Chapter 4
CHAPTER 4
ATLAS
T he sound of my phone ringing pulls me out of Nora’s despair.
After two more cups of coffee, I retreated back to my room and fell face-first into her diary.
Reading our introduction, and the events that led up to it, leaves a hollow feeling in my chest. The kid’s been through more shit than anyone her age should have.
Swiping my thumb over the screen, I blindly accept the call.
“Hello.”
“Atlas, man,” Ellis’s voice trickles through the line.
“It’s not good.”
With those three words, he has all of my attention.
“Tell me,” I demand, jumping up from my desk chair, I begin pacing back and forth in front of my window.
“Just… tell me.” My voice breaks at the end, as I beg my oldest friend not to sugarcoat it.
“The place is totally trashed.”
“Trashed how?” I ask, coming to an abrupt stop.
My dad’s a lot of things, but a slob isn’t one of them.
He was always damn near militant in his need for cleanliness.
“I don’t know…” He pauses, and I can almost picture him surveying the space, his eyes narrowed and his feet planted wide.
“Like someone tossed the place but didn’t take anything.”
“What do you mean?” My voice comes out steady, which is a small miracle given the Class VI rapids of conflicting emotions crashing against my insides.
“The furniture’s all a mess, the dressers have been ransacked. But that’s not all.”
Icy dread crystallizes in my veins.
Call it a premonition or something, but I know the next words out of his mouth aren’t going to be good.
“You said Nora lived with your dad, right?”
“Yeah,” I croak, a fresh wave of dread sending acid into my throat.
“You’re sure?”
“Say what you’re going to say,” I snap, regretting it instantly.
Ellis is doing me a favor and damn sure doesn’t deserve my vitriol.
“There’s hardly any food in the house. One of the spare bedrooms appears to be an office and the other is jam-packed with junk. Boxes of paper—newspapers and shit.”
“What are you saying, Ellis?”
“I’m saying she doesn’t have a bedroom here…”
“I sense a but coming.” I swallow roughly, trying and failing to keep my cool.
A bead of sweat drips down my spine as I try to assemble the puzzle of my dad’s disappearance with the pieces Ellis has given me.
“You ever been down in the basement?”
“Not since I lived at home, why?”
“He’s got a lock on the door.” Ellis heaves out a breath.
“A lock on the outside. He wasn’t keeping someone out, man…”
“He was keeping someone in.” My knees give out and the floor rushes up to meet me as my thoughts tumble and spiral, twisting and tangling together into an undistinguishable mess of anguish and disbelief.
“Surely he wasn’t keeping her?—”
“There’s a cot,” Ellis whispers.
“In the corner of the room. There’s a cot.”
“Fuck!” I shout, pounding my fist into the floor at my side.
I knew he wasn’t well, but I didn’t think he’d lost his goddamn mind.
How long has he been locking her up?
Was he feeding her? Was he hurting her?
“I’ve gotta report this, you know that, right?”
I force myself up from the floor, shove my feet into my boots, grab my keys, and then head for the door.
“I know.”
“Shouldn’t fucking be doing this,” he mutters to himself, before speaking directly to me.
“You can come by first if you promise not to flip out or mess with anything.”
“I’m already on my way.”
After holding my breath for damn near the whole drive, I let out a relieved exhale when Ellis’s car is the only other vehicle in my dad’s driveway.
I know he has to file a report about what he finds here, but the thought of anyone other than him being here with me has my chest all kinds of tight.
I jump out of my truck and charge up the steps, only for Ellis to stop me with a hand pressed firmly to my chest.
“You gotta swear not to lose your shit, Atlas,” he says gravely, causing the hair on the back of my neck to stand on end.
“I won’t.”
His lips twitch.
“You won’t swear or won’t lose it?”
Fuck.
I grip the back of my neck, digging my fingers into my flesh.
He’s asking a valid question, because I already want to flip out and I’m not even over the threshold.
“I’m good. I’ll be good.”
He searches my eyes for a long moment before finally relenting and lowering his hand from my chest.
Once I’m inside, it’s as though I’m a hound dog hot on a trail; I couldn’t care less about the mess all around me—my focus is singular.
The basement. I need to see the basement.
The lock. The cot. I need to make sense of this shit.
I take the steps two at a time, both trying and failing to rationalize the sight before me.
Ellis wasn’t lying—not that I thought he was.
But seeing the lock bolted to the frame and hearing about it are two different things.
What in the hell was he thinking?
Is he really so far gone that he’d lock her away down here?
Better yet, am I really so self-involved that I missed the signs?
It’s not like he lost the plot overnight.
I prod at the open lock with trembling fingers.
It’s sturdy; the kind when it’s locked, nothing’s getting past it.
Especially not Nora.
Last time I saw her she couldn’t have been more than a buck-fifteen soaking wet.
A line of narrow windows near the ceiling let in just enough light for me to make out the shape of a cot along the wall, but not much else.
Part of me has seen enough—I mean, what else is there to see, really?
