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Mom didn’t look up at her. She wouldn’t look at me either. It was as if she were shrinking down into the booth, as if she were trying to disappear.
“Someone—he took me.”
It felt like someone had their hand wrapped around my throat. It was suddenly hard to breathe. Hard to think. This couldn’t be real.
“Winnie, did someone kidnap you?” Emersyn’s voice was calm and steady, and I was glad she was here because I couldn’t speak.
My mother gave one little nod, and my world shattered.
“He tied my hands and feet together so I couldn’t run away. Blindfolded me.”
Neither of us said what else he had done to her out loud, but there was only one way she could walk away from that with a child.
Nausea roiled in my gut, and I clenched my jaw so hard I thought my teeth would break.
“How did you escape?” Emersyn sounded genuinely curious, maybe even a little impressed.
Mom’s shoulders lifted in a small shrug. “I don’t know. I just—I got to know him. He started to trust me, I guess. He eventually took off the bindings on my feet and hands. He kept me in a little room. I think it was in a garage. I don’t really remember. There was one window, though. It was locked from the outside, but I managed to break the glass and I ran.”
“Did you go to the police?” Emersyn asked, stunned.
Mom bristled. For the first time, her head snapped up to Emersyn. “No,” she breathed, horrified. “I never told anyone. I never wanted to talk about it ever again.”
My skin was suddenly too hot. My chest was too tight. I needed to get out. I needed to breathe.
I scrambled up from the booth, not looking at either my mother or my friend as I hurried toward the door and out into the cool, dark night.
34
Lark
I burst out through the doors of the bar, gulping in lungfuls of air. My brain spun, trying to comprehend everything my mother had said.
It couldn’t be real. It couldn’t. My mother was a liar.
Even as I had that thought, I didn’t believe it. Yes, my mother had lied to me. She’d apparently been lying to me my whole life, but I’d seen her face as she told her story and there was nothing but raw truth in her expression.
My mother had been kidnapped. She’d been violated in every sense of the word.
And I was a product of her most violent trauma.
I crashed my palm over my mouth as bile burned the back of my throat. I was too hot and too cold and too numb all at once.
“You okay over there?”
The gruff voice startled me, and I whirled around. A pair of dark eyes were locked on me.
Owen Davis, the last person seen with Lily Baker alive, cocked his head to the side, studying me as he took a long drag on his cigarette. “I’m guessin’ that’s a no, then.”
I let out a breath. Owen’s face was thinner than I remembered, his cheeks hollow and gaunt. His hair was shaggy and falling over his forehead in a dark, greasy curtain.
“What?” I asked, having barely comprehended anything he’d said.
Owen held his smoke between his teeth and shoved both his hands in the pockets of his jeans. He wasn’t wearing a coat, only a long-sleeved thermal, and it was cold enough to see our breaths.
A look of concern flashed in his expression as he took a step closer. “You don’t look so good,” he said. “If you’re gonna puke, do it over there in the grass.” He jerked his chin toward a strip of dying grass near the far left side of the building. A “Vote Cohen for Sheriff” sign was stuck in the ground, half falling over.
“I’m not going to puke,” I said, though I wasn’t sure of anything anymore.
