Chapter 14 #2
“After they sent me more photos, terrible photos, I pleaded guilty. They threatened to do terrible things to you. Even worse than the ones I saw…” He had the courage to look straight at me.
“Bill Luther from Arrow Corp advised me to plead guilty, but only after a period of reflection. The men in the unit were afraid that if I confessed publicly, they would kill you… They believed it was likely that I would never see you again…” He swallowed and his eyes filled with tears.
Now he looked like my dad again, not the man who played politics. At that moment, I wanted nothing more than to believe him and hug him, but I forbade myself and clenched my hands to control the shaking.
He continued. “They’ve been keeping Coldville under surveillance for a long time.
Since the claim was about the oil sands industry, they expected you to be held prisoner near Coldville.
The men up there have few options and they’re…
” He stopped and I had the impression that the word primitive almost slipped out of his mouth.
“It took us a while to find out you weren’t being held in Canada. ”
“How?”
Dad shook his head and regained control of himself. “That’s beside the point. Anyway, that was when we tried to stall them with my alleged confession so they could search elsewhere.”
“Where?”
“The Atlantic.”
Then someone from Coldville spilled the beans! “How did you arrive at that?”
“I told you, but that’s beside the point, honey. A complicated story, but it started with the photos. Bill Luther had the background enlarged and saw a crane like the ones used on fishing boats.”
My head was spinning as a storm of emotions raged in my heart.
I didn’t know what to believe anymore. Dad sounded so honest. It all sounded so plausible and he actually had men from his best military unit search for me.
I hadn’t thought that mercenaries could be pulled out of a crisis area, but basically, the men belonged to my father, he paid them, so he could dictate the orders.
Dad looked at me. “Every day, I hoped for a sign, Willa. I prayed…and I haven’t done that since you-know-when.”
Since the death of Florentine and his son Nicholas. I involuntarily thought of Isaac.
“Do you know who was behind all this?” I asked, my throat tight.
Dad shook his head. “Not quite. A few men from Coldville, certainly. And believe me, I won’t rest until those men have been brought to justice.” He sounded almost like a mercenary himself now. And his expression was harder than a crowbar.
I had to ask him. Now. I had to say the name and ask him even if the thought alone sent me into an irrational panic. “I-Isaac,” I finally managed to say, feeling the echo like a cold shiver down the back of my neck. My tongue stuck, but I forced myself. “I-Isaac McCormack.”
For a split second, Dad’s eyes flashed. He knew the name. “Who is that?”
I stiffened. He was lying! He was lying to me! “You know.”
He was silent for a long time and then a deep breath went through his body. “Was it him? Did he have you?”
My lips trembled as the images burst forth without me being able to stop them.
Isaac above me, kneeling between my legs, Isaac behind me, the horrific pain, the blood, and the faint ray of light, like a finger of hope…
I closed my eyes for several heartbeats and then asked, “Why didn’t you ever tell me about him, Dad? ”
He took the napkin from his lap and tossed it angrily on the table. “The nutcase who claims to be my son?”
“He is your son.” I had to get through this now no matter how hard it slammed me back into the past and the swamp.
Dad stared at me, his blue eyes narrowed with anger. “He told you that, right?”
“He looks like Richard Hampton, like my grandfather, your father,” I whispered.
Dad made a strange noise, a mixture of disbelief and derision.
“People in this world claim to be the sons or daughters of rich men all the time. Sometimes, they just happen to look like someone in the family, but Isaac McCormack has nothing, nothing in common with your grandfather. You didn’t even know him.
” I had rarely seen Dad so angry, the man who always maintained his composure.
This time, though, I didn’t believe him. “He said you planted drugs on him. He said you paid his bail after two and a half years. All so I would never find out you raped his mother.”
Dad rose, his face now ashen. “Willa, child, do you hear yourself… What happened to you out there?” He looked genuinely horrified, so genuinely horrified that I doubted everything.
And that was what made me angry and terribly helpless.
But he had lied about Isaac earlier. Maybe he was lying the entire time.
