“I won’t, baby. Momma is coming to get you. Don’t worry,” she says. “Just try to get some rest, and I will be there soon. Can I call this number back?”
“I don’t know. I’m afraid he has it connected to his phone. If he does…”
“I’ll hurry, baby. I’m not far away,” she tells me. “Let’s get off the phone just in case. Turn it off if you can.”
“Okay, Momma. Thank you,” I whimper again.
“Of course, baby. I’d do anything for you,” she says, making me roll my eyes again. “I love you, Milly.”
“I love you too, Momma.”
When the call ends, I take the battery out of the phone and toss the pieces down beside the cot before sitting. I lie back and look up at the ceiling. Waiting is the hardest part, because what if she flees instead? Just as I start to doubt if she is coming, the basement door opens.
“Momma,” I say as I sit up and see her coming down the stairs.
“We’ve got to be quick, baby,” she says. “Oh, honey. He shackled you?”
“Yeah. I can’t get it off,” I say quietly. “There is a key in that cabinet. It’s where he keeps all the stuff he uses to hurt me,” I say, pointing to the opposite side of the room. It will put her back to the rest of the room, allowing them to come out for her. I see a gun in her waistband, but she’s not reaching for it.
“Great. Okay,” she says, rushing over to the cabinet. I have a feeling that Alania is in there. When she puts her back to the rest of the room, the others start to emerge. When she pulls the door open, she nearly shits herself when she jumps back as Alania comes out with a gun in her face. Grayson is the one to get her gun, so she is no longer armed while Ace unlocks the shackle on my ankle.
“Damn. She’s dumber than I thought,” I laugh. Grayson wraps me in a warm hug.
“You lied to me,” Mom says to me. I turn and face her with a confused look on my face. I just blink at her until I hear thebasement door open again and the others come down. Raul is restraining her arms behind her back when Dad comes down.
“I lied to you?” I ask.
“Baby, please. You can’t believe…”
I tighten my hand into a fist before swinging and punching her in the face. Her head snaps back, and Ace laughs loudly.
“You are a psychopath,” I tell her. “You lie with no remorse. You let grown men rape me. You forced your other victims to hurt me. You made me believe I didn’t have a sister when I did. You let me believe that Dad was the one who raped me.”
“It was going fine until Greg had to go and fuck it all up,” Mom says with a sudden deadpan expression.
“You know,” Raul says. “I tried very hard to find any record of Molly dying.”
“Shut th…” Mom starts to yell, but Alania hits her in the face, shutting her up.
“So then I started looking at hospital records,” Raul says.
“What are you getting at?” Dad asks.
“Well, I found where you were picked up when you were unconscious. You died a few times on the way to the hospital,but they got you into surgery to control the bleeding,” Raul says. “But that same call, there was a ten-year-old Jane Doe transported to another area hospital. I thought that maybe it was Milly, but no… she went to the same hospital as you.”
“No,” Dad says tearfully.
“What?” I ask. Everyone looks at me with a smile. Mom is gushing blood from her nose, but no one is paying her any attention. I hear the basement door open again, and Grayson turns me to face him before he takes my face between his hands. “I am so confused right now.”
“Baby… Molly isn’t dead,” Grayson tells me. “The bullet did hit her head, but she got really fucking lucky.”
“She…” I start to ask. He turns me around, and tears roll down my cheeks as I stare at someone who looks scarily similar to me.
“Hey, Milly,” she says with a tearful smile.
“No. That’s not real,” I say as I back up. Grayson catches my waist and lets her approach me. “You aren’t real. You can’t be.”
“I’m real, Milly,” she says, cupping my face between her hands. I squeeze my eyes shut, and I start to break down. I am eventually crying so hard that my legs give out. She wraps me in a tight hug and brings me down to sit on the ground as she rocks me. She starts humming a song, and it hits a memory.
