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“Can you think of anything else?” I ask. “Somewhere more isolated, off the grid?”
“I’m sorry, Meghan. I can’t. I can’t think,” she says, and I tell her okay, but to keep trying and to call me if she comes up with something.
Not five minutes later, I receive a text from Luke, an address on Leavitt Street, and the words: Come alone. Tell no one. If you do, Sienna will pay for it.
I consider calling the police, but I’m too afraid of what Luke might do to Sienna, and so I don’t. I just go, racing down Dakin Street for Sheridan, where I hail a cab, climbing in, leaned forward in my seat, giving the driver the address. I beg him to hurry. It takes an eternity for us to arrive.
The home on Leavitt is new construction. It’s a teardown most likely, slotted between two existing single family homes with Tyvek house wrap still visible on the outside. There are no windows or doors, which means it’s cold on the inside, winter seeping in, making me think of Sienna again, of her frozen to death and scared. The house is dark, and I don’t think it’s that Luke hasn’t turned on any lights but that there is no electricity in the home.
I make my way into the backyard, slipping down the narrow gangway between homes and into the yard, which is small and longer than it is wide.
There is no back door on the house either; there is almost nothing to stop the winter air from getting in except for some plastic construction sheeting. Carefully, I slip an arm inside, pulling the plastic back, just enough that I can get past, and then I enter the house. I’m disoriented from the darkness. I need time for my eyes to adjust. The moon is nearly full. Outside is a streetlight that gives off just enough light for me to vaguely see the inside of the house: the wooden studs, the vertical wooden beams, rough openings for windows and doors, all of it revealed to me in small increments as I drift forward, dragging myself across the subfloor, careful to avoid making noise. I want to know what I’m getting myself into. I want to take Luke by surprise. I hold my breath, cutting back on the amount of air I take in until my lungs burn.
It can’t be more than forty degrees inside the house, the cold air numbing.
As I circle the first floor, slipping between wooden beams, holding on to them for support, I have the feeling of being watched. My back arches all on its own, the hairs on the nape of my neck rising to stand. I spin wildly around, expecting to see Luke somewhere behind me, a silhouette standing further back, but he isn’t; I’m alone, I think.
But then upstairs comes a subtle noise, the sound of someone softly crying.
I don’t so much hear it as I feel it in my core, a mother’s intuition.
I find the stairs. I start to climb them. There are no risers yet, only treads. There are no handrails either and, in the darkness, it’s easy to lose balance because there is nothing to hold on to, nothing to steady me. My legs are weak, shaking, and the effort to go slowly, to be quiet, makes my thighs ache.
I reach the second floor, which is no different than the first. I make my way from room to room, moving between beams.
“You made it,” I hear, and I turn toward the voice to find Luke standing in some back room, separated from me by beams. “I knew you would come.”
“You have my daughter. How could I not?” I ask.
Slowly my eyes adapt to see Sienna beside him. The moonlight shines in from behind, illuminating her so that I just barely see her on her knees on the hard subfloor, her breathing heavy, labored, scared. She shakes from fear and cold, not just the occasional shiver, but a whole body convulsion. Luke stands behind her, the puppet master holding a gun to her head while Sienna whimpers, quiet, restrained tears silently falling down her cheeks.
“Stop right there,” Luke says as I go toward her. “Don’t come any closer, Meghan.”
“I’m sorry,” Sienna cries, her voice infused with fear, and I want to run to her, but I stop because of the gun, because I worry if I don’t, Luke won’t hesitate to pull the trigger.
“Why, baby? You have nothing to be sorry for,” I say to her, and then to Luke, “I will do anything. Please,” I beg of him. “Take me. Just let Sienna go.”
“I’m not going to jail, Meghan,” Luke says, his voice controlled.
“What are we doing here, Luke? Why did you bring Sienna and me here? What is this place?”
He becomes suddenly sedate. His posture slackens and his shoulders round, though the gun remains pointed at Sienna’s head. “I brought Penelope to see this house,” he says, and I remember him telling me how he had done that, though I didn’t know it was this house. But I remember him saying how he took her to look at homes once and how he wished he could buy a single family home for them before the baby was born, because their small one-bedroom apartment wouldn’t do for a growing family.
“I wanted to provide for my family in the way that a father should. I’ve told you about my own dad, haven’t I?”
“Yes,” I say. Luke’s father was no good, an abusive alcoholic who was only sometimes around, though it was better when he was gone. He would go on a bender, hit Luke and his mom and then take off, only to come back days or weeks later and do it again, a never-ending cycle of alcoholism and abuse.
“I didn’t want to be like him. I wanted to do better, to be better.”
“And you are,” I say softly to appease him.
“Don’t fucking lie to me, Meghan. I’m worse,” he says, and it’s true. What Luke has done is so much worse. I’ve lost track of the number of women he’s hurt. “This house was supposed to be a fresh start, for us, for me. I brought Penelope here,” he says. “We came inside and I showed it to her, I gave her the grand tour, and I told her that one day I was going to buy it for our family, that we were going to raise our children here, and do you know what she said?”
“No,” I breathe, afraid to hear. “What?”
“She said I was fucking delusional if I thought I could ever afford this home.”
I wince. Her words sting. “I’m sorry, Luke. That wasn’t right of her.”
