“Well, if you figure out the problem with me is more than me being human, let me know. Maybe we can work it out. I’ll go let Bo know you’re waiting.”
Chase cleared his throat as she started out of the office. “Do I have to apologize to you, too?”
She turned her head, skewered him with a look. “Depends,” she said, and left.
PART TWO
A Purpose
Hold to the now, the here, through which
all future plunges to the past.
—James Joyce
CHAPTER EIGHT
— 1995 —
Alice—her name was Alice whatever he called her—gave birth to a son.
He was her third child, and the only one Sir allowed her to keep. The second baby, another girl, had been born only ten months after the first. A little girl she’d named Fancy because she’d come with a pretty down of red hair.
When he’d taken her baby away, her second daughter away, up those stairs, she refused to eat or drink for nearly a week, even when he beat her. She tried to choke herself with the bedsheet, but had only passed out.
He’d forced food into her, and feeling her own body crave it, she died a little. He gave her three weeks after childbirth before raping her again. Within six, she conceived a son.
The birth of the boy she named Rory for the father she’d never known changed things. Sir wept, laid a kiss on the baby’s head as it squalled and wailed. He brought her flowers—the purple pasqueflower that bloomed in April all around the ranch.
They said home, and had the rusty knife of hope carving into her.
Was she still home?
He didn’t come to take the baby away, instead brought her milk, fresh vegetables, even a steak. To keep her milk strong and healthy, he said.
He stocked her with diapers and wipes and baby lotion, a plastic tub and baby wash. When she asked—carefully—if she could have softer towels for the baby, he provided them, and a windup mobile, of animals and an arc, that played a lullaby.
For months he didn’t strike her or force himself on her. The baby was her salvation, sparing her from beatings and rapes, giving her a reason to live.
Emboldening her to ask for more.
He came to see the baby, bring her food, three times a day. The midday meal had been an addition after Rory was born. She’d come to gauge the time of day by his visits.
Preparing for the breakfast visit, she nursed the baby, washed him, dressed him. He’d taken his first steps only the night before, and she’d wept with pride.
A new hope burned in her. Sir would see his son walk the first time, would allow them to go upstairs, allow her to take the baby outside, to walk in the sun.
And she would see the lay of the land. She would begin to plan how to take her child and run.
Her child, her precious boy, her salvation and joy, would not grow up in a cellar.
She washed herself, brushed her hair that was now nut brown and past her shoulders.
When he came down the stairs with a plate of runny eggs and a couple of overdone slices of bacon, she sat in her chair, bouncing the baby on her lap.
“Thank you, Sir.”
“See that you eat all of it. Waste not, want not.”
“I will. I promise, but I have a surprise for you.” She stood Rory on his sweet, chubby legs, kissed the top of his head. He clutched her fingers for a moment, then let go and took four wobbling steps before he sat on his butt.
“He can walk,” Sir said quietly.
“I think he may be walking early, but he’s just so smart and sweet.” She held her breath when Sir went to Rory, stood him up again.
And Rory, hands waving, giggled as he toddled across the floor.
“He’ll be running before you know it,” she said, pushing cheer into her voice. “Boys need to run. It’d be good for him to have more room—when you think it’s right,” she said quickly when Sir turned those dark, hard eyes on her. “To get some sun. There’s—there’s vitamins in sunlight.”
He said nothing, but bent and picked up the baby. Rory tugged at the scraggly beard Sir had grown during the last months.
It killed her, every time he touched the baby. She had a knot of terror and despair tight in her belly. But she made herself smile as she rose.
“I’ll share breakfast with him. He likes eggs.”
“It’s your job to give him mother’s milk.”
“Oh, yes, and I do, but he likes solid food, too. Just little bits. He’s got five teeth and another coming in. Sir? I’m remembering what my own mother said about fresh air, and how you need it to stay healthy, grow strong. If we could go outside, get that fresh air, even for a few minutes.”
His face as he held the baby turned to stone. “What’d I tell you about that?”
“Yes, Sir. I’m just trying to be a good mother to … our son. The fresh air’s good for him, and for my milk.”
“You eat that food. He’s got more teeth coming in, I’ll get him something to gnaw on. Do as I say, Esther, or I’ll have to remind you of your place.”
She ate, said nothing more, told herself to wait a week. A full week before she asked again.
But in three days, after she’d eaten the evening meal, nursed the baby, he came down the steps again.
And stunned her by showing her the key to her leg shackle.
“You heed what I say now. I’m going to take you out the house, ten minutes, and not a second more.”
She quivered as that rusty knife of hope slashed jagged through her heart.
“You try yelling, I’ll break your teeth. You stand up.”
Docile, head down so he wouldn’t see that flicker of hope in her eyes, she rose. The hope died when he looped a rope around her neck.
“Please, don’t. The baby.”
“You shut your mouth. You try to run, I’ll snap your neck. You do just as I say, and it may be I’ll let you go out for that fresh air once a week. You don’t obey me, I’ll beat you bloody.”
“Yes, Sir.”
Her heart shook in her chest when he fit the key into the lock and, for the first time in four years, the weight of the irons dropped from her ankle.
She made a soft, throaty sound, an animal in pain as she saw the raw, red, circling scar above her foot.
His eyes were bright black moons. “I’m giving you a gift, Esther. Don’t make me sorry for it.”
When he shoved her forward, she took her first step without the shackle, then another, her gait uneven, a kind of shambling limp.
She held Rory close, struggled her way up the stairs.
Run? she thought as her shaking heart grew heavy. She could barely walk.
He tugged the noose tight at the top of the stairs. “You heed me, Esther.”
He opened the door.
She saw a kitchen with a yellowing floor, a wall-hung cast-iron sink with dishes stacked in a drainer beside it. A refrigerator no taller than she was, and a two-burner stove.
It smelled of grease.
But there was a window over the sink, and through it she saw the last dying lights of the day. The world. She saw the world.
Trees. Sky.
She tried to pay attention, take a picture with her mind. The old couch, a single table and lamp, a TV like she’d seen in photographs—a kind of box with … rabbit ears, she remembered.