Chapter Seventeen
Milly
This basement gives me the chills with how Ace and I set everything up. We definitely pulled from our own traumas, and a lot surfaced in the process, but Mom will resonate with this enough for it to be realistic.
I am pacing with the phone in my hand, trying to convince myself to call.
They had me put on headphones and close my eyes so the ones hiding down here could get into place without me knowing where they are.
We don’t want me accidentally drawing attention to anyone.
Eventually, I stop pacing and hit call. I have the house phone, so it is believable that I am calling at all.
When she doesn’t answer, I keep calling. By the seventh time, she answers.
“Hello?” Mom asks with a huff.
“Momma,” I say with a whimper.
“Milly? What’s wrong, baby? Why are you calling from this number?”
“Momma, please come get me. I don’t want to be here anymore,” I say, forcing tears into my voice. “He makes me sleep on the floor in the basement.”
“He what? Baby, that’s awful,” Mom says, and I roll my eyes. “I made him mad when I tried to get Greg to come get me. He scares me, Momma. I just wanted out. Greg almost did, but he hasn’t come back to get me. He promised he would.”
“Milly, baby. Greg is dead. He killed himself,” Mom says.
“What? No. You can’t come here alone. He’s dangerous. He broke my wrist, Momma, and cut my hand open. He told the hospital that I did it,” I lie.
“What phone are you calling from?” Mom questions.
“The house phone. He accidentally left it down here when he came to… Momma, I wanna go home. He’s not who I thought he was,” I say, actually managing to make myself cry.
Damn. I should have been an actor.
“Is he home?”
“No, he said something about going to The Void or something,” I sniffle. “He just left when I called the first time.”
“Okay. I’m coming, baby. I’ll get you out of there, and we can just leave. How does that sound?” Mom says. “Just me and you. We can travel and find somewhere safer to live. Hell, maybe we could go to Europe.”
“I just want to be safe again,” I say with a whimper. “Please don’t get caught, Momma. He’s dangerous.”
“I won’t, baby. Momma is coming to get you. Don’t worry,” she says. “Just try to get some rest, and I will be there soon. Can I call this number back?”
“I don’t know. I’m afraid he has it connected to his phone. If he does…”
“I’ll hurry, baby. I’m not far away,” she tells me. “Let’s get off the phone just in case. Turn it off if you can.”
“Okay, Momma. Thank you,” I whimper again.
“Of course, baby. I’d do anything for you,” she says, making me roll my eyes again. “I love you, Milly.”
“I love you too, Momma.”
When the call ends, I take the battery out of the phone and toss the pieces down beside the cot before sitting. I lie back and look up at the ceiling. Waiting is the hardest part, because what if she flees instead? Just as I start to doubt if she is coming, the basement door opens.
“Momma,” I say as I sit up and see her coming down the stairs.
“We’ve got to be quick, baby,” she says. “Oh, honey. He shackled you?”
“Yeah. I can’t get it off,” I say quietly.
“There is a key in that cabinet. It’s where he keeps all the stuff he uses to hurt me,” I say, pointing to the opposite side of the room.
It will put her back to the rest of the room, allowing them to come out for her.
I see a gun in her waistband, but she’s not reaching for it.
“Great. Okay,” she says, rushing over to the cabinet.
I have a feeling that Alania is in there.
When she puts her back to the rest of the room, the others start to emerge.
When she pulls the door open, she nearly shits herself when she jumps back as Alania comes out with a gun in her face.
Grayson is the one to get her gun, so she is no longer armed while Ace unlocks the shackle on my ankle.
“Damn. She’s dumber than I thought,” I laugh. Grayson wraps me in a warm hug.
“You lied to me,” Mom says to me. I turn and face her with a confused look on my face. I just blink at her until I hear the basement door open again and the others come down. Raul is restraining her arms behind her back when Dad comes down.
“I lied to you?” I ask.
“Baby, please. You can’t believe…”
I tighten my hand into a fist before swinging and punching her in the face. Her head snaps back, and Ace laughs loudly.
“You are a psychopath,” I tell her. “You lie with no remorse. You let grown men rape me. You forced your other victims to hurt me. You made me believe I didn’t have a sister when I did. You let me believe that Dad was the one who raped me.”
“It was going fine until Greg had to go and fuck it all up,” Mom says with a sudden deadpan expression.
“You know,” Raul says. “I tried very hard to find any record of Molly dying.”
