And Then She Was Gone

by Noonan, Rosalind

  Sis clung to the fact that Paula had not left her side. Sometimes she stepped outside the door to talk with the police, and she gave Sis privacy in the bathroom. But otherwise, Paula stayed with her the way she imagined a big sister or a mother would, and Sis began to feel safe with the older woman. Paula seemed old in a wise old owl way, but not aged like an old granny.

  “How you feeling, kiddo?” Paula asked when they had been moved to a private room.

  “Like a baby tucked in for the night.” Sis had been settled into a crisp, white hospital bed, with her broken foot propped up in a sling. Leaning back against the pillows, Sis had actually dozed off for a bit. The strain of being questioned and facing the teams of people who had paraded in to meet her had zapped her energy. There had been the parents and the younger sister, police officers, FBI agents, doctors, nurses, and victim advocates assigned to her case. Aside from the family and Paula, Sis had already forgotten all the names, but Paula said that was okay. She would be here to help in the morning.

  “So am I staying here tonight?” Sis asked, running her hands over the white sheet under her hips. So smooth and clean. This was the kind of bed she had dreamed of.

  “That’s the plan. The doctors want to take another batch of X-rays in the morning.”

  “And are you going to stay with me?”

  Paula’s eyes opened wide. “I’m going to head home, but I’ll be back first thing tomorrow. And you’ve got your call button for the nurses and . . . and I bet your mom would like to stay with you. Should we ask her?”

  “No.”

  “I think it would be good for you.”

  “No.” Sis tugged the sheet up and wrapped a corner around her hand as that thickness clogged her throat again. It was all too much. Being alone here at the hospital. Being pushed at Rachel and Dan O’Neil, like she was a newborn baby being delivered into their arms. She worried about Kevin coming after her. She worried about what she would do without him to take care of her. Whenever Paula mentioned tomorrow, when she said “from now on . . .” as if Sis had just stepped into the Land of Oz, Sis felt that sour taste rise in the back of her throat.

  “Lauren.” Paula leaned over the bed. “You’re overwhelmed. That’s understandable. But you’ll sort through this in time.”

  “Don’t call me that.” Sis felt her lower lip pucker in what Kevin called her “crybaby face.” “I’m not her. I’m not who you think I am. I’m not their daughter or a good student or a good kid at all. That’s not me.”

  “Then what should I call you?”

  Lauren swallowed. “Sis?”

  “Really. You want to go by the name he gave you? Do you really want to be the person he controlled, the person he tried to make you?”

  She sobbed. “No.”

  “Then you’d better come up with a name for yourself. I don’t care if it’s Puddintain or Britney Spears. Just as long as it’s your name.”

  “Puddintain?”

  “What’s your name? Puddintain. Ask me again and I’ll tell you the same.”

  That made Sis sniff back her tears. She told Paula she would think about the name. But right now, she couldn’t stop thinking of Kevin. She was afraid of what he would do when he found her here . . . and he would find her. Every time she had tried to escape, he had promised terrible revenge.

  Last time, when she crossed the gates and went down to the creek to cool off during that hot spell in May, he had come after her with a wrench.

  “That’s how he broke your ankle?”

  “This time. He’s always gone for my left ankle.”

  “That explains the X-rays showing previous breaks in your tibia and fibula, left leg.”

  “Kevin always hits that ankle. He says he needs to slow me down, just in case I decide to try and run away. But I don’t try to get away anymore. That’s why it was totally unfair this last time. I wasn’t even trying to get away, but he beat me and kept me locked inside the shed during the hottest hours of the day. I was miserable, and he was wrong, because I wasn’t even trying to get away. I just wanted to cool off. I just went over the fence to cool off in the creek.”

  “Did you try to escape before that?”

  Lauren nodded. “A few times. Not in the beginning, because then he kept me handcuffed and gagged when he wasn’t with me. For the first few weeks he kept my ankles tied together, too.”

