The Runaway

by Lisa Childs

  Then she realized that Dr. Cooke had been speaking the entire time, softly, his voice like white noise that only her subconscious heard. And to which it responded.

  * * *

  She slipped back more than eighteen years to that night, to the giddiness of throwing a forbidden party while her parents were gone. To impressing the older guy on whom she’d had such a huge crush. “Whit . . .” she murmured.

  “I’m here,” he said, and the years had slipped away from him, from his voice, from his face. He was eighteen again.

  And she was sixteen.

  Her lips curved into a smile. “You’re so cute,” she murmured, then giggled. Her head was so light that she felt funny. Everything was funny. She giggled again.

  How much had she had to drink?

  Some friends of Whit’s had made trash can punch, throwing in everything from Bobby’s liquor cabinet. Her mom was going to be so mad. Fear flickered through her as she considered the consequences of what she’d done.

  But maybe she could find somebody with a fake ID, somebody who would replace what they used. How much had they used?

  Music echoed throughout the space. Then light . . . flashing, light bright in her face, until she closed her eyes. Then she drifted again, into the darkness, in Whit’s arms.

  He carried her now, climbing up the stairs to her bedroom. This was it. What she’d wanted ...

  But that fear gripped her again. “Please . . .” she murmured. “No . . .”

  Soft lips brushed across hers and then she was alone, the room spinning around her. She groaned, wanting to die. Embarrassment heated her body. Then water suddenly jolted her, and bright lights. Somebody had pushed her into the shower, rushing water over her head and her naked body. She shivered and cursed.

  Then she was back in the dark. But she wasn’t alone.

  “You stupid little bitch,” her mother berated her. “You stupid little bitch.”

  Tears leaked from her eyes. “I’m sorry . . .”

  “You’re going to be . . .”

  Then big hands gripped her, holding her down onto the bed. Other hands pulled her legs apart. And pain ripped through her as a penis was shoved inside her.

  “It’s hurting her.” That was Bobby’s voice, Bobby inside her.

  She screamed and screamed.

  A hand slapped her face. “The little bitch can be useful for once. And she won’t even know. That kid said she was drugged. So she can give us the child we want.”

  That was her mother’s voice. Her mother’s rationalization for having her own daughter raped.

  Bile rose in her throat, choking her.

  “She’s—”

  “I don’t care,” her mother said. “Just do it!”

  Grunting and groaning and then sticky heat filling her where she burned, where she hurt. So much pain. She screamed again and again.

  But still those hands held her down, gripping her shoulders. Pulling her close. She swung her hands out, trying to fight them off.

  * * *

  “Rosemary!” Whit shouted her name, and his hands soothed down her back as she trembled in his arms. “What is it? What happened? Who was it?”

  She shuddered against him. “My mother. My mother had my stepfather rape me.” Her voice shook with the horror of it, the horror she’d endured.

  “No wonder you blocked it,” Dr. Cooke said.

  She saw him now, standing in the room. He was real. Just like Whit was real. Now so was the nightmare. She understood completely why she’d been haunted for so long. The reality was even worse, even sicker, than she could have ever imagined.

  Whit’s muscular body shook with fury. “How could they . . .” His voice cracked with his anger and disgust. “How could they do that to you? I should have stayed even if she’d called the damn cops. I shouldn’t have left you!”

  She reached up and clasped his face in her hands. “She’s my mother. Why wouldn’t you think she’d keep me safe?”

  Instead she’d betrayed her in a way no woman should ever betray another, let alone one’s daughter.

  “She’s a monster,” Whit said. “And him . . . you need to call the police. You need to report them.”

  “Your Honor, you know the law,” Dr. Cooke told him. “You know the statute of limitations has expired.”

  Whit cursed.

  Punishing anyone was the least of her concerns right now. She couldn’t even think. Couldn’t breathe. Despite the oxygen blowing into the room, she needed air—nearly gasped for it as panic pressed down on her lungs, squeezing her chest.

