“Especially not me.”
“So, we have to forgive ourselves for the choices we’d no longer make.”
“That’s a really nice idea, but an unbelievably hard lesson.”
“I’m still learning it too,” I say.
Still adding light to my painting.
Still boldening the trust.
Still working on my paper heart.
NOW
58
I haven’t been on the chat site since the night of the salvage yard, mostly because it reminds me of Peyton, and I really, really miss her.
Sometimes I’ll wake up in the middle of the night, feeling that oh-so-familiar tightness in my chest. My pulse will race, and I’ll work so hard at trying to catch my breath, thinking about things like Story Land and maple syrup packets. My gut instinct will be to log on to Jane—to seek Peyton out. But not half a second later, I’ll remember. She won’t be on. Because she doesn’t exist.
The site is still active, and I miss it too … the other members, “hearing” and reading their stories. So many nights (and so many long, endless days), just knowing that people were on and that I could chat whenever I wanted made me feel a little less alone.
So now, six weeks later, I grab my laptop, wondering if people on the site will comment about how long I’ve been away. After the Peyton/Darwin incident, the Jane Anonymous administrators sent out messages warning members about the potential for online danger and catfishing. Those messages had followed news reports about the disappearance of Charley Mullins, the twenty-one-year-old man who abducted twenty-two-year-old Clara Peyton Adelman from Ashby, North Carolina, a year and a half prior and put her in a shed.
The same man who also abducted me.
Previous news articles regarding Clara’s disappearance stated that she’d been taken by a man who’d been posing as a police officer. Investigators found DNA (aside from Clara’s) among the shed debris, but they weren’t able to link it to anyone relevant until what happened behind the salvage yard. Charley’s DNA was discovered in a pool of blood made by the stab wound; only, by the time the police arrived on the scene, he’d already fled, leaving the mannequin behind, but managing to take the storybook with him.
The Forest Girl and the Wishy Water Well.
No one was able to find it.
Recent news reports didn’t leak my name, but they did detail how Charley had sought me out on a chat site for trauma victims, “under the guise of a twenty-two-year-old fellow survivor of abduction.” They also mentioned the first time I was taken—from my bed, in the middle of the night—acknowledging that it’d actually happened. The fact that they were admitting it felt empowering at first; at last people would know I hadn’t made the story up. But after that initial spark, the power on their words went out. I no longer felt they mattered.
What matters to me now is that Charley is still out there—still capable of taking someone else, still not getting the treatment that he needs. Charley Mullins: the boy who loved storytelling even more than I did, who used to help me escape the inferno inside my head with magical rings and twisty plots; whose own backstory was always too unspeakable to share …
It breaks my heart to know it’s him.
* * *
NightTerra has entered the chat room.
JA Admin: Welcome, NightTerra. Remember the rules: no judgments, no swearing, no inappropriate remarks. We here at Jane Anonymous make every effort to ensure a safe space for honesty and support, but, unfortunately, we live in a world where complete safety isn’t always possible. Please alert us to any member’s comments that make you uncomfortable or that you feel should be reviewed.
TulipPrincess: NightTerra!!! Long time no chat.
LuluLeopard: How are you???
NightTerra: I’m ok, and you guys?
LuluLeopard: We all heard about #Peyton
RainyDayFever: Word travels fast around here.
TulipPrincess: Speculation also doesn’t hurt.
TulipPrincess: So, just to be clear, that guy they’re talking about on the news … The storyteller …
TulipPrincess: That’s def him, right? The guy who posed as Peyton and Darwin …
TulipPrincess: They said he was active on a chat site. It sounded like this one … created by a woman who’d been abducted herself … Everyone’s saying it is.
NightTerra: Yes. Same guy.
TulipPrincess: Plus, the story, what they’re saying … It kind of went along with your story, what you went through.
LuluLeopard: But they didn’t mention a well.
NightTerra: Turns out it wasn’t a well. It was an old mining pit for coal. It took them a while to find it.
TulipPrincess: Have you been back there?
NightTerra: Not yet. Maybe someday.
LuluLeopard: Chills. I can’t even imagine.
LuluLeopard: Seriously … Knowing that guy was on here posing has kept me awake at night.
RainyDayFever: Me too. I almost didn’t come back on here.
TulipPrincess: I could never stay away. You guys have helped me get through so much crap.
TulipPrincess: I’m not sure I would’ve made it these last few months if not.
TulipPrincess: I’m moving out, btw. For real. It’s happening.
LuluLeopard: Wait, you didn’t tell me this!!!
TulipPrincess: Yep. My grandma said I can come live with her, as long as I enroll in school, which is kind of what I want to do anyway. So … I’m going.
TulipPrincess:!!!
TulipPrincess: San Diego, here I come!
LuluLeopard: How does your mom feel about it?
TulipPrincess: Honestly? She seems happy for me.
NightTerra: That’s great!
RainyDayFever: Yay, Tulip!!!
LuluLeopard: So happy for you!!!
