by Raen Smith
I wanted to start fresh with my real parents. No more lies.
“I was in Europe, with a friend,” I started, taking a deep breath before continuing, “Delaney contacted me because of - ”
“Sister Josephine,” Michael interrupted. “This is about Sister Josephine, isn’t it? Delaney told me about it yesterday. She told me to keep an extra eye on your mother.”
“What are you talking about? You didn’t tell me anything about a Sister Josephine,” Ann said, putting her hands on her hips and shooting an accusatory glare at her husband.
“Yeah, well, I didn’t think much of it, and I didn’t want you to worry,” Michael responded, wrapping his arm around her waist.
“Neither of you has anything to worry about,” I interjected. “Delaney contacted me because Father Haskens, a long-time friend of mine, died of a heart attack after an intruder snuck into his house a few days ago. Sister Josephine wanted me to know that she thought she might be in danger. Long story short, Sister Josephine is missing, and I was arrested when I came back into the country. Sanchez offered an agreement that I took. In exchange for dropping the charges on me, I agreed to help him find Sister Josephine. So I’m headed to Appleton. But I didn’t come here to talk about Sister Josephine. All you need to know is that you’re not in any danger, but you might see an officer every once in a while checking up on the house over the next few days.”
“And do they have any leads on her?” Michael asked, slowly processing the information.
“A few - ” I started, but Ann beat me to what I wanted to say.
“Michael, she said we’re safe, so let it be. I trust her,” Ann said, stepping in front of Michael. “She’s only got ten minutes, and I’m sure there are more important things we should be talking about. Evie, we were just finishing dinner, why don’t you come sit down.”
“Sure, ten minutes, though. Sanchez is waiting,” I said, letting my growling stomach follow my parents into the kitchen where the sweet smell of barbeque wafted through the air. My eyes caught the family portrait of a beautiful family. It was the same picture I had set my eyes on back in Delaney’s house when I first discovered Holston was following her. All five of them were smiling at the camera. I averted my eyes from the portrait and directly into my father’s heavy gaze.
“Maybe we can take another photo one day?” he offered softly before he broke into a wide smile. “Or maybe I’m moving a little too fast? Your mother tells me that all the time.”
“Oh my God, Michael,” Ann chided as she herded me into the kitchen and to a wooden chair at the counter. “I hope you don’t mind, we don’t use the table when it’s just the two of us.”
“No, no. Not at all,” I said as I sat down and pulled my feet onto the stool.
“So I don’t know where to start. I guess, I mean, I just never thought - ” Ann stopped mid-sentence as her hand fluttered up to the back of her ear. “I just have never done this before.”
“Me, neither.”
“That makes three of us,” Michael added as he dished a large serving of mixed vegetables and chicken onto a plate. “I should have asked. Are you vegetarian?”
“No,” I said with a shake of my head, realizing that they knew nothing about me. I was a stranger in their house. “That’s more than enough. I only have a few minutes. We’re heading back to Appleton. We’ll actually be staying at Mark’s house.”
“We?” Ann asked with raised eyebrows.
“I’ll let Delaney explain that one,” I said as I picked at the vegetables before I set the fork down without eating anything. The clank of the fork echoed through the kitchen as all three of us held our breath. As much as I didn’t want this normal - as normal as it could be - scenario to end, I needed to know something. I needed to ask a question that had been burning in my mind for the last year. I needed to understand, and I needed to know that she was remorseful for everything that had happened, that she was sorry for who I had become. I needed to hear it from her, my mother.
“Did you love him?” I asked, staring at Ann. Her hand fell off her ear and into her other hand. She clasped them both in front of her waist. Michael glanced at Ann, whose face was stoic and beginning to pale as she looked at me. It was the question she didn’t want to answer, but that had played over and over in my head. I had to know. Michael put his hand over her clenched hands.
“No,” she answered flatly. “I never did love him. And I desperately wish that I’d never spent that night with him. I’ve played that night over in my head a million times, wishing that I would have chosen differently. That I would have walked out of that diner and back home where I belonged. But he was so persuasive and what I thought was passion, wasn’t. What I thought was exciting, wasn’t. It wasn’t real. It wasn’t anything except a man who was artfully skilled at charming the pants right off a vulnerable woman at the time. I regret it, I do. And don’t think for one second that I am not ashamed and haven’t lived with that regret for my whole life.”
Michael was silent as he held her hand. I realized that they had unconditional love between them. That’s what true love was supposed to look like. It’s hard to know these types of things when you grew up like I had, with a monster as a father.
“But I don’t regret what became of that night because Delaney was brought into the world nine months later,” she continued. “But the loss we endured after that night, now that I know what really happened, I’ve beat myself up every day for the last year over that.”
“However, no amount of crying, regret or self-abuse will bring Seth and Owen back to us,” Michael added. “They’re gone, and there’s nothing that we can do about it. We’re moving on because that’s what we do. That’s who we are. Besides, we’re thankful that we were able to give Ben and Mark a fair chance at life. And now, you have been brought back to us and we can’t begin to tell you how blessed we feel.”
