Evil lived in the hearts of men. Demons like Kevin Hawkins.
Chapter 14
On the way home from Westridge Hospital, Rachel told herself to stop feeling sorry for herself and focus on her daughter. Lauren’s recovery was the important thing. Lauren’s safety and her future . . .
Of course, Lauren was the priority, but at the moment, there was no denying the emptiness inside her.
She sank down in the passenger seat and let herself wallow in self-pity. “I should have been the one to stay with her,” Rachel said loud enough for just Dan to hear. Sierra was in the back, plugged in to her music. “I’m Lauren’s mother. I’m the one who should be with her right now.”
“Right now Lauren is more comfortable with Paula,” Dan pointed out.
“Perfect Paula.” The woman was cheerful and down-to-earth, attentive and assertive at the right times. Paula was willing to take the lead but knew when she needed to rely on outside resources. “That woman is way too competent.”
“She is.”
“I hate her,” Rachel muttered in a low voice.
“I know what you mean.”
Sierra spoke up from the backseat. “Is it true that Lauren had a baby? That she really had a kid of her own?”
“It’s true, but don’t say anything to Lauren unless she brings it up, okay? She’s still really upset about losing the baby.”
“I had a niece and I didn’t even know it. That’s totally fucked up.”
“Please! The language.” How did middle-class twelve-year-old girls manage to mouth off like truck drivers? “But you’re right. It is effed up.”
“And why is Lauren staying in the hospital now? Because the guy raped her?”
“The doctors are keeping her for observation and tests,” Rachel said, wondering how much of that was true. Was this a ruse to help Lauren avoid coming home with them? Was Paula on the phone right now, talking with her “resources,” lining up a foster home for their daughter?
“Is she coming home tomorrow?” Sierra asked.
“We don’t know,” Dan answered.
“Do you think Lauren still likes us? I mean, she didn’t seem like thrilled to see us.”
Sometimes Sierra’s bluntness was a relief.
“No, she didn’t,” Dan agreed. “But she’ll get used to us. We need to give her time and space. And we’re all going to have to go for therapy.”
Sierra groaned. “Do I have to go? I am not going to tell my problems to a stranger. Especially a grown-up who doesn’t remember what it’s like to be me. I’ve got friends for that.”
“This will be different. There’s a very concrete goal here. We need to learn how to live together as a family again.” Rachel explained about the reunification therapy.
“Just saying? I am not sitting in that creepy office with the giant fish and the dusty cactus.”
“I’m with you on that,” Dan said.
“Don’t start putting up obstacles.” Rachel turned to her daughter in the backseat. “I’m counting on you, both of you, to do what needs to be done.”
The blue shadows of the car’s interior gave just enough light for Rachel to see Sierra roll her eyes as she reinserted her earbuds. “Whatever.”
Rachel turned back to the windshield and scraped back her tawny hair. “When do you think she will be coming home? I mean . . . wow. I guess this gives me time to put fresh sheets on her bed, but . . . it all seems impossible now. After six years in captivity, I don’t want to force her to do anything, but I do want her home.”
“Maybe our house is not the best place for her right now.”
“Well, the hospital isn’t exactly warm and fuzzy. I think she needs to come home, but right now she just doesn’t realize how good it will be. Yes, she needs to come home. She’s our daughter, a minor, only seventeen.”
“Only seventeen, but she’s survived more trauma than most people endure in a lifetime. Let’s take it easy on her, mother bear. If she wants to live in some sort of middle place until she adjusts to her freedom, we can give her that time and space.”
“Maybe a hotel. We could rent a hotel room and I could stay with her.”
“I thought the point was to give her space.”
“Hmph. I’m not letting Paula Winkler chaperone her.”
“Actually, that’s not a bad idea.”
“Are you kidding me? Haven’t you noticed how Lauren looks to Paula for approval before she answers every question? Paula has become her surrogate parent, and it’s pissing me off.”
