28
I AM NOT dead, which is surprising, considering. I’m sore and bruised. My head is full of cottony water and my ears won’t pop. A shoulder feels scraped raw. But I am alive.
I hide until nightfall, in case he braves the waterfall and tracks me downstream.
The bank of the river is muddy and dank, but overgrown. Things crawl from the muck, their feathery touches tracing over my body, but I lie perfectly still, knowing the slightest movement could mean my last breath.
After what seems like hours crouched in the mud, I feel certain I am safe. For the time being. I travel downriver, careful to keep to the rushes in case they are looking for me, but once again, they will assume I am dead. Who could have lived through that fall?
It is a miracle. I am a miracle. Still walking, still talking. Still sane, after all these years.
My painfully empty stomach finally drives me away from my hiding place. I am thirsty and hungry and covered in mosquito bites and leeches. The sun sinks away into the tall grasses and the river comes alive, fish rising to the surface to snatch their dinner from the eddy pools, the moon bringing her favorite creatures to life. An owl hoots three times, and I shiver. Three hoots means death is coming.
With Adrian on my trail, I know she is right.
Three miles downstream now, and the river banks sharply to the left. I know it is time to reenter the world. There is a trailer park a few miles inland. I find clothes hanging on a line that look like they will fit me. It is not the first time I’ve helped myself to some clothes, nor will it be the last. It happens when you have nothing, and until I can get to D.C., to the woman I was told could help, who I can trust, I won’t be rolling in cash.
I tear off my muddy, torn jeans and waterlogged shirt, use a towel to wipe the dirt from my body and hair, slip into a too-small red T-shirt with Munich printed on it in raised white lettering, pull on a pair of fatigue green cargo pants. I leave my clothes behind in recompense—the woman who lives here might be a firm hand with a needle and can tidy up the mess I’ve made of mine. I can’t give up my boots, but they’re meant for hard times. I slip them back on my feet; they are old friends, worn but broken in, my favorites.
I’ve spent years trying to make them believe I am dead and gone, lost into the wilds, but now that he has seen me in the flesh, nine long years after I made my escape, all hope is lost. He will be hunting me, won’t quit until he sees my lifeless body into the ground. It may not be today, or next week, or next month, but he will not stop. Unless I stop him.
You will ask why I did not return to my family when I found my freedom. To tell them the child they buried was not their own.
You are right to ask. It makes little sense to someone who has not experienced the horrors I have. It is shame, prideful shame, that keeps me from them. To look Mother in the eye and admit how sullied I am, to see the confirmation of all she believed about me come to fruition? To see Father cringe when he looks at me, wincing at the thought of what I have endured? To have them whisper about me in the night? They were not kind people to start with. Oh, does this surprise you? It is hard to imagine having anything but pity for people who lose their children. But I will tell you the truth. This happens to good parents, and to bad.
I chose not to return, not to let them know I still lived. Hate me if you will. But I know my family, and I know that the idea of an angel child, sitting on a branch in some heavenly tree gazing down at them adoringly, fits their narrative much, much better than the rotten, tainted thing they would see me as if they knew the whole truth.
I breathe deeply, tie off the belt at the waist of the khakis. Shirt: too small. Pants: too large. Boots: just right. Goldilocks strikes again.
Yes, I hear the bitterness in my tone, too. This is what the thought of those people does to me. All of them. The ones who were supposed to care for me, and the ones who hurt me.
Love.
It comes in all forms.
The only real parent I’ve known lies dead in a stainless-steel drawer, unable to protect me any longer.
I march toward the road, toward the town, toward an uncertain life.
He trusted her. I must, as well.
Chapter
29
1989
McLean, Virginia