  “Rosemary,” Whit said, and he tightened his grasp around her.

  But she pushed against his shoulders. “I can’t breathe,” she said. “I need to get out of here.” She jumped up from the couch.

  “You need to talk,” Dr. Cooke said. “You need to tell us what you’re feeling.”

  “Disgust!” she yelled. “Absolute disgust. And horror. I handed my baby—my sweet innocent baby—over to my rapists! I trusted my child to the monsters that destroyed my childhood. How the hell do you think I feel?”

  Whit’s guilt was nothing compared to hers—though she could see it weighing heavily on him. “It wasn’t your fault,” he tried to tell her. “You didn’t know—”

  “I remembered now,” she said. “I couldn’t have brought out those memories if they weren’t there. If I hadn’t always known . . .” And instead of facing the truth, she’d blamed Whit.

  Of course, her mother had helped her do that, had always claimed that he’d raped her. That she’d been a fool to trust him. She’d been a fool to trust her mother and Bobby. That bile rose in her throat again. She glanced at the couch, surprised she hadn’t thrown up like she had in that nightmare.

  But it wasn’t a dream. It was a memory—a memory of what had really happened. Not her mother’s lies ...

  Anger chased away the guilt. She was so damn angry. “Let me out!” she yelled at Dr. Cooke. She was angry with him, too, angry with him for bringing out the memory she’d rather think she didn’t have, that she had completely blacked out and not known what had happened. That would have been better than the reality. Anything would have been better than knowing the truth.

  No...

  Not blaming Whit. She should never have blamed him. But he had left her that night. Her anger turned on him now. “I need to be alone!” she told him, holding her hands out as if to hold him back.

  But he wasn’t reaching for her. He was probably as disgusted as she was. She turned toward Dr. Cooke. “Let me the hell out of this room right now or I will tell the sheriff you’ve held me against my will just like you held Genevieve.”

  Genevieve. Had she found out the truth somehow? Did she know her mother had given her up to monsters? Had they hurt her like they’d hurt Rosemary?

  “Rosemary, you’re distraught right now,” Dr. Cooke said in that maddening soothing tone that had lured her back to that nightmare. “You need to calm down. I can administer a sedative—”

  “Fuck off!” she yelled. “Let me out of here or I swear I will press charges!”

  “Rosemary,” Whit said, and now he used that same fake calm voice with her as if she was some wounded wild animal he didn’t want attacking him while he tried to help it. “You need to listen to the doctor. I can leave, if you’d rather talk to him alone.”

  “I want to be alone,” she said. “I need to process . . .” But there was no way to process what she’d learned, no way to deal with the horror of her reality, of Genevieve’s reality.

  Was that why the girl had run away?

  Rosemary wanted to run now, too. Needed to run ...

  She rushed over to the wall and began pounding on it. There had to be another switch somewhere, something that would open the panel that had let them inside the windowless, doorless room.

  “I have to let her out,” Dr. Cooke murmured, and he pressed a button to open that panel.

  “No!” Whit said. But before he could reach for her, she w
as out of that room. Fortunately Dr. Cooke had opened his office door, too, and she was able to run out in the hall. Once she started running, she didn’t stop—not until she was outside.

  Then the snow slowed her down as her boots sank through the crunchy surface into the cold, fluffy depths. Fortunately, her boots were high enough that the snow didn’t go over the tops of them, and it wasn’t snowing now. She was so hot with anger that she didn’t feel the cold even though she wore only a sweater with her jeans. She’d left her coat back in the office. The wind was strong enough that it tangled her hair around her face, and blinded, she nearly tripped. But she kept walking.

  She couldn’t go back to the hall now.

  She couldn’t see anyone—talk to anyone—not with what she knew, not with the disgust she felt not just with her family but with herself. How could she have let them get away with it? How could she have given them her daughter?

  Would Genevieve ever forgive her if she learned the truth? Would she ever learn the truth?

  Where was she?

  That was all that mattered. She was all that mattered—not how she’d come into the world but in how she might have gone out of it.

