AllFreeNovel
Share Us
It wasn’t minor fame that gave me the money to take care of myself now, but extreme responsibility with my finances. I’d always been a saver instead of a spender. It was part of why this step scared me.
But I had to act. Otherwise, I was going to wither away and die in my parents’ house in the creepy room with the white wicker furniture and the paper border wisteria dripping down from the edges of the ceiling.
I was too cowardly to kill myself, though I’d had fleeting fantasies. My master had thrown me out with finality, and my life with him was over. The only thing left to do was act.
To anyone observing this tragedy, I was a brave little soldier. Emily Vargas, the inspiration to kidnapped women everywhere. Such strength to so quickly begin putting the pieces of her life back together after all the horrors she must have suffered spending months at the hands of a madman.
I’d been invited already on a few talk shows to share my story, but I’d declined. No one was getting an exclusive. No one was getting the story period.
Everything seemed normal on the outside. But no one was there to hear me wake up crying in the middle of the night, reaching out for the comfort of a man’s body that wasn’t there. I dreamed only of him. Nothing else. There seemed to be nothing I could do to purge him from the darkest corners of my mind.
Thanksgiving came. Almost four weeks away from him and I couldn’t even begin to not want him. I went to my parents’ house for the obligatory turkey dinner. It was always a big deal. My cousins and uncles and aunts, my parents. My remaining set of grandparents on my dad’s side. And of course friends, including Bobby White, the guy who’d grown up two houses down from me and had always had a crush.
Before being taken, I’d finally consented to one date with him.Just to see, as he’d said. He was seated at the main table directly across from me, staring at me over the large shiny basted turkey that looked like it should be in a food magazine.
I looked down at my plate. I couldn’t stand to see the mixture of pity and self-absorbed disappointment that his one shot with me was probably gone for good.
My mom, as always, was the spokesperson for Thanksgiving. Granddad was the patriarch, but both he and Dad were men of few words, and mom had never had that problem. Like me. Or like I’d once been. I stared at my plate, tracing the filigree pattern around the edges with my finger, trying not to hear her as she said what she was thankful for, my safe return.
Various family members exclaimed their agreement, and I never felt so distant from them. Who were these people? I was a stranger here. We shared blood but not much else, and I wondered why we continued to get together every year like this. Like some bizarre mockery of the family unit.
Dinner went quickly and then there was pumpkin pie. I took my pie on a paper plate and went to sit on the couch in the living room. Several family members attempted polite conversation that skirted delicately around the facts of my absence. It was as if I’d been away at Summer Camp.
Four weeks before, every one of these people had been wearing black and attending my funeral, and now, here we were as if none of it had happened. The denial seemed to stretch out to all my family, to all I knew. Or thought I knew.
I sat with the paper plate propped on my knees as their voices turned into one big white noise machine. I felt the couch dip beside me but kept my focus on the pie. If I didn’t acknowledge whoever it was, maybe they would go away.
Or at least just be fucking quiet.
“You’ve got more whipped cream than pie,” Bobby said.
I glanced over to see him sitting beside me, his paper plate propped carefully on his lap mirroring mine, except for the modest amount of whipped cream, as if indulging in more would be a mortal sin.
“Yeah,” I said and looked back at it.
I’d tried begging out of Thanksgiving dinner, telling my mother it was too much, too soon. It was partly true. It was too much, but I didn’t think a timetable made a difference in the grand scheme of things. It would still be too much five years from now. I’d been irrevocably changed, and no one wanted to accept it, not even me.
They all wanted to believe with enough therapy and enough time, my world would be lovely again. I’d be their golden girl again, but despite my brief forays into fantasy land, I knew it wasn’t true.
Mom had insisted I come. Everybody would feel bad if I wasn’t there. And we wouldn’t want that. I’d been avoiding them all for weeks. They missed me. Etc. etc. I’d caved because you always caved with my mother if you knew what was good for you. She wouldn’t leave you alone to make a decision. She’d just harp until she got the answer she wanted. I regretted giving it now.
Most of the family was crowded in the other room around the new giant screen plasma television watching football. None of them were football fans, and most of them knew nothing about the game. They sat and watched football because it was what families did on Thanksgiving, or what they thought they were supposed to do.
We were all doing what we were supposed to do, and I wondered if even one of us was doing what he wanted to do. I glanced up to see Bobby staring at me intently. Well, one person was doing what they wanted to do.
Good for Bobby.
“Are you going to be okay?” he said.
“Yeah,” I lied.
Part of me hated him right then. Either he was too clueless to understand the nature of my captivity made it completely inappropriate for him to bring it up, or worse, he was hoping to score points as the knight in shining armor who comforted me. I couldn’t deal with being a pawn in his fantasy right then.
He reached out and put his hand over mine. I jerked away and scooted to the far end of the couch. I couldn’t stand for anyone to touch me. Or at least I couldn’t stand for anyone but one person to touch me.
“Sorry,” he mumbled. “Jeez Emmie, that fucking bastard fucked you up good, didn’t he?”
“Don’t say that!” I was shocked by the vehemence of my voice.
