Tim gritted his teeth. “The people my parents left me with when they disappeared.”
There was a tightness in Riley’s chest. Why didn’t she remember Tim? Had her parents really left him? She didn’t want to believe it, but the evidence was scattered all around her. Riley cradled in her mother’s arms at the beach while Tim dug sand in the background. Her father and Tim, locked mid-arm wrestle.
Proof.
Her parents had left him behind. Tears clouded her eyes. She wanted to tell him he was wrong, that her parents would never do that, but the truth was she wasn’t sure she knew what her parents would do. She didn’t know who her parents were anymore. Nadine and Glen wouldn’t leave a child behind, but maybe Seamus and Abigail would.
“They didn’t tell you where they were going?”
Tim swung his head. “I was asleep.”
“And they left you here?” Riley gaped.
Who were these people?
“I was sleeping in my other house. The house where they put me.”
Riley wasn’t sure what to say. “So you gave me the postcards.”
Tim nodded. “But you didn’t do what I told you.”
“You said my parents weren’t who I thought they were. You said you knew who I was.”
“And then I came and found you. You were supposed to leave them and come with me. You were supposed to know what the postcards meant.”
Riley looked away. “You didn’t sign them or anything. How was I supposed to know who they were from? How was I supposed to find you?”
Tim sighed. “I was there, Janie. I was there with you the whole time.”
The pleased look on his face turned Riley’s stomach.
“Oh.” Tim clapped. “You must be hungry.” He went to an ice-packed cooler and picked something out. “I got you something special. Hot dogs! I remembered you love them.”
Riley couldn’t remember the last time she ate a hot dog. When her parents changed her name, had they changed everything else about her too?
Her pulse raced as Tim set a pot on an ancient hot plate and filled it with water. He stared down into it before dropping the hot dogs in.
“What do you want from me?”
“I don’t want anything from you, Janie. But I had to save you. Your parents are awful, awful people. Taking you away from them will teach them a lesson.”
Riley dragged her tongue across her chapped bottom lip. “You know they didn’t have a choice when they left.”
Her father’s sullen voice, telling Riley the same, hummed in her ears, and she missed her parents terribly. They wouldn’t disappear while she was here, bound to a spindly aluminum chair—would they?
She didn’t want to look at pictures anymore. She didn’t want “proof,” didn’t want any more creeping memories of life in this broken-down house. She had to get out, even if it meant getting on with her life should her parents abandon her.
Tim set a hot dog on a paper plate in front of Riley. He pulled out the chair across from her and sat down, his own plate in hand. She watched him pick up a hot dog and take a huge bite, juice dripping over his filthy fingers, his lips smacking as he ate. He gestured toward her untouched plate.
“Aren’t you going to eat?”
There was no way Riley could sit across from this stranger, in the midst of this dirt and debris, and share a meal. She was about to say the same when a thought struck her.
“I can’t.” She tried to shrug her shoulders and the tape puckered with a tight sucking sound. “I need my hands to eat.”
Tim gazed at her, considering. “You’re going to be good, right?”
Riley nodded, keeping her eyes focused on Tim’s.
“’Kay.”
His fingers wrapped around the knife, and she tried not to look afraid. He slit the duct tape, and Riley’s whole body fell forward, blood rushing to her arms, shooting pins and needles. She waited for Tim to put the knife down while silently judging the distance from her chair to the front door. The house was small, much smaller than the Blackwood Hills one, but she’d have to cut in front of Tim to get to freedom.
It was worth it.
The door hung slightly lopsided on the frame, the bottom cracking with water damage. There was a lock that looked new, but she was sure a swift kick would knock the whole thing off its rusted hinges.
“Where—is there a bathroom here?”
“I’ve been working on it for a month now. It even has water. Do you remember where it is?”
Riley shook her head. “I don’t remember.”
Tim pointed toward the pile of debris. “You go right behind that and there’s the hall. It’s the first door.” He grinned. “Your bedroom is the second.”
The thought of her sleeping in this house, with him there, sent pricks of anxiety all the way through Riley. She gritted her teeth and forced herself to breathe deeply, to focus—anything to quell the unease that was welling inside her.