  Rosemary gasped as the errant thought struck her like a blow. Just as she hadn’t wanted to examine her nightmare for the truth, she hadn’t wanted to consider one of the reasons why she might not have heard from Genevieve: She could be dead.

  Rosemary doubled over as if someone had punched her in the gut. The pain was unbearable, even worse than in her nightmare. This pain gripped her heart so tightly it could barely beat; she could barely breathe.

  No.

  Genevieve could not be gone.

  She couldn’t . . .

  Tears overflowed her eyes and rolled down her face. Finally she felt the cold as it nearly froze those tears on her skin that the wind chafed and burned. It penetrated her clothes, chilling her flesh as much as the thought of Genevieve being dead chilled her soul.

  Maybe she’d never really run away from the hall. Maybe she was still here—somewhere on the property. Rosemary had wandered farther from the hall than she’d ever been—even that first day when she’d looked around while someone had cut her brake line. Or so the sheriff suspected.

  Why would someone want to hurt her? Or worse?

  So she would stop looking for Genevieve?

  Who didn’t want her daughter found?

  Her mother and Bobby didn’t seem particularly anxious to find Genevieve. Just the thought of them had bile rising up the back of Rosemary’s throat as disgust and nausea overwhelmed her.

  Had Genevieve learned the truth? Were Abigail and Bobby Walcott behind Rosemary’s daughter’s disappearance?

  She reached into her pocket and pulled out her cell phone. She needed to call them, but the thought had her choking on more bile. Her stomach churned with dread. But for Genevieve, she had to swallow it—the disgust, the horror of it all.

  Her fingers trembling with cold and nerves, she punched in the contact for her mother. Of course the call went directly to voicemail. Just the sound of her mother’s voice had Rosemary choking on a wave of revulsion. To leave a message, she had to clear her throat.

  “I know!” she shouted. “I know what you and Bobby did to me, you sick bitch! I know what you did, and if you don’t want everyone else to know, you will help me find Genevieve and then you’ll never have any contact with her or with me again!”

  She disconnected the call and wrapped her cold fingers around the cell, barely resisting the urge to hurl it across the snow. She glanced around now, uncertain of where she was. How far had she walked from the hall?

  She turned back but didn’t catch even a glimpse of the stone structure. Only shrubs and pine trees surrounded her, the boughs bowing beneath the weight of snow. One of the trees shuddered like she had leaving that message, and snow showered to the ground.

  Where was she?

  And was she alone? With the snow off the branches, the tree cast a strange shadow across the ground—an almost human shadow.

  “Hello?”

  Whit had probably followed her. He’d been so worried about her and so guilt-ridden. A sharp pang of guilt stabbed her heart for how she’d lashed out at him and at Dr. Cooke. She would be lucky if she had a job after the way she’d acted.

  And Whit . . .

  She would be lucky if he had followed her, if he wanted anything to do with her after what he’d learned about her and her sick family.

  “Whit?” she called out as tree branches moved again. It could have been the wind but for that strange shadow. “Are you there?”

  Nobody answered her.

  Whit hadn’t followed her, but somebody had. Somebody who wouldn’t answer her. Whoever it was stood between her and the direction of the hall. Scared of confronting him, she turned away and hurried along the path she’d found in the snow.

  It wasn’t a real path. Not a trail or a sidewalk, just a line of animal tracks across the snow. She glanced down at the imprints. Those weren’t deer tracks but big paw prints. Like dogs or the coyotes she’d heard that very first day she’d arrived on the island. She heard nothing howling now but the wind as it whipped up around her, blowing snow at her.

  She needed to get back to the hall, but as she looked over her shoulder, the shadow moved through the trees behind her. Maybe it wasn’t even human.

  Maybe it was something else chasing her across the snow, something predatory. But then she knew now how predatory humans could be. She quickened her step, nearly falling as her boots slipped. She had to hurry. She couldn’t let whatever that was catch her.