“Blessed.” The word stung in my throat as I thought of Holston and his lifeless body on the ground. He was anything other than a blessing to this world. He had tortured our family. Destroyed it. And now they sat here, calling it a blessing. I felt cursed.
“We have no other choice than to move forward,” Michael said.
“Holston is gone now, thanks to you,” Ann whispered. “I can’t even begin to tell you how thankful I am that you saved us all. I don’t know where you learned to shoot like that, but I don’t care.”
“Out of necessity, I guess,” I responded, finally putting a carrot in my mouth. I chewed slowly and contemplated my next question. “Did you ever believe I was alive?”
“Not once,” Michael answered.
“I didn’t want to believe that you were all gone, but the evidence was there. Your bodies - ” Ann stopped, unable to finish.
“Why didn’t you chase after me?” I asked, looking into the same blue translucence I recognized in my own reflection.
She didn’t respond, and instead stared at me, her eyes beginning to well with tears.
“After I shot him, I saw the relief in your eyes and I knew then that you never loved him, but I needed you to tell me that. I needed to hear it from you. And now I need to hear from you why you didn’t believe I was yours,” I said. “That’s why you didn’t run after me. You didn’t think it was true. You didn’t believe that something so evil as myself could be yours.”
The tears brimmed over her eyes and the streams flooded down her face like a dam that had broken after decades of holding strong. Michael wrapped his arm around her waist and handed her the towel from his shoulder. She wiped her face and let the tears run into the cotton with full force. I had made my mother cry.
“I was in shock,” she whispered. “The past was tumbling back to me, and I believed I deserved everything I was getting. I was ashamed and broken, my actions devastating our family. Then you came back into that house that he built to haunt me, like a pale, little ghost. I didn’t believe it was you at first, and when I finally did, I was too scared to go after you. I didn’t know wha
t you had become. What I had let you become.”
She paused and wiped more tears from her face. She finally let out a deep sob as her back crumbled into Michael’s arms. She wailed, “I was ashamed. I’m so sorry.”
I watched my mother cry, her body shuddering as my father held her close, from my own words. I hadn’t intended the conversation to go as it was, and I was unable to cope, so I was about to do what I did best - run - when my father uttered the words I’d never known I was missing my entire life.
“We never stopped loving you."
12
June 17, 1:00 p.m.
Location Unknown
Sister Josephine attempted to peel open her eyes, but the dryness formed tight seals on her lids. They were so heavy, yet she pulled up anyway, willing her lids open with every ounce of strength in her body. Her head throbbed and pulsed as she tried to inhale the musty air through her mouth. Instead, she choked for air, feeling the tightness of the duct tape against her lips and cheeks. Her nose took over, just as it had before, inhaling the smell of a building long forgotten.
Her eyelids finally obliged to her prodding and lifted open just a crack to filter a bright light through them. She pulled again until they fully opened as her mind tried to process where she was, but all she could see was the pain. The excruciating ache near her temple consumed her as she felt the sudden urge to throw up crawl into her throat.
Stay calm, she said to herself. One, two, three, four, five. She swallowed the vomiting feeling down, concentrating on the position of her body.
She was seated on the hard floor, its cold surface running through the bottoms of her skirt and legs. No surface was cold like this in the summer except for concrete. It’s just concrete, she told herself. She looked down at her legs to see them tied together with a set of rusty chains. Her arms were set in front of her on her lap; her hands bound together with the same type of chain. She lifted them just a few inches from her lap, the weight and bulk of them almost hid her fingers from view. She wiggled them, ensuring they were still there.
I’m okay. I’m alive. I’m in one piece. Thank you, Lord.
Sister Josephine looked around the expansive area in front of her. It was a large, open building with nothing except a few old machines that were caked with black dirt and dust. The light filtering into the room was coming from the windows placed maybe ten feet apart from one another. Almost all of the windows had cracked glass, the hot breeze easily flowing through them. The windows were filthy and had a layer of grime and film covering what was left of them.
A mouse ran past her feet, scurrying by quickly to disappear into a crack in the bricked wall. She yelped, pulling her feet toward herself, but they didn’t move; the chains were too heavy for her legs. Whoever had done this to her had made sure that she wasn’t going to go anywhere.
She closed her eyes, concentrating on the last memory she had. She was standing in front of the church, about to go in, when the man appeared. He was wearing a ski mask and holding a rock. There were only three other people, besides her, that had known about that rock when she was a small girl. One of them was dead. Holston Parker was long gone. Then there was the cook, she presumed to be dead as well, considering he would be well over a hundred-years-old by now.
Holston had promised Sister Josephine over twenty years ago that the only remaining person that knew about the rock, the boy that had instilled the fear deep inside, was dead.
She laid her head against the wall, feeling the heaviness of her rosary around her neck. It was still very much there, and although she couldn’t roll the beads along her fingers, she could recite the prayers she had chanted for years without the placeholders. She quickly made a small prayer to God for water, her throat parched to a dryness she never knew existed, before she bowed her head again, beginning the rosary.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. I believe in God, the Father almighty, Creator of Heaven and earth….
