked her in the eyes and finally stopped resenting her—after all these years. I know it’s selfish, I know it’s shitty of me, but what can I do? I’m just a normal person, and like most people, I’m flawed. If nothing else, my “addiction therapy” finally ingrained that into my stubborn head. But that day, for the first time, I didn’t regret giving birth to her. Not even a little bit.

  Olivia looked at me silently, her lips pressed together, surely puzzling things out in her head already. She isn’t dumb, this much her teachers were right about. She ignored Jacqueline when she prompted her to come closer and say hi. She just stood there, at a cautious distance, and studied me with those mistrustful eyes.

  I didn’t know what to say to her until the end, when it was almost time to leave. I got up and crossed the distance between us.

  The girl was going to be tall, I could already tell. I only had to lean down a bit to be at her eye level, and she didn’t back away.

  That’s when I finally found my words. “Don’t let anyone tell you that you’re tarnished,” I said. “Ever. Fuck what anyone thinks. You shine—you got that? You shine.”

  I can only hope that’s enough to get her through everything that lies ahead.

  * * *

  I’m released in early July. Jacqueline is supposed to come get me at noon; in the meantime, I pack my meager belongings into a duffel bag with the hospital logo, one they gave me at reception. That’s technically all I have to my name. Talk about starting fresh.

  In the last weeks, I’ve developed a habit of getting up early. First because the nurses woke me, and later because I started to wake up by myself. So I spend the long hours of the morning hanging around the central garden, walking down narrow twisting paths among groves of lilacs. I sit on a bench across from the fountain, my legs curled up under me, and watch the water sparkle in the rare sunshine.

  I’m almost going to miss this place. Almost.

  Absorbed in the hypnotizing sound of water, I don’t immediately hear the footfalls on the gravel behind me. At first I think it’s one of the nurses and don’t turn around. The steps stop a few feet behind me, but whoever it is doesn’t speak.

  Maybe it’s just curiosity, or old instincts rearing their head, but I turn and glance over my shoulder, lowering my feet to the ground, ready to bolt just in case.

  My heart soars, and a lump forms in my throat. Sean is standing behind the bench, just a few feet away. He squints in the sun, his hands in his pockets. He’s wearing old jeans and a T-shirt, not his work clothes.

  “What…are you doing here?” I stammer. “Jacqueline…”

  “She’ll show up when she said she would. I just wanted to see you first.” He raises his eyebrows questioningly. I finally clue in and nod at the bench next to me, inviting him to sit—even though deep down, I’m not so sure it’s a good idea. The thought of him being so close…You can’t offer a former addict to sit next to a fix and expect her not to be tempted.

  Maybe he understands that, because he stops a few steps away.

  I feel my face flush. “I’m sorry,” I murmur. “I was supposed to call you. For my…for my program. I’m supposed to apologize to everyone I’ve hurt.”

  His answer is a soft, sad chuckle. “You? You haven’t hurt anyone. People have hurt you.”

  “Exactly. They made me understand it was just an excuse, my reason for being shitty to everyone and not being sorry.”

  “I haven’t exactly been an angel either,” he points out.

  “You saved me. Twice.”

  “You saved yourself. I was just…there. I should have figured it out sooner. I should have called you. Warned you. It might never have happened.”

  “And we might never have caught him,” I say. All these months later, talking about it still hurts. Every word echoes the pain in my head, in my back, in my arm. In every rib Shaw had cracked.

  He sighs. “I don’t know how to thank you. You have no idea.”

  “Then don’t,” I say. I think of Olivia’s serious face. Of the tears in Jacqueline’s eyes when I spoke to her. “Don’t thank me. I don’t want credit. For that or anything else.”

  “You have your life back now,” he remarks.

  “Yeah,” I say grimly. “Not much of a life. I basically have to start from scratch.”

  “A lot of people would kill to be able to start from scratch.”

  I get up from the bench. Glancing down at my hands, I realize with a rush of self-consciousness that I’m not wearing long sleeves or armbands or brace
lets. I haven’t in weeks. And until now, I seemed to have forgotten about my scars altogether.

  They’re still there, of course, raised pink welts an inch thick circling my wrists. A lifetime souvenir of Tom Shaw, along with a ragged star-shaped scar on my left shoulder blade, a chipped tooth, ribs that ache when it rains, which means basically all the time…

  I’m going to stop there. What’s the use? Everyone has scars. Even if they’re not on the outside.

  When I glance up, he’s looking at my wrists too. He lowers his chin, embarrassed. “Are you changing your name back to Ella Santos now?”

  I shrug. “I don’t know. To be honest, I’m kind of used to Laine.”

  The silence wears on. I listen to him breathe like it might give me some kind of clue to what he’s thinking, what he’s feeling.

  “Are you…are you okay?” he finally asks. “Do you need help? You’re released soon. Do you have a place to go?”

  “Yes,” I say quickly. “Jacqueline, she’s arranged everything for me. For as long as I need it. Until I get back on my feet.”

  For a while, he’s quiet. “Good,” he finally says. “Good.”

  “You don’t need to worry about me anymore,” I say. My turn to be generous. My turn to let him go. He no longer has to save me. From here on, I’ll save myself.

  “I’ll always worry about you,” he says.

  “Really?” I say, and my voice suddenly turns hoarse. “Then you could have visited.”

  “I did. For the first week and a half when you were unconscious, I came by every day and stayed for hours.”

  My heart clenches. It hurts so much I can’t stand still. I want to double over and weep. It hurts more than being shot. “No one told me,” I whisper.

  “Did you ask?”

  No. I didn’t; I just assumed, because of everything that happened between us. Because I always think the worst of people.