by Riley Moreno
Julie couldn’t stand it. Her mother had been manipulated into believing her a whore, but Ethan was the last person to blame for the place to which she had fallen. Pushing away from the woman who bore her, Julie fell to Ethan’s side and held him close.
“Ethan saved me. But he wouldn’t have had to if Greg hadn’t---”
“Shut your fucking mouth!”
With the shears poised for attack, Greg rushed forward and lifted Julie from the ground. He pressed the sharp blade to her neck as he spoke fast.
“Sharon?”
Julie looked to her mother as Ethan coughed and bled on the grass. She focused on her mother’s eyes as Greg kept spinning his web.
“It was Kim!” he cried out. “She knew. She said that it’d be fun for them. How could I doubt her? She was always Julie’s good friend and---”
Finding a new strength, Julie turned and started smashing her small, shaking fists on every part of Greg that tried to contain her, and she was able to leave Greg’s hold and slip back to Ethan’s side. She felt him relieved by her return, and he pressed her close, moved her body behind his as his phone kept buzzing.
Morales.
Julie prayed for her to just show up and aim her gun at the true criminal, but she was pushed aside as Greg lifted Ethan’s body from the earth and held the point of the blade at his chest.
And somehow, impossibly, Julie was more scared than she had ever been.
“No! No please!”
Ethan shifted his stance, but the blade still punctured his already injured arm, and Ethan screamed at the point of impact. Julie tore off her shirt and tried to stop the flow as a new voice mercifully entered the fray.
“Hands up!”
Julie pressed Ethan’s bleeding body close as Greg was led away in cuffs and Sharon squealed at her ruined garden. Nothing made sense, but Julie just held Ethan as a team of medics converged on the scene.
She held the hand of his newly injured arm the whole way. Ethan smiled at the sight of her so close, free of further harm, and Julie rested her head against his shoulder as the ambulance moved through the day swiftly becoming night.
She was forced from his side as doctors tended to her wound. Even though her own body was a mass of aches had scars, she couldn’t bear the thought that he would leave her. After what seemed like an eternity, a doctor told her that she could go to him. Morals guided her body to Ethan’s, but they were stopped by the return of Sharon Heller’s hands on Julie’s arms.
“Julie…”
Morales shot daggers at the woman with her eyes, and she seemed ready to retrieve her gun and help Julie away. But Julie wanted to hear her mother out, hoped that she about to assure her daughter that she’d kicked Greg to the curb and wanted him to suffer as Julie had.
Please, Mom.
Sharon smoothed her hands across her face.
“I’ve… I’ve just come from your---”
“Don’t,” Julie interrupted her.
“What?”
“Don’t you call him my father. Or stepfather. Or anything but what he really is.
“I’m…”
Sharon took a deep breath, and Julie watched her search the air carefully for her next words.
“He’s… he’s…”
A pervert? A psycho? A freak? He was strapped for a solution and could think of nothing better or easier than selling the little girl in his midst to the highest bidder. It was an awful whim, and Kim’s body was cold, growing colder, as a result of loss of unwilling bodies. So Julie and Kim? They were available and convenient and constantly penetrated by men that neither girl wanted to know. But at least the fault was firmly planted where it finally belonged, and Julie could start to make a kind of peace with the mother she had ripped from Greg’s awful clutches, and---
All of Julie’s thoughts evaporated as Sharon took hold of a single lock of her daughter’s hair. Julie felt her mother cringe. What could be worse than her own mother ashamed of her when she was the one who’d been targeted, lured, tortured?
“He’s… sorry, Julie.”
And there it was. And it was much worse.
“He’s… he’s sorry? For Christ’s sake, Mom!”
Morales stated to speak, but Sharon kept going.
“He had no idea that it would be like… like this.”
She scanned Julie’s trembling body in Morales’ hold. Julie felt the detective keeping her close, and Sharon just made more excuses for her husband.
“It’s… he didn’t know, Julie. It… he said it was never supposed to take so long. And…”
“What?”
“It was just supposed to be a few nights. He had… he had obligations. But it got out of hand. He’s absolutely devastated that it went so far. And---”
Julie couldn’t believe that she was excusing the sins of the man who had violated her only child, and she found herself past the point where it made sense and smacked her mother in the mouth. Sharon moved back and started to protest when Julie left Morales’ hold and slammed her mother into the first wall that she could find.
“One second was too long. I was in hell, Mom. Kim’s not coming home. How can you---?”
Sharon removed her daughter’s hand from the side of her head. Her clasp was brief, and she quickly flung Julie back into Morales’ waiting arms. Julie’s body buckled as it fell, and she looked up to see her mother staring down at her with something like scorn.
“What did you do to make them want you in… in that way?”
The simple notion that Julie’s body, bound and unwilling, was the guiltiest party in this mess was more than she could take. She longed to smack to her mother again, smack some sense into her, but she barely had the strength to think. All she could do was try not to cry. Sharon didn’t deserve her tears.
“I… I can’t look at you anymore,” Sharon finally said. “And your father… would be so disheartened to see what you’ve become. First chance you had, you couldn’t wait to get back to your… john. I need some air.”
