“So one day, I started a conversation with Lucy. ‘You’re so good with babies, Lucy. How do you know so much?’
“We knew they didn’t have children, because they told us and because there was no sign of any children anywhere. No pictures or baby things. Lucy kissed the baby’s forehead. She smiled and said, ‘God wanted me to have babies when he was making my soul, but then he made a mistake when he was making my body. It’s my cross to bear in this life, Cassandra. Not able to do what I was born to do.’
“Then she bounced Emma’s baby in her arms, and her smile turned happy. ‘Until now, right, my little peanut? My precious angel? My sweet Julia.’
“I told Emma what she said. I told Emma I thought she might be crazy, that she had been mothering us, but now she had a baby and that baby had ignited something inside her. Emma’s eyes got very wide. ‘That stupid bitch named my baby? She gave her the name Julia?’ Emma said she would hate that name for the rest of her life and would never let it leave her lips.
“We were both shaking then. I had confirmed what we both suspected. Lucy had gone crazy, and Bill didn’t know what to do about it. You know how sometimes you have two parts of yourself—one part that wants you to do something crazy and the other part that sees how crazy it is but doesn’t do anything, because it doesn’t want to upset the crazy part? You don’t want to cut yourself in half.… That’s what they were like. They were like one person with two parts. And the Lucy part was stronger.
“That happened in the fall, one year after we left home. By then we both knew something was wrong. The baby was six months old, and she was getting bigger and easier to handle. But still, they would not let Emma take care of her. Lucy held that baby like it was her own. Something just snapped in Emma. She went to their door and pounded on it with her fists. ‘Give me my baby right now!’
“Bill got very mad at her. He yelled from the other side of the door, ‘Go back to your room, young lady, or there will be dire consequences!’
“‘Give me my baby!’ Emma yelled, and pounded again on the door. I was standing beside her, frozen with fear because the situation was escalating and I knew it wouldn’t end well. Emma had fire in her veins but no power. I think the fire made her feel powerful and stopped her brain from working. We heard loud footsteps and then the door opening. Bill was there and he had this look on his face that was beyond angry—he looked like he needed for this to stop or he would lose his mind. I think on the other side of the door, Lucy was pleading with him to get us under control, to make Emma stop asking for her baby, and I think he had no idea what to do about any of this. He couldn’t make his wife stop, so he turned his rage to Emma and he slapped her clear across the face. She stared at him in shock. So did I. And he stared right back, just as surprised as we were by what he had done.
“‘I told you to leave! Why didn’t you listen to me?’ He said this in a pitiful, whiny voice and he even had a tear in his eye. Emma said nothing. She turned and left and I followed Emma back to her room. We sat on her bed. She took my hands in hers and she said, ‘You have to get out of here and bring back someone to help us.’
“We came up with a plan. I told her I would find a way to leave. I told her to start fighting with me and make it look like I left because of her and that I wanted no part of her, so that way when I left, they wouldn’t fear that I would return with help. And that was the plan. That I would come back for Emma and the baby. Emma agreed.
“From September to February, I watched three things: First, I watched the boats. I watched the hours of the day when they passed through different channels safely. Second, I watched when the boatman came and left. Third, I watched the hours when the baby slept during the night and when she needed to be fed.
“Bill kept a small rowboat at the dock. There were oars on the boat, and I thought I could use the boat and oars to leave. I was very stupid.
“The night I tried to escape, I waited until the baby had been fed and they were all asleep. I went down to the dock and got on that boat and untied it from the post. It was dead quiet and freezing cold. All I could hear was the sound of the water splashing against the sides and my heart beating fast. I was scared and excited and again, had that feeling of being powerful because I was taking charge of my life and getting away from these crazy people and saving my sister and her baby. It was also so hard to leave Emma, to leave the baby, like I was leaving a piece of me behind. So I just kept thinking about how I would return, maybe even that same night if I got lucky, with help. With someone who would save us.
“I grabbed the oars and started to use them to steer the boat. I had watched Bill do it sometimes when he didn’t want to wait for Rick. He would make it through that part of the current that pulled things back to the island, and then all the way into the harbor until he disappeared from my sight. But it was so much harder than I thought. I didn’t know to sit backwards. I didn’t know how to put the oars in the rings, and they were so heavy and the current was so strong against them. One got pulled right out of my hand and fell into the water and was carried away. Then the whole boat started to drift alongside the island toward the west, where those rocks were. The boat was totally out of my control. I went from side to side, pushing the water, pulling on it with the one oar that was left. The boat would spin a bit, then just keep on going with the current. I felt this panic like my head was going to explode. I knew if we headed toward the west end of the island, I would get stuck in the rocks. And that’s just what happened. The boat got lodged between two rocks. I pushed with the oar. I got out and tried to shove myself from the rock with my hands. My feet kept slipping. I don’t know how long I tried before I heard the motor, and saw the lights of another boat. Then I saw the face of the boatman. I saw Rick and his stone-cold stare.
“He didn’t say anything to me. He tied a rope around the boat and started to drive away with it, his boat pulling Bill’s. I screamed at him to help me. ‘They won’t let us leave!’ I yelled as loud as I could. ‘They won’t let us leave!’ But he just drove off, taking the boat with him. Leaving me alone on the rocks.”
Abby hit pause and wrote down the time of this piece of the recording. Cass had started to cry then. Abby asked her what she was feeling and she said she was remembering the despair, the feeling of self-loathing at her stupidity, her immaturity. She said she also felt rage, and that she had learned that rage is powerful and it can make you do stupid things. Listening to it now, some time gone by and Cass not right in front of her clouding her mind with the wonder of her return, it felt out of place with the story. Cass hadn’t done anything worthy of self-loathing. She had risked her life trying to escape and save her sister.