Once, We Were Stolen

by Courtney Symons

  When I got into bed, Violet came in to say goodnight. She kissed me on top of the head. I never told her about how Mom used to do that, and I was pretty sure I hadn’t said anything out loud when I was thinking about it earlier. I have no idea how she knew, but it felt really good and I hoped she would come in and do it every night.

  When she left, I opened the book she gave me. This memory was my favourite:

  Do you remember when you were really little and you were taking a bath in Mom’s big Jacuzzi? You must have been sick, because that was the only time we were allowed in there. I’m not sure what you’d done to annoy me, but it was something bad because I was really pissed at you. I unplugged my CD player and I brought it into the bathroom where you were. I held the thing over my head, and I told you that if I dropped it in the water, it would electrocute you. I think I must have seen it on TV or something, because I have no idea how I would have known something like that. And, for the record, it wouldn’t have electrocuted you because it wasn’t plugged in, but I didn’t realize this at the time so I guess it’s no excuse. You looked up at me with real terror in your eyes. I was scared that you were scared that I would actually do it. Because Ben, you know I never would. I don’t know what I was thinking that day. But when I saw the fear in your eyes, I immediately left and put it back down in my room and started to cry. I’m not sure if I ever apologized for that. I’m sorry, Ben. It was an awful thing to do and I wish I’d never done it. I just wanted you to know, and I never knew a way to tell you before now.

  It was a weird memory to choose as my favourite, but I remembered it so well. I always knew she wouldn’t throw it in. But she looked so powerful with it in her hands that I had been scared just because I knew how much smaller I was than her. I know exactly what I did to make her so mad. I looked through her diary. I snuck into her room and dug it out, because I’d seen her put it away after writing in it. I was sitting in her room reading it, but she came upstairs and caught me. She started to scream, so I just ran. And I wasn’t sick that day, I was just brave and asked Mom if I could have a bath in the big tub, and she said yes.

  I never told my Mom about Vi’s threat. And she never apologized for it either. I’m not good with times and years but I think I was five when it happened. We never said a word about it, and it felt nice to have it down on paper. It was like we’d talked about it when we never really had to. It felt like we cleared the air. That’s something my Mom used to say when I would sit and pout and she told me to just let it out because it would feel better that way. It didn’t always feel better that way. But this time, it did.

  Jeremy came by to say goodnight to me too. He just stood in the doorway. I didn’t feel sad or anything that he didn’t come in and give me a kiss on the head. I don’t even think I would like that.

  I told him thank you for my birthday.

  He stood there for awhile and didn’t say anything. A bit like Vi earlier when she was sitting on my bed. Finally, what he said was, “You can call me Jer.”

  He left then, and didn’t wait for to me to tell him if I was going to call him Jer or not. He just pulled the door shut behind him and that was it.

  26

  Violet was frustrated. Her evening burlesque shows were having no effect on Jeremy, or at least none she could see. There were moments when she wondered if she just wasn’t his type. Maybe he was gay, or wasn’t into blondes. But she had seen the way he looked at her.

  The next stage would have to begin, and it was going to happen that evening. May had arrived. Buds were sprouting. Most of Violet’s time was spent outside, gardening and shovelling and wiping grime and sweat off her forehead. She had taken to going for runs around the property in the early mornings or evenings when the air was crisp and cool. The ground squished beneath her toes, and the only sounds in her ears were the birds chirping, her own breathing and the blood pumping through her veins. Her lungs felt as if they could expand for hours. She frequently took huge gulps of air in, just to see how much she could fit. Back home, she had wheezed. Runs were cut short by the ache in her chest, the metallic pressure of her lungs turned to lead pipes about to burst. Here, she felt she could run for days. Just not away.

  The deadline for applying to school for the fall had come and gone. She wouldn’t be accepted anywhere that year. She refused to let herself really think about it. It was inevitable, she supposed, since she hadn’t been able to save the money she needed anyhow. What was one more year? She was only eighteen. There was no rush, no voice in her ear telling her that life was passing her by. There was only time, and so much of it.

