by Kara Thomas
She smiles as she collects the cups and makes her way toward me. I look away. Pretend to be fascinated with the man in scrubs next to me as he dumps hot sauce onto his burrito. I wonder how the doctors can eat in a place like this; how they can go from stitching someone’s skin back together to cutting through a slice of roast beef.
“Here you go—hot chocolate.” Annette places a Styrofoam cup in front of me. She sits and watches me expectantly as I lift the cover off to let some of the steam out.
“Thank you,” I say. Annette looks pleased, as if I’d done her a favor. She watches me blow and sip, her hands knitted together on top of the table. “I couldn’t get you to stop eating the dry mix with a spoon. I had to hide the container above the fridge.”
And Joslin would climb on top of the counter to be able to reach it for me. I burn my tongue on the hot chocolate.
Annette eyes me over the rim of her cup. “How is she? Your grandmother.” My mother swallows. “Maggie brought me here that night, you know.”
“Here?” I ask. “The hospital?”
Her eyes flick downward. “The psychiatric unit. I stayed for a week. I was so low, Tessa, after your father, and your sister…I failed you. But as soon as I got better, I wanted you back. Only, by then, your grandmother had already come to get you.”
I’m quiet. I never knew that Maggie went back for my mother that night. How come she never told me?
“How is she?” Annette asks. “Your grandmother.”
“She’s fine,” I say.
Annette hasn’t touched her coffee. “She probably told you things about me—lies—”
“Don’t talk to me about Gram,” I say, anger igniting in me. “She’s the one who was there for me for the past ten years.”
Annette’s eyes flash. “Has she told you once in all that time that she loves you?”
I can’t look at her.
“She never, ever told me she loved me.” Annette’s eyes glisten. “Never—”
“I said I don’t want to talk about her.”
Annette seems to shrink in her seat. “Even if I’d had the money to get to Florida, I wouldn’t have been welcome in my mother’s home. She wouldn’t have let me see you.”
I slam a hand down onto the table. “You didn’t call. Not once. You could have been dead, for all I knew.”
“Tessa, I was dead inside. I’d lost both my daughters—”
“Don’t say that.” My head is cloudy. “You don’t get to pretend that we died, when I’m right here.”
Nausea hits me, swift and hard. I force myself to look my mother in the eye. “Did Joslin run away because she knew the truth about who she was? That you took her?”
“What are you talking about?” My mother sounds nervous. “Tessa, are you feeling okay?”
My head feels like it weighs nothing. Black spots dance in front of my eyes.
“I’m fine.” The words stick in my mouth. “I want to talk about Jos. About Macy.”
Annette takes my hand in hers. Her face blurs. “Macy? Who’s Macy?”
I’m slumping in my chair, and my ears are ringing. “I think—I think I’m gonna pass out.”
“Let’s get you to the lobby. I’ll find a doctor—”
I turn my head to the side, where the man in the scrubs with the burrito was, but he’s gone. Annette helps me to my feet, and the blood rushes to my head.
“You’re okay,” Annette whispers into my ear. I’m fading, and I think people are looking at me.
“We have to go out to the ER,” my mother says. She leads me through the visitors’ entrance. A cold blast of air in my face, then thick humidity on my skin. This isn’t the way to the ER. We’re outside. I double over, and Annette helps me so I’m standing, tells me it’s just a bit farther—
A car door opens, and I’m crawling into the backseat, a pickup truck, I think, a hand on my back. A voice somewhere far off screams No, no, NO, but my limbs won’t work.
The last thing I hear before everything goes black is my mother’s voice.
“We were finally safe, Tessa. Why did you have to do this?”
Wool scratches my face. The faint smell of rose cream, the kind my sister rubbed into her hands every night before bed.
I open my eyes, thinking I’ve been dreaming about my old house. My vision clears, and I can see a brown knit blanket hanging off me, grazing the wood-planked floor. My old house was carpeted.
The blood rushes to my head as I sit up. I run my fingers over the blanket. Hold it to my face and breathe in, even though just looking at it is enough. It’s mine.