“Rach, let’s focus on what’s best for Lauren. She’s probably suffering acute post-traumatic stress. Would I like to bring her home with us tonight? The answer is yes. Is it a bummer that she’s bonded with someone who isn’t us? Yes. But I’m not going to blame Paula for being there to support our daughter. She’s spending the night in the freakin’ hospital to watch over Lauren. I applaud her dedication. And I have faith that Lauren will learn to trust us again. Give it time. We’re going to turn this around.”
Rachel wished she could share Dan’s optimism.
“All the time that she was gone, we were hurting for her,” Rachel said. “We were missing a piece. I dreamed of her coming back to us, but I never thought that this could happen—that she would no longer fit. We’re all like puzzles pieces left out in the rain. Swollen cardboard. Nothing fits together anymore.”
“Good metaphor.” Dan kept his eyes on the road. “I get it, but we have to make the pieces fit.”
Rachel imagined her husband shaving down the pegs of old puzzle pieces and sizing them up to make sure they interlocked properly. Dan was handy that way, and he had that conceptual gift. He could see how things fit together. Dan and Lauren used to stay up late, bent over puzzles on the homework table. “A thousand pieces!” Lauren would exclaim, marveling over the wondrous feat they were tackling. And Dan would remind her to do the edge first. “Always start with the border.”
“I wonder if Lauren still likes puzzles,” Rachel said.
“Let’s hope so.”
PART 2
Come In from the Cold
Chapter 15
In the hospital room, Sis couldn’t sleep. She didn’t want to leave the crisp, clean sheets of the hospital bed, but her fingers were restless, and her mind was spilling over like a river into a lake.
What was going to happen to her? Paula said she would have to go home with Dan and Rachel O’Neil. The mom and dad. But that didn’t seem right. It wasn’t her home anymore. The O’Neils didn’t even live in the same house. Kevin had told her that her family had moved away, to another state. Washington, she suspected. That room was being used by someone else now. A TV room or the bedroom of an old granny.
But for a long time, that house had filled her dreams. How she had longed for it in those first awful months! She remembered her room, painted in a soft shell pink and beige, because Mom had thought that all pink would be over the top. But mostly it was her design, her room. She used to think of that warm, familiar little cocoon with her sketches and posters taped to the wall, her colored pencils on the desk, her creations from ceramics class set up like a fairy kingdom on one of the shelves. On the center of the bed sat her stuffed Mr. Toad. The bedspread matched her giant pillow, both a zebra print in hot pink and brown that brought the whole room together. She’d had a color scheme there, unlike the cabin in the compound that was such a hodgepodge of patch plaster and mold that Kevin hadn’t cared when she started painting over it with her artwork. That house, the home of her childhood—why did they sell it?
Because they had given up on her? Because they wanted to make a fresh start in a place that didn’t remind them of her. That was the explanation Kevin had given her before he told her to shut up about it.
Once upon a time, she had spent her lonely hours dreaming of going home to her family. In those early weeks and months at the beach, when he had kept her arms and legs bound so that she couldn’t move—hog-tied, he called it—she had yearned for home. She
had wriggled toward the skylight in the upstairs cubby where he locked her in and watched the moon rise overhead. Moon and stars.
And then she sang that song that they used to harmonize on while they were cleaning up the kitchen. Tell me why, the stars do shine. Tell me why, the ivy twine . . . Back then she would have given anything to go back to the O’Neils because she thought they wanted her back.
Stupid girl, Kevin had scolded her. They don’t care about you.
She had thought he was lying, sort of, just to make her trust him. Every night, as the moon rose, she told herself that tomorrow might be the day that she got rescued. She had kept hoping for a year or so, holding on to hope as if it were a tiny mouse in her pocket.
And then came the news that would change everything. One day when Kevin was done with her, he had pressed his palms to her belly, cupping the little mound that had grown there.
You’re getting fat, he’d told her. She’d rolled away, telling him they ate too many fast food meals, too many milkshakes.
