Chapter Four October Nineteenth
Eagle Arch (unincorporated), Alaska
Barton, the man I no longer call Father in my head, came home today. I wasn’t fast enough to get away before his return—but parts of my plan are in place.
It helped that Sarah stayed away longer and longer each time she went out, as if she were enjoying the freedom his absence created, too. When she was out, I scoured the house, always careful not to disturb too much at a time.
I’m nineteen. Born the next year. Was she pregnant with me on this trip? Where was Barton?
Where was I born?
I can’t tell, because I can’t find a birth certificate. I have no medical records. I wonder if they don’t exist, or if Barton has hidden them too well, or maybe even burned them. I doubt my mother took them. Why would she take them and not take me?
But I’m piecing together a timeline, I guess.
She was a college student in Anchorage. She was at a New Year’s party with Barton in 2003.
Must have been married to him then or soon after.
She traveled a lot—and I can’t imagine someone like the man I know traveling, or even letting someone else travel.
I’ve found other pictures in the house, hidden in places that Sarah avoids.
Barton and my mother. His face lost its smile. Her hair lost its bounce and wave. Her smile and pretty clothes vanished. Her name was Gisela Sommer. It sounds like a pretty name, much prettier than Bremner, in my opinion. I will be Imogene Sommer when I run.
Sometime next week.
“Imogene!” Barton’s sudden bellow makes Sarah yell, a single frightened shout. I stay where I am, reading and working on my essay.
He barges into my room and glares. “I know you’ve been in the den.”
I look up at him calmly. There’s no more terror in my eyes, and he looks startled, then angry. “The den? No, Father. Ask Sarah. She’s been here all the time.”
Barton storms off. I hear him shouting at Sarah, and Sarah’s feeble yips of replies.
“You left her alone! Don’t you know what kind of trouble she could cause?”
“I didn’t, Barton. Only the one day, a couple of hours, to the store and back.”
Lies. But good for her. In an unlikely way, we have covered for each other.
“Next time you have to go, leave her outside.”
“Outside! Barton, it’s forty below with the wind chill.”
His voice drops, low and vile, but I can hear it.
How can I hear it?
It occurs to me now that I’ve always been able to hear so much of what was said—even things I wasn’t supposed to, and that curiosity has caused him to hate me.
Well, to hate me more.
“She won’t die from it. I tried. Left her out there for hours when the bitch left. She wouldn’t stop breathing. She’s the devil’s own. Could burn her, and she’d just change colors. Don’t you think I’ve tried?”
My breathing is shallow and shaky now. Breaths are taken with fear in each one.
“I could... I could bring her with me. In a scarf, hood, all bundled up, in the back... Barton, she could stay in the car.”
Barton calls Sarah names that I’ve never heard, shouting until she cries. Tells her that she’s so stupid that she ought to be the one left out in the cold to freeze. That no one would ever know what happened.
But I would.
I start to stand, then sit still. When I leave, there will be no reason for Barton to yell, and Sarah’s already started lying. Started staying out for hours on several days when he’s gone. Sarah must have friends—or a plan.
Good for her.
Men like Barton deserve to be punished.
My skin suddenly tingles, and I can feel something in my soul. A confusing sort of peace that knows righteousness from wickedness.
I might be shaped like the devil, or at least his daughter, but Barton is the evil one.
THAT NIGHT, HE’S DRUNK and snoring. Sarah’s voice is tight and frightened, whispering into her hand as she paces in the dark Alaskan night, risking life and frostbite of limb to talk to someone. If she sees me in the kitchen after I’m supposed to be in my room, she ignores me.
Just like I ignore that she’s making a phone call, one she obviously doesn’t want her husband to know about.
I take some jerky and a few canned items, not enough for anyone to notice or miss—I hope.
I add it to the bag under my bed, the bag with different clothes, my mother’s wallet, and most importantly, what’s inside it. A passport. Something I can use for ID.
And tonight... Tonight, I’m going to start looking for those sites Lesha mentioned. It would be smarter to wait until Barton leaves in seven days, but I don’t think I can. The urgency gnaws at me.
Looking at the book on careers that’s free from the college online collection, I start to type as softly as I can.
A resume for Imogene Sommer, nanny, caregiver, maid, and more. Will travel.
I hesitate. This passport is long out of date. I don’t think it’ll actually be much use. I edit the last sentence.
Will travel within the United States.
OCTOBER 23RD, 2025
Pine Ridge, New York
BEEP. BEEP. BEEP.
I sit up with a snort, and my mind starts playing the dizzy roulette game that’s become part of my life.
