by Rowan Hanlon
Hadley sat up and exhaled deeply, her eyes wide and wild. Alicia stood and quickly went to her, putting her arm around her shoulder.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
“He took me at work,” she said. “In the parking garage. At night. That’s when it happened. He was dressed in black and he was wearing a hoodie. He had sunglasses on, too. That’s why I thought it was so weird because it was late at night.”
She nodded. “That’s good. Anything else?”
“Yes, there was just one thing. He had said, ‘Hadley, wait. Hold up.’ She turned to Alicia. “He knew me.”
Her mouth dropped. “Did you recognize him?”
She shook her head. “I didn’t. But he knew me. By name. He called me by name.”
“Did you have your nametag on from work?” she asked.
Hadley thought about it. She shook her head. “No,” she said. “I was dressed in street clothes. I usually change out of my work clothes because most of them have to be dry cleaned, you know? And if I didn’t spill anything on them or get them dirty, I’d just shake them out and wear them again.”
“Do you remember what time it was?” Dr. Sparks asked.
“It was just…” she started then stopped. “Wait. It wasn’t at night. It was during the day. The parking garage was dark for some reason, maybe because there was this really bad thunderstorm and the electricity went out… I don’t know. I’d gotten off work early because I had a doctor’s appointment. You know, annual checkup kind of thing.”
They both nodded, hanging on her every word.
“And I was hurrying because of the rain. I didn’t have an umbrella. And I was getting soaked. And then… Then he just came out of nowhere.”
“Did you recognize his voice?” Dr. Sparks asked.
Hadley looked at him and shook her head. “I didn’t.”
“Why do you think he knew your name?” Alicia asked. “Was he staying at the hotel?”
Hadley thought about it. Rarely, if ever, did they have anyone dressed so causally stay there. Most people were wealthy and they dressed like wealthy people, even the ones wearing casual clothes. His clothes were cheap, the kind you’d have to wash separately for a few loads so they didn’t bleed onto other clothes in the machine.
“Hadley,” Alicia said. “Was he staying at the hotel?”
Hadley shook her head. “No. I don’t think so.”
“Did he work there?” she asked.
Hadley thought about it. She knew all of her employees very well; she even went out of her way to get to know the new hires. If he had worked there, she would have recognized him in a second flat. So how did he know her but she didn’t know him? She didn’t know. And that meant, he was still lost.
“I believe that is enough for now,” Dr. Sparks said and smiled gently at her. “You did very well.”
Hadley nodded then turned to Alicia. “Does this mean I can go home now?”
“I think so,” she said and smiled at her. “We’re going to get through all this, okay?”
“Okay,” Hadley replied, though she wasn’t so sure.
* * * * *
When Hadley finally returned home about a week or so later, she was greeted with a living room filled with flowers—all sorts of flowers. There were lilies and roses and carnations and dahlias and orchids and others she didn’t recognize. The smell from the various assortments was a bit overpowering.
Huck stood to the side and grinned sheepishly. “I went a little overboard,” he said.
She nodded. “I see that.”
“And I made you all your favorite foods,” he said.
“Oh, yeah?” she said and walked into the kitchen. The counters were covered with all sorts of food—a whole turkey with gravy and all the dressings, a pizza ordered from her favorite restaurant and spaghetti and meat balls among other things.
“I thought you might be sick of hospital food,” he said and nodded.
She nodded.
“Your mother brought you a cake, too,” he said and pointed at a three-tier chocolate cake.
“Oh,” she replied, staring at all the food, then glanced at him. “I don’t want to seem ungrateful, but I just want a bath.”
“Oh, of course,” he said. “Want me to draw it for you, love?”
She shook her head and said, “No, I’ll do it.”
He stared at her like he didn’t know what else to do. “Okay.”
“Okay,” she muttered and headed down the hall and into the bedroom. She stopped and stared around the room. It was just as she’d left it so long ago. The king bed in the middle covered with her favorite duvet, the two side tables, each with an alarm clock and a nice lamp. The walk-in closet door ajar. She went to it and opened it, peering in at all her clothes, all neatly lined up on the rods or folded on the shelves. Huck’s things on the other side, neat and orderly, too.
Just then, she heard the buzzing sound of the blender in the kitchen go off and it made her jump a little. She inhaled sharply and held her hand over her heart, told herself to calm down and then went into the en suite bathroom. It, too, was just as she left it. The walk-in shower was clean, the double sinks on the vanity sparkling, the free-standing tub to the left of the shower ready for use. She went over to it and turned the faucet on, then pushed the plug down. She felt the water, hot and refreshing, and stood back, knowing it would take forever to fill the tub.
She turned and began to undress, tossing her clothes into the hamper, then she reached for her bathrobe just as Huck came in, holding a frozen margarita. She held the bathrobe in front of her.
“I thought you might want this,” he said and smiled. “Made it fresh. I know it’s been a while since… Well, since you’ve had alcohol, but I thought you could sip it. Take it slow.”
