She runs to the guest room for her bag, throws her laptop in it, and grabs her keys.
But no. Those are useless. She needs Mrs. Reilly’s keys. And she needs the Miata to work and have gas in it.
“Ella, honey, I’m gonna count to three, and then things are gonna get scary. I don’t want ’em to, but that’s my job. Don’t make me do something we’ll both regret.”
Shit.
But she can’t get out of the garage with his car parked right there.
She pockets Mrs. Reilly’s BEACH LIFE key chain, puts down her bag, and walks to the door like she’s going to the electric chair. She slept in her clothes, and her hair is a mess, and there are still some speckles of bile on her shirt from throwing up.
Good. Let her be as pathetic as possible. She’s got to find a way out of this, because the only two places Uncle Chad can take her are to the police station or to her dad, and both choices suck.
“One.”
“I’m coming.”
A pause. “Good, Ella. I’m gonna need you to open the door now. I’ve got my gun out, but I’m not going to shoot you.”
There’s an implicit probably in there, and they both know it.
Ella puts the knife down on a side table.
“Okay, Uncle Chad. I’m opening the door now. Please don’t hurt me.”
She undoes the chain and twists the lock and opens the door, and even though he warned her, she’s not prepared to see a man she’s known all her life pointing an evil black gun right at her chest.
The moment he sees her, his eyes flick to her empty hands, and only then does he lower the gun. He doesn’t put it back in his holster, though—just lowers it and holds it with one hand instead of two.
“Okay, good girl. Thank you. Now we can talk.”
Yeah, because nothing makes a girl want to talk like an angry man holding a gun.
“Okay,” she says, because he’s staring at her like she’s supposed to say something.
“Let’s have our little chat inside.”
Fear trills up her spine. She doesn’t want to be trapped in that house, alone with this man, every curtain shut to outside eyes. But she can’t say that, so she just nods and steps aside. Chad walks in and does that little FBI gun dance from the movies as he checks every corner, face twisted in a scowl as he aims. When he spots the knife on the side table, he glares at Ella like she’s betrayed him.
“I was here all night by myself,” she says. “I was scared.”
He throws it across the room and jerks his chin at the couch. “Sit down.”
She does, hands fidgeting in her lap.
“Ella, honey, what are you doing here? Why aren’t you home?”
And she thinks about lying but it just takes too much energy and anyway, who cares? There’s no way out of this. No way Uncle Chad is going to let her stay here, safe and left alone.
“I’m not home because my dad chokes me unconscious, and he beat my mom up, and that was before he was really angry,” she says, her voice flat.
Uncle Chad’s face screws up. “Now honey, that’s just not true. I’ve known your dad almost my whole life, and he’s a good guy.”
She shakes her head. Of course he would deny it. “Not to me.”
He plows on like this doesn’t matter a bit, and to him, it probably doesn’t. “Well, the thing is, you’re a minor. By law, I have to return you to your parents’ house. So we’re going to get in my car, and I’ll escort you there right now. Your dad’s waiting. He’s real worried about you.”
That is not what he’s worried about, but Ella knows arguing with a guy like Uncle Chad is stupid. He’ll tell her she’s lying, she’s wrong, that she’s remembering things incorrectly, that there are other points of view. He’ll tell her to be a good girl, to submit to her father, to follow the law.
He’ll deliver her right back into the hands of a man who will hurt her, all because he’s never witnessed it with his own eyes. And even if he did see it, he would tell himself Dad was only playing around, or she needed to be taught a lesson.
“Why didn’t my dad come?” she asks.
For the briefest second, Uncle Chad looks surprised and stupid, like she caught him. But then he covers that up with his Policeman Scowl. “He didn’t know if it was you or if someone maybe stole your car. So he sent a professional. He’s waiting at home for you right now, worried sick.”
They stare at each other for a long moment, Uncle Chad looking smug and like he thinks he’s pulling one past her, and Ella hating everything about him and the situation.
“What if I don’t want to go home?” she finally says.
He looks confused by this thought, and it occurs to her that this whole time, he hasn’t asked if Brooklyn is here with her. Dad only seems to care about keeping tabs on the women who take care of him. The women who defy him. A little kid like Brooklyn is just…well, not worth the trouble. Yet.
“You have to go home. Like I said, that’s the law.” He holds up a pair of handcuffs. “Trust me, you don’t want these.” And then he smirks. “Although you might when you’re a little older.”
Ella is about to tell him how gross that is coming from her “uncle” when she goes unconscious.
29.
Patricia is sobbing into her hands on the floor of her closet when a tiny voice says, “Nana, you’re crying.”
Once she knew the house was safe, she unbuttoned the fancy dress and sent Brooklyn upstairs to change to buy herself some time and save herself from whined complaints about itchy crinolines. It didn’t take her granddaughter very long to follow those orders, and now Patricia has been caught in a vulnerable position, which she hates. She takes a shuddering breath and rubs her fingertips gently over her eyes from the inside corners to the edges in that way that makes her mascara smear less.
“Yes, I know.”
“What’s wrong?”
With a big sniffle, Patricia changes gears and stands before Brooklyn can touch her face with those sticky hands. “Someone stole something very important from me.”
“Jessie stole my favorite princess dress at school last year. I was so mad I wanted to pull her hair.”
A wild half sob escapes, and Patricia shakes her head.
“This was something much more than a dress.” She looks around her enormous closet, calculating how much she could get for her Birkins, Louboutins, and furs…if those were the sort of things anyone was buying right now or that she knew how to sell. She hasn’t set foot in a pawnshop in thirty years but she knows damn well she won’t get enough to pay for a week’s worth of groceries, just now. “Go on now, back to the kitchen. This closet is off limits.”
“It’s bigger than my room!”