Hold Me Close

by Megan Hart

  And there is light, faint, from the other room.

  A woman’s voice, querulous, curious. Calling out a name. Then a strangled cry. The thud of an overturned table. Shadows stretch and tease. Effie sees a silhouette. Long hair. The sickly-sweet stink of a familiar perfume.

  “Oh, my God! Oh, my God! Oh God, oh God!”

  God stopped caring about them, Effie thinks, while beside her, Heath struggles to get up from the bed. The light stays on. Heath is on the floor. Someone’s in the doorway, and then they’re gone.

  More time.

  Another voice. More light. Bright, this time. It hurts Effie’s eyes through her eyelids, and she tries to cover her face with her hand, but she can barely wiggle her fingers.

  “Hello? Holy shit.” The voice is garbled. Staticky.

  A figure looms over her. He wears blue. He has a gun, but he puts it away and puts a hand on her, gentle, but the pain flares and Effie screams. Or tries to scream. She has no breath for it.

  “You’re okay,” the police officer says. “I’m Officer Schmidt. I’m here to help you both. You’re going to be okay.”

  * * *

  Blinking, Effie gasped for breath. She was going to pass out. Her fingers gripped the wooden railing hard enough to make the wood creak. A splinter gouged her with a small sting, but no real pain. She misjudged the last step and went down too fast, onto...

  Carpet.

  Soft, thick carpet in a plush royal blue. The basement was well lit with hanging pendant lamps in multiple colors. One big space broken up by several wooden pillars, but nothing else. No other rooms. No walls.

  Everything she’d been expecting was gone. She moved forward on numb feet into the center of the room. Here it was, their living space. Here, that fetid bathroom. Here, the tiny decrepit bedroom where they’d spent so much time. All gone, replaced by fresh white walls and the lingering scent of floral air fresheners. From one corner, a small dehumidifier hummed. Two small windows hung with pretty, gauzy curtains let in a bit of filtered light. Like the frame of the door upstairs, the wood around these had been painted, but if you looked closely enough, you could see the places where nails had once punctured the wood to hold in place the boards that had covered the glass.

  It was gone, everything was gone, there was no remnant here of what had happened, and this was worse, somehow, even than Daddy not recognizing her. Effie went to her knees there in the middle of the room. Then her hands, too. Bent over, pressed her forehead to the carpet, waiting to see if she was going to scream or wail or faint or die.

  With her eyes closed, it was dark, but she could still sense the light. Above her head came the familiar creaking step, step, step. That had not changed, and oh, what fuckery, that she should take comfort from that. Effie pushed herself up onto her hands.

  Get up, she told herself. Get up, Effie. You didn’t come here to be a prisoner again. Get the fuck up and go upstairs and walk out that fucking front door.

  There are no more locks.

  Shaking, she managed to get one foot beneath her. It wasn’t enough. She couldn’t make herself stand. Her fingers dug into the carpet, all the way to the scratchy base. A staple poked her. She dug her fingers deeper, seeking that pain.

  “...Miss? Are you all right?”

  Get up, Effie. You’re making a fool of yourself. You need to get up right now.

  She turned her head, trying to smile. “Yes, yes, I...”

  “I know you,” the woman said. “Oh. God. I know who you are.”

  * * *

  “My mother left my father when I was twelve and my brother fifteen. She wouldn’t tell us why. There was no joint custody. We never saw my dad after that, except maybe once or twice a year for holidays, and then he always came to our house and sat in the living room while we opened our presents or whatever. My mom wouldn’t talk to him, but she never left us alone with him, either.”

  The woman’s name was Karen. She was older than Effie by about ten or twelve years, but you wouldn’t have guessed it if you put them side by side. They were about the same height. They had the same color hair. Karen’s eyes were deep brown, but aside from that, they might’ve been sisters.

  “He’d been in the hospital for two weeks before they found you. The infection from that untreated stab wound. It almost killed him.” Karen paused to pour them both mugs of tea. She’d chased out the Realtor and everyone from the open house so she and Effie could sit in the kitchen and talk alone.

  Effie was lucky Karen hadn’t called an ambulance. Or the police. As it was, Effie could barely string more than a few words together. She took the tea and warmed her hands on the mug, though of course she didn’t sip.

  “It might’ve been better if he’d died then.” Karen’s voice shook a little, and she drank a gulp of tea. “Someone would’ve come in. Found you sooner.”

  “Someone found us anyway, thank God.” Effie blew on the tea and let the steam bathe her face.

