Chapter 11
“Sally?” I spoke into the phone. Could it be possible? I’d left a message, but no one had gotten back to me anywhere I’d called yet.
“Alatheia,” she squeaked. “It is you. My father, he mumbled something and gave me a number. I wasn’t sure the name he gave, it was close but not right. How are you?” She sounded almost frantic.
It was ridiculously good to hear her voice. “I’m okay. How are you?”
“I’ve been so worried about you. The way your boyfriend carried you out.
” Barrett. Okay. It made sense that she thought it was my boyfriend.
“And he had his brothers and all those men. You had a whole hoard of people come get you. They were yelling. Demanding doors opened, and the headmistress did it. She was actually doing it. Then we got cleared out and sent home. I felt so sick. So sick.”
Right. She’d had to go through withdrawal too. Everyone did. Maybe not as much as I did because I had the drugs in solitary. But, we’d all been dosed every week. I’d had so much help. It sounded like Sally had none.
“Me too, but I… Sally, listen, I have to talk to you, and it’s serious. I heard that no one really left that place. Not ever. They didn’t get to go when they turned eighteen. They were killed. I know my family wants to kill me. Is there… is there any reason your family might want to kill you?”
She was going to holler or hang up. That’s what any rational person would do. But she was silent. Then when she spoke again she whispered. “Yes. Wow. I thought I might be crazy.”
“You’re not. Why? I mean for me it’s money.” I couldn’t expect her to share if I didn’t.
“My grandmother left me money. A lot. I mean we’re not rich, but she was.
I get it when I’m eighteen.” Her voice shook.
“Oh. What the fuck? What the everloving fuck? They were going to kill me. Oh my god. I have to get out of here. This is my number. Text or call me. I don’t know where I’ll be, and at some point I’ll have to ditch this phone. ”
“Sally.” I tried to stop her, but she was already gone.
I stared at the phone before I looked up at the guys. “Well, she wasn’t… um surprised. She’s running.”
“She’s running?” Julian stared at me wide-eyed. “Where?”
“I don’t know. Honestly.” I swallowed through the lump in my throat.
“All the care you guys have given me, all the help in the hospital, and the therapy and the love, she hasn’t had any of that.
She’s alone.” I pulled at my knitted cap.
“With her head shaved.” That was a small thing, but for me it had come to represent a lot.
“Running for her life now.” I stared at them. “Is everything always about money?”
Barrett nodded. “Ninety percent of the time everything in life is about money. Ten percent of the time it’s something else.”
“I can’t do anything for her. I don’t even know where she’s going.”
Phoenix drew me to him. It was cold out and after my phone call I was feeling it more acutely. He was warm. “She’ll call back and then we’ll see if we can help her. Text her from your phone when we get home with your number in case you aren’t with Jeremy when she gets in touch.”
“I don’t know if I could have survived it without you guys. How did she?”
With his warm lips, Phoenix kissed my head. “You could have. You’re so strong.”
I wasn’t. I kept trying to be, but inside… I was just a wreck.
We sat with Dina while she slept. Eventually, each of the guys had something they had to go do.
They all had jobs for their fathers, and Phoenix wanted to go skate to clear his head.
But I sat with her, which gave her companion a break.
Technically, I was supposed to be that, but I was pretty sure at this point that had all been a ruse to just get me to do her journals.
The lovely woman had just wanted to save me from a fate I wasn’t sure I could really be saved from.
So, I read them. That was the least I could do. The very least.
April 1st 1967
The weather is beautiful today. Mild. In the 70s.
My father would have loved this weather.
My mom liked it hotter. Funny, I can think about them in little bursts now without wanting to weep or crawl into bed.
I think they would be proud of me, for getting away from my uncle, for doing things with myself day in and day out.
They were busy, smart, studious—yes, that’s a funny word but that is what they were, future me, in case you’ve forgotten—and they would like that I was being that way.
Even if they’d thought I would have a more studious life than I am actually having and they’d be sort of shocked that I am eighteen and married.
