Chapter 17
It was three weeks to the day before Chad’s wedding when Rebecca, Lily, and Chad packed their bags and headed for the airport.
Lily’s husband, Mick, drove them in their minivan, and in the front seat, Rebecca listened as Lily spoke gently to her daughters, telling them she would be home as soon as she could.
She sounded at the edge of sobbing. “I’m going to get your Aunt Shelby and bring her back to Nantucket,” Lily explained to Natalia and Arianne.
“You’re going to love your Aunt Shelby. And your Aunt Shelby has three little kids!
Three cousins for you to play with and a baby on the way! Isn’t that amazing?”
At the Nantucket airport, Chad hauled their suitcases to the check-in line, while Rebecca said goodbye to her granddaughters and to Mick.
“Go out and get our girl back,” Mick said to Rebecca. “We need her here.”
Rebecca promised she’d do her best.
After they cleared security, Rebecca sat with Chad and Lily and studied the map of Livingston, Montana. There was an X where Shelby’s house was and another X where Vivian lived. After speaking with Vivian on the phone, Rebecca understood how difficult this mission would be.
“I think he’s friends with all the men in the area,” Vivian explained over the phone.
“That, or those men are frightened of him and willing to do anything to get on his good side. He’s got the most money of anyone around here.
At least, his family does. That said, we’ll have to find a way to get you into the house from the back.
If you come in through the front, someone will surely see you and call Jared.
I know that none of us wants that to happen. ”
Before they got on the plane, Chad called his fiancée to say goodbye.
Rebecca listened as her son spoke tenderly to Jenny, telling her the time they planned to land and when he’d call her next.
“I hope we won’t be gone long,” he said.
“But I’m going to do everything I can. I want my sister at our wedding, you know? I want this to be over.”
Rebecca squeezed her eyes shut and told herself not to cry.
The first plane took them to the mainland, where they had to change to another plane that would take them all the way to Livingston, Montana.
Once in Montana, a place of cowboy boots and quiet-seeming people, people entirely different from their East Coasters, Rebecca rented a car for them—an SUV that seemed like it could drive quickly across these wide open fields and into the mountains.
Once inside, she adjusted the seat and glanced at her son and daughter, who looked just as determined as she felt.
She couldn’t believe this was happening.
Then again, she couldn’t believe it hadn’t happened earlier.
To give themselves a bit of time, they rented a house in the mountain town one over from Shelby’s.
There, they found the key in the hiding spot, which the owner had sent them instructions to find, then entered to find an immaculate mountain cottage with a gorgeous view of the snow-capped peaks beyond.
For a little while, Rebecca stood, gazing out at the Rockies, unable to comprehend that this had been her daughter’s view for five years.
Everyone was starving after a long day of traveling.
Chad and Lily went to town to pick up a stack of pizzas, and Rebecca texted Vivian to say they’d made it in safely.
Vivian wrote back, asking: Shall we meet tonight to discuss our strategy?
It was clear that she wanted “Operation: Save Shelby” done quickly, just as much as Rebecca did.
Rebecca sent her their address and said she was welcome any time.
Vivian arrived a few minutes after Chad and Rebecca.
She brought a bottle of local wine and a box of homemade oatmeal-raisin cookies.
She was in her fifties, with graying hair and a kind smile.
Rebecca wanted to throw her arms around her and thank her, but she held herself back.
Vivian was a stranger. And this was perhaps the weirdest day of Rebecca’s life.
“We’re so glad you’re here,” Rebecca said instead, beckoning for her to join them on the veranda that looked out at the mountains in the distance. She opened the bottle of wine and poured everyone a hearty glass. Her hand shook slightly until she put the bottle down.
“Would you like some pizza?” Lily asked Vivian.
“Oh, I don’t know,” Vivian said, smiling nervously. Rebecca had the sense that she didn’t get out much. “It looks good, though.”
“It’s great,” Lily said. “We have more than enough.”
Vivian piled her plate with all three flavors.
She looked like she didn’t know how to sit still and kept wiping her mouth with her napkin.
Rebecca burned with curiosity about this woman.
Why was she living in the mountains all by herself?
If she hadn’t been by herself, would she ever have become curious about Shelby?
Lonely people were good at seeing what was happening around them, Rebecca thought.
“Thank you again for your email,” Lily said. “You can’t imagine how worried we’ve been over the years. When she moved out here, I thought that was it. I thought I’d never get to see my sister again. I thought she hated us.” Lily’s voice wavered.
“Oh no. She doesn’t hate you at all,” Vivian said, furrowing her brow.
“You know, when I first encountered her at the stream, she seemed so frightened of me. It reminded me of my past. There’s a reason I moved to the mountains by myself, and it isn’t because I’m a weird lady who wants to be left alone.
Of course, maybe I am a little bit weird, and maybe I do want to be left alone.
” She laughed sadly. “But I was married to a man not unlike Jared for many years. I met him when I was thirty-two. By then, I’d given up on love and marriage.
