My Peace

by Courtney Cole

  I pick it up.

  It’s 1:00. Time for your medicine.

  I stare at the door.

  I can’t do this. What if they kill Zuzu anyway?

  But what if they don’t? A voice reasons with me in my head. They don’t want Zuzu. They want me. It doesn’t matter what happens to me as long as I keep her safe.

  As long as I behave.

  I sit on the bed, pull out the mirror, and do the line of cocaine.

  18

  Chapter Seventeen

  Mila

  I race back to Zuzu’s room to see if there are any clues there, anything at all, and there isn’t. Her bed is rumpled from where her little body had been sleeping in it. Her windows are closed, and I don’t know how they got into this house. It makes me feel vulnerable, out in the open, and I grab Zu’s favorite blankie and inhale it.

  It smells like little girl, and my eyes flood with hot tears.

  She’s out there, and she’s alone, and she’s probably crying for me. God. My stomach clenches and contracts, and I feel like throwing up.

  I glance around her room, at the little tea table she’d set for tea with her teddy bears, and the castle that she’d played prince and princess in just today. I was the princess, Pax was the prince, and she was the baby who was magic.

  Tears stream down my face and I can’t.

  I can’t.

  I just can’t.

  I reach for my phone to call Maddy, and it’s not in my pocket. I’d left it in Pax’s study.

  Taking Zu’s blanket, I rush back down the hall, and when I get there, Natasha is sitting at the desk. Her face is solemn, her hair pulled into a tight bun.

  “Looking for this?” she holds up my phone.

  “Yes, thank you,” I reach for it, but she pulls it back.

  “No. You can’t have it.”

  I’m confused, and because I’m so addled already, it takes a minute to see the look on Natasha’s face. It’s cold, perfunctory, and it’s not good.

  She smiles, a slow grin. “Awww. You’re getting it now.”

  “You’re in on this,” I saw slowly. “How…”

  My voice trails off.

  She smiles again.

  “Let me tell you a story. Come sit down.” She motions to the two chairs in front of the desk and hesitantly, I sit down. “There you go. I want to share a story with you. Will you listen?”

  I don’t have a choice. I nod.

  “Good. There was once a girl. Let’s call her Natasha, shall we? She lived a dry existence, going to college and then working as an accountant. It was so boring, so lifeless. And then, one day, she saw a story on the news. A man was convicted of killing a young mother, but it wasn’t the man at all. It was her own son who did it, you see. I could see the kind look in his eyes, and I felt so sorry for him, that the justice system had failed him so miserably. What crime had he committed, really? Other than fall in love with a woman and try to show her? Her son overreacted and bumped the trigger and it was his fault she died. Not the kind man’s. So I started writing him letters in prison.”

  I literally feel my eyes widen as I realize what she’s saying.

  “So you’re… you’re…”

  “Shhh,” she tells me, and she’s looking past me, her gaze unfocused. “He’s a wonderful man, Mila. He’s so kind, and so forgiving. He took his admiration of Susanna a little too far, and he shouldn’t have come into their house. He knows that. But that’s all he did that was wrong. Pax is the one who pulled the trigger. Not Leroy.”

  “Pax was seven years old,” I say slowly. “Leroy broke into the house with a gun, and forced Susanna to give him oral sex in front of Pax.”

  Natasha looks up at me sharply.

  “You don’t know what happened. You weren’t there.”

  “Maybe not,” I tell her. “But I was with Pax at the therapist’s office when he remembered. I was with him when he remembered aloud, everything that Leroy did that day. He carved Pax’s hand with an X. Did you know that? He tried to kill him, but he said he couldn’t kill a kid.”

  “See?” Natasha is triumphant now, and her eyes have a strange light in them. “See? He can’t kill a kid, because he is a kind man. He just can’t do it.”

  “Is he the one who arranged for Zuzu to be taken?” I ask her. “Did he escape? Does he have her?”

  She’s disdainful now. “Of course not. He’s still wrongfully imprisoned. And I arranged it.”

  She’s crazy. I’ve always wondered about the women who wrote to inmates after they’d been imprisoned. And Natasha is crazy. She had just done a very good job of hiding it.

  “How did you come to work for William?” I ask her. “Was that part of the plan?”

  “Everything is part of the plan,” she answers and she’s proud of that. “Originally, we thought we’d hurt Pax through William, but then we saw a better way. Once Zuzu was born.”

  “You’ve been planning this for so long?” I’m breathless.

  “Of course. Master-plans take time,” she sniffs, as though I’m the idiot here.

  “Is Zuzu all right?” I ask calmly, and I don’t know how I’m remaining calm. It’s like my blood is frozen as it rushes through my heart, and my daughter is out there somewhere and these people are crazy.

  “Of course,” she tells me. “I thought we already established that Leroy doesn’t want to hurt a kid?”

  “Then what are you planning on doing with her?” I ask. “She’s innocent. She hasn’t done a thing to anyone.”

  “Of course she hasn’t,” Natasha agrees. “She’s fine. And she will stay fine as long as Pax does what we ask.”

  “And what are you asking of him?” I ask. My hands shake against the arms of the chair.

  Natasha smiles.

  “Only for his life. That’s not too much, is it?”

  19

  Chapter Eighteen

  Pax

  Light shines in from the bedroom windows, and I stare at it for a second. The sun rays filter through the air, and the dust motes spiral and I reach out a hand to touch them.

  I haven’t slept all night.

  Doing four lines of coke will do that to a person. I doubt I’ll sleep for days.

  Through the monitor, I hear my daughter singing, through my closed door and hers, and I relax my tight muscles. She’s still here. She’s still alive, and thankfully, from the sounds of it, she doesn’t know the danger she’s in.