  If she were still at home, Violet knew she would have returned from work each night to a computer screen with university websites pulled up. University of Guelph. Carleton University. Brock University. Her mom had mentioned them all, had done more research than Violet ever had or would. Have you made up your mind yet? She never had.

  But at Jeremy’s house, she slept late, spent time outside, got her shoes covered in dew from early morning runs that took her breath away more from beauty than exhaustion. Ben, too, seemed increasingly happy. Violet had grown so used to her everyday life that sometimes she would go for days at a time without questioning it.

  Not today, though. Writing down memories for Ben had pulled at something she’d kept hidden. What if the police tracked Jeremy down? And what if, when they arrived, they discovered Violet had done nothing to get them out of there?

  It was time to make a move, for her own sanity and so she could tell everyone she fought as hard as she could to get out. Nine months, that was how long it had been. Violet could have conceived and given birth by now. A whole human life could have been created in that amount of time.

  Four loops around the property took her an hour to run. She had her own route carved out. Sometimes she could even spot her footprints from the day before in the mud or carved into the grass. Other times, she’d see bunny tracks, bird feet that had crossed her path on their own journey.

  Once, Violet tripped over a stump and fell, hard. The wind had been knocked clear out of her and she lay on the ground wriggling in pain before hoisting herself up and wobbling back to the house. She hadn’t even sprained her ankle, only scuffed up her knees a bit. When she hobbled back into the house, Jeremy’s eyes had widened to saucers and he immediately fussed and fawned over her bloody knees.

  Her cuts had healed, but on that dewy morning Violet remembered how good it felt to have Jeremy’s undivided attention.

  Violet let her legs give out underneath her. She collapsed to the ground, hitting one knee on the soft earth as the other bashed into a rock.

  “Motherfucker,” she muttered. She hadn’t meant to really injure herself, but she supposed authenticity wouldn’t hurt. Her pants had ripped and she could see the mashed up skin beneath it, already beginning to secrete thick, red fluid. Before convincing herself it was a bad idea, Violet lowered her head to the rock.

  I can do this, she thought. With a strange, sick dedication, she raised her skull a couple of inches above the boulder, scouting out its sharpest edge. Quickly, with more force than she thought she would be able to summon, she smashed her head against the rock. Bright lights flashed and her head began to thump in pain. Wooziness filled her. She felt something trickle down the side of her face. She hoped… yes, it was blood. Sufficiently bedraggled, Violet lay on the ground motionless. The pain in her knee came and went. It felt as if someone had wrapped a tourniquet around the cap and was pulling tightly on it then letting it loose again and again. Her head felt as if it was in the process of exploding. She lay still for five minutes until she finally got the strength to pull herself up. Thinking of her body as a puppet, she visualized pulling herself up by the strings. She had no choice but to straighten, rise up and begin to walk back, her own marionette.

  Jeremy was in the garden. He looked over at her and waved. Violet wasn’t sure if it was theatrics or light-headedness; it happened too quickly and she can’t remember it right, but she collap
sed to the ground. Her puppet strings came loose and her joints unlocked, sending her tumbling back down to the earth. Her eyes were closed, her head throbbing, and sound filtered into her ears sporadically. She knew Jeremy was calling her name, but she couldn’t bring herself to respond. Stars flashed across her vision.

  She felt strong hands underneath her legs and around her waist. Light, she felt light, floating upwards. She tried to open her eyes but shut them again quickly from the pain and hot blood hovering around her eyelids.

  Jeremy carried her into the house. Fluffy comfort greeted Violet’s body as he lowered her into the royal blue easy chair in the living room. She was alone then. Violet realized she had smashed her head harder than she should have. There shouldn’t be so much blood and so many stars.

  “Hey,” she heard Jeremy and felt a cool cloth on her forehead. “Are you alright?”

