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EPILOGUE
BONITA
HER NAME IS FLORA DANE. Once, she knew a bad man, too. He kidnapped her and hurt her and tried to break her. But she held strong. She survived him. She rebuilt her life. She found people to love, people who love her.
She is not surviving anymore, she explains to me. She is thriving.
And she is going to teach me how to do it, too.
During the day, a new lady comes to visit me. Her name is JoAnn Kelly and she knows the magic of speech. She works with lips and tongues and how to make them do what you want. She is teaching me noises. Puh, puh, puh. Hah, hah, hah.
I haven’t heard myself in so long, the first noise shocks me. The second makes me cry.
Later, when D.D. comes to check on me at lunch, she cries, too.
My new friends are busy.
I can’t tell them where the other girls are, but there is another woman, Dorothea, who works in the town offices and runs some kind of website; she talks enough for everyone. D.D. tells me Franny, the Bad Man’s mother, refuses all conversations. Her man is dead. Her son, too. She doesn’t care about the police, our town, what she did. She sits in silence.
But Flora’s boyfriend, Keith, can make computers do whatever he wants. With some information from Dorothea, he finds everything D.D. and the others want. Now, the FBI agent Kimberly is gone every day, overseeing the dozens of law enforcement experts pouring through our mountains, unearthing sad piles of bones, and helping them find their way home.
I’m called Bonita now. I like this name. I don’t think it’s the one from my mother, but it is the one from my new life with my new family, so I will keep it.
Eventually, D.D. says I can come to a big city called Boston. There is a place there that specializes in injuries like mine. My new therapist tells me they can help me make some progress. Maybe not speech, but I will learn to communicate with pictures and some words and maybe things like sign language. It turns out there are many kinds of talking in the world. I will find a way in the end.
D.D. says I can live with her and her husband, Alex. Her son, Jack, already wants to meet me. He has a dog named Kiko who eats shoes and runs like the wind. I want to meet Alex and Jack and Kiko, even if it means leaving this tiny place that has been both my prison and my home for so long.
Flora tells me it’s okay to be scared. She says I must talk about it and not hold it inside. Fear is natural, but I should always remember that I am strong. All survivors are strong, and no one can take that from us.
People have vanished.
Not girls this time. Townsfolk, business owners. Here, then—when the FBI goes to raid their homes—gone.
Dorothea’s computer includes names, D.D. explains to me one day. Many are local. Some are from around the world.
She and Kimberly are not concerned about the ones who’ve fled. D.D. tells me they will catch them all in the end. The ripples from this case—bodies in the woods, names in the computer—it will take years to unravel.
But that’s the FBI’s job. I don’t have to do anything. They have Franny and Dorothea and other guilty parties and piles of evidence to help them out.
It’s my job to be a girl now. Not a stupid girl. Just... a teenager. One who will go to school, and study speech and maybe make new friends, like Alex and Jack and Kiko.
I’ve never been a child before. I don’t know if it’s hard or not, but I would like to try.
I cry at night. I have bad dreams. I wake up, maybe trying to scream, but of course there is no sound.
Flora tells me she does the same, and she’s been rescued for seven years. She assures me it gets easier. I will learn about me, and what I need to get to the other side.
I have never been me before either.
Flora loves Keith. They never say anything, but we all know. They blush when the other walks into the room. I like how they smile radiantly. It brings a lightness to my chest.
I think I understand what Flora is trying to teach me. It won’t be all better right away. But someday, it will be all better.
We have been staying at our same motel. After the Last Stand at the Mountain Laurel and the string of arrests, the motel manager has been very nice to us. He swears he never wanted us to leave, but had received a threatening note. It turns out many people knew Clayton, and most were scared of him.
D.D. must return to Boston soon. She misses her family and needs them. I can’t go just yet. There is paperwork that must be in order. I don’t know how you put paperwork in order, but Kimberly assures me it can be done. In the meantime, Flora and Keith will stay with me.
Flora is arranging the burial of a man named Walt Davies. I didn’t know him. I don’t really know most locals, just the guests that stayed at the hotel. Apparently, Walt was the father of Flora’s bad man. But she says Walt was good in the end and tried to help her, help me.
