26. Holden
Saturday morning dawns with delusional visions of Rosie walking toward me with the sunrise. I stare through my window into the distance, her curvaceous frame as real to me as it’s ever been. I watch her sashay toward me, my mouth watering with desire. The womanly figure fades away the higher the sun climbs until I realize she was never there.
I’m alone in my room, sweating on the floor with aching shoulders. The lack of sleep is giving me mirages. I reach for my phone on the nightstand to text her again.
Holden
Just tell me you’re okay. If you don’t want to sleep in my room anymore, that’s your choice. I just need you to respond to me.
Dixon, please.
I stare at our text thread, each passing second more agonizing than the first. No dots appear near her name. Finally, I get dressed before stomping out to the kitchen in search of Dolly.
My sister is sitting at the kitchen island in a pink sweatshirt. Her dark hair is braided over her shoulder. She’s sipping on a mug of coffee and reading a book with a man’s chest and abs plastered across the cover.
I plant my fists on the counter in front of her. “Have you heard from her?”
Her eyes scan the page for another few seconds before shifting up to meet mine. She tilts her head to the side curiously. “Rosie?”
I scoff. “Who else do you know that’s been missing since Tuesday?”
Dolly scrunches up her nose. “She’s not missing. She went to be with her family. Her mother is missing, for God’s sake. I’ve texted her, but she has every right to some time off. I don’t know what kind of twisted tasks you have her up to in your room all afternoon, but you’ll survive.”
Dolly lifts her chin defiantly before turning her eyes back to her book.
“So, you’ve heard from her?” I question.
My first text to Rosie was on Thursday night, politely asking her when she would be back. Friday morning, I asked her if she was getting my texts, and this morning, I’m truly beginning to think something bad happened to her. I’m sure of it.
Dolly sighs. “Yes. She texted me Friday morning that she was taking off the rest of the week.”
The sting of her rejection takes me off guard. I physically step back, realizing that not only is Rosie getting my texts, but she’s also leaving me on Read.
You’re the definition of pathetic.
I turn away to get myself a cup of coffee.
“What is going on with you? Are you … into her? You can tell me. I won’t tell Duke.”
I reach for a mug, my hand shaking. I pour the coffee, unable to lose the uneasy feeling deep inside my gut.
It’s called rejection, fucker.
“It’s not like that. She’s been helping me sleep. Ever since prison …” It’s on the tip of my tongue to tell Dolly about my time spent in solitary confinement.
She would understand. She would more than understand, probably sign me up for therapy or buy a cot to sleep on in my room, forcing everyone to take shifts as my sleeping buddy. My inability to ask for help from my family is some combination of being the oldest child and losing my mother in adolescence, then being raised by an absent alcoholic father with four younger siblings.
I don’t need help.
I don’t have the luxury of help.
Soft fingertips touch my forearm, jerking me back to reality. I look down at Dolly’s young face.
“Holden, what did they do to you?” she whispers.
Hours bleed into days, which bleed into weeks and months. Time passes on a continuum that I have no control over and no grasp of.
I stare at the white walls, praying like I’ve never prayed before. I don’t understand who God is anymore or what my purpose on this earth could possibly be.
Twice a day, someone drops food outside of my cell before opening an eight-by-eight-inch door. The bowl sits there, filled with rice, beans, overcooked meat, along with a bruised banana occasionally. They never speak.
I grow accustomed to the bananas, looking forward to the days when they’re served in the mornings. I start to notice that every three days, a brown-and-yellow banana is in the little food window. I start laughing the day I realize there’s a pattern, shaking my head as I peel it.
The next time it comes, I catch myself mouthing, Thank you.
Thank you? What the fuck is wrong with me?
Then, the nightmares start. It’s been weeks, but I don’t know how many.
I’m only let out of the ten-by-ten-foot cell twice a week for thirty minutes. Two guards flank me as I’m shuffled into a small field, surrounded by a razor-wire fence. They’re both armed with guns and mounted on horses. There are three additional guards stationed on the exterior of the fence.
I run the entire thirty minutes, doing sprints back and forth. The expelling of energy seems to be the only thing that gets me through the next two to three days before I’m let out again.
