by Eliza Park
Emily laughed, “You’ll have to take notes, Sunshine, I know how shitty of a student you are.”
Emily’s dictation on the proper ways to take down an enemy were surprisingly accurate. Scarily accurate, and although I was curious about the story behind her admission, I didn’t ask. It was her story and if she wanted to keep it in silence with her therapist, I understood. The bond of our shared trauma brought us closer together. We started working on self-defense moves daily, the progress was slow, but it was something, and occasionally we’d attract the attention from an orderly or nurse and receive smiles and nods of approval.
Em reminded me constantly that I needed to take up running if I was ever going to escape a situation like I’d been in before.
“Distract and then run,” she said, her small hands on my shoulders. “Especially if there’s substance abuse involved.”
I frowned, “Like if they’re high?”
“Yeah,” she avoided my gaze for a moment, “Like when they’re manic. Not much you can do other than distract, run, and pray you can get away.”
She was folding up her journal, preparing for her next session with Jenny.
“So, what’s your stepbrother like?” I asked, trying to sound casual.
Emily thought for a moment, her chestnut hair piled high up on her head, “He’s a good dude. Lives in New York now, I think.”
“You guys don’t talk much?”
She shrugged, “He’s come to visit a few times, but he’s always worried he’s going to run into his dad.” Her voice fell on the last part.
“When you get out, you could go stay with him.”
Her head tilted to the side, “I hadn’t thought of that.”
“You could come with me to Idaho. And we could go to Ireland with my cousin Janey. I can cover the cost.” I sounded eager, excited, and I realized that I was. I wanted to get out of here and start living a life away from the past.
“I know you can afford it,” she laughed and considered my proposition a moment, “I could go to New York and meet you in Ireland. I mean, no offense Sunny, but Idaho sounds boring as hell.”
I laughed, “I know, that’s why I want to go. I could use some boring.”
She walked to the door with her journal under her arm, “You know what? Me too.”
I watched her leave, a plan forming in my mind, and pulled my journal out of its resting place, folding it open on the desk and starting to write another letter to Maverick. I was heeding Jenny’s advice for the most part. But when it came to recapping the things that were happening here, it was Maverick I wanted to talk to. So, I wrote to him, explaining like I would if he was in front of me. I wrote to him about my mom, the mysterious envelope, how I suspected it was from his dad, about the training we were doing, the progress I was making, and even the memories I was uncovering.
Day 25
Carole sat before me in one of the cushioned patio chairs, her blonde hair impeccably styled in a chignon. She was at an angle and she looked a little uncomfortable, but her gaze on mine was steady. “It was really nice to hear from you mo-Carole.” I still wasn’t sure how to address her. She’d been my mom for 18 years, at least from a distance.
She flinched at the correction. It was clear she hadn’t had a Botox injection in weeks, the lines along her eyes and mouth were more than noticeable. “I’m so sorry for what you’ve been through the last year, darling.”
I scoffed, “It’s been more than a year.”
“I know,” she said to her hands, “I came to tell you all I know about what happened with your...birth mom.”
I sat back in my chair, shifting with anticipation. I wasn’t expecting this kind of revelation from Carol. She went on.
“I owe you this. Well, I owe you much more than this. But I think you need to know now, for your own sake, what happened all those years ago.” She took a deep breath and began.
“Your father and I had been married for about a year before we started trying to have a baby. This was before his company became so successful. We weren’t poor, but we weren’t where we are now. There were a lot of late nights, but your father never forgot to call me during those days. We tried for five years and in those five years your dad’s company became mega successful. Our lifestyle changed, our friends changed, we built our beautiful house in Connecticut, and still no baby. I saw a fertility specialist who told us that everything looked normal, there was no medical reason why I couldn’t conceive.
Your father started disappearing more. He’d go on longer business trips, forget to call me, come home even later than usual and we stopped actively trying to have a baby. I was so devastated, Celeste, and so lonely. None of the friends I had felt like people I could try to confide in. Even the maids looked at me with pity and I knew why. I saw the lipstick stains on his shirt collars, I smelled the women’s perfume.
Before long, your father asked me how I would feel about adopting. At first I resisted. We just have to try harder, I thought, rediscover one another as a couple and everything will work. He said there was a university student at his office who found herself in a bad situation- she had a baby she didn’t want to keep. After a few more discussions, I agreed. It hadn’t even occurred to me that the baby was his. He wouldn’t let me invite her to dinner or over to the house, and he had his lawyers draw up all the paperwork. She wanted no contact, and we were both okay with that.
On the day you were born, your father was overseas on business, so I waited for you in the waiting room alone, nervous, and so, so excited. The nurse called me back and I walked into the delivery room where your…mom was holding this tiny pink bundle. The nurse took the baby from her and handed you to me and that’s when I knew, Celeste, that you were the lovechild of this woman and your father. But in that moment, I didn’t care. I wanted you so desperately and there you were, this perfect, pink cheeked baby with the biggest eyes.