TulipPrincess: Thanx. But getting back to you, NightTerra …
TulipPrincess: That guy is on the loose now, right? How are you doing with that?
NightTerra: I’m ok.
TulipPrincess: Better than ok. Sounds like you’re super brave.
NightTerra: I’m ok in this moment, but you know how that goes. These things change. One moment ok …
RainyDayFever: The next in a fetal position, eating a carton of doughnuts. #Confessions #WhatIDidLastNight
TulipPrincess: Lol!
RainyDayFever: Is anyone else craving doughnuts right now?
NightTerra: I just have to take each moment as it comes.
TulipPrincess: #SoWise
NightTerra: #JustWords #NotEasy
NightTerra: But thank you guys for being here and believing my story. It’s made all the difference. #Truth
TulipPrincess: #Love
LuluLeopard: #Trust
RainyDayFever: #Doughnuts!!!
NightTerra: Thank you guys again. Talk to you soon.
TulipPrincess: Later, NightTerra!
LuluLeopard: Sending a virtual hug.
RainyDayFever: Sending virtual doughnuts. Lol!
NightTerra has left the chat room. There are currently 4 people in the chat room.
NOW
59
I’ve learned some things.
Like that people will “love” you when it’s popular to “love” you. They’ll be right there beside you when you’re a star on the news for doing something heroic. Escaping from an abductor is heroic, so they’ll love you for that. Bonus points if you were abducted twice—and if those same people didn’t believe you the first time it happened.
They’ll shower you with “love,” apologizing for turning their backs before, and offer to bring you lunch / take you shopping / buy you coffee / listen to your story. They’ll tell you how brave they think you are—brave and heroic and sparkling and strong—and call you their best friend, and thank god for your safety.
“Love” like theirs can feel both comforting and intoxicating. But it isn’t real. And it doesn’t last.
I’ve learned that real love comes from those who stick a
round regardless of what’s popular. They don’t necessarily have to be with you in your own personal hell, but they can still sit beside you and offer a sweatshirt for your tears.
After the incident at the salvage yard, when police asked me questions and made me go over all the details, Garret was there, by my side, holding my hand and reminding me to breathe.
He’s also been there every day since. I’ve learned that love like his—that comes from true friendship—is super rare and well worth the risk.
A few weeks following my escape from the bus, when Detective Marshall had me come to the station to discuss a few more things, Garret insisted on being there too. And when the detective gave voice to what I’d been fearing, Garret held tight around my shoulder and reminded me I wasn’t alone.
Detective Marshall pushed a photo of Charley toward me, across the table. His gray-blue eyes angled slightly upward. His grin looked somewhat shy, not too wide; there was just a peek of teeth. It was a kind face, one I used to look forward to seeing, one that helped to reassure me. But now, it’s left me with so many questions. Like, why me? Why now? Was it truly our history of telling stories together that drew him here, after all these years?
And what about Summer’s Story? Was there a specific reason he wanted me to watch the show? Do clues to his backstory lie somewhere hidden in the plot? The theme of broken spirits? Of abandonment? Of abuse? And what about the setting of a camp commune? Was it similar to the setting of the book in “Peyton’s” captivity quarters—if such a book exists? Or the camp Charley had mentioned all those years ago in the quiet room?
“Terra?” Detective Marshall’s voice. “It’s possible he’ll come looking for you again, wanting to finish your story. The problem is we don’t know when. It seems he’s pretty new to this type of ‘storytelling,’ involving victims. But he’s getting better. He left DNA at the scene of his first crime. He knew better than to leave it at the second. The third time, in the salvage yard, he was overly confident. It’ll take him a bit to recover from that.”
The salvage yard, where he’d been working part-time, off-the-books, for the past eight months.
“What was his connection to the victim from North Carolina?” I ask.
“Clara. It seems he knew her, at least briefly. They’d been in a playwriting class together at a local community college, months prior to her abduction. People say Clara was a bit of a loner, never quite fit in. We know she lived and worked on her family’s animal farm, that she’d lost a sibling—her brother—due to health issues.”
“Were the issues related to his heart? Was his name Max?”
Detective Marshall jots the questions down, promising to check. But I’m not even sure the answers matter. The details are close enough.
“Clara enjoyed going on hikes,” she added. “She was on a hike when she got taken, having detoured from her route to explore an old abandoned one-room school.”
“A one-room school, just like the storybook. Did Clara also work at a yacht club?”
“She’d worked part-time at a local bed-and-breakfast. It seems Charley likes his stories inspired by real life but not limited by them. He takes artistic license, which makes studying his fairy tale—your version of it, that is—all the more complicated. We haven’t yet been able to uncover the actual storybook.” She sighed. “Further complicating is the fact that Clara died in a hiking accident—also like in the storybook—just months after her return from the shed, so we can’t exactly ask her questions.”
“Any chance there was foul play?”
“Nothing that was noted, but I’m not ruling it out. We just want you to be alert, aware, and to call us for anything.”
I pushed the photo of Charley away, no longer wanting to look. “He said he won’t come for me; that if I got away the third time, my story would have ended, the heroine—I—would’ve won.”