My heart was pounding hard against my ribs. “What happened to me?” I heard myself replying, sounding far away. Instinctively, I stood and ripped the wool poncho and long-sleeved shirt over my head, then pulled off my pants.
Dad’s eyes went as wide as barn doors and his face, if that was possible, even paler.
“ He did this!” I said fiercely but with a hint of tears in my voice that I hated.
I hated my weakness. I hated myself. I hated feeling so vulnerable.
“He beat me with his belt and stubbed out his cigarettes on me when he felt like it. He broke my bones and…he did much worse things…” Things I can never tell anyone!
Things that will separate me from the rest of humanity forever.
My voice failed me, but I pulled myself together, I had to keep talking.
“And you state he’s not your son! Why else would he do something like that if not for revenge?
Who would do something like this?” Now my shoulders were shaking and my whole body was trembling.
“Good God, Willa Rae…” Dad came toward me but I backed away.
“No! Don’t touch me!” Without meaning to, I suddenly found myself with my back against the wall and a storm of fear whipped through my veins.
Dad stopped with his arms dangling and I picked up my shirt and pressed it to my chest.
“Isaac McCormack has threatened me several times,” he said, now sad and shocked.
“Even back in Baton Rouge. He’s paranoid and sick.
He’s obsessed with me being his father. And I didn’t plant drugs on him, I merely hinted to the police that this young man might have a serious drug problem.
He harassed and assaulted me in the middle of the street, which was completely absurd.
So, I reported him and expressed my suspicions.
He was then followed and his motel room was later searched.
They found a lot of cocaine. And his bail…
I actually paid it, yes. Because I felt sorry for him.
I didn’t want him to get into trouble because of me. ”
Dad’s words swirled through my mind, driving me absolutely insane.
I didn’t know what to believe anymore, but in all the confusion, I remembered something I had completely forgotten.
“You also said Mom was sick,” I said, my voice breaking.
“You said she needed her pills because, otherwise, she would imagine things that weren’t true.
But I bet that was a lie. And you’ve been telling me I had allergies for years.
” He stared at me. “But that’s not true either…
you simply wanted to keep me down…to keep me with you so I wouldn’t go out with my friends…
you wanted me to be afraid…you deliberately stoked my fears… to bind me to you.”
“I wanted to protect you from the world. It’s a cruel place.”
Dazed by his honesty, I shook my head. “As cruel as you?”
“I’m not cruel. I only protect those I love.”
“And you punish the others? Who are you? God?”
He smiled sadly. “Willa, what you said about your allergy wasn’t true. But you were such a sensitive child, you saw ghosts and did crazy things. Talked to yourself and other stuff. I didn’t want your friends to mock you or for you to fall apart in the face of reality. I wanted to protect you.”
I let my shirt fall so he had a clear view of all my scars.
“You did a good job, Dad,” I stated bitterly, and with that, I left him there and walked back to my wing as erect as I could.
This time, he didn’t follow me. After a while, I opened the door to my room and listened through the crack.
I heard his footsteps in the hall. He was talking to someone, obviously on the phone.
Then, keys jingled and he crossed the hall.
“I have to go again, love. It won’t take long,” he called upstairs and turned off the lights on the lower floor. “We’ll talk more tomorrow. Quietly and without false accusations, I hope.”
I waited until he closed the double doors, then a security signal sounded, and the mechanical locking of our door lock followed.
I swiftly slipped back into my shirt and pulled a thick sweater over it.
I absolutely had to talk to Nathan. I had to hear his voice to know who was telling the truth.
Dad or Isaac. However, my cell phone was still in my pants and my pants were in the dining room.
Damn! You put it in your pocket because you always wanted to have it with you and then you just leave it there!
Not knowing if Dad was truly gone, I tiptoed down the stairs. But it seemed he did leave because it was dead silent.
I quickly returned to the dining room to get my pants. Dad had picked them up along with the poncho and hung them neatly over my chair. I reached into one pocket and then the other. My heart was beating faster. My cell phone was gone. Dad must have taken it.
But why? Why did Dad take my phone from me?