I hadn’t been holding you for more than a few minutes before the woman, your mom, started screaming. She became hysterical and you started crying too, making the loudest, most horrible wailing sound I’d ever heard. She was demanding I give her back to you and leave. She wanted to tear up the contract and keep you forever.
I couldn’t do it, Celeste. I’d waited so long for you and legally, you were mine now. So, I left. I turned and I walked out the door and brought you home where you belonged. Her crying still haunts me to this day. Sometimes I wonder if I’d given you back if things would have ended differently for her and if you would have had a better life.”
She paused here, reaching for a tissue off the glass coffee table. Normally, I would think this a facade, but she seemed generally depressed about my situation.
“You grew up right before my eyes. You were such a happy, brilliant little baby and you grew into this amazing little girl. You were adventurous and clever, always building something and getting into trouble around the house. You might not remember but we had so much fun together. And even though I knew you were my husbands and not mine, I loved you like my very own. I stayed up with you every night those horrible first six weeks when you were learning to sleep, I rocked you and played with you and fed you. We were together constantly.
The phone calls started sometime after your third birthday. The phone would ring endlessly for hours and hours until we eventually changed our number. We reported it to the police as harassment and they said there was nothing they could do. For a while it stopped, and letters started showing up at our door. Endless amounts of letters all addressed to you. I called our lawyer, begged your father to call your mom and ask her to stop, offer her more money, anything to make it all go away.
Our lawyer sent her a cease-and-desist letter stating that any more contact would result in a lawsuit. The letters and phone calls stopped, but one day at the park, I saw her standing over by a tree, watching you. I reported it to the police but again, there was nothing they could do. I started getting an uneasy feeling that I was being watched everywhere I went. I stopped taking
you to the library, to the grocery store. Our play dates were only held on our territory under my direct supervision. I wouldn’t let you go anywhere with anyone unless I was there.
When you started kindergarten, I relaxed a little. I was there for pick up and drop off and the staff was under very clear instruction not to let anyone else take you home. Your fifth birthday party was a big one. We invited the whole neighborhood and had a huge celebration. It had snowed, but everyone still managed to come because you were so, so adored. You were wearing the cutest little green dress that made your eyes just pop.”
Carole smiled, tears in her eyes, the lines of her mouth making her look particularly human. “I don’t know if you remember this, honey, but that boy who lives next door, Maverick? He tried to get you to dance with him and it was the funniest thing. You were so stubborn.”
“Mav tried to dance with me all the way back then?”
Carole nodded and rolled her eyes, “The two of you at those parties, it was just adorable. I could have sworn he had a little crush on you even at that age.” She sobered then, her expression grave. “It only took a moment. One single moment when I wasn’t watching for you to disappear. I assume she came in right through the front door and waited until I was distracted before tucking you into your coat and mittens and taking you right back out the front door. Smart girl that you are, Celeste, you started crying the second the cold air hit your face. I watched from the front steps as she jumped into a car and sped away.
It was your father who acted. He was out the door behind me before I had a chance to react, keys to the jeep in his hand. ‘I’ll get her back,’ he’d yelled at me. ‘I’ll get her back.’”
Carole shook her head, “Had I known…I just wish I’d been there.”
“What happened?” I asked, my voice barely a whisper.
“The next hour was the worst of my life. Still to this day I never want to relive a moment like that. Your dad returned with you in his arms and told me what happened. He said your mom had been driving really fast, lost control of her car and driven straight into a ditch. Then she tried to make it on foot, and your dad followed her. They were right off the Putnam Lake, which was unusually frozen solid in a little area off of the highway. Your mom tried to cross it with you, thinking she would get away because your dad wouldn’t follow. By the time your dad got to you, you were halfway across the lake, standing in front of a giant hole. He got you to come back to him, slowly, but you kept pointing at the hole and saying, “She fell in, daddy you have to get her. She fell in.” But it would have been too late, Celeste. There was nobody thrashing in the water. Your dad thinks she got caught in a current and was pulled too far under the ice before she had a chance to hold onto anything.
You were different after that. You stopped wanting to be adventurous, you had nightmares that left you screaming and gasping in the middle of the night. You’d say strange things to me and scream whenever your dad came into a room. You started acting out, throwing things, ripping up your dresses and throwing tantrums. It was like someone had replaced you with a completely different child. We tried having you talk to a therapist but after several violent outbursts in her office, she said the only solution was medication.”
Carole paused, sniffing, folding, and unfolding a tissue in her hands, “We knew that of course, one of the nannies we’d hired had given you something. I was desperate, I didn’t ask what it was.”
I frowned.
She sighed, “I wish we had done more, seen more therapists, talked to other professionals. The medication kept you quiet. The little girl I’d raised was gone. You were just an empty shell. You stopped talking to your dad completely and ignored me, so I gave up. We all just gave up on you and I’ll never forgive myself for it.”
Her cheeks were stained from the tears that fell freely down her face. She was genuinely upset, and I felt sorry for her. So many things were starting to make sense. All the pieces of the puzzle finally coming together. The nightmares I had, the way my dad could never quite look me in the eye.