It was mine.
I get out of the bed and take small steps over to the only window in the room. Sunlight streams in, an assault to my blurry vision.
Sun. It’s the morning. The thoughts swirling in my head start to settle.
Jimmy Wozniak is dead. He blew his brains out right in front of Callie and me.
Hours at the police station. Then the hospital. Hot chocolate with my mother.
The goddamn hot chocolate.
Rage rips through me as I find the door. I jiggle the knob. Locked. I slam my palm against the door and scream. “What did you do to me?”
She doesn’t come. I alternate between banging on the door and yelling, “What did you do to me, WHATDIDYOUDOTOME?”
When the flesh on my palm is red and raw, I throw myself onto the bed and scream. But I know it’s no use—I knew it the second I looked out the window and saw nothing but sky and trees.
My mother has brought me to Bear Mountain, where no one will ever find me.
•••
When I wake up again, I smell baked beans. I lie still on the bed until the lock in the door stirs.
“Are you hungry?” my mother asks.
I say nothing.
“I just wanted you to calm down.” She sits at the foot of the twin bed, balancing a glass bowl on a pot holder. “We’re going to figure everything out together.”
She slides a plastic fork into my hand and holds the bowl in front of me. It hits me, how long it’s been since I’ve eaten.
“What did you put in my drink?” I set the fork down and glare at her.
“Tessa—”
“I’m not eating shit until you tell me what you did to me and why you did it.”
My mother opens her mouth and closes it. She forces a smile. “How about you come into the kitchen and I’ll make you something else. I promise I won’t put anything in it. You can watch.”
I follow her into the living room of the cabin. Everything is made from flimsy-looking wood, as if one of the Three Little Pigs had constructed it. There’s a kitchenette off the sitting area with a fireplace. A closed door on the other side of the room, adjacent to the front door.
“It’s locked, Tessa,” my mother warns me. “And there’s no one around for miles.”
She deposits me on the couch, within full view of the kitchenette. I watch her open a can of beans and heat it over a wood-burning stove. I notice that my mother’s arms look firm, healthy, and I imagine her chopping the wood herself.
There’s a lock on one of the drawers, where I can only assume that the utensils are held. A sick feeling washes over me. Has she been planning this since she found out that I was back in Fayette?
Annette places the beans in front of me, on a coffee table made from a split log. I ignore them.
“If you don’t tell me who killed Lori, you’ll have to carry my starved corpse out of here.”
“Wyatt Stokes killed Lori,” my mother says. She doesn’t look at me when she says it.
“No, he didn’t,” I say. “Was it Joslin? Did Joslin kill her?”
Annette stares out the window. She doesn’t deny it, but why protect Joslin now? Why lie to me now, when I’m trapped here with no one to tell?
My mother presses a palm to her cheek. Her hands are tanned, calloused. I picture them wrapped around Lori’s neck.
Stay the hell away from me.
My mother isn
’t protecting Joslin. She was never protecting Joslin.
“Oh my God. Lori knew,” I say. “Amanda Stevens killed herself that spring, after Brenda Dean’s book proposal was leaked. Macy’s picture was all over the news—that’s how Lori figured it out. You had to kill her to keep her quiet.”
My mother’s gaze snaps to me. “Stop it.”
“That’s why you didn’t fight Gram for me,” I say. “You didn’t come after me or call the cops because you couldn’t risk everyone finding out you’re some lunatic baby stealer—”
Annette is on me in a flash, stopping my words with a hard slap across the face. She aims too low and gets my jaw. I taste my lip, but she didn’t draw blood. She stares at me, flinches, like she can’t believe what she’s done.
She never, ever hit me or Joslin.
I lunge for Annette, but she blocks me with her forearm. She forces me onto the couch. I try to yank my arms free from her grip, but she’s stronger.
My father was wrong. I’m the weak one.
Annette grabs my jaw. “Open your mouth.”