I stood there for a moment, staring into space, and then I came to my senses and ran into the foyer to our house phone. I had to talk to Nathan, the one person I trusted unconditionally. I would simply warn him in case Dad pressed redial later.
I picked up the phone, dialed the number, and was about to change my mind because I was afraid it might somehow put Nathan in danger when I noticed that the line was dead.
Stunned, I stared at the phone, then ran to the double doors and pushed down the handle even though I knew they were locked. I hastily entered the code to unlock the automatic door lock, but all I heard was a dull beep—the long-standing code was wrong.
Dad locked me in!
The truth assembled like a montage. Dad had not only made certain I couldn’t get out, he had also taken measures to ensure I couldn’t reach anyone. Sweat gathered in my palms and I felt the familiar wave of fear rolling toward me.
I was locked in.
Locked in. Alone. Helpless.
No! Please no!
My mind knew that the penthouse was not the two-story house on the swamp, but my feelings could not separate it.
The great hall shrank and flipped before my eyes into the room with boarded-up windows.
My arms and legs went numb and my teeth chattered as if I had the chills.
Before I even reached the door, I sank to my knees, unable to breathe calmly or control my body.
Eventually, I was lying on the white marble, my cheek on the cold stone.
I heard his footfalls climbing the stairs.
Do you feel that, little lady? Isn’t that enough for you? You want more?
Isaac’s voice whispered in my head. Horrible words, horrible threats.
My whole body was shaking and my scars burned like a phantom pain.
I wanted to get up and throw myself out the window so it would stop and silence his voice inside me, but despite all my panic, I knew that there were no windows at this height that could be opened wide enough.
Later, I thought of the gallery with its arabesque railings, but the thought of Nathan losing someone he loved again held me back.
So, I lay there, waiting for it to cease as I had had to do for most of the winter.
At one point, I burst into tears because Isaac had defeated me once more even from his grave.
He was inside me, still alive, an immortal, invincible demon.
Chilled by the cold floor, I staggered to my feet and dragged myself to my bedroom, a leaden tiredness in my bones.
That was always the case after a panic attack.
My body was exhausted as if I had run a marathon.
I forbade myself to think about the locked door and sank into the pillows of my four-poster bed.
Exhaustion did the rest, and my soft bed, my wonderfully soft bed in which I had not slept for a year, rocked like a barge on the gentle waves of oblivion, like a cutter or a yacht.
For the first time in months, my nightmares stayed away, but Mom appeared to me instead.
To this day, I don’t know if I dreamed of her or saw her in her ghostly form because the temperature dropped that night.
In New York, it was so many degrees colder than in Louisiana.
Perhaps she had returned from the in-between world, but I never said that thought out loud not even to Nathan.
When I noticed her, she was sitting on the edge of my bed in her white Fendi dress, her cinnamon-brown wavy hair curling around her delicate face like a bridal veil.
How beautiful she is , I thought. Was . She must have been watching me as I slept and her presence, a cool breath of air like a southern fan, had woken me. She smiled at me. “Nevaeh, my love.”
“Mom,” I whispered. Never had I seen her so distinctly in all these years, her contours almost crystalline sharp. “Mom, why are you here?”
“You’re searching for the truth, but you only see part of it. You don’t dare think the impossible. But it’s all there, everything is inside you. You simply have to find it. Remember!”
“What?” Now I was sitting upright on my bed. I still remember that the moon was shining on the spot where Mom was sitting on the edge of the bed, bathing her in unearthly light. Her hair was fluttering as if an invisible breeze was blowing through my room.
“Something. An image. A feeling. A scent. It’s all there.” She stroked my cheek gently and hummed a gentle melody that turned into verse inside me. You are my everything, my day and my night, my star in the sky and my earth. You are my yesterday and tomorrow. My now. My eternity .
I was startled by a thought that arose inside me, and in an instant, it was gone, like a word that had been on the tip of my tongue.
Suddenly wide awake, I glanced around my room, but Mom was no longer there.
“What is the impossible?” I whispered into the empty room. “What do I not dare not think possible?”