We exit the park within minutes and I let her steer the course, pretending I don’t know where she’s parked. We make small talk, discussing mindless topics like the weather, the way the town hasn’t really changed in years. She asks me if I live here and I say yes. I ask her if she lives here and she changes the subject, points out a dolphin jumping out in the ocean.
We stare at it for a moment, transfixed. I steal a glance at her, see the way she’s watching the sleek gray dolphin leap in the water, her eyes wide, her rosebud lips parted. Damn, she’s pretty. The urge to grab my phone and snap a photo of her at this exact moment is strong, but I know she’d freak.
So I’ll have to settle with etching her expression in my memory instead.
“My car is close.” She smiles and turns to face me. “Just right there.” She waves behind her and I look, knowing exactly which vehicle is hers, but again, I’m not supposed to. “Thank you again. For . . . everything.”
“You’re welcome,” I say solemnly, dread filling my gut and making me feel sick. This can’t be it. I can’t . . . I can’t let her go like this. Not with a “thank you and it’s been real but I’ll never see you again.”
Fuck, I can’t do it.
She’s turning away from me. Starting toward her car. I watch her walk, drink in her lithe figure, the subtle sway of her hips. She’s thin. I don’t know if she eats much and I’m suddenly overcome with the need to feed her. Take care of her.
“Hey,” I call and she pauses, turning to look at me with curiosity in her dark blue eyes. “Uh, are you doing anything right now?”
She contemplates my question, her delicate brows scrunching downward, her teeth sinking into her lower lip for a brief moment. “I should probably head on home. It’s getting late.”
“Oh.” I nod, swallow. Pray I don’t fuck this up. “I was wondering . . .”
Her face—there’s no other words for it, it lights up. Like she wants me to ask. “Wondering what?”
“If you wanted to have a cup of coffee with me. Maybe get something to eat.” I cock my head, stuff my hands in the front pockets of my jeans. Trying for unassuming. I don’t want to push.
But I can’t let her walk away from me. Not yet.
“Right now?”
“Yeah.” I swallow against the dryness in my throat. “Unless you have somewhere else you need to be . . .”
“I have nowhere to be. Nowhere to go but home,” she says, a rush of words that make her clamp her lips shut the moment they escape her, as if she didn’t want to admit that.
“There’s a little coffeehouse just up the street. We could walk there.” I pause. “They have a great view of the ocean.”
The smile on her face is nothing short of brilliant. “Okay. Yes. I’d love to.”
Despite my instincts screaming at me in protest, I move forward and she falls into step beside me, just like before, when I was someone else and so was she.
As if we were meant to be.
She was tired. And whiny. Her whimpers and constant sniffling was getting on my nerves, but I dealt with it. How could I be mad when she’d already suffered so much? My father chained her up to the wall like an animal. Something I could still hardly comprehend.
How many others had there been? That was the part I didn’t like to think about too much. But it lingered in my mind always, pounding an incessant question through my blood.
How many? How many?
I didn’t want to know.
Yet I had to know.
Saving this one was all I could do. I didn’t know about the others. From the things Katie had said, the hints my father had given her, I knew without a doubt kidnapping Katie wasn’t his first attempt. He had experience. He almost killed her. He’d raped her repeatedly. She never said exactly what he did to her beyond mentioning the choking incident, but I’d seen the bruises on the inside of her thighs, black and purple and huge. I could only imagine him wrenching her legs apart just before he . . .
“Are we there yet?” she asked for about the fiftieth time, sounding like every kid they make fun of on TV. Reminding me of Bart and Lisa from The Simpsons. There was an episode I watched where the whole family was going on vacation and that’s all they said, over and over.
Are we there yet? Are we there yet? Are we there yet?
Until Homer finally screamed at them and they reluctantly shut up.
“Almost,” I said, my rote answer. So tired of her asking that. But I was thankful for the interruption of my thoughts. I don’t want to envision what he did to her. Bad enough I saw the lingering evidence.
“I’m so sore. I don’t know if I can walk any farther.” Her voice trailed off, so weak and pitiful, and I turned around to see her standing there, her body hunched over, my sweatshirt swallowing her up, making her look incredibly small.
“Katie,” I started and she shook her head, closing her eyes as the tears slid down her cheeks.