Chapter 19 – Adrian #2
Deborah’s forehead furrows in a show of empathy. Cora glances up from the rug.
“I’m so sorry that happened to you,” Deborah says in a practiced way. “That must’ve been very traumatic.”
I nod, wet my dry lips, and wait for the next question. Deborah studies me, expectant. Cora’s gaze flicks between us.
“Do you feel comfortable talking about it?” Deborah finally asks.
“Sure.”
Both women keep looking at me. I wait for Deborah’s next question.
“How old were you?” she eventually asks.
“Eleven.”
“Oh. Wow. That’s young.”
Not that young. My brothers and I were basically raising ourselves by that point. It would be rude to correct her, though, so I nod.
“What happened?”
“Well, uh—” I clear my throat. “My grandfather was Henry Maddox.” Deborah’s expression shows that I don’t need to say more. Everyone in Manhattan knows the name. “And my father was, well, less than circumspect in mixed company. He flashed his money.”
“And your mother?”
“She was already gone by then.”
“I’m so sorry for your loss,” Deborah says.
“No, she’s not dead. She left to live in Europe.”
“Oh.” Deborah picks up her pen and scratches something on her note pad. “Please go on.”
Go on with what? “I’m sorry. What is it exactly that you need to know?”
“What do you feel is important for me to know?”
What the fuck kind of bridge-troll-riddle shit is this?
I dart a desperate glance over at Cora. She’s actually got some color back in her face, and she’s watching me closely.
Her eyes are brighter than they’ve been in a while.
Her body isn’t signaling that she’s about to run anymore. My irritation ebbs.
“Well, um, I was held for four days.” I didn’t know that until afterward. It felt like weeks. Months. In the pitch black, there was no way to mark time.
“That must have been terrifying. How did the ordeal end?” Deborah’s expression is a model of deep, sincere concern and compassion. How many times does she have to trot that out in a day? I wouldn’t have the patience.
“I got out.”
I settle back in my seat. After a few, long moments pass, Deborah’s brow furrows. “What else is important to know? To understand what happened to you?”
“That’s pretty much the whole story.” I rest my hands on my thighs and check the clock. Forty minutes left to go.
I let the silence sit. It doesn’t bother me. I negotiate for a living.
Cora’s gaze is riveted on my face now. Maybe that does make me a little twitchy. This is supposed to be for her. I don’t think it’s working. I take a deep breath, but I can’t think of what else to say. The second hand just keeps jerking around the clock’s face.
“How did you get out?” I blink in surprise. Cora’s question is soft, but almost defensive. Like she expects me to stonewall her. That’s not what’s going to happen.
“I escaped.”
“How?” she presses.
I don’t want to tell her. It’s nothing she needs to ever worry about.
“You don’t have to share anything that you don’t feel comfortable with,” Deborah interjects into the silence.
Cora, who’d somewhat straightened, deflates back into the sofa cushions. Hell, no. Deborah’s wrong on this one. If Cora’s talking in therapy, I’m doing whatever it takes to keep her going.
“I was kept in a basement. The windows had been filled with cinderblocks. They left me with a gallon jug of water. No food. After a while, I finished the water. I figured they weren’t coming back.
” I pause to swallow, but my mouth is so dry, my throat sticks.
“The floor was dirt. I found a hunk of concrete in it and dug it out. I used it to hack my way out the basement door.”
Cora’s watching me closely, but her face is blank. Not like she doesn’t care. Hard. Like this isn’t the worst thing she’s heard. Not by far. “What happened then?” she asks.
“Someone on the street found me and took me to the hospital. I was pretty dehydrated. I’d torn my hands up pretty badly.”
“Did they catch the kidnappers?” Cora has totally taken over the questioning.
I shake my head. The guys got away until Logan and Lucian were old enough to do something about it. All three are dead now, buried in a dark basement with a dirt floor.
“And the ransom?”
I snort. The kidnappers made the mistake of going to Dad instead of my grandfather with their demands. Dad was still dicking around when I got myself out. “The ransom was never exchanged.”
“Why not?”
I shrug. “I got out before Dad could pay.” Dad is always wistful when the subject of the kidnapping comes up, like it was a missed opportunity. He probably had some half-baked scheme to skim from the ransom that he’s pissed he never got to try.
“You were locked up for four days.” Cora’s voice rises. I grab her hand and pull it onto my lap. This is supposed to be helping, not upsetting her.