  Those days, those terrible, lonely days when she’d nearly choked on tears and that gag, when she’d had to pee her pants because she couldn’t always get to the bathroom—that nightmare seemed like the life of some other poor girl. It hurt her to talk about that time, but she did. She had decided that she could trust Paula, and it felt good to unravel the tight ball of pain.

  And Paula didn’t scowl at her or judge her.

  “Many kidnap victims learn that the only way to stay alive is to go along with the person who kidnapped them.” Paula’s voice floated overhead like a soft moon.

  Sis closed her eyes to float along with it, to move in the night air and look down on herself, the scared, quivering eleven-year-old girl who wanted to go home.

  The first time she showered, Kevin stood at the edge of the curtain, watching. She turned away, thinking that he was just standing guard.

  Even the second time, when he gave her a razor and shaving cream and told her to shave everything, she thought that maybe he was trying to be nice. She liked the way the shaving cream puffed up, smooth and creamy, but she had never done this before, and she was so nervous about cutting herself.

  “You look like you need some help with that.” He started with her legs—just below the knee. “You cover everything with a thick lather, and then run the razor over it, nice and light.”

  She thanked him. Such a polite little kid. Her parents had taught her manners. She had told him thanks, and she would do the rest.

  “Now I’m worried. You’ve never done this before. You’re liable to cut yourself up, and I’m responsible for you now.”

  That was when he’d turned off the water and stepped in, cornering her. “I’ll help you with the rest.”

  She thought she would die of mortification when he rubbed the shaving cream on her thighs. He was looking at her naked body, staring. He had warned her that he hated girls who cried, but she couldn’t stop the whimper that slipped from her throat.

  When he reached between her legs, she couldn’t take it anymore. She banged on his shoulders with her fists and clawed at his face.

  In a second, he was standing tall and pressing her against the fiberglass wall. “Cut it out! Don’t you see I got a razor in my hand? I could slice you open like that. That!”

  “I’m sorry. I’m—”

  “Your blood would be running down the drain before you could even breathe that you were sorry.”

  Then in a flash, he left her alone in the shower. When she rinsed off and got out, he handed her a dress and a hoody, real calm. Scary calm. He shoved her out on that jetty, smacked by sea spray, and showed her the choices: Let him touch her, or drown in the dark, roiling sea.

  There wasn’t so much shame in telling Paula these stories, not like Sis had expected. Instead, she felt sorry for the girl she used to be.

  “I didn’t want him to touch me, but I didn’t want to die. And that was the strangest thing, when I realized he didn’t want to kill me. He liked me.”

  Paula told her that she deserved to be liked. But she also deserved to be free from his control. And his abuse.

  Sis wanted to be free, but it all scared her. “What if Kevin comes after me? He’s going to be really mad now. He warned me about something like this.”

  If I have to come after you, I’ll be your worst nightmare. She shivered as his voice curled inside her.

  “Kevin Hawkins is in police custody. With the amount of witnesses the police have in the armed robbery case, there is no chance that he’ll be released anytime soon. Hawkins won’t be hurting you anymore.”

  “I can’t believe that. He’s left me alo
ne before, but he always comes back.”

  “Not this time. And he must know that, because he told the police where to find you.”

  “Why would he tell?” Lauren wondered.

  “Maybe his conscience was bothering him.”

  “Or maybe he was getting sick of me. He’s been complaining that I’m boney and frigid. A sad sack of bones, and it’s true. I’ve been sad since we lost Mac. And he complained that I wasn’t worth anything to him anymore. He was sick of having to take care of me, having to come up with ways to make money. He didn’t like having me in the compound when he brought women around. Even with me locked in the shed. He said I was cramping his style.”

  “Did he bring lady friends home often?”

  “Only recently. Since Mac died.”

  “Did you ever meet any of these women?”

  “I talked with one girl, Gabby.” Lauren pointed to her right cheek. “She has a tattoo of a teardrop right here. That always made me sad when I saw her. She talked to me a little when she was out in the garden, having a smoke. She said my paintings were nice, but her father would have killed her if she drew on the walls at home. She asked me how long my brother had owned this farm and where I went to school. I told her Kevin had been there a long time, and that I was homeschooled. That was the story I had to tell people.” Sis let her head roll on the comfy pillow. Paula was making notes on her clipboard.

