Fixing. Cora’s always fixing and protecting and preventing. Another way in which my conviction irrevocably altered our family. I can’t go back. I can only go forward, but with the future so uncertain, I wonder what we’re moving toward. More days like this?
I hook a finger in the curtain to make sure Dad’s gone. He is. I open the door for Cora, giving the hall where my mom disappeared a final glance before heading out after her. Maybe all at once was too much to ask, too forced. If our family is going to find our way back to one another, we’re going to have to do it in tinier, easier-to-manage steps. Maybe I’ll give those Al-Anon meetings another try. There’s no way I can wrap my head around the changes in my parents without some kind of road map showing us how we got here. And how we can get back.
Chapter 10
Vera
I spent the weekend mostly holed up in my motel room, finalizing projects for a couple clients. I’m running low on money and could use the payday that finishing them will bring. I tried not to be drawn to that house. All of Friday and most of Saturday I resisted driving over there. Saturday evening I found myself climbing in my car, then driving down that street. I didn’t know what I expected to find or even why I put myself through going back to that time and place. Maybe it was just to prove to myself I could do it. That I could face the demons and walk away.
Of course, I went there armed. I’m not stupid. Masochistic, yes. Dumb, no.
The house looked pretty much the same. It was me—I realized—who had changed. Everyone I knew back then was long gone. Javier is smart enough to have moved the operation. My escape was a huge breach in his security, and as far as I know the only time anyone got the better of him. He’d want payback for that. He’d want Marie. She wasn’t his usual taste, but she was young and so obviously vulnerable it would be like picking low-hanging fruit. According to her Tumblr posts, he has her fooled, as he once fooled me.
I want to say I made him work harder than Marie did, but that’s not true. I wanted what he was offering. I didn’t realize what lay hidden just beneath or that I’d be trapped in a lower level of hell for nearly four years. I don’t think about that first time. Or the next or the next. The last time…now that I remember. It’s that last time Javier wishes he could forget.
I sat in my car across from the house for almost an hour, the memories rushing at me in crashing waves. So many times I wondered how the neighbors didn’t know what was happening in the middle of their neighborhood as they walked their dogs and took their kids to soccer practice. At first I held out the hope that I’d be rescued. As the days turned to weeks, then months, then years, those hopes faded and died. I remember the day I finally gave up and the song that was playing on the radio.
I shake myself out of those thoughts. They don’t serve me. They won’t get Marie back. Beau thinks he might have a lead on Javier’s new residence. Or it could be another dead end like the three before it. Javier is smart. He hasn’t lasted this long doing what he does without knowing exactly what moves to make and when.
I’m jittery and tired from too much caffeine and not enough food. I haven’t slept a whole night since I read Marie’s Tumblr. The clock is ticking. Once she gets the tattoo, that will be it. No going back. I go to the crooked mirror hanging over the scarred dresser and take off my robe. I make myself look at my body, turning so I can see the tattoo on my right shoulder blade. I thought Javier designed it just for me, so I was proud to sit for it.
It’s pretty if you don’t know its meaning. A scrollwork heart with a keyhole at the center and a chain attached to the top of the heart with a J-shaped key dangling just below. In the flourishes around the heart—if you know where to look—are three numbers. I didn’t know the significance of them at the time until I met another girl with the same tattoo. She gloated over hers being a lower number.
I cringe at how high the numbers could be now. What number would Marie’s be?
My phone pings with a message from Beau. Since we kissed and talked, things have settled into something more comfortable for both of us.
Beau: (panda emoji)
I smile.
Me: (bamboo emoji)
Beau: What are you doing?
Me: Nothing.
Beau: Can I come in?
He’s here? I look down at my plain bra and underwear.
Me: Hold on a sec.
I shimmy into my robe and tie the sash tight. I check the peephole, and sure enough, there he is. My heart stutters and I put a hand over it, clutching the top of my robe tightly as I open the door. He takes me in from my bare feet to my makeup-free face. He doesn’t look good. Something happened. Something’s wrong. I motion for him to come in, nervous for a whole new reason.
“Is it about Marie?”
“No.” He closes and locks the door behind him, then just stands there, staring.
“Did something happen?”
He leans back against the door with a sigh. The paper bag in his hand clanks against the door.
“What’s wrong?”
“What are you wearing under that?”