I shrug again. Ultimately, it wasn’t that big of a deal. My mother didn’t even bother to come back to town, not even to visit me in the hospital. “It was four bad days. Lots of people have had it a whole lot worse.”
Cora is shaking her head as I speak. “You’d never let Winnie or Pearl be gone for four days.”
“I’d never let them be taken in the first place.” I squeeze her hand until she focuses and her eyes lock with mine. I want her to know that I mean it. Our girls will never know what it feels like to be defenseless.
Deborah takes advantage of the lapse in Cora’s questions to pose her own. “What kind of supports did you receive afterward?”
Gideon bought us pizza when I got home from the hospital, and we stayed up all night watching every Lethal Weapon, but I’m sure that’s not what she means.
“There was follow-up. I don’t really remember. I was pretty young at the time.” It’s an evasion, and I’m not sure it flies. Deborah scratches another note on her pad. Cora moves our clasped hands to rest on her lap.
My stomach hollows. I don’t care to live in the past, but I have no problem talking about it. Objectively, the whole experience wasn’t much more than a misadventure. IV fluids fixed me up in no time, and fingernails grow back.
“It was only four days,” I repeat.
“Were you scared?” Cora asks.
Deborah’s brow knits like she’s about to take issue with the question.
“Yes,” I answer before she can.
“What was going on in your head?”
I don’t know why it’s easy to understand this kind of question when Cora asks, but the answer comes like I had it ready.
Like I’ve thought about this before instead of doing everything in my power to never, ever think about it.
“It was basically solitary confinement in the dark. I tried to count to track time. I’d lose track.
I wondered if the kidnappers were ever coming back.
What it would be like to die from thirst. Whether it’d be peaceful like people who freeze to death or if the thirst would just get worse and worse. ”
Deborah has lowered her pen. She’s watching me closely. When it’s clear I’m done talking, she asks, “How would you say the experience has impacted you as an adult?”
It hasn’t, but that’s not the answer she wants. By any measure, I’m a privileged person. I have a good life. So privileged, in fact, that I risked losing the best part of it because I couldn’t tolerate the idea that someday she might leave me.
I have to answer the doctor, though. I could say that I’m security conscious. Good thing, too. Cora’s self-protective instincts are haphazard at best. On one of our early dates, she strolled through Central Park to meet me with earbuds in her ears and a purse slung over her shoulder.
I guess I’m also very aware of emergency exits. When I built the house, I made sure the basement had multiple points of egress.
I have nightmares.
I don’t realize I’ve taken so long thinking of an answer until Cora breaks the silence.
“It’s like he’s always bracing for something,” she says. “I don’t think he trusts anyone but his brothers.”
I watch Deborah’s face as she quashes her instinct to instruct Cora to let me answer. I’m happy the doctor understands that our sole concern here is Cora.
“Does that resonate with you, Adrian?” Deborah asks.
Trust is psychobabble bullshit, but I’m not going to quash Cora, either. “I rely on people to generally behave in a way that’s aligned with their past actions. Or how they’re motivated to behave.”
I expect Deborah to quibble. Instead, she turns to Cora. “Is that how you see trust, Cora?”
Cora softly snorts. “You can’t predict how people will act, and you don’t really know what motivates them.”
“You and your husband hold very disparate beliefs about trust. I would say, respectfully, both are almost cynical views, but in different ways. That must pose challenges.” Deborah lets the statement hang in the air like a question.
I’m about to redirect the conversation somehow back to Cora when she says, “We have that in common, I guess. We’ve both got a screwed-up way of looking at people.”
I know it’s bad, to feel hopeful at that, but a small flame flickers to life in my chest. Cora is still holding my hand, and she’s not leaving me hanging out to dry.
I feel raw and exposed, like I should say something to move the moment along, but also, I want her to say more. Tell the stranger what else we have in common. Throw me another lifeline.
By some miracle, she does keep going. “I used to think that we were together because he was, like, my Prince Charming. And then I thought our relationship was all a terrible mistake.”
I can’t argue because my lungs have seized.
“But now?” Deborah prompts.
“Honestly?” Cora hesitates, gnawing her bottom lip. She looks at Deborah when she answers. “I think eleven-year-old him and the messed-up kid inside me recognized each other. I think we made pretend people for each other, so we could be happy in the way we thought we should be.”
“Did it work?”
“For a while, but it couldn’t last.”
Dread extinguishes the flicker behind my ribs. She needs to stop talking. The truth in the words is gutting me.