“He may change his mind and want to add another twist.”
“Or maybe he’ll leave me alone.”
“He’s still out there. You and Clara might not actually be his first crimes. We’ve been looking at cases where the victim resurfaced, alive, after a matter of days.”
“How many cases fit that profile?” Garret asked.
“At least four.”
“And have those families been contacted?”
“They have.” She nodded. “It’s going to take some time. I’m just glad we now know what we’re dealing with here. I’m sorry it’s been such a long process.”
Garret gave my forearm a squeeze as though reading my mind. Her apology didn’t make up for the six previous months of being shunned by everyone I knew, the eight weeks I’d spent on the mental health floor of the hospital, or the time that was wasted not searching for clues.
“We’ll have cars circling your house to keep an eye on things,” she said. “There will also be an unmarked car parked on your street overnight.”
Overnight? For how many nights? Did it even matter? Could I really count on them?
“Just promise me one thing,” she said, her eyes narrowing. “You’ll leave the investigative work to us, okay?”
Part of me wanted to ask where she thought we’d be if I’d never gone to look for Peyton. Would investigators have ever connected the two crimes? Would they have identified Charley and realized they had a serial abductor on their hands?
“And you can call me for anything.” She gave me yet another card.
I still have a stack of them by my bed. Maybe one day I’ll use them in my art. For now, they’re just another reminder to listen to my gut, regardless of what others say: rule number five.
And speaking of my parents’ rules … I’m grateful for them. They’ve given me a sense of safety and helped me to keep my parents close. But they haven’t always worked, which, I think, brings me to one of the biggest lessons of all: There are no guarantees. No absolutes or foolproof plans. But, as RainyDayFever would say, at least there’s ice cream and doughnuts.
NOW
60
I’ve asked Garret to take me to the site of my childhood house on Bailey Road. It’s no longer a heap of concrete and dust. Fresh grass has been planted where I used to do somersaults. A new house sits on the lot, painted bright blue with white accents.
We sit out front in Garret’s truck for several minutes, as I take it all in: the basketball hoop in the driveway, the wreath of oyster shells hanging on the front door, and the field hockey sticks propped up against a fence.
“People live here,” I say, stating the obvious. I’d heard the land had been sold, but I still half expected to find remnants of the fire.
I gaze across the street. The stained-glass sun is still there, in Mrs. Wilder’s front window. What would the scene look like now, through one of its rays?
“A lot different?” Garret asks as if responding to my thoughts.
“Different good. The house looks happy.”
“It does,” he says, pointing out sets of children’s handprints cast into a patch of cement on the walkway.
“Life goes on,” I say. Wanting to share something else from my old life, I pull the doorknob from my bag. “This is from my bedroom, from back when I lived here. I salvaged it from the debris.”
“That’s actually kind of cool.”
“On the night the house burned, my father wanted me to open my bedroom door. I’m not sure why—to save himself or to save me. But I never did, because I burned myself in the process.” I hold out my hand to show him where the knob lines up with my palm.
Garret runs his thumb over the phantom scar. “So, the knob represents survival, I’m assuming.”
I blink hard, taken aback by the word. “Why would you think that?”
“What else would I think? This knob survived the fire, and so did you.”
“But my parents didn’t. The knob has always represented what I did wrong—what I should’ve done differently.”
“What could you have done differently?”
“Forced the door
open, for starters.”
“The door might’ve saved your life. Did you ever consider that?”
One of the firefighters had said the same, especially when I described the smoke coming through the grain. But I hadn’t wanted to listen, because his words didn’t change what’d already happened, what I already felt I’d done.
“There’s something else,” I tell him, hearing the wobble of my voice. “Before the fire started, I’d gone downstairs to feed a log into the wood-burning stove. I thought I’d closed the stove door. But obviously I hadn’t.”
“You don’t know that for sure.”
“Why else would the fire have started?”
“A stray ember, a dirty stove, an antiquated system … Maybe something got clogged in the flue. Maybe someone had poked at the fire after you’d gone back to bed. The point is you won’t ever know the answer. But you have to be able to move forward without letting the question haunt you.”
I look away, sucking back tears. His words feel years late.
“I told you about my grandfather,” he continues, “about how he was a vet, taking on cases no one else would touch. He wasn’t able to save every animal, but he did his best with what he knew.”
“Did I do mine?” I peek up into his face.
“You’re here, aren’t you?”
I look back at the house, no longer able to recognize a single shred of what used to be. “For years, I’ve wondered what I could do to make it up to my parents somehow.”
“Who says you need to make anything up? Just go on living. Do the things you’ve always dreamed of. That’s what your parents would want. That’s what any good parent wants for their kid—just for them to be happy.”
“You really think so?”
Garret reaches into his back seat and grabs yet another of his sweatshirts. He uses the cuff to wipe my cheek. The fabric smells like soap. I want to blanket it over me, and so that’s what I do, allowing myself to lean my back against his chest. Garret wraps his arms around my shoulders.
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