“You’ll help me?” I said with desperation.
The woman nodded slowly. “Yeah. I’ll try, but ya have to gimmie a few days. Tell no one we spoke ‘bout dis. I’ll come to ya when I’m ready.”
I nodded; my hands sweated; my heart pounded feverishly in my ears.
The woman started for the door.
“Wait.” I stepped up behind her. “What about my sister? Her name is Sosie. She has blonde hair; she’s about my height. And she’s blind. They took her to the brothel.”
The woman chewed pensively on the inside of her cheek.
“I’ll see what I can do,” she said, and stepped out into the hall.
“But I can’t leave without her,” I said at the door. “If you can’t find me a way out of here that includes my sister, then I won’t go—please find her.”
The woman nodded once and then scurried down the hallway. I closed the door and locked myself inside the Overseer’s room.
I had been hungry before, but now that my mind was racing with the possibility of escape, I barely picked at the eggs and fried potatoes with my fork as I stared off at the wall. I was too excited to eat. And nervous. I was more nervous than anything because I knew that even with someone’s help, it would not be easy.
I spent the next few hours locked inside the room alone with only my thoughts and a half-eaten plate, until the lock on the door rattling against the wood frame woke me from a haze.
“Open the door!” I heard the Overseer say, and the lock rattled again.
I went over to let him in; decided I had to act normal while I waited for news from the woman who would be my ticket out of this prison.
Atticus walked straight into the room when the door came unlocked, barely giving me enough time to move out of his way.
“I-I didn’t feel safe being in here alone,” I stammered.
His lumbering movements as he made his way across the room toward his desk suggested he might be angry, or maybe just in a hurry.
“I don’t care that you locked the door,” he said as he sifted through the contents of his desk. “It’s best that you do from now on anyway; I should’ve woken you up and told you to lock it behind me when I left this morning.”
He took the large map and moved it aside. Then he took up a warped notebook that appeared to have been wet at one time, and flipped through the buckled pages.
I went over to my cot and sat down nervously, and watched him with private glances.
Atticus scanned the text, as though he were only skimming sections, looking for something, but then he looked up suddenly, glancing at the half-eaten plate on the table by the wall.
“Who was in here?” he probed.
I raised my eyes but was slow to answer.
“I…don’t remember her name,” I began. “One of Rafe’s wives.”
Atticus went back to reading the notebook.
“Well don’t open the door for her anymore.”
“But how else am I going to eat, or get a bath, or use the restroom?” There was a slight edge to my voice.
“I’ll bring your food from now on,” Atticus said without looking at me. “And when you need to use the facilities, I’ll take you and wait outside the door—no one other than me is allowed in this room.” He looked right at me then. “Is that understood?”
I wanted to argue my point until I realized I didn’t have one. At least not one I could argue with him. I couldn’t tell him I needed to see this woman because she was going to help me escape.
“I understand,” I agreed. I would figure the rest out later.
Atticus set the notebook down and went over to the food on the table. He looked at me and then back at the food. Lifting the plate, he placed it underneath his nose and inhaled deeply.
“It’s already cold,” he said, setting the plate back down. “How long ago did you eat from it?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. A few hours maybe.”
“Good, then you’re probably safe.”
“Safe from what?”
Atticus went back over and sat down at his desk; he was so tall he sat awkwardly in the chair, hunched over slightly with his legs taking up all the space between him and the desk.
He glanced at me. “I doubt they’d try to kill you here, but it’s been almost two weeks and you still haven’t cracked, so naturally the claws will start coming out.”
I stood up and went toward him. “What are you talking about? They’ve been really nice to me—you were the one who sent them to care for me in the first place.” Weren’t you?
“Don’t let them in here anymore,” he said simply. “Now, I have work to do, if you don’t mind.”
Angry at his non-answers, but too intimidated by him to let him know just how much, all I could do was nod. Could what he said be true? Would Rafe’s wives want to kill me? I thought it absurd, after they’d been so kind. Plus, the many opportunities they had to kill me already—it didn’t make any sense. And I didn’t want it to be true, not now especially, after I had a way out of this city with the help of one of them.
I tried another approach.
“Well, I was going to suggest that I be allowed to stay with them, actually,” I said, with absolutely no confidence. “I think I’d feel safer with them. Not to mention, it would be, well, more appropriate than staying here in your room, sir.”
“No,” was all he said without looking up, and he continued to scan the text of another notebook.
“But—”
“No.” His head snapped around; he set the notebook down. “My job is to keep you safe until my superior returns. That means safe from all things, primarily rape, consensual sex with soldiers like your ex-roommate, and, of course, murder. So, you’re going to stay in this room, with me, whether you like it or not. What did she say to you when she was here?”
The question caught me off-guard.
“She didn’t say anything.”
I was unconfident now in my lies, too, and I got the feeling that Atticus knew it. My demeanor probably didn’t help, either: the way I couldn’t look him in the eyes for more than a second, the way my fingers fidgeted nervously in front of me—I wasn’t this uncomfortable last night when I watched a man get stabbed to death. Sure, I had been frightened and shaken up, but this was a different kind of fear—I was hiding something, and I was afraid that he knew it.
Atticus turned back to his desk.
“Well, what’s going to stop me from leaving this room on my own?” I said boldly, and yet, timidly. I rounded my chin with as much defiance as I could muster.
“Looks like you can’t lock the door from the outside,” I pointed out, “or you would’ve locked me inside here when you left.”
“You won’t go anywhere.” He didn’t look up from the paper, and his voice was uninterested.
“I won’t?” My chin reared back.
“No. You won’t.”
“What on earth would make you think that?” I found his apathetic attitude toward something I thought quite a serious matter, maddening—Did he think me weak and stupid?