It’s pretty obvious what this room was for.
But the rest of me needs to know, conclusively.
“Where’s it at?” I mumble, running my hand along the wall just inside the room, feeling for the light switch.
“It’s out here,” Ellis says, flicking the switch on.
The tightness in his voice matches the uncomfortable pinch in my chest. She had no control over the light switch.
There’s a wrongness to this room, and it’s fucking palpable.
A living, breathing thing.
A single exposed bulb blinks to life, creating just enough light to cast shadows in the damp, rank room.
“Ellis,” I exhale his name on a long sigh as I venture further into the hellhole below my father’s house.
Because that’s what this is, plain and simple.
Hell.
There’s a cot shoved against the far wall, with a stained and threadbare blanket covering it.
No pillow. No warmth.
No cushioning or support of any kind.
To the right of the cot is a small, worn dresser with three crooked drawers.
I don’t want to open them, but at the same time, I have to.
Maybe this isn’t what we think it is.
Maybe he kept a rambunctious dog down here ? —
The thought dries up the second I tug open the first drawer, finding it full of unmistakably feminine items. The kind I’m not entirely comfortable touching, knowing they belong to Nora.
Moving on to the next drawer, I find a hairbrush, some hair ties, a handful of pens, and some crumpled papers with hauntingly familiar handwriting.
But it’s the third drawer that’s the final nail in the coffin.
Sitting all alone in the bottom is a well-worn Polaroid of a young Nora with a man I have to assume is her dad; they’re both smiling wide, like they’re in on a secret the rest of us just wished we knew.
The joy splashed across their faces reminds me of my mom.
She always was the brightest light in any room—until she got sick, that is.
“Shit, man.” I grab the image from the drawer and slide it into my back pocket.
“My sick fuck of a father was keeping her locked up in here like a prisoner.”
“I don’t know what to say.” Ellis takes a step closer to me.
“Atlas?—”
“There’s nothing you can say.” I laugh, but it’s a dark and hollow sound.
I’ve had my suspicions about the kind of guy my dad was for years, since my mom died, but I always shrugged it off, always convinced myself my imagination was running wild, that I was reaching.
Clearly I wasn’t, though, because the man’s a monster.
“There’s nothing anyone can say to make this better. He’s…” I trail off and take one last look at the makeshift prison before turning for the door.
“He needs to be found. He needs to be held accountable, to pay for this.” A cold shiver works its way through my body.
“More than that, she needs to be found. Fuck, man.”
Ellis sighs, and I can tell he’s just as worried as me.
“Get out of here then, and I’ll call it in.”
“I mean it, Ellis. I don’t care that he’s my own flesh and blood, he’s sick and I—if he did anything to hurt her, I’ll kill him myself.”
“Loud and clear, man,” Ellis says, before I can pop off anymore.
“We’ll find him— both of them —and he’ll have to answer for this. But I’ve gotta tell you, I’m not sure this’ll stay quiet.”
“What?”
“I’m just saying, if the press gets wind of your dad keeping Nora locked up like a dog, they’ll be all over it.”
“Let ’em. The world needs to know exactly what kind of man Randall Wallace is.”
“And what kind is that?” my best friend asks.
“A spineless, nutless, no-good sack of shit who deserves every single thing coming his way,” I say.
Family or not, he’s dead to me.
DIARY ENTRY, AGE 15
Dear Diary,
Yesterday was my birthday.
I’m fifteen now.
There’s no pretense of a party this year.
At least not for me.
In fact, Mom hasn’t even acknowledged my birthday this year at all, because she’s been far too busy preparing for her very own special day.
Her wedding day.
That’s right, she’s marrying Rand today, and while she’s floating around like she doesn’t have a care in the world, I feel like I’m slowly suffocating.
Drowning. Dying.
How can she be walking down the aisle when Dad’s only been gone a year?
I mean, his grave dirt may as well still be fresh for all the time she waited.
She’s really and truly marrying Randall Wallace.
It’s like I’m trapped in a nightmare and can’t wake up.
God knows this abomination of a dress had to have been plucked straight from a nightmare—it’s a lace and tulle monstrosity that no self-respecting girl over the age of seven would wear.
Yet here I am, doing just that.
She even made me curl my hair in ringlets, too.
I look like I’m five, not fifteen, and I hate it.
I’m so mad that I’m shaking.
In less than an hour, my mom will be Mrs. Grace Wallace.
She mentioned changing my last name, too, and it was like I was possessed.
I kicked and screamed and threw a fit worthy of the child they have me dressed like.
I told her if she ever mentioned changing my name again, I’d hate her for the rest of forever.
I am my father’s daughter, and I will keep his last name until the day I die.
I feel sick to my stomach.
How could she do this?
To me, to Dad, to us?
It’s like she’s got blinders on, and Rand is all she can see.
Did I tell you she quit her job to be with him?
Rand says a woman’s place is in the house, not the workforce, and she just listened like she didn’t spend twelve years in school and another seven building her practice from the ground up.
