“Weeks? Months?” Reyes pauses. “Years?”
I don’t know, so I go with answer B. “Months, I think.”
“And what did you do during this time?”
Besides survive? “I screamed a lot at first, thinking someone might hear me. Then I moved on to crying. Then I gave up on that and mostly just slept.”
“And what did Jackson do during this time you were in the closet?”
I know what she’s asking. I thought this had been clear and confirmed by the hospital tests, but apparently no one can believe that I spent ten years with the man who kidnapped me and wasn’t molested in some way.
“Nothing. I mean, he talked to me. Brought in fresh water and food and a fresh bucket, but that was all the contact I had with him at first.”
“What did he talk about?”
I stare at the recorder. A little red light flashes on it, and I watch that until it puts me into a trance. “He called me Sara. He referred to me as his daughter. He talked about memories of them going to the park, the time he taught her to swim. He said that he wasn’t going to let anyone take me away from him again. He promised he’d keep me safe.”
“And did you say anything back?”
I blink, focusing on the red light again. “At first I tried to convince him that I wasn’t his daughter and to let me go, but after a while, that dark closet just kinda broke me. By the end, I would have said anything, been anyone, just to get out of it.”
Burnside shifts in his chair.
“When he finally let you out, what happened then?” Reyes continues.
Even though she doesn’t have a notepad in front of her, I can tell she’s crossing off questions one at a time.
“Um . . .” I rub my neck and tug at the neck of the sweater. “He chained me up. At first the chain was only long enough to move around a bedroom, but as time went by, he kept adding a little more length until I could move around most of the first floor.”
“Did he ever take the collar off of you?” Reyes glances at my neck, but her eyes don’t linger there.
“No. Never. I slept in it, showered in it. It never came off.”
“So you never had a chance to escape? To get away from him?” Reyes’s index finger taps the table like she’s knocking at something.
“Never.”
Her finger stops tapping. “So you weren’t aware that when we found you, the end of chain wasn’t tied up to anything?”
My throat goes dry, but I know I’ve heard her wrong. “What?”
Burnside and Reyes exchange a look.
Reyes leans in closer. “The other end of the chain you were tied to wasn’t connected to anything. It was just sitting on the basement floor. There was a padlock attached to one of the links, but we have no idea when Jackson unlocked it.” Reyes pauses, looking at me. “Do you?”
The ground feels like it’s crumbling beneath my chair. “I’m sorry. I don’t think I heard you right.” I shake my head, trying to clear it. “Did you just say I wasn’t chained to anything when you found me?”
That can’t be what she said. I know I heard her wrong. There’s no way he took off the lock keeping me there so I could get away. There’s no way he would have chanced me getting away . . . unless he knew that I’d accepted the chain and would never try to fight it . . .
God, I’m the baby elephant. Actually, I’m the adult elephant whose will to fight’s been crushed.
Whatever’s left of my soul detaches and dissipates into the dark.
“When we found you, no, the chain wasn’t attached to anything. You weren’t tied to anything that would have forced you to stay there.” Reyes exhales, and I can tell from the way her expression falters that this next question will be a hard one. “Did Jackson ever leave the house?”
I nod, knowing where she’s going.
“Why didn’t you try to escape, Jade? Why didn’t you try to get away?” For the first time, I hear emotion in Reyes’s voice.
My head is spinning, and I feel like I’ve just been thrown in that closet again. All sense of time and direction and meaning drain from me. I’m floating in a black vacuum.
“I didn’t know . . . I didn’t try. I just stopped trying after a while and gave up.” My voice is shaking, but I’m not crying. I think this is what shock feels like.
“So you don’t think Jackson freed your chain because he was letting you go?” Reyes asks.
My head lowers. “No, he did it because he knew he’d broken me.”
Ten Years Ago
I’VE HEARD IT said that love makes us weak. It makes us weak because our survival instincts, along with our reasoning, become dulled. We first consider every move through the filter of that love. In a way, what we love makes us better people, more intuitive and less impulsive.
In another way, it makes us worse. It turns us into an immoral, corrupt being that knows no bounds when it comes to protecting what it loves.