  “Why are you writing that down?”

  “They’re case notes. I’m afraid we’re going to need to go over all this again and videotape it. Sorry about that, but once we have it documented, you won’t have to repeat your entire story for every district attorney or victim’s advocate involved in your case.”

  “Do you write everything down?”

  “Just pertinent facts. Memory cues.” She pointed her pen to her head. “At my age, you need help remembering.”

  Lauren pulled the sheet up to her chin and sighed. “And me, I wish I could forget.”

  “I guess we make a good team,” Paula said. “You can remember all the things I forget.”

  “Okay. That means you have to stay with me.” The prospect of spending the night alone in this big room with shiny tile floors made Lauren’s bones tremble. And she didn’t want to lose Paula.

  Paula chuckled. “Is this a clever trick?”

  Lauren smiled. “Mmm-hm. Is it working? I bet those nice nurses can wheel a bed in for you, too.”

  Paula cocked her head to one side, looking girlish. Sometimes she seemed too young to have silver hair. “We’ll see. The night is young.”

  Chapter 13

  Dan O’Neil was no stranger to trauma. His unit was usually first on the scene for local emergencies: heart attacks at Mirror Lake’s assisted living home, rollover car accidents in which victims needed to be cut from the vehicle, fires that swept through houses and filled the air with dense black smoke. Twenty years in the fire department and you figure you’d seen it all.

  And then this . . .

  To lose your daughter to some monster, to finally get her back, and then to realize that she didn’t want to be back—at least, not with your family—all the training in the world couldn’t prepare you for this.

  “I don’t know how to tell you this without causing you distress,” the social worker had told them. She had corralled them into a conference room in Westridge Hospital while Lauren was having blood drawn. “So I’ll be blunt: Lauren doesn’t want to see you right now.”

  Rachel gasped and hung her head, more in frustration than surprise. They had suspected this; he and Rachel knew there was a reason they were being kept at bay, and in the little time they’d had with Lauren, the young woman hadn’t expressed much interest or confidence in them.

  Dan thought of the emotional baggage he had carried into that moment with Lauren. When he finally got in to see his daughter, he was so overwrought he could barely talk. Add to that his fear of touching her and seeming like a pervert, even though he was her father. The whole meeting must have looked more like a job interview than a survivor reunion or a “reunification,” as Paula kept calling it. “You look like your mother when she was a teenager,” he blurted out because it was true and he thought it might help to make a connection that didn’t seem to exist in the static air between them. The young woman in the bed was polite, but cautious. She thanked him for bringing her old sketchpad. But then, as she leafed through the pages that he had studied over the years for traces of his daughter, she lamented that she’d been a pretty raw artist back then. “I thought you were remarkable,” Dan told her. “I still do.” Lauren eyed him warily and seemed to be taking her cues from the social worker. Who had told Lauren that Paula Winkler was the boss? “Thanks, Dad,” Paula had said with enthusiasm. Lauren had nodded, refusing eye contact with Dan. “Yeah, thanks.” Any thought of a hug was erased by Lauren’s body language. “You’re welcome,” Dan said. A nurse came in with a tray of food, and Dan backed into the corner of the room, feeling guilty for being a man, the same gender as the monster that had repeatedly attacked his daughter, stolen her youth, and sucked away the spark in her eyes.

  It had not been the bright reunion he had envisioned through the years. Still, he wasn’t giving up, not by a long shot. And he wished that Rachel wasn’t second-guessing the social worker who was trying to help Lauren now.

  “I can’t believe that after all this she . . . ,” Rachel pressed her lips together as her eyes misted over.

  Dan rubbed his wife’s back, fielding the ball passed to him. “We felt this coming on. Has she told you why?”

  “She hasn’t articulated why, exactly,” Paula went on, “but I’m guessing that she feels alienated. So many years away from you. She’s changed, and so have you.”