And with that, she turned away. Julie could no longer fight back her tears as Morales held her sobbing form and gently stroked her hair.
“Let it all out, Julie. It’s okay.”
She didn’t believe Morales, but her tears flowed freely against the woman’s sleeve. She wept for Kim and her father and the mother who was also now essentially dead to her. As she ran out of tears, Morales helped her to her feet.
“It’s over now, Julie.”
She barely believed that as she was led down a hallway of bright white light. Julie was dazed until Morales slowed her steps before a closed door.
“No,” Julie whimpered as she turned her head from side to side.
“Julie---”
“I don’t want to see Greg again.”
Morales pressed Julie close and lightly touched her hair.
“No Greg. No Pete. But there’s someone else who wants to see you.”
Morales opened the door on Ethan pierced and tubed. His head shifted at the sound of the door opening, and Julie met the eyes that had been forced to sleep via drugs. When he smiled at her, Julie rushed to him and held him. Ethan winced under her arms, but her hands found his face and caressed his cheeks as he struggled to speak.
“Juliet?”
Her eyes moved down his reinjured arm, and she touched the bandage. Time and again he had risked everything to try to make her safe, and Ethan kept paying a price for his gallantry. If he had any sense, he would get as far away from her as possible, and if she had any strength, she’d send him off and linger in loneliness to keep him safe.
“He… he didn’t hurt you again,” Ethan said as he ran his fingers through her hair.
“No.”
“So you’re finally safe.”
Morales left the room, and when Julie felt her gone, she cried again into his chest. He held her with his good arm and slowly ran his fingers down her back.
“My… my mother says it’s my fault. She actually blames me for this. Ethan?”
She lifted her shattered face to his kind eyes. She was free, she was home, but she had lost everything to get back to where it all started.
“I’m all alone now, Ethan. I don’t… I don’t have anyone.”
He steadied his gaze in her eyes and softly touched her face.
“That’s not true, Juliet. You have me.”
22
It seemed the only thing left to do.
While Ethan recovered with Julie at his side, he made a call to someone at a place called Arcadia and arranged to have the few things left that were precious to Julie brought to his apartment. When she asked him who would be there to see that the boxes of photos and other trinkets would make their way safely through his doors, Ethan arched his eyebrow with an ironic smile.
“Nick.”
The neighbor was working overtime to get back into Ethan’s good graces. And Julie’s. It occurred to her that lewd comments didn’t necessarily make for a lewd person. Nick’s comments had been made in the light of day, not hidden behind promises that led to pain, and she realized that she was going to have to try to trust if she was going to survive. Living seemed out of the question. She was far too broken, and her head was full of too many painful memories to imagine a place where she would ever be truly happy.
But at least she had Ethan. It was something.
Morales and Leo Barber stopped in on the morning of his release.
“So the hero’s going home,” Leo quipped.
Ethan blushed in the face of the label, but Julie knew that he had earned it.
“So what’s the word?” Ethan asked.
“Mr. Heller is en route to Rikers,” Leo said. “He’s being most cooperative. Pointing out all the places we’ve yet to uncover.”
The idea that it was so massive was horrifying. Julie pictured endless lines of other girls snatched form innocent days and forced to serve cruel masters in the most humiliating ways. Pete had named names. Greg was naming more. But how far did the thing stretch? Were there pockets of hell on earth that would never be found out? Would the girls languishing there be unendingly violated? Or would they be left to starve and thirst and die as arrest after arrest was made? If Julie couldn’t see their homecomings, at least she could look to a moment when their suffering would cease. As she walked with Ethan out of the hospital into the light of day, Julie envisioned survival as hiding until she was with the others. With Kim and her father. It seemed like the only thing to look forward to.
“Okay, Juliet?”
She nodded on cue without meaning it as they climbed into a taxi and drove back to the only place she could almost call home.
Nick was waiting for them when they arrived, and he helped the cabbie usher Ethan up the steps. Julie moved slowly behind them. Unlike Ethan, she knew she would sleep as soon as she had the chance.
Nick paid the driver and started showing Julie all of her things, untouched, still in boxes.
“I didn’t unpack them,” Nick said. “Figured… figured you’d know where you wanted them.”
They could stay in the boxes for all she cared. Julie didn’t want to remember the life she’d lost.
“Thank you,” Julie whispered.
She cast Ethan a single glance and retreated to his bedroom. As Nick asked Ethan if he was alright, and as Ethan assured his neighbor that in no time his arm would be as good as knew, Julie kicked off her shoes, striped off her street clothes, and slipped under the blankets. In no time, she sank into sleep. There were no nightmares. No dreams. Just a blackness that mirrored her soul, and that’s where she wanted to stay.
For a full week, Ethan obliged.
He checked on her in the seventh morning and asked her if she needed anything. Without fail, Julie simply twisted her head and begged him off.
“You have to eat, Juliet.”
He presented her a ready-made sandwich and a glass of milk. Even though she was hungry, Julie ate without savoring and consumed the food to survive. There was nothing left to enjoy. Ethan appeared glad once she cleaned the plate, but she caught a faint clouding of his eyes as she moved back to the bed and settled her body under the sheets, covered her head with one of the pillows.