“She really is dead, then?” I asked Carole, still processing all of this information.
She nodded, holding a fistful of tissues. “The police never found a body.”
I looked away. Well, that was it then. I would have to call my grandparents and let them know what Carole had revealed to me. I wondered briefly if they still would want me to come and stay with them. If they’d want to get to know me now that there was no chance of their daughter ever coming home.
“There’s something else,” Carole said, reaching down to pick her giant purse up off the floor. She pulled out a giant stack of old letters, tied together with a rubber band. “I could never bring myself to read them or throw them away.” She handed them to me with a trembling hand, “I hope they bring you closure, and if not that, I hope they give you some insight into the kind of person your mother was.”
I gave her a weak smile, a weird knot forming in my throat, “Thank you, mom,” I said.
Carole left after giving me a big hug, her makeup completely ruined from our encounter. I walked back to my room with the letters in my hands, excited to open them and read all the things my mom had been wanting to tell me for the first five years of my life.
A blood curdling scream ricocheted through the halls, causing my hair to stand on end. I felt something, in the pit of my stomach, and knew instinctively that it was Emily. I sprinted down the hall, ignoring the warning call from a nurse to slow down, and nearly fell into the room. Emily was standing on her bed in the corner, black tears streaming down her face. A middle-aged man stood over by my side, his hands on his hips, looking at her with disappointment. Marie was in front of her, holding her arms out and talking in that calm, soothing voice.
“No,” Emily was crying, “I won’t leave, I won’t go with him.”
My heart sank into my stomach.
“You have no reason to be here anymore, honey. You’ve been sober for a year. You can go home, go back to high school.”
I could see the way her hands were shaking against the wall.
“I won’t do it. I won’t do it. Don’t make me do it,” She wailed.
The middle-aged man turned to me with a sigh, brown eyes so dark they were almost black. He offered me a sympathetic smile.
I scowled at him, feeling the disgust all the way down in my heels.
This was him.
Emily’s rapist.
The man held up his hands, “You can stay till the end of the month, then we’ll come back to get you. But you’re not staying here another year, Emily.” He left the room then, shaking his head.
I dove out of his way, afraid to get any of his creepiness on me.
Emily fell down against the wall, her mouth open in a sob.
I rushed over to her, climbing on to the bed and wrapping my arms around her.
“I can’t go with him,” she said, “I can’t. I can’t. I can’t.”
“I know,” I said. “I know. I won’t let you. We’ll figure it out. I promise. We’ll figure it out.”
Day 29
Tomorrow was my last day in rehab. My grandparents were flying in and picking me up at the front of the facility. They were already in town, and I’d laughed when I’d heard them bickering over the phone about when to leave to come and get me. My official release was at noon.
I’d read and re-read all the letters my mother had written me. They were beautiful, describing a life I wished I’d had full of adventures across Dublin as a mother-daughter runaway duo. Maeve had gone to Dublin after my birth, intending to drink herself to death. There she’d met a boy.
“A tall, dark haired native with eyes the color of butterscotch.”
The man, named Colm, convinced her to come back to America and fight for me. She’d made plans. Broad, elaborate plans to whisk my back there and raise me among the rolling green hills. I wanted to go there. I wanted to see the things she had and meet the man who could have been my dad. My heart ached for the possi
bilities.
Emily had three days left before her stepfather was coming back to get her, but we’d been working on a few different plans.
Option A: Stab him in the throat the second she gets home and has a knife.
Option B: Fold herself into a pretzel to fit into my tiny carry-on bag, where she will be conveniently “forgotten” at the airport with a pocket full of cash and an Idaho number to call when she made it somewhere safe. Meet me in Ireland this fall. She’d already called her stepbrother in New York.
Option C: Find a lawyer, press charges, stay at the rehab facility on Maeve’s trust money where it was safe.
Option B was obviously my favorite. The only problem was that Emily was too tall to fit into my bag. We’d tried the night before.
I stood in front of the phone with a different number in my hand. One I’d never called before, despite the personal connection I had. Marie had looked it up for me and slipped it under my pillow when she did her nightly checks, giving me a wink.
I dialed the number and waited, listening to it ring, my journal balancing in one hand, a pen sticking out of the middle. For whatever reason, my brain could remember Mr. Lockwood’s extension from the times I’d seen Maverick dial it. I was surprising myself every day with the memories I was retaining. I hit the extension.
A familiar voice came through the line and I inhaled with a shudder.
“Abel Lockwood’s office,” Maverick said, sounding far too grumpy.
“Hi,” I said.
There was a pause, “Celeste?” His voice was hopeful, excited.
I smiled, “Um, hi.”
“How—how are you?”
“I’m okay, I’m almost out, actually.”
“Yeah, I know. I mean, I assumed,” He cleared his throat, “30 days tomorrow, right?”
“Yep,” I bit my lip, “I’m going to Idaho with my grandparents.”
Another pause, “Your…grandparents?”