Chapter 30 Before
Before
In the early days, after my initial panic receded but before this started to feel normal, I would count to try to keep track of the passage of time.
One to one thousand, and then I’d place an almond on the ground as a marker.
Any way to record the passage of hours and days.
It didn’t last long, but now I find myself counting again.
Seven hundred and sixty--three. Seven hundred and sixty--four. It’s not just about knowing how long it’s been. Even the voice in my head is better than the silence. I thought I was used to it, but I was wrong, because the gossamer girls have been here for so long.
They’re gone now. They’ve abandoned me. Perhaps they escaped when the door opened, or maybe they simply lacked the substance to survive the onslaught of the light. They’ve always come back before.
It’s different now. He’s dead. Gone, truly gone, and I hope it hurt, but I think it didn’t. At least not for long. A few gasping minutes at most. I hope it felt like drowning.
There should be more relief in the fact of his death than this.
There should be more safety. But whatever Andrew said, whatever his promises not to hurt me, he’s crossed a line.
They all have. And they know it, even if they haven’t said it out loud yet.
If they had called for help right away, or even after the first few minutes, it would have been simple.
Any initial reaction they had would have been put down to shock, if it even was mentioned at all.
But now? They know that if I live, it will be known that they debated the alternative.
My survival would have damaged them before. Now it could destroy them. Unless I can convince them otherwise.
He talked about them a lot. My captor. Mason Hill.
He told me all about them, his hopes, his disappointments, his thoughts on how they were lacking (and, oh, he found them lacking).
Mason Hill locked me down here, but maybe, just maybe, he also gave me the key to my survival.
Because it isn’t this hole I need to escape now. It’s them.
It’s an hour before the door opens again.
I shut my eyes as the light floods down but keep my face pointed toward it, letting my eyes adjust. The heavy tread tells me it’s Andrew, and when I finally open my eyes a crack, I see that I’m right.
This feels like a small victory. Maybe I’m just desperate for one.
He’s brought a plastic grocery bag, from which he extracts a -bottle of water and holds it out, wordless.
I take it, but my fingers wrap around the cap without the strength to twist it.
He makes a noise that might be irritation or simply surprise and crouches down to help me.
I flinch, turn my head away on instinct, watching him out of the corner of my eye.
He pauses, and a look flickers over his face almost like he’s offended.
He hands the opened water back and I hold it in trembling hands. I can’t look him directly in the face.
He looks too much like his father. With the same anger in his eyes. I’ve complicated his life. I’m proof of his father’s evil, and he would be happy if I disappeared entirely.
“Thank you,” I whisper. Andrew sees me as a threat. I need to make myself small.
He grunts. “I brought you some food, too. Melinda says go slow. Melinda, that’s my sister.”
“I know,” I say. It’s the wrong thing to say; his gaze sharpens again, and his eyes narrow.
“We’ve been talking,” he says.
“Are you going to let me go?” I ask.
“Of course,” he says. He’s still lying to himself. Still pretending that he isn’t seriously considering an alternative. “But we want to do this in a way where everybody wins.”
They’re the words of a salesman or a politician—-We want a win--win, everybody goes home happy—-but there’s no home for me here or anywhere else, and happy stopped being an available destination even before that door slammed shut.
I’ve been on a road to ruin longer than Mason Hill’s been my keeper, and maybe Andrew can see that.
I’m not the sort of girl who gets missed. I’m the sort of girl who people are relieved to see gone.
“It would be helpful if you told us your name,” Andrew says.
“I told your sister.”
“Stranger.” He tilts his head. “That’s not a name.”
“It’s what I have.” I trace a circle on the floor, the tip of my finger damp with water. I keep my eyes downcast, my body bent inward. I am nothing. No threat at all to you, Andrew Hill, and if you let me go, I’ll vanish into the brush like a rabbit and it’ll be the last you see of me.
“How did you end up down here?” he asks. “I mean, how did he . . .”
“He offered me a ride,” I say. I was easy prey.
Stupid, trusting. Too drunk to stay smart, but that had been on purpose.
I wanted to be stupid, because staying clever is so exhausting.
Sometimes you just want to drop your hands and let the blows land because it’s better than the constant ghost of anticipation.
“And then what?”
“Does it matter?”
“I want to know.”
I wet my lips. “He pulled over. I knew something was wrong, but I was slow. He put his hands around my neck. I blacked out. He tied me up. Is that what you want to hear?”
