Page 27 of The Woman I’ve Become

An image instantly flashes on the screen and has me rearing back. In my head, where no one can hear, I want to scream as if the person pictured in the image can hear me.

It’s the primary photo used in all the local newspaper’s articles about the abduction just a few days shy of twenty years ago. The image is one that has haunted me for every one of those fucking years. My heart reacts. How could it not? This is the part, I rail at myself, that will never allow me to be truly free. A lump of sticky, sickening fear surges into my throat. I read the scrawled letters marring the face in the pic—a single ugly word. Liar.

My heart thumps, and a distinct thread of uncertainty weaves its way through me as I scroll down to read the one typed line in the body of the email.

Did you really think you would get away with it?

I draw in a jagged breath. Remind myself that this is to be expected. The article published by the Times has prompted a reaction.

The reality in all this is that one can never undo their pasts or even successfully outrun it forever. What’s done is done. The real problem is those who rise from it like the dead crawling from cold, cold graves. That’s the true nightmare. Bony fingers clawing through the years like layers of dirt—layers I have carefully and diligently spread behind me to separate that past from my present.

But that separation is never truly anything but temporary.

I delete the damned email and open the next one without even thinking.

It’s the same . . . same image . . . same one liner.

The next one is from a different address with a different subject line, but the content is the same. As is the next one and the next one after that . . .

I launch to my feet, causing my chair to topple over onto the floor. But I don’t care, I can’t stop staring at the dozens more emails that keep coming. Now there are more than two hundred. Then it climbs to three hundred. The little pings accompanying the delivery of each are like needles piercing my brain. It’s as if opening the first one has set off some sort of chain reaction.

“Julia?”

I turn too quickly and sway. The room spins a little. I frown at the unexpected reaction. What the hell is wrong with me?

Oh yeah, I’ve probably been drugged. And the bitch staring at me is unquestionably the one who did it.

“Julia,” Acacia repeats, her gaze roaming over me, landing lastly on my face, “what’s wrong? What’s happening?”

Mounting anxiety and a dash of outrage suddenly replaces all else. “Where is Olivia?”

“She’s having a break.” A frown lining her features, Acacia comes closer, her attention fixed on the laptop. “What’s happened?”

I slam the lid shut. “We need to talk.”

“Is something wrong?” She searches my face now.

“We’ll discuss it downstairs.” I need to see with my own eyes that Olivia is safe. I unplug my laptop and tuck it under my arm.

Acacia follows me out of the room without another word.

Downstairs, Olivia is planted in front of the television watching her favorite cartoon. I give her a hug and tell her Acacia and I will be in her father’s study.

The study was once a library. When Phillip and I married, he needed a space here for working from home. He chose the family library and turned it into a very masculine space with lots of dark woodwork and heavy furniture. Even the upholstery and curtains are deep blues and grays.

I take the chair behind Phillip’s desk, more as a statement of authority than comfort. The sleek leather and wood are cold and austere. I place my laptop on the blotter pad as Acacia lowers into one of the upholstered chairs on the opposite side.

“What’s going on?” She asks this with a good deal of nonchalance, but her eyes give her away. She is nervous. Good.

“In the drawer of my bedside table, I found this.” I open the image of the necklace on my phone. While she stares at it, seemingly unfazed, I go on. “It’s very much like a necklace I once had, a long time ago. But it was lost. I want to know how this one got into my room and why.”

She blinks. “Are you asking me?”

I roll my eyes. “I am. You put my things away. You go in and out of my room as you please. Who else would it be?”

Her jaw drops, and a sound of disbelief issues from her mouth. “You’re joking, right? Olivia probably found it and put it there.” She shrugs. “Or it was already there. I have no idea.”

I restrain the building anger. “Olivia did not put it there. Where would she have gotten it?” Not that I asked my child but I know. I’m looking at the person who did this. I am certain of that much.