  She nodded. She opened her eyes tentatively, waiting for the blood to seep in but it didn’t. “I fell,” she said simply.

  “No shit you did,” Jeremy said, and Violet’s mouth curved upwards into a tiny smirk. She loved when he swore. “Were you out for a run?” A small nod again.

  Part of him always worried that she would just keep going, that she would run for miles and miles. But she’d never leave Ben alone like that, and Ben didn’t like to stray far from the house.

  “Maybe you should take a break from running for awhile,” he said gently. Violet grunted agreement.

  “Say something,” Jeremy asked her, “What’s your name? Where are you?” He didn’t know much about First Aid, but knew enough to know she should be able to answer those questions, even after some deliberation, or she was in trouble.

  “Don’t be stupid,” she said. “I’m Violet Wrigley and I’m here and I’m okay.” She tried to push herself up into a more comfortable position. “God, my head,” she said, raising a hand to her warm, wet forehead.

  “You really did a number on yourself this time,” he said, wiping her forehead with the cloth. The blood just kept coming. Head wounds scared him. A little chunk of skin had flapped upwards on her forehead. He pulled it back down and tried not to grimace.

  “Is there anything I can do to make you feel better?” he asked. Violet had known the question was coming.

  “Yeah,” Violet said decisively. “I want a campfire and a big bottle of wine. Tonight,” she added to make sure he didn’t go spark up the fire right there and then.

  “Oh,” Jeremy said, taken aback and clearly delighted. “Sure, we can do that.” He ran his fingers though her hair, and kept doing it. At first it had been functional, to smooth the locks away from the sticky, clumpy blood. There was no reason he should keep going, but he couldn’t find a reason to stop. Violet leaned into his hand. He ran his fingers along her scalp and she was amazed by the nerves that tingled all over her body.

  Ben walked in soon after, oblivious to her injuries. “What’s wrong with you?” he’d asked, looking at the bag of ice she held to her forehead.

  “I’m concussed,” she said. Ben just gave her a strange look and walked out of the room. Violet couldn’t help but feel a little hurt. But, true to adorable form, Ben poked his head back around the corner, just as he’d done when he was little to shout, Hola! This time, he said, “Are you really okay?” She just nodded and let him go off to play.

  Violet stayed in the big blue chair and watched soap operas. She humbly accepted the soup and crackers that Jeremy presented her with; she drank the tea he brought. She didn’t prepare dinner or clean up after it. It was easy to revert to having someone tend to her every need. Sometimes, you just need looking after.

  The days were stretching longer. The sun was still hinting on the horizon past dinner; a big improvement from the winter nights when Violet had looked out the window and seen only her reflection in the darkness by late afternoon. The sun still belonged in the sky at that time. It wasn’t fair that it should shy away from the cold, taking the only part of the season that could warm them from the ice.

  Violet eased herself off the chair to put on her spring jacket. Jeremy peeked in from the next room. “Is it time yet?” he asked.

  “Yes,” she said quietly. The sky was darkening.

  They shouldn’t be there. Sometimes she repeated the sentiment in her head like a mantra. They shouldn’t and they wouldn’t be, not for much longer.

  Jeremy gathered newspapers, a lighter, a bottle of wine with two glasses.

  By sundown, they were stationed around a blazing fire. Ben peeked outside to ask what they were doing.

  “What does it look like?” she shouted jokingly. “Wanna join?”

  “Nah,” he said. “I’m fine in here.”

  Violet was relieved, and felt guilty for it. “We can make s’mores,” she shouted back in negotiation.

  “Nah,” he said again, and pulled himself back in the house.

  “I wonder what Ben’s life would have been like if you hadn’t found him,” Jeremy said when the door closed. Violet hadn’t found him. She’d simply been waiting at home when he arrived. But she didn’t argue the point.

  “I don’t know,” she said honestly. “When we first got him” (instantly, she regretted her word choice. He sounded like a goldfish they’d won at the county fair), “he would wake up almost every night screaming from some nightmare.”