  Fear had her heart racing, her lungs straining for breath along with the cold. She was so damn cold, not just her skin and flesh chilled but her very soul. She ran blindly because of the wind tangling her hair across her face. She ran until she stumbled over some rocks.

  Then her breath caught, painfully, coldly, in her throat as she gasped. She’d reached the edge of the property, a steep drop off to the rocky shore below.

  Ice jammed up against those rocks and several yards out into the ocean. Despite the cold, waves rose up and broke over the ice—sending spray up so high that Rosemary felt the dampness of it against her frozen skin. She jerked back, from the edge of that steep drop. But before she could turn around and head back toward the hall, strong hands slammed into her back—shoving her over the edge and down the rocky slope.

  A scream tore free from her mouth as she fell. But she doubted that anyone would hear it—that anyone would be able to help her.

  * * *

  Where was she?

  She had been gone a long time. He should have followed her. But when Whit had started out of the windowless room after her, the doctor had caught his arm, physically holding him back.

  “Let her have some time,” Dr. Cooke had advised.

  Whit had tried to shake off Dr. Cooke’s grasp, but the man was strong. “She shouldn’t be alone right now—not when she’s so distraught.”

  He’d watched his wife and daughter die, but he’d never seen anyone in as much pain as Rosemary had been in—was still in. Now she was off somewhere alone. At least he’d been there for Deborah and Isabella. He’d never been there for Rosemary—not like he should have been. He shouldn’t have left her alone that night.

  “I need to find her,” he’d insisted to Dr. Cooke. “I need to talk to her.”

  But the shrink hadn’t released him. “Maybe you should talk to me first.”

  Whit had snorted. “I don’t need to process anything.”

  “What about your guilt?” Dr. Cooke asked.

  “It’s nothing new to me,” Whit assured him. “I can handle it. I’m not so sure that Rosemary can handle what she learned.”

  “She always knew,” Dr. Cooke insisted. “The memory was there. I couldn’t have brought it out if it wasn’t. She had just suppressed it.”

  “So she’s feeling guilty now, too,” Whit acknowledged. “That she gave her baby to those monst
ers.”

  Dr. Cooke nodded.

  He knew guilt well. He’d felt guilty over how he came into the world, over the pain it had caused his mother. And he’d felt guilty over Deborah dying giving birth to his child. But he’d experienced nothing like the guilt and horror he’d seen on Rosemary’s face. “I can’t imagine how she’s feeling. . . .”

  “I can,” Dr. Cooke murmured.

  “What?” Whit asked.

  The doctor shook his head and released his grasp on Whit’s arm. “I have things I need to take care of.” But he didn’t head toward his desk; instead he headed to the door that was open to the hall.

  Whit rushed out after him, not wanting to get trapped in that strange office. “I’m going to look for her,” he insisted. “Where would she have gone?”

  “She likes the conservatory,” he said, and gestured in the opposite direction from the reception area—the opposite direction in which he was heading.

  “Are you leaving?” Whit asked.

  Dr. Cooke turned back toward him. “If she needs me, the receptionist can reach me.”

  Whit hoped Rosemary wouldn’t need the shrink or anyone else. Not even him—since he’d already failed her when it had mattered most. And now ...

  He shouldn’t have let her run out of the office on her own. He should have made sure that she wasn’t alone. He headed down the hall in the direction Dr. Cooke had pointed. The corridor was dark, with tall mahogany doors lining it, except for the light that glowed at the end of it—kind of like the light in Cooke’s secret room.

  No. This light glowed like real sunshine. It must have been from the conservatory. He rushed down the hall toward that light and the glass-walled room for which the double doors stood open—almost as if someone had pushed through them in a hurry.

  He peered around the potted trees and plants, but while there were other women in the room, none of them was Rosemary. One woman was very slight—so small that she could have been a teenager if not for the dark circles beneath her eyes and the faint lines around her mouth. The other woman would not have been mistaken as a teenager for several decades. Her face was heavily lined beneath heavily applied makeup, and her red hair curled every which way.