Chapter 11 Sydney
Sydney
Imust be in shock. Why else would I feel so unbothered to learn that the man who calls me his wife has killed someone? Or that the necklace he gave me could track me?
But he defended me. Protected me from the man who wants to ask me questions and use me for bait. He doesn’t want to use me. He brought me to this place to find peace, and I’m grateful for it because, even if this turns out to be a trick, it’s a reprieve.
This man killed the person who tortured me. That’s enough for me to give him the benefit of the doubt.
I’ve woken from a long sleep. The roar of the surf is real. So is the heat of the sun on my face and the air in my lungs. The teak deck beneath my feet, the necklace in my pocket, and cotton against my skin aren’t a dream. The man who stands beside me saved me.
“He’ll kill you too. He’s dangerous and now you have proof,” a voice inside reminds me.
He could end my life with his bare hands. Somehow, I know that’s true. My brain says to run, but my body reacts with ingrained muscle memory that wants me to melt against him.
If he’d hurt me in the past, wouldn’t I flinch from him? Instead, when he placed the gold seashell necklace in my palm, his hand under mine, I fought the urge to flip my hand over and cling to his.
A tracker should terrify me, but he could have kept it a secret. Instead, he gave me a choice. It’s another promise of protection.
I follow him into a kitchen so pretty that my chest fills with something I don’t recognize. No wonder I didn’t believe him. He looks like a movie star, he’s too patient to be real, and this place is beyond anything I could’ve ever imagined.
He opens the outrageously expensive refrigerator. “Why don’t you take a look and see what you’d like? I can heat up soup, or we could make sandwiches.”
I peer around him. So much food. The fridge is full of everything from an entire layer cake to fruit and pre-cut veggies to cheeses and yogurt and juice and more.
I close the fridge and open cabinet doors, one after the other. It has to be here.
He nods toward a full-size door. “If you’re looking for your peanut butter, it’s in the pantry on the shelf to the left.”
I find it exactly where he said it would be and return to set the jar on the island counter.
“Great choice.” He walks to the island and pulls out a cutting board and chef’s knife from the drawers.
Then he drags a loaf of whole wheat bread across the shiny quartz countertop, spreads exactly the right consistency of peanut butter across the slices of bread, and plucks two apples from a ceramic bowl.
After washing, then coring them, he slices the apples into thin wafers, then layers them over the peanut butter.
He does know me. I’ve never met anyone else who ate whole wheat, peanut butter, and apple sandwiches the way I do.
He inclines his head toward the cabinet behind me. “Can you grab the plates and a couple of glasses?”
I open the cabinet. On impulse, I retrieve two dessert plates, as well. He builds the sandwiches, cutting each one into two triangles, and I return to the refrigerator, remove the chocolate cake and, with shaking hands, slice off two pieces.
Skirting around him, I walk to the small round table set in the nook overlooking the ocean.
After I set the table, he carries our sandwiches over, then sets down a carafe of water with sliced strawberries and mint leaves floating in it.
I don’t remember ever drinking something like that before, but sense immediately that I’ll love it.
I pass him a slice of cake.
He holds eye contact. “Thank you.”
I wait for him to take a bite of his sandwich. When he does, I reach out and swap his sandwich for mine. He doesn’t protest, merely picks up the new one I’ve given him and takes another bite. When I eye my glass of water, he reaches across, takes a swig, then passes it back.
”Thank you,” I say.
His lips curve. “Anytime.”
I can only eat a quarter of the delicious sandwich because I want chocolate cake, and if I finish the whole thing, I won’t have room. When he picks up his fork and digs into his dessert, I perform another swap.
Chocolate melts on my tongue, and all my taste buds fire at once, my mouth reacting with violent joy to the sweet confection. I don’t moan, but it’s a near thing.
The man watches me eat, a smile crinkling the corners of his eyes, as though he’s beyond happy to be sitting here with me, eating cake. He hasn’t demanded that I do anything yet, unless you count begging me to eat.
“What do you want from me?” I ask.
“For you to be healthy and happy.”
“What’s in it for you?” I speak the words slowly, careful to say what I mean.
“I want my wife back,” he says hoarsely.
“I don’t . . . understand.”
“I love you.”
“No you don’t.”
Something cracks behind his eyes, old and new at the same time. “You can tell me how you feel. You don’t get to decide what I do.”