Every time I’m put back in with gen pop, another group attacks me within a few days. I defend myself, and I’m put back in isolation.
I ask the guards if I can get books or something to write with in my cell, but they ignore me.
I ask them if I can talk to my lawyer, but they ignore me.
It doesn’t matter what I ask; they never answer.
I start fantasizing about killing them. One by one, in my dreams, I annihilate each one. First one, I have to take a rock and bash his head in. Once he falls from the horse, I grab his gun and shoot the next one.
It always ends the same. I wake up in a cold sweat in my empty cell, no sounds, except the rats in the hall scuttering about. I drop down and do one hundred push-ups. On a tiny divot in the rock wall, I can hold on long enough to get in forty-five pull-ups before I lose my grip.
I collapse onto the cold concrete, my heart rate skyrocketing. My mind races to latch on to a new fantasy to keep me occupied, to keep me grounded to reality.
Rosie Dixon’s face on the night I killed her uncle flashes through my mind. Her gaping mouth as she watched another woman going down on me is my last vibrant memory before I found my sister being violated by a man twelve years older than her. Then, I shot him, and I was arrested.
Rosie Dixon is my last link to life before this nightmare.
And her father is the one who falsified the evidence that led me to this place. I also believe he must be the one who sent me to solitary confinement for an indistinguishable number of months.
Fuck Rosie Dixon.
Fuck all the Dixons.
The bull underneath me bucks wildly. I grip the leather strap, keeping my other hand high as my body is thrown into the air and whipped back down again. The smell of cow shit, mixed with the mud from the rain over the weekend, fills the air.
“That one’s a winner,” Cash says from the side of the steel pipe fence.
My thighs grip the sides of the animal, clenching his back to stay on for dear life. I hear the buzzer right as my cowboy hat flies off. I reach my hand back down to hold on with the other one. One of the ranch hands rides up next to us on a horse and releases the flank strap. The bucking immediately slows, but he’s still pissed that I’m riding his back.
I slide off to one side as he pivots the other way, running for the fence and easily sliding through it. The adrenaline shooting through my bloodstream is a high I spent my early twenties chasing. Now, I use it as a distraction.
I look over toward the main house and the long driveway from the county road. There’s still no sign of Rosie’s car.
“What time is it?” I ask Sterling.
The cowboy working the chutes runs over with my hat and hands it to me. I place it back on my head. I use the bottom of my shirt to dry the sweat on my brow.
“Eight thirty. And, no, she ain’t here yet.”
I throw my brother a look, but there’s no use in telling him to shut up. They’ve all caught on that something is happening between me and Rosie even if it’s just sleeping.
The sound of tires crunching gravel draws my attention toward the driveway. An unfamiliar black Lexus is coming down toward the main house. I start walking toward it, flanked by Sterling and Cash. My stomach is in knots as the car parks and a woman steps out. She’s older, in her early fifties. She’s classically beautiful with silver-white hair. She’s dressed in creamy-white slacks and a matching button-up blouse.
“Hello. I’m here to see Rosie. Is she here?” she asks, holding out her hand to me with a tight smile. “I’m June Clancy, her aunt.”
I extend my hand to shake hers. “Rosie hasn’t been here since Tuesday.”
June’s face is stricken as she freezes in place. “What?”
The alarm bells in my head start ringing as I step toward the woman. “When did you last see her?”
She shakes her head, blinking in confusion. “I haven’t seen her in years. We spoke on the phone, and we texted back and forth the last few days. She never showed up to her father’s when we were supposed to meet. She said she would be here, working.”
My heart beats loudly in my ears as my throat begins to close up. The ice-cold fear that something has happened to her washes over me, surging me forward. I grab June’s upper arms, jerking her toward me. She shrieks in fear.
“What happened? What was Rosie so worried about that made her leave?”
June’s eyes widen and grow watery as she gapes up at me. “I—I have no idea what happened to her! We were supposed to meet at her father’s house on Tuesday evening, but she texted me and said she was too tired.”
I release her, spinning around and stalking up to the main house. “Then what?” I call back.