  Thank God.

  I straighten my leg and adjust my back.

  I’m sitting on the floor, pressed to the wall, and it is holding me up. The coolness of it bleeds into my skin, and I soak it up. I concentrate on it, because it grounds me in this moment, and keeps everything real.

  Temperature is real.

  The wall is real.

  Focus on what is real, I tell myself. Zuzu is real. Mila is real.

  Mila. God. She’s probably so worried. I heard my phone ring numerous times, and then I think it was turned off. I haven’t heard it from hours, and I know Mila wouldn’t just stop calling. Not if she was able.

  Lord, the thought of her being unable turns my blood cold.

  But that’s not happening, I tell myself. They don’t want her. They want me.

  A paper is slipped beneath the door.

  I open it. It’s time.

  I stare at the boxes. I don’t feel the pain in my leg anymore. The drugs have definitely dulled all of my senses. The idea that I used to live like this… it’s so foreign to me. It’s like living through a fog, not really living at all.

  I open the box, and am surprised to see clear capsules filled with white powder. I don’t know what they are. PCP, maybe? I don’t bother worrying about it.

  I swallow them.

  Within minutes, I’m swearing, and my vision is blurred. Definitely PCP. My skin starts crawling, there are ants on it, and I fight the urge to scratch them.

  It’s a side-effect, and there are no ants. I know that.

  Yet, at the minute
s tick past, it’s hard to know anything.

  Everything becomes subjective. Everything is a gray area. Even the sounds of my daughter fade away and I can’t focus on her anymore. I’ve got enough drugs pumping through my veins that I can’t even see her face or my wife’s, even when I try to imagine them in my head.

  Leroy is good at this. He’s planned out exactly how much drugs he can force me to take without me dying. He’s dragging it out, loading me up, then bringing me back down with heroin.

  He wants to make me suffer.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I see things. I see movements, and shadows, all moving along the walls and while I know they aren’t really there, I can’t help but check. I’m losing it.

  I know I’m losing it.

  Before I’m completely gone, I try to break the door down one last time. I’m a strong guy. I know that. I don’t make a dent in the door. I think it’s been reinforced from the outside somehow.

  I try to break the windows.

  They don’t budge. They’ve been replaced with shatter-proof glass. He’s thought of everything.

  Son of a bitch.

  I slump to the floor. I’m not giving up.

  I look at the video monitor.

  Zuzu is playing by herself, combing the hair on one of her dolls. Her door is closed, and I’m sure it’s locked, and I wonder what they’ve told her about her parents? Did they tell her we’d be there soon?

  I shout through the door.

  “Zuzu! Sweetheart! I’ll be there soon. Don’t be afraid.”

  She doesn’t even look up. She can’t hear me.

  I examine the door again, and now that I’m really looking at it, I see it’s not the same door I had installed. I think this one might be soundproof.

  It must be. As a test, I bang on it as hard as I can.

  Zuzu doesn’t look up. She can’t hear me.

  No one can hear me.

  My scalp buzzes, and I tug at my hair, and then I force my hand to still. It’s the PCP. It’s the PCP making me crazy. I’ve got to stop.

  I force myself to sit on the floor again, and I pick a spot on the wall, and I stare at it, forcing my breath to be even. In, then out. In, then out. One, two. One, two. I focus on the pattern. I focus on my heart beat. I focus on making my breath fill my lungs up like a balloon, then forcing it all out, like the balloon is deflating.

  If I do this, if I keep my mind active, and focused, I won’t lose it. It will be tethered to me.

  It will still be mine.

  Leroy can’t take that.

  Not if I don’t allow it.

  I glance out the windows for a moment, and the waves are crashing outside, and I realize something.

  I can’t hear them.

  20

  Chapter Nineteen

  Mila

  I’m in my room without a phone.

  Natasha took it, and Natasha has a gun, and has she always had a gun in this house? It must’ve been hidden in her bedroom and I didn’t even know it.

  I should’ve listened to my instincts about her. I knew something was off. I just thought she was after my husband.

  And I guess she was, just not in the way I thought.

  I pace. The door is locked, and I have no means of communication. I’m sure Natasha is answering my texts from Maddy as though she is me, and no one will ever know that I’m being locked up in here. I’m going to be here forever, or until they decide what to do with me.

  There is a knock, then the key is turned, and the door is opened.

  Natasha walks in with a tray.

  “Here.”

  She puts it on the bed, and picks up the TV remote. “I’ve got something for you.”

  She messes with the television, and then a black and white picture comes up. A surveillance video. It’s not high-definition, certainly, but it’s clear enough.

  It’s Pax.

  I suck in a breath, and my husband is sprawled on the floor in a room.

  Looking closer, I decide it’s our bedroom in Angel Bay. There are small boxes on the bed, the size of jewelry boxes. Some are neatly stacked, and some are open in a pile.

  Pax isn’t moving.

  “Is he ok?” I ask quickly. Natasha stares at me.

  “You can see for yourself.”

  Pax is staring at nothing, his eyes open, and is he alive?

  God, is he alive? My heart pounds and pounds, threatening to leap from my chest.

  I touch the screen, his hand, and he’s not moving. There’s no signs of blood or a struggle. His legs are long, his body is taut, and he’s not moving.

  “Come on, baby,” I tell him. “Please be alive.”

  Natasha laughs and I shove her away from me.

  She backhands me across the face, and my head snaps around. I taste blood in my mouth, and my cheek is on fire, and I rush at her, my blood boiling and red blurring my vision.

  But then there is something cold and metal in my side.

  She brought her gun.