“I don’t love you.” Only after I speak the words, do I process that if he told the truth, then I’ve just been horribly cruel.
“You will.” He clears his throat and looks away. “For now, you can think of me as a friend. The important thing is your recovery.”
“Where will I go after?” Suddenly, the idea of leaving this man sends despair into my veins.
It’s like whiplash, fearing and needing him.
Maybe it’s Stockholm syndrome. With food in me, I can think more clearly, and my stomach is full to the point of cramping, so why do my heart and gut feel hollow at the idea of running?
“When you feel ready to get back to normal life, we can go home to New York.”
He says those words with patience, but I sense he’s told me this before. I want to rip away his calm and see what’s underneath. I want to poke at that crack until I see the kind of person he is when he’s angry at me. Then I’ll know.
“Home,” I say slowly, testing the word. With this man who scowls, then feeds me and holds me, and just showed me that smile. Who says he loves me, but I don’t know him.
The crotchety orange cat rubs against my legs, and I bend to run my fingers through the soft fur on his head.
An image pops into my head of him yowling at me to feed him.
He’d eaten the center part of his dinner, and the bottom of his white and blue bowl was showing.
I had to shake the dish to redistribute the food, so he understood it wasn’t actually empty.
“Why are you so goofy? Stop staring at the empty part and look at the rest of the bowl.”
It’s a new memory. Maybe all I need to do is go home. Sleep in my own bed. Eat from my own dishes. “I should go b-back to the g-group home. Call Franny.”
His face fills with so much regret that every muscle I have goes rock-hard in fear.
“I’m so sorry, but Franny passed five years ago. And that group home hasn’t existed for more than a decade.”
Loss layers over loss so thick I can barely pull air into my oxygen-starved lungs.
Franny was staff, not my mother. But she was a good person.
She did her best. She was the one who didn’t change jobs or placements every six months.
It wasn’t great living in a group home, but it meant I stayed in one place and could focus on grades and soccer.
It was the closest thing to a home I had.
I stand to face him. “How old are you? How could you . . . t-take me away?”
“I didn’t take you—” His eyebrows twitch, then smooth back out as he shakes his head. “I’m thirty-three. We were married a little over a year ago.”
“Gross.”
He covers his eyes, then rubs his temples.
He should be ashamed of himself. “I don’t care how pretty or r-rich you are. Marrying a teenager is sick.”
When he drops his hand, the haggard expression from this morning is back. “You’ll turn thirty on your next birthday.”
“You lie.”
He shakes his head. “Would you like to see your driver’s license? Your social media accounts?”
More than ten years. Inside my mind, I claw frantic fingers at my brain. A third of my life can’t be gone. I can’t be that old.
He brushes his thumb across my cheekbone. “Shh. Let’s take a break. You’ve done a lot today. You don’t have to stress yourself out over this.”
I push away from him. “Ba-bathroom.”
“Okay.”
I rush forward on wobbly-colt legs to the bedroom, then through it to the attached bathroom, slowing when I get close to the sinks. When I showered earlier, I kept my face down and didn’t look in the mirror. I never do . . . because, deep down, I know what I’ll find.
I lift my head and face my reflection. The person staring back isn’t me.
The eyes are too big in a gaunt face. My cheekbones stick out too far, the hollows beneath them and under my eyes ghoulish.
My arms ache just thinking about dealing with the dry, matted nest of my hair.
It used to be my best feature, glossy and wavy, but that’s gone too.
I grimace as I lean closer to examine my reflection. Someone broke my nose, and it healed badly. An inch-long pink scar nearly touches the corner of my left eye and another one, slightly longer, marks an ugly trail on the other side, near my temple. I press trembling fingers to my head.
“The doctor thinks your long-term memory issues may be the result of a combination of psychological trauma and the drugs you were given. The memories from before you were taken may come back to you over time. Your other cognitive problems, like forgetting words and conversations, could be a result of the drug or physical injury and may take a while. The human mind and body are miraculous, though. You could heal over time.”
Could heal, not will. “Why d-didn’t you . . . tell me . . . how old I was?” The words, so coherent and clear in my brain, fight for a place in my mouth.
“We did. I have, but you forget. Like you’re on a loop. It’s okay. You weren’t ready to hear it yet, but you’re improving now. You turned another corner today.”