Yeah, well, you’re gonna need the milk in those shakes, Sis, ’cause you got a bun in the oven. You’re gonna have a baby.
Sis had burst into tears. It wasn’t just the scary part about going through childbirth. She knew her life was over, her chance of going back gone. Now her parents would know the terrible things she had done with him. Everyone would know, and that was why she could never go back. Never.
Suddenly, the hospital bed felt wrong, as if Sis were a broken toy on display to anyone who walked in. She couldn’t stay here.
Paula was asleep in the bed on the other side of the curtain; Sis had to keep quiet.
Moving silently and balancing on the weird heel of her walking cast, Sis went to the cubby where Paula had hung her dress. That old dress with fat flowers. She slipped off the hospital gown and put her old dress on. She had hated it since the day Kevin brought it home from the thrift shop. Now it was worn thin, the print faded to nothing. She tied the rope belt around her waist, picked up the plastic bin of free stuff and teetered a bit on the smooth floor. The walking cast threw her off balance. Better be careful.
Sis sat on the bed and went through the things they had given her, wondering how she could carry it all. A toothbrush and mouthwash and two pairs of footy socks with plastic footprints on the bottom for traction. Little plastic tubs for washing and lotion that smelled like lemons and mint. So many nice gifts in one day; she couldn’t leave them behind.
This hospital wasn’t such a bad place, not the madhouse Kevin talked about. Her lips puckered at the thought of what a hospital could have done for Mackenzie when she was sick. These medicines and clean sheets and nurses with knowing hands would have saved Mac for sure. But they couldn’t do anything for Sis. All the doctors and nurses in the world couldn’t fix the thing that had broken inside her.
Paula didn’t stir as Sis found a big plastic bag in the closet, stuffed everything inside, and moved quietly out the door. She wasn’t sure where she would go, but if she had to she could return to the compound. She knew her way around there, and Kevin wouldn’t come around to bother her if it was true, what they said about him being locked up in jail.
And with the lock on the gate busted open, she could go down to the creek and soak in the cool water on hot days. She could probably survive until winter on the garden vegetables, and there were a few other staples stored in the other shed.
The hallway was wide, the floors and wall tiles shiny like a still lake. The cast made her limp even worse, but none of the people she passed tried to stop her. Up ahead she saw the main desk, with two people in scrubs lingering near it. Now those people were going to ask her questions if they noticed her.
Sis turned around and backtracked, following the red exit sign to a group of elevators at the other end of the hall. Pushing the down-arrow button, she thought about how much TV had taught her about the real world. Sure, she knew a lot of things before she had been kidnapped, but watching tapes of her favorite shows that Kevin had brought her had given her good lessons about how the rest of the world lived. How happy families lived.
When the doors whooshed open, she hobbled forward and came face to face with the bright eyes and pensive frown of Rachel O’Neil.
Sis’s heart thumped in her chest as she considered bolting—running in the opposite direction.
“Lauren?” The mother stepped off the elevator, her smile smooth and sweet as a milkshake. “Honey, are you checking out your walking cast? Putting some mileage on it already?”
Sis looked down, caught, and unwilling to watch Rachel’s expression shift when she realized that Sis was trying to escape. The woman seemed so hopeful, and Sis hated to be the one to disappoint her.
“Where is your hospital gown?” Rachel asked, a little more crisply.
“I took it off,” Sis said, stating the obvious. She braced herself for Rachel to yell at her, the way Kevin would, but instead the woman put an arm around her and ushered her away from the elevator.
“I don’t blame you. Those gowns allow zero modesty. I was thinking you might want to ditch the hospital gown, so I brought you some pajamas.”
Sis squinted, carefully taking in each word as the woman guided her back down the hall, back to the room. Her touch was firm, but gentle, even though Rachel had to know Sis had been escaping. But Rachel wasn’t mad. She wasn’t going to punish Sis. She was painting over everything with a happy color—orange or pink—and acting like everything was fine.