I clamp down, but she applies pressure on my face until my eyes water. I open my mouth, hating myself for letting tears escape. Annette reaches to the back of my throat and sticks a pill at the back of my tongue. She marches me into the kitchen and makes me drink a glass of water. Her hand is on the back of my neck. I jerk to shove a finger down my throat, but she catches my arm.
“If you throw it up, I’ll have to do it again,” she says gently.
She makes me sit on the couch, and she sits down on the other end, watching me. I return her stare until she grows another pair of eyes and her head splits into two. I close my eyes, fighting off another wave of nausea. Even if I could throw up what she just gave me, it’s too late. I feel worse than I did when I woke up; the effect of whatever she’s drugging me with must be cumulative.
It can’t have been more than a day since Annette took me from the hospital. Maggie will have to wait at least forty-eight hours until the police allow her to file a missing persons report. It’ll probably be longer before anyone realizes that I didn’t leave with my mother willingly.
I touch my pocket, where my phone was last night. No doubt Annette took it, even though I’d have no use for it anyway. The battery has been dead since the hospital.
I drift into that fuzzy place between consciousness and sleep, and I find myself in the front seat of my mother’s car ten years ago. I scramble out, my little legs getting tangled in fast-food wrappers, and I run across the highway.
She let me get away once, and the look on her face now says she’ll never let it happen again.
I wake up on the couch. I raise my hand to wipe the drool crusted in the corner of my mouth, and curse. There’s a zip tie around my wrists. I lift them both to my mouth and try to chew through the plastic. My jaw is sore, like I’ve been clenching my teeth in my sleep. Or maybe it’s a side effect of the pills.
The sound of the front door being unlocked makes me drop my arms. The door swigs open, and Annette shoulders her way in. She’s carrying split logs in her arms.
“I’m thirsty,” I croak out.
Annette nods and sets the logs down. “I’ll put some water on.”
I watch the curve of her back as she stoops over the woodstove. She lights a match and drops it onto the kindling. Sets up a pot over the grate.
“It’s a little hot for tea,” I say.
She looks over her shoulder at me. “The water is from the stream. I boil it to make it safe to drink.”
“You drugged and kidnapped me, and you’re worried about me getting a bacterial infection?”
Annette strides over to me. She sits on the opposite end of the couch, her eyes flicking to my wrists. “You’re my daughter. You belong with me. Do not use that word.”
“Kidnap?” I shimmy so I’m sitting up against the arm of the couch. My ankles are bound with a zip tie too. Annette’s eyes focus on me. They’re brown, like my father’s and mine are. I never thought it was weird that Jos was the only one with green eyes.
“Daddy didn’t know she wasn’t yours, did he?” I ask. “She told him who she really was, in prison, years ago,” I say. “And you know what he did? He tried to get the reward money from Macy Stevens’s family.”
Annette stands up and goes over to the stove. Checks on the pot of water.
“Gram told me about the baby,” I yell, hysterical and desperate to make her answer me. “The one that died.”
Annette flinches with her whole body.
“Is that why you stole Jos? Alan wouldn’t have another baby with you?”
She’s silent as she opens the cupboard and removes a glass, one of the jam jars with Tom and Jerry painted on the side that we used to save and wash out so we could drink from them.
“This was your favorite,” she says with a wry smile.
“Answer me!” I scream. “Why did you take her?”
She closes her eyes, drifting off to some private place. “You never truly understand what fear is until you have a child, Tessa. Do you know what I saw in that woman’s face, on TV, after she realized her baby was gone?”
Annette stokes the fire and looks back up at me. “Relief. Not fear. Joslin was safer with me.”
“That’s not her goddamned name!” I scream. “Her name was Macy!”
My stomach turns as she checks the water, as if she hadn’t even heard me.
“We need more wood,” she says. “I’ll be right outside, chopping it.”
There’s a warning in her voice, as clear as a bell. Annette—ax. Tessa—drugged and incapacitated. When the door closes behind her, I shut my eyes. I won’t allow myself to cry; she’ll only give me more of the sleeping pills. Or worse, she’ll try to comfort me.
