Reese
He pulls me through some field by the hand. I’m crying. Tears flood my eyes, spill over and down my face. My nose runs, snot
mixing with tears with saliva that trickles from the edges of my mouth so that my whole face is wet. I try to pull my hand
away, to let go of his, to turn off and run some other way, but he tightens up on his grip, saying stuff like, “I know. I
know you must be so confused. You must not remember. It’s been so long. I’m sorry I had to do that. I’m sorry you had to see that. I didn’t want you to have to see that. But those people, Kylie. They took you from your mother and me. They’re not
good people. They’re bad people. Very bad people. Keep running, Kylie. We’re almost there. It’s not much further now. God,”
he says, “your mother is going to be so happy. So surprised.”
He’s kind to me. Gentle, other than the death grip on my hand. When I fall, my hand pulling out from his, I try crawling away.
But he takes me by the upper arms and helps me to my feet, asking, “Are you okay? Are you hurt?” running his hands over my
hair, and I shake my head, feeling myself shut down before he reaches for my hand again and we begin to run, my feet and legs
moving so fast I can’t feel them anymore.
I can’t stop thinking things like if only she hadn’t opened the door.
If only I had stopped her.
If only I had remembered Daniel’s knife in the nightstand drawer.
I think of all the things I could’ve, should’ve, would’ve done differently.
I have only one free hand. At one point, I manage to get my phone out of my pocket with that one hand, but when I turn it
on, the screen light is blazing in the darkness. I move fast, opening Snapchat, going to the chat screen. That’s as far as
I get. He stops all of a sudden. I don’t anticipate it. I keep running forward, his hand on mine stopping forward motion so
that I jerk back, feeling something in my shoulder pop. He says, “What’s that?” turning to look at the screen, his face haunted
in the phone’s light.
When I look up, there is blood on his face.
“Nothing . . . I . . .”
There’s sudden movement. He comes at me fast. It happens before I know what’s happening. My hands go to my head by instinct,
to protect it. I wince, cowering, and then my legs actually give out. I fall, curling into a ball on my knees, shaking, blubbering.
His voice is so nice.
He lowers himself beside me. Runs his sticky, bloodied hands over my hair.
“I’m not going to hurt you. I’m not mad, Kylie. I’m not mad at you,” he says, folding his hand around the phone and easing
it from me. I don’t try to resist, I let him have it. “It’s not your fault. It’s theirs. They did this to you. They made you
forget who we are.”
He helps me to my feet, which I don’t feel move though I know they are, because we’re gaining ground, we’re getting somewhere,
but I don’t know where.
All the while I wonder if Emily is alive. If Nolan is alive. Or if they’re dead. If he killed them.
There is a parked car up ahead. He opens the back door and the light turns on. He pushes me in and then closes the door. He gets in the driver’s seat. The light goes off.
He drives away down the deserted street, leaving the headlights off at first. As he does, I tug desperately on the door handle,
trying to get out, but the door doesn’t budge. He set the child locks in advance.
He knew I might try to run.
I press myself into the door as he drives. He says stuff like, “You don’t need to be so scared,” and, “No one is going to
hurt you,” and, “I know you must be confused. It’s a lot to process. But you have to believe me, Kylie. You have to trust
me. Those were bad people. They took you from your mother and me. They’re not who they say they are.”
I say nothing. We come to a house. The porch light is on. He pulls the car into the driveway and puts the car in Park. We
sit there with the engine off as he turns around in his seat, beaming in the glow from the front porch light. “Your mother
is going to be so surprised. I always told her I’d find you. I always said I’d bring you home one day. And now I have, just
like I promised her I would.”
He gets out of the car. He comes around to open my door, reeling me in by the arm, though I try grabbing at things to stop
myself from being dragged out of the car.
“Don’t be scared. You’re safe now. I promise. It’s all over. You’re home.”
My legs are stiff as we walk. They don’t work right. My knees lock and I trip, but he holds on to my arm. He leads me to the
house where he unlocks the door, and we go in, into a dark living room. He reaches down and turns on a lamp, filling the room
with light. “Do you remember our house?” he asks, talking fast, excited, his eyes bright.
I’ve never been here before.
“Sam?” a woman’s weary voice calls out. “Is that you? Where have you—”
She comes into view, standing there in her pajamas, the hall behind her dark. Her eyes bulge, her mouth drops open and she
gasps.
“What’s going on?” she asks, her voice now strained. She doesn’t know where to look first, at him or me. “What is that on
your clothes? Is that—”
It’s blood.
His voice is loud. “Look who’s here,” he says, laughing like he didn’t hear her, like he doesn’t care that he’s covered in
someone else’s blood. He grins like a madman. “Look who I found.”
She gives a slight headshake, pulls her eyebrows together and asks, “Who did you find?” her face blank.
He gives a strangled laugh. “Kylie. It’s Kylie, honey.”
She looks again, running her eyes over and examining me. “That’s not her,” she says.
He drags a hand through his hair, his smile fading. He looks at her in disbelief. “What do you mean it’s not her? Of course
it’s her.”
He turns to me, his voice desperate, insistent. “Show her. Show her your necklace.”
I don’t know what he’s talking about. I shake my head. He says, “The one that was in the picture of you. The one we gave you,
honey.” He gets flustered when I don’t know. He motions to a picture above the fireplace of this man, this lady and a little
girl, of them making silly faces. In it, the girl wears my gold necklace, the one Daniel gave me, the one I threw away. “That
necklace. Show her, Kylie. Show her you still have it.”
But the woman doesn’t care about the necklace. She says, “I’d know my daughter anywhere, and that’s not her.”
He looks harder, and this time, he starts to second-guess himself. He finally sees it. I’m not who he thinks I am. I’m not the person he wants me to be.
He gets choked up, he cries big, fat tears.
“Oh my God. It’s not her. It’s not her,” he sobs over and over again to the woman, and then, to me, “You look so much like
her,” he says, reaching a hand out to touch my hair, though I recoil. I pull back so hard my head slams into the wall, seeing
Emily’s body heave on the porch floor as he hit her again and again with that bat. “You look so much like my baby girl. Oh
God.” He sobs, dropping his head into his bloodied hands. “What have I done? What have I done?”
“What are we going to do with her?” he asks after a minute.
He won’t look at either of us. He can’t.
They talk about me like I’m not in the room with them.
“I don’t know,” she says, shaking her head.
“Well, we can’t just bring her back. She’s seen my face. She saw what I did to them.”
“To who? What did you do, Sam?” she asks, though she sees the blood all over him and knows.
He shakes his head. Even he can’t say.
She says, “Just give me a minute to think.”
“We need to get rid of her before someone comes looking for her. If they find her here . . .”
“I know.”
They lead me down some dark, unfinished stairs. They open a panel in the wall and leave me in the basement crawl space.
Because now that I’m here and after what he’s done, they can’t just let me go.