Lana,
As you requested, it’s at the Waterfront. The deal was this for your cooperation; it will be gone in an instant if you ever defy me or my wishes again.
J
Motherfucker. Even with keeping her locked up, he still wanted her to accept her fate without quarrel? I’m gritting my teeth as I go to pull out the rest of the box’s contents.
And a set of keys falls out and to the ground. I’m about to bend down and grab them when I see, at the bottom of the box, another letter.
And this one’s addressed to me.
To my son, Greyson,
I remember you. Every day I wonder what you’re doing and how you’ve grown. I ask for pictures, and as you can see I’ve gotten quite a few. You’re as handsome as I imagined you’d grow up to be. I look at these, wishing all your inner strength will be able to stand living with a man as hard as your father. But I try pretending that you’re all right. I try remembering how strong you are, how resilient, and I tell myself, one day you’ll outgrow your father and then you’ll be unstoppable. You will make yourself to be exactly what you want.
I’ve written you countless letters, none of them ever reach you. So I stored this one away to make sure that, somehow, it will.
I remember all our years together, I cling to them. And of all those years, I remember our time in Seattle most. You liked it when we walked to the waterfront.
We used to stare at the yachts out on the water and we’d wonder what it would be like to have a home that gave us that kind of freedom.
We both wanted to stop running, remember? We were tired of running from city to city, home to home, and yet every time I told you to pack, you did so quietly and without complaining.
I’ve never forgotten what a noble son you were, and I never forgot those days. Not when we moved to Dallas, Ohio, Pennsylvania, or Boston.
I’m surrounded by water now.
Since I got here, I’ve seen these lovely yachts sail by, and I became obsessed with finding a way to make sure that one day you have a boat of your own, where you can sail far away from any trouble, away from all those bad men around you.
In the end, I couldn’t see another way to do this except to cooperate with your father.
Escaping has been futile. And even if it were successful, who’s to tell me he won’t take his anger out on you before I reach you?
I’ve stayed put and tried to make the best of what I have.
The best of what I have is you, Greyson.
In this box you will find the little that was of value to me, most especially the keys to the boat I wanted you to have. It’s not much, and not nearly everything I would have wished to give you, but I hope that the ocean can give you the kind of comfort it has given me all this time.
Your loving mother,
Lana
TWENTY-SIX
* * *
IN DARKNESS
Melanie
Blackness. Cold. Beeping sounds. I feel alone. I feel empty. I want to move, open my eyes, as I hear voices around me. Why can’t I move? I don’t remember it. I see faces. A woman. A man. Familiar. Familiar voices.
“Melanie?” she asks.
“Sweetheart, do you remember us?”
I blink and the lights burn through my retinas.
Who . . .
WHERE . . .
Panic starts setting in, and that’s when I see the large figure at the other end of the room. My body trembles in reaction, not from fear but from some innate emotion and my heart starts beating really hard. His face is strained, there’s remorse there, and anguish. Seeing the pain there cripples me. I start hurting in places other than my body. Deep inside. I don’t understand how a pain could go as deep as this.
My lips part but I can’t talk, and then the woman presses a straw between my lips. I swallow coldly, my throat raw. The man—he, he is all I want to see—pushes himself from the wall and starts coming over, his eyes taking me in, forehead, eyebrows, nose, lips, cheekbones, neck.
Heat prickles through me hard and fast when he is close enough that I can smell something other than disinfectant. Forest. Forest. My brain screams thoughts at me. Forest. Kisses. Forest. Love. Forest. Danger. A tear trails down my cheek as I open my mouth again, and nothing comes out.
“Oh, I think . . . maybe you should leave,” the woman whispers to him. Not the woman. My mother. My mother, holding me when I was three, ten, fifteen . . . what happened after?
The man hesitates.
THE MAN looks at me like he lost himself and doesn’t think that what he lost can ever, ever be recovered.
“No,” I rasp. “Don’t go.”
His eyes bounce from my parents and back to me, and behind the depth of those hazel-green pools, there’s a roil of feelings in there. Frustration, regrets, and another more powerful feeling . . .
This man loves me . . .
His eyes red, this man looks proud as a rock and nothing will convince me he has not sat in that chair in the corner and cried for me.
He waits and they step back to give us a moment. He starts to whisper achingly softly to me, and the low timbre of his voice torments and heals me, both at the same time. “Hey, princess,” he says, gently running a hand down the length of my braid.
I’m wearing a braid. Someone braided my hair.
Hey, princess . . .
The way he LOOKS at me, I almost can’t take it. He stands there, his body vibrating with tension as he tries to hold himself together. He looks helpless. As broken as I feel. All my senses ache and hurt and my body itches and my arms ache and my soul burns for me to wrap my arms around him. To get closer to him, comfort him, but I can’t move and the wanting to be close is choking the breath out of me, making my heart race.
“Do you remember?” he asks in that achingly soft voice that makes me close my eyes and remember hearing it. Loving it.
“The doctors said you might . . . or you might forget a couple of things.”