“Juliet?”
She stayed silent and finally left his eyes. The days ticked by, and as she had during the months of captivity, Julie lost track of the calendar. Her mind often drifted to the other girls left behind, and soon she was past the point of hoping for every rescue. There would be more Kims, more casualties, and Julie started to number herself among the dead.
Then Ethan altered is approach.
“Rise and shine!”
Julie blinked as he parted the curtains and sat on the edge of the bed with a warm smile. She tried to turn away from him, but Ethan kept gently kept her upright as he touched her arms.
“I think you could use a change of scenery,” Ethan said. She noticed that his arm was devoid of the bandage and took some comfort in his recovery. He reached into one of the drawers where he had finally deposited her clothes, and his healed arm reappeared with a pair of jeans and a violet turtleneck. Part of her was grateful for the item that would completely conceal her arms, but Julie just wanted to go back to sleep and try to forget, which was impossible.
“Ethan, I---”
“Humor me, Juliet. Simple walk around the block. The fresh air will do you good.”
She started to protest but didn’t have the strength to object. Resigned to his offer, Julie took the clothes and dressed as he left the room. When she finally emerged with her greasy hair pressed in a ponytail behind her covered neck , Ethan had one of her tweed jackets in his hands, and he eased Julie’s arms into the garment.
“It’s getting colder,” Ethan said. Under the blankets, Julie had no conception of the change in temperature.
Then he offered his hand.
“Ready?”
Julie nodded faintly and let him lead her down his steps. When they hit the street, she felt the first chill of fall and wished that she could be back in the heat of the early summer. Before everything had changed forever. Before Greg became a monster but no worse than her mother, and she just let Ethan lead her down the street. As she briefly met the other pedestrians’ eyes, she was struck with the thought that somehow they still knew, that they were pitying and judging her in equal degrees. A shiver crept up her spine, and it was all too much too soon.
“No.”
“Juliet?”
“I can’t be here.”
She twisted away from him and ran back to his stoop as he followed and kept calling out her name.
Ethan found her sitting on the steps, holding herself as she cried, and he sighed at the sight of her. So now she had disappointed him, too, and she had no idea where else she would go. Ethan didn’t speak as he lifted her limp body from the concrete and carried her back to his bed. Fully dressed, Julie crawled under the sheets and couldn’t help but cry as she felt him hovering above her. She couldn’t bear to meet his face, and she kept crying as he closed the door.
It was one thing to go out in the world when there was some hope that things might click back into place once the shock had passed, and her mother could stand to love her again. It was something else entirely, far worse, when she was abandoned in favor of Greg and his pleas that things just got out of hand. What comfort could those words ever be to Amanda Beyer? And now she’d let Ethan down, the one person who had tried to make believe that a return to some kind of normalcy was even an option. She could do nothing but cry herself back to sleep.
She awoke with the light growing dim through the undraped window. From somewhere she couldn’t see, a baby was crying, and that sound forced Juliet out from under the covers. She slowly opened the door to Ethan’s bedroom and looked for him in every corner. When she didn’t see him, she started to become resigned to letting him down, but then there was a pounding of footsteps, and then he reappeared with a stunned smile when he saw her standing,
“Beat me to the punch, I guess,
” he said as he shuffled where he stood.
He inched closer to her and offered his hand again.
“This morning?”
Julie waited for the other shoe to fall.
“My fault. Bad idea. But you still need some air.”
His tender hand found hers.
“Do you trust me?”
She still did. As he led her out of the apartment again, Julie prepared to go down, but Ethan guided her up. They passed a door, and the baby’s cries intensified at their nearness to the source. They kept going and soon emerged on a rooftop.
And Juliet couldn’t help but gasp.
The place was full of flowers, and Julie was drawn to the scent of chrysanthemums in green vase. She walked through the instant garden and touched the petals. Like everything else, nature had seemed the enemy after they ran through a bloodied forest. But here, with the city skyline behind them, nature was once again something friendly. Julie took a deep breath of fresh air and closed her eyes around a bouquet of roses. She felt Ethan’s hands on her shoulders and turned to him slowly with moist eyes.
“How did you---?
“Nick’s got this… friend. Florist down the street. She hooked me up.”
Julie looked around at the garden just for her, and she fell to the roof with a set of new tears. But these weren’t bitter or hopeless. There might still be some goodness left in the world, and she needed to find a way to drink it in.
Before her fell to her side, Ethan plucked a mum and presented it to her carefully. Julie took the flower and inhaled its scent.
“Oh. And there’s something else.”
He reached into his pocket, and his hand reappeared with a small heart affixed to a tangled chain. Julie knew if by sight and took it quickly.
“Morales came by while you were asleep. They… they found this in the woods. It’s yours, right?”
Her locket. Snatched from her neck before she was forced into servitude. How had it survived? Julie’s fingers grazed the image of her father, and she knew that her mother had been wrong. He was far from disheartened by what had happened to her. No. He had been there from the moment when she first prayed for rescue, and through some power that she couldn’t imagine, he had led Ethan to her, and this was his way of telling her that she had to at least try to go on. Her fingers trembled around the clasp.