Chapter 32 Before
Before
When Melinda arrives, she hesitates outside the door; a solid minute passes between when I hear the chain unlock and when the light floods down, but then she marches down the stairs at a determined gait.
I’m sitting on the bed, cross--legged. I’ve had water and a bit of food.
It’s taken everything I have not to devour all of it, but I know they’re right—-I’ll make myself ill, maybe dangerously so, if I indulge my hunger.
She stands at the bottom of the stairs and examines me.
She’s not a beautiful woman. Her features are too severe, the lines around her mouth aging her prematurely.
She has the face of the sort of woman you want in charge of things, the kind who’s never been given any slack because her smile was pretty.
“I brought you some light,” she says. She unslings a backpack from her shoulder and strides over, setting it at the end of the bed. She takes out a camping lantern and puts it between us. “I think we have a couple more I can scrounge up, but they’re in the storage shed somewhere.”
“It’s more than I’ve had for a long time,” I say.
She nods. Her mouth is tight, the corners tucked in.
Andrew stared; she seems to want to look at me only out of the corner of her eye.
“I saw that you’re hurt. I brought some medical supplies,” she says stiffly.
I make a puzzled noise and her head jerks up, her eyes meeting mine almost by accident.
She seems transfixed for a moment, and then she gestures sharply to my ankle.
It sticks out a little, an odd posture I’ve adopted unconsciously after so long with the chain as part of my everyday reality.
“Oh.” The skin beneath the manacle at the end of the chain is raw. Sores have turned to scabs, scabs to scars, but others are open and weeping. “It’s always like that.”
“You’re lucky it hasn’t gotten infected,” she says. She takes a closer look. “Any more infected. May I?”
I extend the leg. She sits at the edge of the bed and pulls out supplies—-alcohol, wipes, bandages.
She moves efficiently, shifting the chain out of the way so that she can dab the sores clean.
I hiss in pain but keep my leg still. Melinda is a practical woman.
She’s focused. Which is a problem for me, because I am a problem.
It won’t be enough to show her that there’s a solution to this problem that lets me live. I need her to see that I’m a person, not just an issue in need of resolution.
“Do you think you could take the chain off?” I ask.
“I’m sure we can find some bolt cutters or something,” she says. “Once . . .”
“Once you decide whether to let me go.” At her silence, I stifle a hollow laugh. “What was it Andrew said? ‘Vote for Hill’? Are you a politician?” I know she is, of course. I know so much about them.
“Trying to be,” she says tightly.
“Are you going to be a senator, then?”
“Eventually,” she answers without a trace of humility—-or pride. It’s just facts. “House first, though. The incumbent is a Republican, but the area’s gotten a lot more blue lately. I’ve got a decent shot.”
“But not if people find out about me,” I say.
“It wouldn’t exactly poll well,” she says dryly. She secures the bandage around my ankle, giving it some extra padding to protect it from the manacle.
“I wouldn’t have to tell anyone,” I say. “You’re saving my life. I wouldn’t want to cause any trouble for you.”
“How are you going to explain where you’ve been?” she asks.
I have to be careful now. Because the truth makes letting me go easier—-but it also puts me in danger.
“No one is looking for me,” I say. It’s a gamble.
On the one hand, that means no one is around to question where the hell I’ve been, should I reappear.
On the other hand, it means no one’s going to cause problems if they decide to leave me down here for good.
“That can’t be true,” Melinda says. “Don’t you have family? Parents?”
I draw my knees up to my chest. “Technically. But I took off years ago. They haven’t wondered about me yet.”
“Friends?”
“Not that kind,” I say. Not the kind you keep. Who care where you’ve been when you vanish for months at a time. The only ones who might have, I drove away a long time ago. “If you let me go, I’ll just . . . go. You’ll never hear from me again.”
She thinks about this as she gathers up her supplies, packing them meticulously back into her bag. “Andrew says Dad offered you a ride. Were you hitchhiking?” she asks.
“Does it matter?”
“It matters who might have seen you,” she says.
I could lie. Tell her it was the middle of nowhere and no chance anyone could connect us.
But I get the feeling that she’s someone good at reading people.
And then there’s the fact that my brain is still half suffocated with hunger and exhaustion and the horrible sameness of months in this pit.
I don’t trust myself to keep track of a lie.
“I was staying at a shelter. I was stupid, showed up drunk. They turned me away. He was there, offered to take me to a motel.”
“A shelter.”
“Yeah. He volunteered there sometimes. That’s why I thought I could trust him,” I say. Stupid. “Hope’s Hands.”
She flinches, her whole body drawing back and her face contorting in something like disgust. “That’s—-I run Hope’s Hands,” Melinda says, stammering. “Andrew and Liam are on the board. He was—-our mother started that place. Elizabeth Hill.”
My mind is filled with terrible light.
Lizzie—-
No. Leave the door shut. Leave that memory locked where it belongs.
She stands abruptly, grabbing the backpack. “I’ll be back soon.” The words are rushed. She won’t meet my eyes. I’ve made a mistake. I shouldn’t have told her.
A murderer for a father is one thing. But this? She’s right. It would destroy them. It would destroy all of them, and so I’m a threat again.
She flees up the steps. At the last second, I come to my senses and lunge for the lamp, twisting the knob to turn it on just before the door slams shut. In its glow, I sit panting, the cold grasp of memory still like a hand gripping the back of my neck.
At the end of the bed, where Melinda perched a minute before, is the oil--slick shimmer of the gossamer girl. It’s not over yet, she says. But you have to get out of here. As long as you’re in here, you’re not real to them.
I have to convince them to bring me up.
No.
I have to convince one of them. And I think I know which one.