Chapter 15
Lily Graves hated the woman she’d never met before Saturday, but would never forget—or forgive.
That voice. That awful, singsong, arrogant bitch.
Lily crossed herself. She needed to remember not to lower herself to that level. She needed to remember her faith.
It was really hard to trust in the Lord when her son was suffering. But she was trying, praying for an answer to this impossible
situation.
Lily stared at the photo sent from Franklin’s cell phone and read the attached message.
I’m not joking. If you leave the house, Franklin is dead. Maybe that’s what you want?
Franklin looked terrified. Hollow. Dark circles under his eyes. Had he even slept in the last forty-eight hours? Probably
not much more than she had.
The woman claimed she had been his lover, that they had a passionate affair.
Lily didn’t believe her. Well . . . maybe in the back of her mind she thought it was possible, but that would have been in the past. He’d confessed to her that he’d lost his first wife in part because he had an affair with a colleague at his law firm.
That between the affair and his long hours, Marissa couldn’t forgive him.
But she and Franklin had always been honest with each other. Her ex-husband had been abusive and cruel; Franklin was neither.
He was kind, he was responsible, and he loved them. Lily didn’t doubt it. He had changed his practice, never worked nights,
and only worked Saturdays when Nathan didn’t have a baseball game.
He had never once missed a ballgame. When Lily worked—as a nurse, she worked three twelve-hour shifts a week—Franklin picked
Nathan up from school and made dinner. He brought her flowers. Not on birthdays or Mother’s Day, but randomly, once or twice
a month, from a roadside stand near his office. Spring bouquets or a single yellow sunflower or long-stemmed white rose, her
favorite.
He was the man she deserved. He was present.
Nathan’s father had wanted nothing to do with his son, who as a baby had been sickly and small. He’d walked out on them when
Nathan was three.
Now Nathan was almost twelve, healthy, and growing like a weed. He played baseball and was very good. His grades were nearly
straight A’s. Franklin had shown Nathan nothing but love and pride. He never yelled, even when Nathan on rare occasions deserved
punishment. Franklin would talk to him, then together the three of them would come up with a punishment to fit the crime.
Nathan loved Franklin, and Lily loved her little family.
Now they were all threatened. By a woman who had knocked on her door and then . . . Lily hadn’t remembered much after. A glimpse
of a blonde and then . . . nothing.
She’d been unconscious for hours. And when she woke up, the woman had been in her face, wearing an obvious wig and large sunglasses even though they were indoors.
Now she was gone, but Lily couldn’t leave this damn house in the middle of nowhere. She would never leave her son. She believed
the woman when she said Nathan would be dead if she stepped off the porch again.
She limped down to the basement of the farmhouse where Nathan was locked in a cell. Who had a jail in their basement? Who
would put a child there?
If she were locked up, Lily would have told Nathan to leave. She had tried. At dawn, while Nathan slept, after the woman had
left, Lily had tried to leave to get help.
The porch stairs exploded. She thought she was dead because of the sound, but the explosion was small and the damage to her
calf was manageable. She had found a first aid kit in the kitchen and painstakingly removed splinters from her skin, then
cleaned the cuts—dozens of small cuts. She was bandaging them when her phone rang.
“Next time, you’ll be dead and your son will starve to death, so think twice about defying me.”
Lily believed her.
He’d starve, or die from the gas that the woman threatened to release into the basement.
Lily couldn’t bear the thought.
There was only one light in the basement, a bare overhead bulb. So she’d brought down a couple lamps and a mattress from one
of the beds upstairs. She wasn’t going to let her son sleep down here alone. It was damp and the stench of mold and dirt filled
the space; it was cooler than upstairs but that was actually a blessing in the middle of the day when it was so hot.
She’d made them dinner—canned soup and grilled cheese.
There wasn’t much to choose from, but the woman had left them two grocery bags of food.
No fresh fruit or vegetables or milk, but two loaves of bread, cheese, eggs, frozen hamburgers, and canned soup.
Lily had written out how long the food would last if she had one meal a day and Nathan had two.
They had ten days; this was the third day.
Her son would not go hungry.
“Mom,” Nathan said when he accepted the mug of soup through the bars, “you need to go find help.”
“I’m not leaving you.”
She could have called 911. From the far corner of the front porch, she had cell service. But the woman claimed to have cloned
her phone and would see any call she made, any message she sent. She believed her when she said she would kill Nathan before
help arrived.
Lily found the canisters of gas in the basement. There was a digital panel and phone attached to them. The panel was lit with
numbers that meant nothing to her. If the gas was released, Lily would be here with her son. He wouldn’t die alone.
“Did Dad call?”
“No. He’s okay, though. The woman sent me a photo.”
Lily had looked everywhere for tools to cut through the bars; there was nothing. The farmhouse appeared to have been abandoned,
though there was electricity to the property. There was some furniture, but most of the house was empty. The basement had
been flooded at one point, but most of the water had been pumped out, only a few puddles remained in the low spots. Still,
there was an overriding stench of mildew and rot, like something had died down here. A rat or an opossum or . . . she tried
not to think about it.
They didn’t talk for several minutes while they ate their soup. When they were done, she collected the bowls, but she didn’t
want to leave him yet. “Ready for a game?”
The first day they were here, she’d found an old deck of cards that was missing the ace of spades and four of diamonds.
She’d also found several boxes of books in a closet.
They’d been working through them. She’d read eight Harlequin romances—all published more than thirty years ago—and Nathan was reading All Creatures Great and Small by James Herriot.
Lily had read that book when she was a child.
“Mom, I’ve been thinking. Maybe if we turn off the power, that’ll kill the cameras. And you can go out a window, not the front
stairs.”
“I’m not risking it. I’m not risking you.” She looked over at the cabinet where the canister and phone taunted her. “Let’s
play a game, okay?”
“Sure, Mom.”
They played rummy in silence for several minutes, then she said, “If I can get you out of this basement, we’ll go. But I’m
not leaving you down here alone.” She reached out and took his hand. “I’m not leaving you,” she repeated.
“I love you, Mom.”