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And I did know. The tragedy of both my parents was that neither of them was a bad person. They had always loved me and my sister. They just couldn’t always cope with things. Although I suspected that the not coping came largely from my mother’s side of the camp.
When the microwave dinged, I took the plate and plowed through it like a starving woman. It was my first real food of the day. I didn’t count fast food, and I hadn’t had breakfast.
My father stood in the kitchen for a few minutes more, watching me. It was obvious he wanted to say something else, and I knew what it was. He wanted to know which version of reality was true. Had I been someone’s prisoner, so he could be distraught? Or had I just run off, so he could be angry? But he remained stoic as ever.
With the dirt that had covered me, one might assume something at least resembling what had happened. But if I’d had a mental breakdown and run off somewhere, only to come back and discover a fresh grave with my name on it, the results would have been the same. They were better off not knowing. They’d be better off angry.
The doorbell rang again. More kids. I put the empty plate in the sink and headed for the door. I wanted to do something normal. Even if my heart wasn’t in it, I wanted to participate in some inane activity like giving candy to random neighborhood kids in costumes.
My mother had been halfway to the entryway when I stopped her and took the bowl of candy from her hand and opened the door. But it wasn’t cherub-faced little princesses and miniature goblins that greeted me. I had believed I’d been discreet, that no one had recognized me, but I’d been wrong.
The glass bowl shattered on the porch and the candy went flying.
A crowd of journalists had assembled on my lawn with bright lights and cameras and microphones. Some of them with little squares of paper that they were furiously jotting notes down on. Perhaps noting my state of dress, my facial expressions, whether or not I looked abused or if I’d lost or gained any weight.
I squinted out into the sea of eager faces, people for whom my trauma equaled their paycheck. I could hear camera shutters clicking, could see the video cameras trained on me, and I wondered if he would be watching the news back in his fortress. Just another piece of video surveillance. Just another way he could spy on me.
“Miss Vargas.” It wasn’t one voice, it was several, all bleeding together, running on a loop.
“Why didn’t you go to the police?”
“Were you kidnapped? Is the perpetrator still at large?”
“Emily . . . ”
“Miss Vargas, were you held against your will?”
“What happened?”
“Can we get a statement?”
“Miss Vargas . . . ”
I shut the door and locked it. The nightmare had begun.
ELEVEN
Ileft my family to handle the media and the random people who kept popping by insisting we were the closest of friends and they needed to see how I was, when really, most of them had the most fleeting and peripheral impact on my life.
They just wanted to rubberneck. These people built up our association so they could watch with morbid fascination the undoing of one Emily Vargas.
I had no choice but to talk to the police. I’d already decided I wouldn’t turn him in. The idea of the man I’d called master being locked up was more distressing to me than anything else I’d experienced.
I would have loved to have refused to talk, but then I’d be obstructing justice. Justice. As if anyone but me had any horse in that race. It was a crime against me, not the police, or the state, or the country. To force me to comply was just one more type of enslavement. So I did what I had to do. I lied.
I told them I never knew exactly where I was, but that one day he tied me up and blindfolded me, drove for what seemed like several hours, and then dropped me off on the side of a highway. By the time I got through the ropes and blindfold, he was long gone. I told them I’d found out, through hitchhiking, that I was in Nebraska and took rides from several people until I got home.
Of course, this was announced on the evening news along with a plea for anyone who’d picked up someone meeting my description on the route I’d described, to please call in with any additional information. A few people called.
Whether they were crank callers trying to get fifteen minutes of fame, or people who had picked up a hitchhiker and thought it was me, it was enough to cause the investigation to grind to a halt. There just wasn’t enough information to find anything.
I’d burned the clothing and shoes I was wearing, feigning naiveté and talking about how it was just too much, and I needed to get rid of the memories. No one knew about the storage facility.
The year lease was coming up, and I’d have to pay another year or switch to monthly soon. I wondered how long I was prepared to pay to shield my tormentor from punishment and if this wasn’t just another way for him to hurt me.
Once the business with the police was finished, I fell into a listless pattern of television watching. A few friends came by, but I didn’t have the energy or will to ask to stay with any of them. That felt too much like moving on with my life. My life had ended with him.
Everything was still too loud. Too much stimuli from too many sources. I longed for that nice, quiet room with the soft Middle Eastern drumbeats that thrummed through my body as the whip came down. To feel his weight covering me, his mouth on mine.