“I brought some other clothes for you, too. I know it’s late. I figured I’d find you asleep, and I planned to leave this stuff. But I made it to Target before they closed,” Rachel went on as Sis’s cast clunked rhythmically on the tile floor. “I guessed at the sizes, but I realized that you need everything. Don’t worry if you don’t like something. I’ll take it back. I figure that we have a few shopping trips in our future, right? No rush, but it’s always better when a gal can pick out her own clothes, try things on, develop her own sense of style.”
A sense of style . . . it was something Lucy would say in Seventh Heaven, and Sis felt her throat growing thick at the notion that she might have a life like that once again.
Rachel ignored Paula asleep on the other side of the room curtain and began to spread clothes out on the bed. The woman had a million questions. Did she still like purple? Did she like ruffles or plain, a simple shift or denim shorts? Sis had trouble pushing words past the lump in her throat; she could only grunt dumb answers like “yes” and “sure” and “I guess.”
The clothes were beautiful . . . like something D.J. or Steph wore in Full House. Flip-flops with pink jewels winking up at her and canvas tennis shoes as white as a puffy cloud. Besides jeans, leggings, skirts, and tops, there were two bras, one in hot pink, the other white, both with little satin bows between the lightly padded cups. Just the sight of them brought tears to her eyes. Kevin had bought her simple sports bras, always on sale, but these . . . these dainty bras were as sweet as candies. Bras for a young woman.
Sis swallowed back the tears as she fingered the strap of the pink bra. Rachel had been kind to go buy these things for her. Considerate. But it couldn’t replace the years Sis had gone without a mother. She wished she could go back to being a daughter and sister again, but Sis couldn’t get past the invisible wall between them—the constant reminder that her family had not saved her. They’re not even looking for you anymore, Kevin had told her. You’re a lost cause.
She felt gratitude, but that was it.
“Thanks,” Sis muttered.
“I also got you these.” Rachel dug into a smaller plastic bag. “Paula mentioned that you needed them right away.”
Rachel pulled out a pile of underpants in rainbow colors. There had to be at least a dozen in the stack, some with stripes and bubbles and flowers and lace. Others were plain, soft cotton.
“Paula told me he didn’t allow you to wear panties. I think these will fit.”
Panties. Sis’s vision blurred from tears.
She wasn’t sure what bothered her most, the fact that Paula had told this woman such an intimate thing, or the way this stranger wanted so much for Sis to love her.
Tears spilled onto her cheeks. Losing her resolve and balance, Sis turned and plopped onto the bed, right on top of a soft new hoodie.
“Oh, Lauren . . . ,” Rachel sat beside her, and rubbed her back. “I know it’s hard for you. No one can imagine what you’re going through, but please, help me to see it. Help me know what you’re feeling and thinking. I want to get to know you again.”
The woman’s gentle touch was soothing. Sis remembered a nighttime ritual, when her mother used to brush Sis’s hair and make one big, loose snake of a braid down her back. Her mom was the only one who knew how to get the knots out without hurting her.
So long ago.
Surrounded by beautiful clothes and Rachel’s arms, Sis sobbed. Rachel could not understand the fear and grief, the terror of the future and the loneliness for Kevin that filled Sis’s heart.
Yeah, he was mean sometimes, even brutal, but Kevin was the only person in the world she could rely on. Sis cried at the prospect of the future. How would she survive without him? She was lost—helpless without him—and all the clothes and condolences from this very nice woman were not going to change that.
Chapter 16
The next morning, Dan was out of bed before his alarm went off. Outside the bathroom window, through the filter of fir branches, a swath of light streaked the sky. He smiled.
Lauren had been found. Lauren was safe.
It was going to be a great day.
As he pulled on jogging shorts and a T-shirt, he read Rachel’s body language, curled up tightly under the covers. After her late-night shopping trip, she hadn’t come in to bed until late. He wondered if the hospital had let her see Lauren when she got there. God, he hoped so. Rach was so stressed right now.
And Then She Was Gone Page 8