I’d told myself that my career—I was an accountant at that time—was more important to me, and I started rising in the ranks, making more and more money.
It was empowering. And then, I met Bob. He was an accountant at a different firm.
We met on a work trip, a cruise. When I first saw him, I thought he would never want to talk to me.
He was flirting with a bunch of other women, making his rounds.
But everyone was flirting. It was just a fun little trip.
When he reached me, he said something about my hair, which was long and sleek at the time.
I blushed, and he asked if I wanted a drink.
You have to understand that nobody had bought me a drink, not for years.
It had a real effect on me, as embarrassing as that sounds.
“We started dating after that. He was Mr. Wonderful in every sense. He lived a town over from me in Kansas, and we visited one another often and went to the big city to do other things, like go to the movies and go out to dinner. Sometimes we stayed at fancy hotels, which was so exciting.” Vivian’s face lit up, as though the memories were nourishment.
When he asked me to marry him, I was so blown over with disbelief that I nearly fainted.
I called my sister in Topeka, and we started planning an extravagant celebration right away. I was the happiest I’d ever been.”
Vivian folded her lips and blinked out at them, as though waiting for one of them to stop her from telling more of her story. But Rebecca was all ears.
“The abuse didn’t start right away,” Vivian said.
“He was still Mr. Wonderful after we walked down the aisle, just not as much. I told myself that the butterflies had to fade sometime. That’s how romance works.
We started fighting when he started buying things without asking me.
I’m not talking about small things or extra groceries.
No. He went out and bought a boat for twenty grand.
We lived in Kansas, mind you, and the nearest body of water was a four-hour drive away.
Maybe that could have been a conversation we had.
But no, he did it without asking, and he used my money, too.
I was still working hard at the accounting firm.
As it turned out, I was making more money than him.
He didn’t like this, either. But I didn’t recognize that at the time.
“When he first suggested that I quit my job and take care of things at home, I wanted to laugh. It took me a while to recognize that he was serious. He explained that if I quit, that would open up my position at my firm, and he could take it over. I explained to him that it would still mean we would have only half the money. But he said he wanted me to have kids and didn’t want to send them to daycare, so I had to stay home.
By then, I was thirty-four, and I knew my clock was running out.
So I told him I would quit when and if I got pregnant.
Lo and behold, I got pregnant right away.
A promise was a promise, so I quit my job and stayed home, waiting for the baby to come.
She did: ten pounds of her. I was happy and terribly busy, as you know. ”
Rebecca nodded. A sense of doom and gloom hung over them.
“I guess I hadn’t fully noticed how different my husband was treating me by then,” Vivian continued.
“He’d gotten the job I’d vacated, lucky him, and then he began to speak to me as though I’d never had a job and never brought in any money.
I was so busy with the baby that I let a lot of it slide.
But by the time we had our second kid, I felt brittle and frightened.
He only hit me once, but goodness. I’ll never forget it. ” Vivian shook her head sadly.
“I only got up the nerve to leave him after our second child went to college,” Vivian explained.
“My great-aunt passed away and left me some money, so in secret, I bought this place out here in the mountains and left him. I’ve been reeling ever since.
It’s all very recent. But when I saw Shelby at the stream, Shelby with her three little kids, I knew that her story was only just beginning.
Maybe she didn’t have to go through the decades I’d gone through. ”
Vivian stopped and closed her eyes. “If you get her out of here, I know it’ll be a struggle.
It’ll take years, probably, to undo the damage he’s done to her.
I’m doing work with an online therapist, trying to fix my brain.
But there’s a terrible narrative in my head, one that tells me that I’m not good enough to start over on my own. ”
Lily, Chad, and Rebecca were quiet, soaking in Vivian’s awful story.
“You’re brave,” Rebecca said finally.
“I’m not,” Vivian said with a laugh. “But I want to be. And I think that’s what life is, sometimes.”
“Fake it till you make it,” Chad said, offering a crooked smile.
“Exactly,” Vivian said, reaching for another slice of pizza.
Rebecca had the sense that back when she’d been married, Vivian’s husband had closely monitored everything Vivian had eaten. Maybe that was why she let herself eat as much pizza as she wanted. She was hungry. She needed the fuel to survive.
Lily took another slice, too, as though she understood she needed energy to save her sister. Rebecca sipped her wine and narrowed her eyes.
“You said we can’t enter the house the front way,” Rebecca said.
Vivian nodded. “It’s too dangerous around here. Jared’s too much of a name. Everyone wants to be on his good side.”
Chad grunted. “Pathetic.”
“But she takes her kids to the stream,” Vivian said. “Especially when the air-conditioning goes out. We’re about to enter another heat wave. It’ll be over a hundred the next three days.”
“How do we make sure the air-conditioning breaks down?” Chad asked.
“Let me take care of it,” Vivian said. “I can be pretty handy when I need to be.”
“Don’t put yourself in danger,” Lily told her.
Vivian cast Lily a look of humor mixed with mischievousness. “My life has been filled with danger,” she said. “I made it through all of that. I can break an air-conditioning unit, no problem.”