“He brought you here.”
My teeth grind together. They’re loose in the sockets. My gums bleed easily these days. Lack of sunlight, the wrong kind of food—-whatever it is, it’s stealing the things that hold my body together. I’ve started to decompose before I’m even dead.
“What do you want to hear?” I whisper.
“Everything.”
“Why? Do you like it? Do you get off on hearing about girls getting hurt?” I snarl. It’s a mistake.
“You think I’m some kind of pervert? You think because my father did those things, that I—-I’m trying to understand.
I need to know. I need to know what he did so I can .
. .” He can’t finish, because there’s no reason, is there?
He knows. He knows enough, at least. What happened is: the obvious.
What happened is: of course he did, and I will not lay it out in grotesque detail for this man, who looks so much like his father, with the same divot in his chin and the same pale eyes and the same long--fingered hands.
Not for him and not for anyone. Inside me is a room like this one, and all those days I lock inside it, except what I need to keep.
The words. The ways to stay alive. The things that man told me about his sons, about his daughters.
He spoke in a language of sin and vice and failed virtue, and so I know their vanity and their cowardice and their compassion (weakness, he calls it, weakness) and their wrath.
I know you, Andrew Hill.
But he doesn’t realize that. And I need to keep it that way. I need to keep him away from me, because he’s the greatest threat to my survival, and I to his.
“I’m sorry,” I say, simpering and weak. I curl against the wall. “I’m sorry. I just can’t. Please don’t make me.”
He softens. Not much, but a little. I have a chance as long as he thinks I’m weak.
“I shouldn’t have asked. Maybe I don’t want to know.
” His hand passes over his face. “None of this feels real.” Because his is the reality that matters.
“Dad was a bastard, but I can’t believe he would do something like this.
” He’s still hoping that somehow there’s been a mistake.
It was some other man, someone else’s father.
You aren’t stained after all, you won’t carry this weight until you die, no. “I don’t know what to do.”
His voice is raw and vulnerable, and I would almost believe it if I hadn’t heard that voice before.
Mason Hill used to weep. He used to say nearly those same words, as if it was some outside force compelling him.
As if circumstances had simply created the situation we were in and he was powerless against them.
I don’t know what to do.
In the beginning, it frightened me, and I would cram myself against the corner of the bed with the wall at my back, compressed as a pill bug.
Then the sobbing would turn into rage. I learned better.
The girls before had learned the lesson, too, and left me instructions, though it took me time to understand them.
I steel myself. Maybe there is kindness here I can’t see. A chance. I reach out. I don’t cover his hand with mine, but brush only the very edge of my fingertip against the side of his hand. He startles but doesn’t pull away.
“This isn’t your fault,” I tell him, my voice like velvet. “You didn’t do anything wrong. If you hadn’t found me, I would have died down here.”
He stays there a moment, perfectly still. His eyes search my face, and I brace myself, but he only frowns, looking almost -puzzled. He stands. He towers over me, but I don’t try to rise to match him, only look up from my position on the ground, on my knees.
“I’ll be back soon,” he says. He starts to turn, and I can’t stop myself. I grab at his ankle. He pulls it away with an expression of distaste, and then guilt.
At least he has the humanity to feel bad for how much he despises me.
“Don’t leave me in the dark,” I croak.
His eyes flick around, taking in the lack of light sources for seemingly the first time.
“Shit,” he mutters. He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a small penlight. “Here. I’ve just been using it to look around the basement and stuff. I’ll bring something better later.”
I take it from him with unfeigned gratitude and test it.
It’s far brighter than the failing flashlight that’s been my only light source for weeks, and my eyes flood with tears as I twist it to turn it on and off and on again.
“Thank you,” I whisper. “Thank you.” I cradle it in my hands as he looks down, uncomfortable.
“Right. You’re welcome,” he says, and then turns abruptly.
At the top of the stairs, he hesitates for a moment—-just a moment. Then the door swings shut, a guillotine dropping to sever the rectangle of light that stretches almost to my feet. It clangs. A chain jangles. A lock clicks.
My body floods with relief. I bend over, brow nearly to the ground, my arms wrapped around my rib cage.
To Andrew, I’m a threat. I will always be a threat. The best I can hope for is to hide myself from him, to become so small he doesn’t think I can hurt him. But the others—-maybe there’s still a chance.
A chance that I can convince each of them that I am exactly what they need me to be. And then I will be the only thing that matters—-
Gone.