  “Like he did that night awhile ago?” Jeremy asked.

  “Yeah, except he normally remembered what the dream was about and he’d be so scared. I thought it was over with.”

  “What sort of things did he dream about?”

  “Mostly that he was back at the orphanage. Another one of the boys would have a knife to his throat or a gun to his head, telling him he couldn’t leave to live with us. He also had one where he was in a car with me and our mom, and it crashed into the river, and my mom and Ben were alright but I didn’t make it. Ben said he could see my body all blue and floating down the river. He would wake up sobbing.”

  “A little boy had dreams like that,” Jeremy said with a shake of his head. “That’s scary. I wonder if it was because he didn’t think he deserved to go from an orphanage to a home like yours. It must have felt like heaven.”

  “Hey,” Violet said quickly. “Life wasn’t always so amazing in our house.”

  “That’s not what I meant. Just comparatively, from a little boy’s perspective. I know no home is perfect. There’s always the good and the bad.

  Violet wondered how different his home had been from her own.

  “I guess we had it pretty good,” Violet admitted. “I didn’t have a father, but I did have a mother who loved me.” She caught herself using the past tense. Her hand shot to her mouth. The sentence scared her.

  “Would your mother have loved you no matter what?” he asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, do you think she would love you no matter what you did or how you turned out? Unconditionally?”

  “Well,” Violet thought, “I think that’s part of being a mother. I don’t think you really have a choice. I don’t even mean a moral choice, I mean a physical one.”

  Jeremy didn’t like her answer. He was shaking his head before she’d even finished. “No, it’s a choice,” he said definitively. “And I’m asking if your mother chose it.”

  “Well then yeah, I guess she did. She puts pressure on me to succeed, but I’d like to think she’d love me no matter what.” She paused. “Although you’ve bought me a little time before I really find out.”

  “Why is that?” Jeremy asked. Violet didn’t normally talk so openly about his kidnapping them, especially not in a positive way.

  “I was supposed to go to school this fall. I took a year off to work and figure things out. And here we are, past application deadlines, and I’m still no closer to knowing what the fuck I should do.”

  Jeremy was quiet for almost a minute. “Violet,” he finally said, “I didn’t even think about the fact that you being here would get in the way of ap
plying to university. I’m so sorry. I should’ve offered you the internet to research programs…” His voice faded.

  It baffled Violet how out of sorts Jeremy got about the strangest things. He had no qualms about stealing two people for months on end, but the fact that his doing so got in the way of university applications really distressed him.

  “It’s fine,” she said. “I would have been in the same boat even if I were still at home. I wouldn’t know what to do either way.” She almost stopped, but continued.

  “Hey Jeremy? Do you ever feel like even though our generation has had the easiest lives out of anyone, that some parts might be harder than anyone else’s ever before?”

  “Sure,” he said. “People can live wherever they want because it’s easy to get around. There are thousands of occupations to choose from. How is anyone supposed to decide?”

  Violet could tell he’d thought about it before. She couldn’t help but wonder if he’d anticipated her comment somehow, stayed up late the night before with cue cards practising.

  “Right,” she said, glad he seemed to understand. “We’re expected to do it all. To travel the world, to get the best education possible, the best job, the most money, the biggest house. But what if life would be better without all this stuff? Without all the choices?”

  She paused for a breath.

  “Sorry,” she said. “Tangent. I’m just getting worried about making those decisions. I wish I had a crystal ball so I could see what job I should pursue, what education I should get.”

  “That would defeat the purpose,” Jeremy said.

  “Of what?”

  “Of living.”

  “Yeah, well,” her voice trailed off with a shrug. “But I can’t help but feel scared that I’m too young or naïve to be making the right choices.”

  “Don’t be so hard on yourself,” Jeremy said kindly. “There’s no training for those big decisions, and they don’t get easier as you go. Just take it day by day, Violet, and you’ll be okay.”