“Shut th…” Mom starts to yell, but Alania hits her in the face, shutting her up.
“So then I started looking at hospital records,” Raul says.
“What are you getting at?” Dad asks.
“Well, I found where you were picked up when you were unconscious. You died a few times on the way to the hospital, but they got you into surgery to control the bleeding,” Raul says.
“But that same call, there was a ten-year-old Jane Doe transported to another area hospital. I thought that maybe it was Milly, but no… she went to the same hospital as you.”
“No,” Dad says tearfully.
“What?” I ask. Everyone looks at me with a smile. Mom is gushing blood from her nose, but no one is paying her any attention. I hear the basement door open again, and Grayson turns me to face him before he takes my face between his hands. “I am so confused right now.”
“Baby… Molly isn’t dead,” Grayson tells me. “The bullet did hit her head, but she got really fucking lucky.”
“She…” I start to ask. He turns me around, and tears roll down my cheeks as I stare at someone who looks scarily similar to me.
“Hey, Milly,” she says with a tearful smile.
“No. That’s not real,” I say as I back up. Grayson catches my waist and lets her approach me. “You aren’t real. You can’t be.”
“I’m real, Milly,” she says, cupping my face between her hands.
I squeeze my eyes shut, and I start to break down.
I am eventually crying so hard that my legs give out.
She wraps me in a tight hug and brings me down to sit on the ground as she rocks me.
She starts humming a song, and it hits a memory.
Molly and I are sitting in bed. It’s dark, and I’m in pain. I was in the basement, but now I’m with her. She is hugging me and humming this same tune.
“I’ve spent the last fourteen years looking for you,” Molly says, sitting me up to hold my face. “I’m real, Milly. I promise.”
“But you… Dad said… Dad?” I say, looking around to find him. He comes over and kneels next to us to wrap us in a tight hug. The sob that cracks in his voice isn’t pain. We are not sad. This is the light breaking up the dark and the sun shining through.
“Oh, my girls,” Dad says as he pulls back.
“How did they find you?” I ask Molly.
“I was adopted by a couple in The Society. Raul tracked me from that hospital to when I popped up as Molly Gardner. It’s not a common name, so he was able to trace it to school pictures and compare it to yours. Then he just called me. I met him, and he told me the plan.”
“You did this in an afternoon?” I ask Raul.
“I did,” he says. “You just needed to know where to look. No one did because Mother-of-the-year over here made her seem like she didn’t exist.”
Dad and Molly help me stand up, and she turns to Mom. For the first time, Mom has fear in her eyes when Molly takes the gun from Alania. “You took them from me,” Molly says. “You erased me like I was nothing to you. You let people hurt her. Why?”
Mom opens her mouth to say something, but Molly lifts the pistol and pulls the trigger. My first reaction is to laugh. Not just like an inappropriate giggle, no, this is a hysterical belly laugh that has Molly laughing with me. Everyone else follows suit.
“We will have someone come clean this up,” Adrian says.
“I’m going to get Milly upstairs so she can relax. If you need us, just come up,” Grayson says.
We get upstairs, and Grayson helps me get changed into shorts and one of his shirts so Molly and I can sit on the bed facing one another.
“This is weird,” I say.
“Ask her what she went to school for,” Adam laughs. I raise an eyebrow.
“I just got my master’s in psychology,” Molly laughs.
“Hey, me too,” I say. “I want to get my doctorate.”
“Same,” Molly says. “We should do it together.”
“That would be fun,” I say before yawning.
“Okay, girls,” Grayson says. “Milly, you need some sleep.”
“Rude man, you aren’t the boss of us,” Molly laughs.
“Oh, God. They’re both brats,” Adam laughs.
“She needs rest, Molly. Take the guest room next to us and come in here and check on her anytime you want.”
“Means you have to wear clothes to bed,” I tell him.
“Damn. That’s right,” Grayson laughs. “Lie down, Milly.”
“Blah blah blah,” I grumble before moving under the covers. Molly comes over and hugs me before walking out. Grayson lies in front of me so I can snuggle into his chest. Adam lies behind him to do the same while Ace is behind me with his arm around my waist.
“I love you guys,” I mumble.
“We love you too, Milly,” Grayson says, kissing my head.
I feel like I am finally free. Free to live. To heal. To grow. I lost so much time with Dad and Molly, but we have all of the time in the world now to make up for what was taken from us. We all have a scar to open, but I’d do it again to feel this kind of peace.