  “I asked my mom, when he went to prison, if there was something he’d done that had made her divorce him. I was almost thirty by then. Married, two kids. I’d allowed my dad to see the kids. Never alone, like I somehow knew without knowing, but still...” Karen shuddered and shook her head. It took her a long minute to speak again, but Effie let the silence hang between them without trying to fill it. Karen got up to wipe her eyes with a paper towel she tore from the rack beneath the cabinet. She stayed where she was, leaning, before she cleared her throat. “He took you and that boy to replace me and my brother. And I finally got out of my mother why she left him. She’d found diaries, drawings. Sick things of what he’d intended for us. He wanted to keep me safe, so I didn’t become a whore. And my brother was somehow a replacement for him, to do things he wasn’t able to do. He was impotent or something. I just... I didn’t want to ask her more than that.”

  Effie pressed her hand to her mouth. She wanted to hate Karen. She wondered if Karen hated her.

  “He never touched me,” Effie said. “I know that we testified something different in court. I know it’s what everyone thought. But he never actually touched...me.”

  Karen looked sick to her stomach. She breathed in and out a few times, then shook her head. “I’m so, so sorry. He was a sick man. I’m so... If there was something I could do, I would do it.”

  Effie looked toward the basement door, shut but not locked. She gave Karen a faint smile. “You’ve done a lot.”

  Another silence spun out, longer this time. Karen came back to the table, but not to sit. She took her mug and dumped it in the sink, rinsed it and put it on a dish towel on the counter. It was a signal, Effie thought. Time for her to go.

  “What ever happened to the boy? The one who was with you? Is he okay?”

  There was a question without a straightforward answer. Effie hesitated, then decided there was no point in launching into a life history. “Yeah, he’s fine. We keep in touch.”

  “Well, you look like you’ve done all right, anyway,” Karen said. “You look...good.”

  “Sure, other than totally losing my shit in your basement, I’m great.” She’d meant to joke, but Karen flinched. Effie stood. “Sorry. I was trying to make light.”

  Karen wouldn’t meet her gaze. She wiped her eyes again with the paper towel, then crumpled it into a ball she shoved into her pocket. “I wanted to make sure there was nothing left of what happened down there. He’s dead. There’s no reason for anyone, ever, to remember anything he did.”

  Except there was every reason. There was Effie. And there was Heath. They lived it, survived it, and they’d done it together. They were the only two who knew what it was like.

  Effie didn’t say that, though. It wouldn’t do any good to castigate Karen for what her father had done. If smiling blandly and leaving meant Karen got to go on with her life without carrying more of a burden
than she already did, well...there were times when giving someone else what they needed meant doing just that.

  So that’s what Effie did.

  chapter forty-three

  “I never wanted this for you. You know that.” Effie’s mother stroked her hair off her forehead with gentle fingers. “As a mother, can’t you imagine how it was for me? How horrible and terrifying, and how I did what I could to keep you safe, because I’d failed you so miserably?”

  “It’s not your fault that Stan Andrews took me, Mom. I never blamed you.” It’s a tiny lie—the blisters from the shoes, that Effie had blamed on her mother. But not the abduction itself. Not for real.

  Effie leaned against her mother’s shoulder with her eyes closed, thinking of all the times she’d done this when she was young. Of how often Polly had leaned on Effie’s shoulder this same way, how she sometimes still did, but how mostly she’d started leaning away more often than moving close. Polly was growing up.

  “But you have to understand something,” Effie said and looked up at her mother’s face. “What we went through...it can’t be erased. We can push it to the past and get over it and move forward, but it happened. And, Mom...if I tried to pretend it didn’t, that would negate what was probably the most influential experience of my life. What happened in that basement made me who I am.”

  Her mother hitched a broken sob and shook her head. “But I don’t want that to be what made you who you are. I want me and your father to have made you who you are. I want your other life experiences, the good things, to outweigh all that bad.”

  Effie put her head back on her mom’s shoulder and said nothing for a moment or so. Her mother stroked her hair the way she had when Effie was young. If she kept her eyes closed, maybe she could pretend she was ten years old again. Eight. Six. Maybe she could be a toddler in pigtails, a birthday balloon in each hand and cake smeared on her face.

  Effie sighed. There was no going back. Not to good times. Not to bad.

  “I want you to be able to move on,” her mother said quietly. “I’m so proud of you with your art, but every time you sell one of those paintings, Effie, all I can think about is how you have to put yourself back in that place. With him.”

  Heath.

  Effie sat up then. “All the best art comes from the broken places, Mom. And I love him. So does Polly. So I wish, for our sakes, or at the very least for hers, that you would try to accept him. Because I can’t live without him. And I don’t want to.”

  “Oh, Effie.” Her mother shook her head.

  Effie got up and stood in front of her. Not weeping or shaking. Calm. Smiling. Confident.