I hear her footsteps, along with Cash’s and Sterling’s, trying to keep up with me.
“Then, by Friday, I tried calling her, but she didn’t pick up. She texted and said she was feeling sick. The last thing she texted was that she’d be here today, working, and I could come see her.”
“Why was she meeting you in the first place? What happened with the Dixons?”
“Her mother is missing. She’s … been missing for weeks.”
Why didn’t she tell me? Did she go looking for her?
The unanswered questions shoot through my mind. I clench my fists, feeling the urge to hit someone. As soon as I reach the front door and open it, I call out for Dolly.
“Dolly! Where are you?”
I hear the mixer in the kitchen whirring.
“Kitchen!” she calls back.
I force myself to walk and not run as I approach the kitchen, where she’s dumping flour into the mixing bowl.
“When was the last time you talked to Rosie, and what did she say? Talked on the phone, not a text.” I plant my hands on the countertop in front of her, tensing up and trying to keep myself from driving into town and strangling Clay Dixon until he tells me when the last time was that he spoke to his daughter.
Dolly’s eyes are filled with alarm as the color drains from her face. “I haven’t spoken to her on the phone, only texts.” Her voice is barely audible. “She was supposed to be here this morning … I thought she was running late.” She visibly gulps, clapping her hand over her mouth. Tears well up in her eyes.
My body feels like it’s about to burst into flames. I force myself to remain in place, to think. “Do you have her on your phone? Her location?”
Dolly sucks in a ragged sob. “Yes. I have it on Snapchat.” She pulls it from the back pocket of her jeans, opening up the app.
I move around the island so I can see what she’s seeing on the screen. The little cartoon Bitmoji face with red curls and aqua eyes looks exactly like Rosie. Her cartoon isn’t far from the one with black hair that looks like Dolly.
“Where is that?” I peer closer at the map.
“It’s her last known location. But it says … three days ago. So, it’s probably not where she is anymore.”
“Is it on the ranch?”
Dolly zooms in on the cartoon. “Looks like it’s more on the dirt road portion if you drive toward Elmott. Why would she be going that way? She was supposed to head into La Pradera to meet her aunt.”
“Her aunt is here.” I reach for Dolly’s phone, which she hands over.
“So, there’s no way to make it update to her current location?”
Dolly shakes her head, wiping the tears from her cheek with the back of her hand. “What do you think happened? Car accident?”
I consider the possibility. Rosie could have gotten in a car accident, but wouldn’t her next of kin have been notified, which means June would have heard by now? Clay Dixon wouldn’t bother telling us about Rosie being hurt or hospitalized even if she was unable to communicate herself.
But why keep it from June?
Also, why all the texts? Why has she been texting and just not showing up anywhere or answering the phone?
Unless someone else has her phone.
“What should we do? Call her father?”
The possibility that Rosie was supposed to go meet her aunt at her father’s house and he hasn’t come looking for her is a bright red flag in my mind. This entire situation has me coiled for some kind of unhinged attack waiting in the wings.
There’s nothing Clay Dixon isn’t capable of when it comes to ruining my life. He made that clear after my sentencing when he came to visit me and told me exactly where I’d be sitting for the next two years—off and on in solitary confinement—followed by another thirteen in a maximum-security prison.
When I got out early, he started planning his revenge.
But what does that have to do with his wife and daughter? She was working here before I even got out.
The front door opens, and heavy footsteps approach. Cash’s face is grim as he enters.
“She’s calling the sheriff. I couldn’t very well stop her.”
I pause, debating his words and my next move.
On the one hand, Rosie is the very rich and powerful mayor’s daughter. Surely, they’ll do whatever they can to find her even if it is just for show.
On the other hand, she technically went missing on Redford Ranch. No one’s seen her since she was here.
And I’m the first name on the mayor’s shit list.
“Tell them I’ve been out hunting with Duke. Other than that, nobody tell the sheriff a damn thing other than that she left Tuesday afternoon. Call Warner and get him out here now.”
Cash flexes his jaw, clearly catching on to what I’m thinking. I meet his eyes, and we both know that one of us is probably going to end up in jail for this.