  “True.” Dan rubbed the back of his neck, assessing the situation. It was pushing eight, and Sierra had school in the morning. “We’re probably better off heading home and returning in the morning, after we’ve all had a good night’s sleep.”

  “No.” Rachel shook her head. “I won’t leave her alone.”

  “She won’t be alone.” The cold, industrial lighting sizzled on Paula’s silver hair. “I’m staying with her tonight. She made me promise.”

  Rachel put a hand to her forehead, a gesture that said she couldn’t deal with it.

  “So you’re saying she’s bonded with you?” Dan said calmly.

  Paula held up her hands. “Sometimes that happens. Sometimes hostages bond with the first rescuer who shows them kindness. It doesn’t mean that she won’t reattach to your family.”

  Dan raked back his pale hair. “Right. I’m sure you understand how disappointing that is for us. Our daughter is rescued after six years, you bring her in, and it’s like she’s not our daughter at all.”

  “I know. Believe me, I know.” Paula tossed her pen onto the clipboard. “I have to admit, I’m a little over my head on this. I’m a licensed social worker with a degree in psychology—not a full-on psychiatrist. As I mentioned, I’ve reached out to a reunification specialist I know, as well as half a dozen others. There’s a youth crisis center that we can use tomorrow, a place called the Children’s Center. They have equipment to record and document interviews with Lauren, which will save her having to repeat all the difficult details for the cops, the district attorney’s office, and anyone else who needs to hear it. They have trauma counselors there, some guys and gals that have tons more experience than I do with situations like this. Believe me, I’ll be happy for the help. All day today I’ve been reaching for my proverbial toolbox and finding it one wrench short.”

  He put a hand on the table to stop her. “I didn’t mean to imply that you’re doing a poor job.”

  “No offense taken, Dan. I just want to confirm that if you think I’m under-qualified for this, I’m not saying you’re wrong. I just happened to be the social worker on call today. I may not be the best with academics, but I’ve learned plenty in the school of life, and I’m going to give your daughter’s case every
thing I’ve got.”

  “That’s all we can ask of you.” Dan stood up from the table. “I’d like to say good-bye to Lauren before we go.”

  Paula nodded. “Absolutely.”

  At least Lauren looked more comfortable now, settled in the hospital bed. She had the television on, a rerun of that sitcom where the three girls live in an amazing Victorian row house with their dad and two uncles. Mind candy TV was what Dan called it. Right now, Lauren definitely deserved some mind candy.

  “We’re here to say good night.” Dan felt that sting at the back of his tongue when her eyes met his. Scornful eyes, as if punishing him for every bad decision he’d ever made. He hadn’t ever expected to see that edge in his daughter’s eyes. He hoped that therapy could erase it. “It’s so hard to leave you here now that we finally have you back.” Rachel leaned over the bed and pressed her lips to Lauren’s forehead, and Dan felt one of those proverbial arrows piercing his heart.

  Rachel was tucking in their oldest daughter. It was an event they’d been praying for. Only not in this way

  It was a day of incredible highs and huge disappointments.

  As the elevator doors closed, Sierra’s fingers tapped away, her eyes on the cell phone screen.

  “Isn’t that against the rules, using a cell phone in the hospital?” Rachel asked.

  “We’re in the elevator.” Sierra’s disapproving tone did not waver. “And I don’t understand why we had to sit in the waiting room all this time if we’re leaving her here for the night.”

  “Can we not talk about it right now?” Rachel, tight as a double knot, kept her eyes on the flashing elevator floor number.

  Dan offered a wary smile to the man in green scrubs, checking out Sierra from his place by the keypad. Just a friendly hospital worker, he reminded himself. Probably doing a study on family dynamics.

  As he ushered his girls out on level P-2, he offered a silent prayer, grateful to have his daughter back, alive. A survivor. So often he’d been on his knees in church, begging God for relief, praying for Lauren’s safe return or at least her safety. He had spent many hours pondering why bad things happened to good people like his innocent daughter. He would never know the answer to that, but he did know that the bad things were caused by other people, not by God Himself.