She was only into the second prayer when the sound of a door sliding open echoed against the walls. The door screeched as metal slid against metal. She desperately tried to put her hands up to her ears to protect them, but they stopped short of her chest, her arms aching as they tried to lift higher. She relented, setting the heavy chains back into her lap.
No fear, Sister Josephine, God is with you.
A man appeared though the doorway dressed in blue jeans, a black t-shirt and black ski-mask. He strode toward her at a quick pace, his long legs moving with a slight restraint. It wasn’t the movements of a young man, but that of an older man; a body aged and worn, though still fit. Could it be?
She inhaled, searching for the strength to confront the man that had killed Father Haskens. She knew God would judge the man before her, but she needed to know why she was here, and above all, she needed to get out.
Only a few feet away, the man stopped and clasped his hands in front of his chest.
“Sister Josephine,” he started, his voice low. She watched his lips move in the opening of the ski mask, listening to the voice, but she couldn’t place it. It wasn’t familiar at all. “You’re awake.”
Sister Josephine nodded her head slowly and suddenly wished that she hadn’t woken up. She knew she was supposed to be brave, however the thought of being tortured here to die a slow painful death anyway was nauseating. It would have been much easier had he just killed her and sent her to be with God. She didn’t fear death, but she did fear the amount of pain that this man might inflict on her.
“Good, I’m glad to see you’re awake,” he continued. “This is going to make the next task a little easier. Can I take the duct tape off your mouth?”
Sister Josephine nodded her head again, this time with more eagerness. She would take the small victory in hopes of breathing easier and getting a drop of water.
He bent down, about to reach toward her when he stopped. “Just so we get some things straight here. If I take this off, you are agreeing not to yell, scream, spit or curse at me.” He said the word curse with a smugness that settled into the pit of Sister Josephine’s stomach. Of course, she wouldn’t curse at him. She couldn’t remember the last time she had cursed, aloud at least. Nuns were subject to their own inner thoughts, just like everyone else. She nodded her head slowly, smelling the diesel that wafted from his body.
“You’re a sister of God, after all. I wouldn’t expect anything less from you,” he continued as he reached toward her and peeled the corner of the tape. She scrunched her eyes as he peeled slowly, the adhesive tearing the delicate layer of skin. He stopped after a few seconds, making her open her eyes, before he grabbed hold again and ripped it all the way off.
Sister Josephine winced out in pain, letting her lungs inhale the oxygen through her mouth. The heat in her mouth dissipated, but the dryness remained, scorching her throat as she tried to swallow.
“I suppose you want some water,” he said lightly, his body still bent only a foot away from her. “You know, that reminds me of a book I used to read to my son when he was small. If You Give a Mouse a Cookie, I think it was called. This mouse would go through crazy antics as the little boy gleefully played along to his whims, asking for more, one after the other, after the other. So, tell me, Sister Josephine. If I give you water, what will you ask for next? If You Give a Nun Some Water…” he said as his voice trailed off.
She cleared her throat, desperately swallowing what felt like a dozen swabs of cotton, and muttered a barely comprehensible, “Nothing.”
“Nothing, huh?” he asked, dragging his finger along the concrete. She looked down to see that he had drawn a cross in the dust on the floor, but she didn’t mind, she would need every bit of God’s guiding hand to get her out of this. She saw it as a glimmer of hope.
“I miss my son,” he continued, his voice traveling in the distance as if his son was a mere ghost, just as forgotten as the building he was keeping her in. “And this is why you’re here, Sister Josephine. You’re going to help me g
et back what was taken from me. I will get my revenge. And since Holston Parker is already dead, I will get the next best thing. It was because of Evie Parker that he ended up dead.”
Sister Josephine’s eyes glossed over in confusion. The man was looking for Evie Parker, but why had he taken her? She may not be enough for Evie to come back to Wisconsin. The man would have been better off taking one of the Jones family members.
The man’s lips turned up into a smile. “You don’t remember me, do you?”
She shook her head no, careful not to lie, but to walk a fine line to not insult him. She had thought it was the boy from her childhood, but now, the story didn’t seem to match up. She had no clue how Evie might have been involved with his son’s death.
He pulled the black ski mask from his face to reveal an aged man, somewhere in his late fifties or early sixties. A man not much older than herself, but she didn’t recognize him at first. She scanned his nose, dark eyes and dark hair, but her head was cloudy, the pain still soaring through it. She couldn’t be sure it was him. It had been too long, and he had changed so much. They both had.
“If I held up a rock again, would you understand, Josephine?” he asked with a smile.
Sister Josephine felt the pit in her stomach hollow out and the breath clamp in her lungs. Her guardian angel couldn’t have been any more wrong. The man standing before her was very much alive and very much the boy from Cooper Orphanage that had conjured the only fear she had ever known. And now, she feared, he wasn’t going to fail at his second chance.
13
June 19, 4:45 p.m.
Appleton, Wisconsin
“How’d it go?” Sanchez asked as I climbed in the passenger seat of his squad car. I slammed the door shut and listened to the silence between us.
“That good, huh?” he added.
I shrugged my shoulders before I pulled the seatbelt across my body with a forceful click.