I wondered while I folded shirts this week what they would make of my life.
Of my being in the Life. I will capitalize it because it seems the thing to do.
My father was a very open-minded person.
He would have found it fascinating that this has existed in plain sight for so long.
That people, even people who left the Life, seem happy to protect it.
He might not be thrilled I was living a life where I had to lie to everyone.
Last night, as I cuddled with Victor and he did that thing I love so much where he played with my hair, he asked me if I was unhappy, if I wanted to go back to Louisiana where we could just be without worry about what others might think or say.
I told him no. I didn’t want to go back there.
It was scary to me. The longer I’m away from the place the more I’m glad that I left it.
I don’t think a single person there tells the truth ever.
They lie to themselves. I can’t say that to my Lents.
They don’t hate it like that. They want their kids to spend summers there and to visit for holidays, to sometimes have some of those people here in our home—our safe home that I have painted red.
Oh how I am going on tonight.
Kids. I am once again not pregnant.
The store is booming and that is something, especially since my husbands have all started to notice that they can’t do it without me.
I’m so good at handling the floor that Nathaniel doesn’t have to come out anymore at all and can concern himself with things in the back office, which he prefers greatly.
I watch the women who come in, the young wealthy women who shop at our place.
I’m grateful for their business, but I can’t imagine being them.
It’s not like they went and participated in the Be In Central Park last week.
Maybe it was more than just last week, maybe it was two weeks? I’m losing time.
I need to go to bed. Our days start very early.
DL
I rose from my chair, listening to the whoosh of the IV in her arm that was delivering whatever medicine kept her comfortable. How had this happened so fast? Four months ago she seemed fine. Maybe the key word was seemed.
On quiet feet I walked over to where someone had placed her framed pictures.
They were close enough she could see them if she looked in that direction.
I’d never seen them before so they must have been in her bedroom in Manhattan, her private sanctum I had never visited because it hadn’t seemed inappropriate.
There she was as a young woman standing in front of Lents.
She wore a suit that showed her legs, and her hair was cutely fashioned with a clip.
She had one hand on her hip, and she smiled brightly.
I’d never seen the department store she spoke of in her journals.
But there it was. On the frame was written 1967 so it wasn’t far off from where I’d been reading. That was amazing.
I looked at the other photos that stood there.
She held a baby in one but looked a great deal older.
She smiled at the camera. The frame had been labeled.
Dina and Stephen. 1985. He was the third oldest. They’d all been a year apart.
That had made her thirty-six. She kept mentioning not being pregnant.
That wasn’t going to happen for her for some time.
She’d said twenty years one time when we spoke, but it wasn’t quite that. Maybe she rounded up.
She held a blond-haired little boy and pointed at the sky in another picture.
Dina and Kit. 1989. He looked to be about six or seven.
The next one was Dina kissing a toddler.
There was no label to indicate the year, but it said Dina and Eric.
He had curly hair. The last one was a young man holding up a ribbon, and she had her arm around him.
Dina and Daniel. What had he won? She had obviously been very proud.
The next row was different. The first one read Store 2, Dina and the Boys.
It was Dina with who had to be her husbands.
All four of them smiling at the camera. 1969.
So they had really moved fast. Maybe that was because Nathaniel had been allowed to just work the back office thanks to her help.
The second one had Rosalind in a wedding dress.
She was twenty years old. Blonde and gorgeous.
Dina had her arm around her, she wore dark blue and they were both grinning.
And the last one had her with my Lents—to steal a phrase from her journal.
They were babies. Or at least Phoenix was.
He had chubby cheeks and a big smile. Jeremy and Julian wore matching outfits on both her sides, a blue sailor kind of a look and Barrett stood grinning next to her. It read, My Precious Loves.
Okay. The tears started, and I wiped them away. She and I would never have a photo together, and it was stupid to even think about that. She’d only have known me for seven months or so when all was said and done. I wasn’t that important in her story. Even if she was going to be huge in mine.