“So I had the night off,” I continue. “If I didn’t get out right then, I knew I’d never get out. He’d discover I had the thumb drive and that would be it. I’d end up like Cherry. I waited until the guard outside my room stopped one of the girls to get him off, then I pried the wood off my window with a piece of the bed frame and climbed out.”
“You jumped out a second-story window?” Beau asks in disbelief.
“I lowered myself as far as I could go, yes. I got lucky. There was a bush under the window.”
“Where did you go?” This from Cora.
“I couldn’t go to the police, so I went to a fire station and hid. When they went out on a call I took what I could use—some cash, clothes, a car—”
“The other crimes,” Cora chimes in. I don’t hate her for trying to protect her brother, even though she destroyed any chance I might have had with Beau.
“I drove as far as I could,” I continue. “Ditched the car. Got on a bus. I just kept going as fast and as far as I could. I changed everything I could to stay hidden. I only came back for Marie. But I was too late. He already had her.”
“Why did you take the thumb drive?” Beau asks. “What were you planning to do with it?”
“Revenge, maybe? To prove I could hurt him a fraction as much as he hurt me? I don’t know. After a while I came to see it as insurance. I had something over him I could use to negotiate with if I had to. I really don’t know. There was no plan. It was there. I knew what it was. I took it…while he beat me. It was me trying to be defiant, I guess. How dumb. God. I was so dumb.”
I laugh at how ridiculous I was back then. How ridiculous I am now. This whole thing is just so stupid. I don’t know what I was thinking then, and I don’t know what to think now. I wrap my arms around myself and lose it, laughing like a fucking lunatic. Cora stares. Beau takes a step toward me, but I shake my head at him to stay away. I can’t be touched right now. I can’t restrain myself. Everything is spinning out of control. All of my careful planning, every well-thought-out move, how I kept myself separate, alone, all of it was for nothing.
It’s all out now. Every ugly thing I did. How desperate and sad I am. How totally and completely stupid I’ve been about everything. How after all the things I’ve been through I still held on to hope. Hope of a better life. Hope to be a person of worth. Hope to find someone like Beau and the sheer, absurd, comical hope that I could hold on to him, that what I’ve done, who I’ve been, could just be ignored or forgotten. That’s what’s so goddamn funny to me now. I believed it! I tried to pretend I didn’t. I ignored the part of me that wanted and honestly believed I could have normal things, a normal life.
But it was there all the while. That seed of hope. I should’ve killed it a long time ago. It’s disintegrating now, eating me up from the inside, spreading like poison through me. It fucking hurts. I drop to my knees. Then on all fours. I’m dying. I’m on my face on the floor. Beau and Vera crouch beside me, but I can’t hear them. The other voices are too loud. All of the things they said to me, those men. All of the ugly, vile things they did to me. I can feel them touching me, pulling at me. They all want a piece of me. They take and take and take till nothing’s left but an empty shell. I’m nothing. This is what they made me.
Nothing.
Chapter 27
Beau
“Should we get her to a hospital?” Cora asks.
I don’t know what the fuck to do. Vera is scaring the shit out of me. She’s always been so strong. She says things so bluntly, so matter-of-factly, that I don’t look past her candid words to what she might be burying deep down underneath. I forget how young she is, how young she was when all of that shit happened to her. I don’t know how she survived this long.
“Go,” I tell Cora.
She gives me a worried look as she stands, then leaves the room, closing the door behind her.
Vera lies on her side away from me, crumpled into a ball. The sounds she makes. The keening. The shaking. I put a hand on her shoulder. She shrinks away, as though my touch burns. I don’t know where she is, but she’s not here. She’s gone to that place in her head. It’s not the comforting, blank place it once was. There’s no strength for her to draw from anymore. I don’t know what to say or do for her. I’ve never felt so helpless in my whole life. The only thing to compare would be my first few weeks in prison. I try to think of what would’ve helped me back then, what someone could’ve done for me.
Nothing.