Is that the dishwasher telling me the bottles have gone through the sterilization cycle? The bottle warmer? The alarm on my phone? Or, please no, not again—the smoke detector?
I can’t keep doing this, I think, and the little voice that whispers about my looming failure is louder than ever.
I can’t be a full-time employee—even from home—and a full-time parent to an infant. Not to mention the time spent being a part-time student and detective.
I spend Laurel’s naptimes reading every baby book I can download. I have my old refurbished gaming PC open next to my work laptop. Any break I get, I research missing persons’ cases, child abduction, child deformities, and diseases, trying to discover what Laurel might have or who she might be.
There’s nothing I can find. No missing children in the state, or on the whole East Coast, for that matter, that match her age and description, and no book or article that makes sense.
The horns, little hooves, and tiny tail—they’re real.
They’re all real, and so is Laurel. Books that speak about devils and demons get a quick skim and are consigned to the dark corners of the internet, where they can rot someone else’s brain.
My baby girl is sweet and wonderful. There is nothing evil about her, except her parents or abductors, or whatever piece of shit that left her to die in the woods!
Fatherly rage fuels me and shuts down the voice that whispers that I never had a father, never even had a decent male role model, unless you count guys from sit-coms. I’m running on instinct, being the dad I never had.
“Whh!” Laurel lets out one fretful whimper from the cheap crib next to me, and my eyes focus.
Dad Mode: Activated.
Up, with a stagger, but who the fuck cares, I’m up.
“I’m here, baby. I’m not going to let you go or give you away.
I’m going to protect you, always. I’m going to love you no matter what you look like or how good you are at sports, or how bad you are at math or reading.
Got it? Good.” I pick her up, kiss her little chin (which is getting adorable round now that someone is feeding her), and shuffle us downstairs for bottle, diaper, and Baby Brainzilla, the only show approved for babies under one year old for more than thirty minutes at a time, according to the pediatric pamphlet I found online.
“You know, you can nap today for longer than two hours at a time. I have a big project due today, and I’m way behind.
If I mess this up, you and I are going to be living in a car.
And how is that going to work, stinker? You have way too much stuff,” I tell her as she snuggles onto my shoulder.
I look around the beautiful house Mr. Wickstaff rented me—and almost puke.
If he were to come in right now, he’d kick me out.
Cardboard boxes are everywhere. Laundry, stacks of clean diapers stashed on any flat surface, like I have a baby changing addiction. Toys. Blankets. Bibs and burp cloths. I need to clean. I need to organize.
“The guys in high school said women were expensive. The guys in community college talked about how a woman would take up a lot of space in your apartment. Well, they were right. To be fair, it wouldn’t have mattered if you were a boy or a girl; you are one expensive, adorable package.
Yes. Yes, you are,” I rub my hand along her back, and feel her snuggle in deeper.
We walk and bounce, my step now like a permanent jig to keep her from crying, even when she’s not fussy.
“Gotta tell you, I thought I’d have a mommy for the baby before the baby came along and ate all the money and space.
I don’t think I’m ever going to get you a—”
I stop. Okay, I’m not a great ladies’ man or anything, and I know there’s no hope in hell that a skinny nerd with a really “special” baby is going to get a girlfriend, let alone a wife and mother for his baby, but I can’t tell Laurel that.
I pause and let the bottle warmer do its thing while she mumbles on my shoulder, sleepy baby noises that are like music to my ears.
I think of all the times I wished for parents, for a mom to hug me when I was confused or bullied, to have someone relentlessly in my corner.
.. I don’t tell Laurel that she’ll never have that. I want something better for her.
“Ee!”
She makes a high-pitched noise that makes me giggle and shift position.
Based on her weight after a few days of regular feedings, I’ve come to the conclusion that she’s probably between two and three months old.
“Your baby sling thing is supposed to arrive today, and I’m going to wear you like a scarf.
Or a backpack, but in front. I like that you’re totally building up my arm muscles, but I’m getting cramps, kid,” I tease.
“Aaa!”
Oh my God. She’s so precious. She looks at me with big forest-green eyes in her little pink face, and a toothless smile that would melt a stone.
Sometimes, her little tail (which starts a few inches above her bottom and hangs out over her diaper or down the back of her unsnapped baby onesies) curls around my fingers while I hold her, and my eyes well up.
Fuck, I’m completely, utterly a softie, a marshmallow. A few weeks with this kid, and I’ve lost any of the hard armor I built up during my rotten life.
I look around again.
Mess.
Stress.
Every appliance running or beeping.
My wallet, sobbing.
Laurel.
Ohhh, man. “You make it all worth it,” I sigh, then kiss her little pink noggin.