“No, thank you,” she said, then saw his look of disappointment. “Sorry, sorry. Here, I’ll take it.” She took the drink with one hand and took a sip, then nodded her approval. “It’s delicious.”
He stared at her curiously, then placed one hand on her shoulder and turned her gently until her bare back was facing him. Once he saw it, his head began to shake in anguish. He could barely look at it. Her back was black from all the beatings but was now slowly turning a yellowish color as it was healing. It looked like it belonged on a body in a morgue, post mortem. It was shocking to her when she first caught a glimpse of it in the mirror in her room at the hospital, so she wasn’t surprised when Huck began to lose it over the site of it.
“What the fuck did that bastard do to you?” he asked, distress written all over his face. “I mean, fuck!”
Hadley quickly set the glass down on the vanity and pulled the robe on, tying it at the waist.
“Does it hurt?” he asked.
She nodded. “It does. They said it would take time to heal.” The doctor who had examined her had told the nurse it looked like black torture and that he’d never seen anything like it in his life, then commented that “he must have beat her every day for hours,” and that “this would take weeks, if not months, to properly heal.” He’d said all of this quietly, thinking she hadn’t heard him because of all the pain medicine they’d been pumping into her. But she had heard him and she had to say black torture was a good way to put it.
“Oh, baby, I’m so sorry,” he said and held out his arms like he wanted to hug her, then he dropped them, almost in an impotent manner.
“I know,” she said softly, glancing at the bathtub, which was only about a quarter filled. She longed to get in there, lie back and just feel the hot water soak into her skin.
“You know,” he said. “As soon as you didn’t come home that afternoon, I called the cops and I told them you were missing. And do you know what those assholes said to me? They said you were probably just mad about something. That’s what they told me! And I told them we weren’t even fighting! And they said, ‘Oh you know how women are. Give her a day or so and she’ll be back.’ Like this shit
happens all the time and maybe it does! But I knew something was wrong! I knew!”
Hadley leaned up against the vanity and studied him, noticing that his English accent was coming out really strong as he ranted, so much so that she could barely understand him.
He glanced at her and went on, “They wouldn’t even let me file a report for two days! And then, of course you didn’t come home! Because I was right! And I told them if they’d just listened we might have got a start on him! And then—”
“Huck,” Hadley said and held up her hand. “Please stop.”
He stopped and nodded. “Okay. I can do that.” He nodded again. “Let me show you something.”
Before she could protest, he had left the bathroom hurriedly. She sighed and stared around, almost in wonderment at how neat and tidy it was. It was so clean. The house where she’d been kept was so dirty that whenever her captor entered the room, his heavy boots would stir up dust from the floorboards. She could still see the dust clouds stirring in the light that somehow managed to emit from the filthy window at the front of the room. She could still hear the rats or God knows what scurrying across the floor late in the night. She rarely slept at night because she was so afraid of them. To make matters worse, she never got to clean herself, not even with a washcloth, not even her face or hands. She hadn’t touched soap since he’d taken her. She could remember wanting a bath so badly, just to get clean, just to get the grime off of her. During these times, she would think about the bathtub in her house and dream of being in it, soaking in it, getting clean. She stared at the tub now, wishing it would hurry and fill.
Huck returned a minute or so later carrying a bunch of his shoes. He threw them down on the floor, then bent over and held up pairs as he said, “See the bottoms? I wore down the bottoms on all these shoes looking for you.” He shook a pair of hiking boots. “These I wore up in the mountains. Yes, I went all over that place up there looking for you. And I bet I was pretty close a few times, you know? If I’d just known about that old house, I could have found you.” He threw the shoes to the side and bent to pick up another pair; these were vintage looking sneakers. He shook them. “These I wore out whenever I’d go to a new city somewhere to look for you. And I went all over.”
He kept on and on, showing her the shoes, the trophies of his futile efforts. She watched him dispassionately like something inside of her could not connect to what he was saying or doing. Finally, she had had enough and so she held up her hand. He stopped talking and stared at her.
“We need to talk,” she said. “This is hard for me but hard for you, too. I understand that. But you need to know I won’t ever get over this. I’m changed. I’m damaged. You know what I’m saying?”
“I do,” he said.
“What I want you to know is that you can leave,” she said. “I don’t want to be your burden, your cross to bear.”
“I will never leave you,” he said aghast, as if he couldn’t believe what she was saying. “I will never, ever, ever leave you, Hadley. I love you. I won’t leave. You can’t make me. And I know you will try to. I know it will be hard, but I am going to stick with you through this.”
“This is not going to end,” she said evenly.
“I don’t care,” he said. “I don’t care how bad it gets, I will never leave you. I will stick right by your side and, if you let me, I will hold your hand.”
She knew he meant it, too. But she didn’t want this. She could barely stand to look at him, at his pain, at his frustration of not being able to find her. She knew his thoughts about the abuse, too and she knew it killed him inside to think someone had harmed her in such a way. It was too much to take. She couldn’t handle her own pain, let alone take on the pain of someone else. Just staring at all the worn-out shoes on the floor made her want to crack.