I watch the flames in the stove sputter pathetically. The wood must be damp, from last night’s rain. I scan the kitchen; the same zip ties are on several of the cabinet handles.
I wait until I hear the thump, thump of the ax outside before I sit up. I inch forward in my seat and rest my feet on the ground; slowly, tentatively, I stand. I sway a bit but regain my balance.
I press my zip-tied ankles closer together and hop into the kitchen.
Annette has left one drawer open, but my stomach sinks when I see the contents. Plastic forks, knives, napkins, all packaged together from different fast-food places.
I glance at the stove, feeling a surge of adrenaline when I see what Annette has left next to the pot.
A book of matches.
I struggle to get them into the front pocket of my shorts with my bound hands. I yank my T-shirt down as far as it will go and shuffle back over to the couch. Moments later, Annette comes in, empty-handed.
“The wood needs to dry out,” she says. “I’ll take a ride to the store and get some bottled water.”
She comes over to the couch and helps me to my feet.
“What are you doing?” I ask.
“I can’t leave you out here,” she says. “I’m sorry, Tessa.”
Annette puts a hand on my hip to guide me into the bedroom. A lump lodges in my throat as she sets me down on the bed and lifts my bound ankles onto it.
My shirt rides up. Before I can yank it back down, Annette’s gaze lands on my pocket. Her face is emotionless as she pats it. Pulls out the book of matches.
She slips them into her pocket and locks the door behind her. I scream until I’m hollowed out and my voice is gone.
•••
I wake up with a full bladder and pulsing behind my eyes. I lift my arms up; Annette cut off the zip ties while I slept. I check my ankles; they’re free too. She probably thought she was doing me a favor by snipping them off.
Outside the window, an owl calls out to something in the dark. I pad over to the window and pry at the lock. It doesn’t budge.
I tap on the glass, scaring a smattering of birds in the tree outside. It’s thick glass, impossible to break with my bare hands. Nothing in the room except for the bed.
I pound on the door. “I need to pee!”
Nothing.
“I NEED TO PEE!”
I could keep screaming. I could try to kick the door down with my bare feet. Both will probably get another pill shoved down my throat, or more zip ties. I drop my pants, pee in the middle of the room, and get back into bed.
•••
Annette sees what I’ve done in the morning. She says nothing as she mops up the mess with a dishtowel. When she finishes, she grabs me by the shoulder and drags me into the other bedroom.
Before she shoves me into a squat, square bathroom, I spy a series of pencil drawings hanging over the twin bed pressed against the wall.
“Did he do those?” I ask. “Daddy?”
“Your father built this whole place.” Annette sits me on the toilet and turns the faucet on in the tub. “There’s fresh water from the top of the mountain.”
I eye the water as it drips into the basin. “Why didn’t you bring us here, when we got evicted?”
“We had a tenant,” Annette says. “Made a couple hundred dollars a month renting this place for years, but you don’t get good people up here. Daddy let in a man I didn’t trust. He stopped paying rent, and there was nothing we could do about it. Came up here to collect the money, and found him on the porch with a shotgun. Had no choice but to wait until he moved on.”
Annette sticks a finger into the water. The tub isn’t even a quarter full. “Get in.”
I fold my arms against my chest. My mother yanks my shirt over my head and wriggles my shorts off. I step into the tub, ice-cold water coming up to my ankles.
“Sit.” Annette grabs a cup from the vanity and proceeds to pour water on top of my head. “I haven’t been able to pick up shampoo in a while.”
I bring my knees up to my chest, shivering. Water drips into my eyes.
“I’m glad you’re so calm now,” Annette says, dragging her fingers through my wet hair.
Only because I’m picturing killing you in your sleep, I think.
•••
I eat the beans, and the canned carrots. I don’t complain at the bitter taste that obviously came from the white powder I saw her sneak into the saucepan.
All I want to do is sleep. Annette is content to let me. I hear her outside, chopping wood while I’m in bed. She comes in, sweaty, and washes herself before preparing vegetables from a can for her own dinner.