I’m not sure if aliens are real or not, but if so, I think one might be controlling my mom.
It’s like I don’t even know her anymore.
Honestly, I’m not sure I want to.
Because what kind of mom marries a man who doesn’t even like her daughter?
I have to go now. It’s time to walk down the stupid, tainted aisle.
Crushed, Nora
Dear Diary,
You know the saying “what else could go wrong?”
Well, Dad used to always say phrases like that only served to tempt the universe into piling on more bad, and I guess I must have thrown it out there one too many times, because things have gone from bad to worse to absolutely awful.
This time last year, I thought the hardest thing I’d ever face was losing my dad, but I was wrong, because losing Mom while she’s still living and breathing and under the same roof as me is twenty times harder.
They’ve only been married for a month, but I swear, it’s like he lobotomized her or something.
Mom has turned into some kind of Stepford Wife.
She makes him breakfast every morning, cleans the house all day, and has dinner on the table by the time he gets home each night.
At first, I ate dinner with them, but then Rand decided it should just be him and Mom at the table each night.
He said my sullenness made the food taste bitter.
Stupidly, I thought my mom would stick up for me.
But she just nodded and sent me into the kitchen to finish my roast.
You’d think that’d be the worst of it, but just wait, diary, because there’s a freaking cherry dripping its nasty juice all over the top of the crap-sundae that is my life.
For some reason, Rand thinks that a “troubled young girl” should study at home.
That’s right, he’s making mom homeschool me—and she’s just going along with it like a freaking zombie.
I hate it here, and I hate him.
Even worse, I’m scared I’m starting to hate her a little, too.
Helplessly, Nora
Dear Diary,
I’m a week deep into hell—and by that, I mean homeschool—and if I thought I was lonely at my old school…
well, let’s just say I’m to the point where I’d gladly listen to Kelsey and Eliza laugh at me if it meant I was around other people and outside of these four walls.
How pathetic am I, that I’d rather subject myself to my former friends making fun of me than to stay here one more minute?
I guess it doesn’t really matter, though, because Rand has Mama convinced I’ll end up pregnant or on drugs if I leave the house.
It doesn’t matter that I’ve never even kissed a boy, because his word is law, which means I’m on house arrest.
Does that make him my warden or my stepfather?
In the end it doesn’t matter what he is to me, because he’s made it more than clear I’m nothing to him.
Which wouldn’t be so bad if Mama didn’t look at him like he hung the moon.
What does she even see in him anyway?
He’s controlling, manipulative, and mean as a snake.
I’m only fifteen, and I can clearly see that Rand’s a walking red flag, so why can’t Mama?
What’s so good about him that she’d pick him over me?
She doesn’t even teach me during our allotted homeschool hours!
She says that Rand said the lessons are self-guided.
It almost seems like he wants to drive a wedge between us.
I don’t get it. Mama and I should be a packaged deal, but every day we’re here, I feel more and more like the dented can they tossed in on sale.
I’m so annoyed I’m not even sure that made sense, but whatever.
It doesn’t matter. Maybe none of this matters…
Clearly, I don’t matter.
Forgotten, Nora
Dear Diary,
I…
He… He hit me. Rand hit me, and I haven’t stopped crying since.
Mama cried, too, and then sent me to my room.
Her not sticking up for me hurts worse than his palm stinging my cheek.
It used to be Rand just ignored me as long as I kept out of his way, but a few weeks ago he started saying mean things to me whenever Mama wasn’t around.
He started telling me I was worthless and unwanted, how he couldn’t wait to get rid of me.
I did my best to ignore him, but tonight I overheard him calling Mama ugly names and I snapped.
Honestly, I’m not even sure why it made me so mad.
It’s not like she stuck up for me.
But he was mad she burned the rolls.
Like big mad. He threw the entire dish across the room so hard it rattled the walls.
He told her if she was going to be a freeloading bitch, the least she could do is make his dinner right.
I stormed out of my room and told him to shut his nasty mouth because the only reason she doesn’t work is because he won’t let her.
He smacked me right across the face so hard he busted my lip.
I was just trying to protect her—to take up for her—since apparently she’s lost her voice.
But Mama sent me straight to bed without an ounce of concern for the blood pouring from my mouth like a freaking waterfall.
I know last week I said I was worried I might start hating her too…
but tonight made me realize something.
I can’t hate my mom.
Even if I want to—and I really, really want to—I can’t.
I’m not trying to make excuses for her, but while waiting for the bleeding to stop, I realized something: losing Dad broke her.
Not in the same way it did me.
Dad dying cracked me.
It made me sad in a way I don’t know how to bounce back from, but it shattered Mama, and even though her pieces are glued back together, she’s weak now.
Fragile.
So, no, I don’t hate her.
But I don’t really like her either.
Why am I not enough for her?
Why am I, her living and breathing daughter, not enough?
I don’t have an answer, and I’m not sure there’s any reason she could give that would allow me to forgive her for essentially abandoning me. Resentfully, Nora