“Just so you’ll know, I’m going to find him,” he told her. “And then I’m going to kill him.”
She eyed him. “Why do you say that?”
“Because I am,” he said. “I will. He deserves it.
“What about the police?” she said. “They have a whole crew on it.”
“Ha!” he exclaimed, shaking his head. “You think they’re going to find this bastard? Really? I am the one who went out for weeks looking for you, showing your picture to any stranger who would give me the time of day! I am the one who kept calling and checking up to see if they had any leads. And you know what they gave me? Well, me and your parents would get a call ever so often and they’d tell us to come to some morgue and see if they had you. Yeah, they did that. We went all over this country to see dead women lying on slabs! And, thank God, none of them were you! I mean, God bless those women, but they weren’t you. I knew you were alive! I knew it!”
Hadley shuddered at all the pain he and her parents had to go through for her. It wasn’t right and it wasn’t fair. None of it made any sense. All because some evil man wanted to do unspeakable things to her. Then she thought about the women he’d seen in the morgues, the lost souls. She imagined the pain they’d gone through and she shuddered with it. “Who were the women?” she asked.
“What?” he said, shaking his head.
“The women in the morgues,” she said and raised her hand a little, which began to shake uncontrollably. “Who were they?”
“Victims,” he said. “Most of them called Jane Doe. Some homeless, some vagrants. They were trying to find out who they belonged to.”
Hadley couldn’t properly process that, so she decided to push it out of her mind. She tried to forced her hand to stop shaking and, when it wouldn’t, put it in the pocket of her robe. “I’m sorry you had to go through that,” she told him and laid her other hand on his arm.
He stared down at her small hand on his large shoulder and smiled, as if that small gesture meant so much. He stared back at her. “It almost killed your parents,” he said. “I’ve never seen two people so distraught in all my life. But I kept telling them you were alive and they agreed. We formed a bond over this. We believed.”
“Thank you for that,” she said quietly.
He looked down at her hand again then smiled at her. “I’ve missed you so much.”
Hadley nodded and remembered when she was being held how she would think of Huck. Well, she did at first until it got so bad she thought of nothing but when the next session of torture and torment would begin. She would wonder how much more pain her body and mind could handle and how long it would last. But at first, when hope sprung eternal, she would remember the good times she and Huck had and the love they’d shared. It got her through the first month or so until it diminished as her time in captivity stretched out.
“But I mean it,” he said. “I’m going to find him and I’m going to kill him. I won’t stop until I do.”
“No,” she said and shook her head. “You’re not.”
“Why not?” he asked.
“Because that will become your life,” she told him. “And you don’t deserve that.”
“You didn’t deserve that,” he said.
She glanced at the bathtub. It was about half-full. She didn’t answer him. She didn’t know what to say.
“I’ll go so you can get your bath,” he said.
“Thank you,” she replied, then picked up the glass and took another sip of the margarita. “But I mean it, Huck. You can bail and I won’t hold it against you.”
“Are you kidding me?” he asked and gave her a gentle smile. “Where am I going to find another one of you?”
She smiled a little at him but didn’t say what she was thinking. And what she was thinking was obvious. She wasn’t the same as she’d been before and she knew she’d never be the same. Huck was getting a completely new girlfriend and this one came with an enormous amount of baggage.
A Common Enemy
Hadley had a hard time of it. She knew she would all along. She knew it would take time to recover from what had happened to her. She just didn’t know it would b
e this intense. She didn’t know that she’d sit up in bed in the middle of the night screaming and crying and panicking. She hadn’t even done that in that old house he’d kept her in. She didn’t know that no matter how hard her boyfriend tried, he could not calm her. She didn’t know she would eventually take to sleeping on the floor, curled into a fetal position. She didn’t know the amount of pain she’d be in while her body healed itself. She didn’t know she’d have to keep seeing her psychiatrist or that the woman would begin to really, really annoy her. She didn’t know that hordes of reporters and curious citizens would gather outside her house for hours at a time wanting to get a look at her, holding up signs telling her they—and even Jesus—loved her.
Had she known any of this, she might have extended her stay at the hospital. Or she might have even run away.
But, most importantly, she didn’t know that they’d never find the bastard who did this to her. It’s like he just disappeared into thin air. Poof! He was gone. Never to be seen or heard from again. And this was the main reason she could not rest or heal properly. Knowing he was still out there, perhaps even doing to another woman what he’d done to her, was enough to keep her in a constant fit of rage, panic and despair.
Huck told her they should leave and go far, far away. He told her they could go anywhere and that all she had to do was name the place. She half-heartedly agreed with him but never committed to any of the places he said they could go. But then one day, he came up with a pretty good idea, one she could get behind. He told her they could rent a beach house in the Florida Keys, a place where they’d vacationed a few times before. He said no one would probably bother her too much there. While Hadley didn’t want to be too far away from her family, she agreed. She knew she would go crazy sitting inside of her house and who knew how long the media fascination with her would last? She could only hope that if she and Huck left town for a few months, by the time they got back, things would have died down.