I say nothing. Then, as though he senses what comes next, he lunges from the chair and walks to the fireplace. He spreads his arms wide and palms the mantle, leaning against it so that his head hangs down between them. I hear his breathing in the quiet. It’s heavy, labored. Angry.
So I finish. I’ve come too far to stop now. “Not much changed for four long years. During the day, Emmy was all mine. I cared for her, clung to her, protected her. I fed her, bathed her, put her to bed. But the nights…the nights belonged to Ryan and Lucy. I got numb to it eventually. I lived for the days. I’d get a few hours sleep after they left me and then I’d spend every second I could with Emmy. But the nights… I drifted through them like a zombie. But I had Emmy. That’s all that mattered. She was clothed and well-fed, she had toys and parks and playgrounds, and as long as she was okay, I was okay. Until the one day that she wasn’t.”
I feel the tears now, hot and urgent, burning. My heart pounds against my sternum, demanding release. Like the memories themselves are alive within me. An alien clawing toward the freedom of open air.
“I was only asleep for a few minutes. Emmy had been sick and I’d been up with her for two nights straight. She was watching cartoons when I drifted off on the couch. When I woke, she was gone. I went all through the house looking for her. I even checked in the backyard, thinking she might’ve gone out to play on her swingset. But she wasn’t there. And neither was Ryan.” My words are coming faster, my breath more frantic. My voice hardly sounds like my own. It sounds shrill and shaky. “I don’t even remember climbing the stairs. I only remember praying that she was okay, that he didn’t have her. That’s when I heard her scream. It sounded exactly like the one you just heard.”
I close my eyes. I have to force myself to calm down, to remember that she’s safe. That we are hidden away where no one can find us. Not even Ryan.
“He had taken off her pants and her panties and w-was holding her down, t-t-trying–”
“Stop!” Cole snaps. “Please stop.” His voice is tortured, as tortured as I feel.
I drop my face into my hands and I let the sobs come. Deep, gut-wrenching, painful. They come from a part of my soul that I haven’t visited since it happened. I can’t. For Emmy’s sake, I can’t. The anger overwhelms me. The fear incapacitates me. But Emmy needs me, so I have to be better than that. I have to be stronger.
“When Lucy saw what I did to Ryan’s face, when she heard what he was doing when I found him, she took me to town the next day, gave me five hundred thousand dollars and told me to disappear. She didn’t like that Ryan wanted me so much. Wanted Emmy. It wasn’t fun anymore. At least not for her. But that was fine with me. Anything to get away. And so we did. Emmy and I disappeared. That was two years ago.”
Cole turns to me, a mixture of rage and heartbreak on his face. I see it clearly despite the tears flooding my eyes. As always, he watches me for a bit first, but then, he walks to stand before me. Slowly, he kneels, taking my hands in his. He stares down at them as though they might speak to him at any moment. Purposefully, he brings each finger to his lips, kissing them one by one. When he’s finished, he lifts his eyes to mine.
“Eden, I…” he begins. His voice is low. Gruff.
He doesn’t finish his sentence. Instead, he pulls me onto the floor in front of him and draws me into his arms. He holds me this way–both of us on our knees, my cheek pressed to his chest, his lips pressed to my head–for so long that I know the rhythm of his heart better than my own. Mine starts to follow it, matching the pace, beat for beat.
We breathe together, beat together, hurt together, closer now than we were even when his body was buried deep inside mine. Right now, we are the same. We are two broken people, finding strength in each other’s remaining pieces. We’ve both lost so much, paid so dearly for what we have left, for what we were allowed to keep. Maybe, just maybe, it’s enough to make a whole. Our pieces. Together.
It’s minutes, hours, days later when Cole speaks again. “Is that why she doesn’t talk?”
I nod against him. “Selective mutism. She hasn’t talked to anyone except me since the day I pulled Ryan off her.” My voice is a whisper in the quiet, like the patter of rain in the halls of a mausoleum.
“And the nightmares?”
“They’re getting less and less. She pulls out of them more quickly, too. She’s still sucking her thumb, though. Something she only started doing again after Ryan. The doctors say that with time and safety and normalcy, she’ll heal.”
There’s another long pause. I hear the steady thump of Cole’s heart, the even wisp of his breathing. And then I hear his eerily cold, “If I ever lay eyes on him, I’ll rip his throat out.”
I squeeze my eyes shut against the notion of seeing Ryan again. “He can never find us. Never. I can’t risk Emmy. I can’t risk him trying to take her away.”
“I would never let that happen. He’d have to kill me first.”