  “You don’t understand. Heath is my world. If everything else in the universe disappeared and Heath was left, I would still find a way to live. Without Heath, everything else is a shadow and a strangeness that I can’t ever be a part of. I need him, Mom. I need him, I love him, and I’m not sorry about it anymore.”

  Her mother got up, too. She took Effie’s hands and squeezed them. Tears in her eyes, finally, she nodded.

  “All right,” her mother said. “Because I love you, too. Because you’re my daughter and I want you to be happy. All right. I will try to accept this, and him.”

  Effie hugged her mother hard. “All I can ask you to do is try.”

  chapter forty-four

  Seeing Heath with Lisa would be hard. Perhaps far from the most difficult thing Effie had ever lived through, but it wasn’t going to be like riding a unicorn along a rainbow into a swimming pool full of kittens, either. All she could do was straighten her shoulders, put her chin up and make the best of it, since most of it was her own damned fault.

  “I want to go to your art show.” Polly frowned and kicked at the table legs until Effie gave her a frown.

  “Wog, it’s not for kids. I told you that.”

  “Me and Nana could go for a little while and then stay in the hotel. I never get to stay in hotels.”

  Effie laughed, though the thought of exposing Polly to the possibility of any of those wackos from the forum wasn’t funny at all. “I promise, I’ll take you to stay in a hotel with me another time. And besides, you’ve seen all my paintings already.”

  “Not in a fancy show. Mom, are you going to be famous?”

  “I don’t think so. Hardly anyone gets famous for their paintings.” At least not while they were alive. “You and Nana are going shopping anyway, so that will be more fun. Do I look all right?”

  “You look pretty with your hair curled. You’re wearing heels,” Polly said. “You’re probably going to have sore feet.”

  Effie looked over her shoulder. “Yeah, I know, but this is a fancy kind of party. I have to try to look like a grown-up.”

  “You need lipstick.” Polly got up to stand in front of her mother with a critical look.

  “I have lipstick on.”

  Polly rolled her eyes. “Lip balm isn’t the same, Mom.”

  “Okay. Okay. I’ll put on some lipstick. If Nana gets here while I’m in my room, tell her I’ll be right out. I need to get on the road. Long drive. Shit. I’m going to hit traffic—”

  “It’s all going to be okay, Mom.” Polly took Effie’s hand and waited for her mother to look at her. “You’re going to have a fantastic show and sell a ton of paintings, and then you can buy me an iPad.”

  Effie took a deep breath and focused on her child, the delight of her life. She hugged Polly close, expecting resistance, but the girl squeezed her hard. She stroked Polly’s blond hair and breathed in the soap and water scent of her.

  “I love you, Pollywog. So much. You know that?”

  “Yeah,” Polly said with a sigh. “I know.”

  * * *

  Two hours later, Effie had avoided most of the traffic and arrived more or less on time at the gallery. Cursing the light misting rain that threatened to weigh the curls Polly had insisted she try, Effie let her car idle in the parking lot without getting out. This was it. Her big night. Her time to shine.

  “Dammit,” she said aloud. “You’re going to get through this night, and it’s going to be great, and you’re going to enjoy it.”

  Still, it took her another ten minutes or so before she convinced herself to get out of the car and stagger like a newborn colt across the parking lot in her too-high heels. Inside the front doors, she let an attendant take her coat. She found the restroom. She fixed her hair and her lipstick. Her eyeliner, courtesy of Becky, looked fucking amazing. She straightened her shoulders. She was going to do this, ready or not.

  “Effie, hi!” Elisabeth waved at her from a short distance down the hallway. “You made it.”

  “I made it,” Effie agreed, self-conscious in her fancy clothes.

  Elisabeth gestured her closer. “You look so beautiful. I love that dress. The vintage style is so flattering. And your shoes. Wow.”

  “If I don’t break an ankle, I’ll call it a good night.” Effie looked down at her feet, then at Elisabeth. “So...am I the only one here?”

  “No. Absolutely not. I told you we would advertise and promote the hell out of this event. We have a room full already.” Elisabeth grinned and looped her arm through Effie’s. “You’ve already sold two paintings.”

  “What? No. Really? What?” Effie had been allowing Elisabeth to lead her toward the gallery, but now she stopped short. “You’re kidding.”

  “I would never joke about something like that. You just bought me a week on the beach.” Elisabeth looked solemn. “This show, Effie. It’s going to change your career.”

  Effie let Elisabeth lead her another step or two before she faltered again. “Are any of...them...here?”

  “The forum people? Maybe. If so, they’re behaving themselves. And if anyone bothers you, let me know. I have security here tonight,” Elisabeth said with a confi
dence she obviously meant to ease Effie’s fears, though it didn’t help much. “I mean it. Anyone who gives you a hard time or in any way makes you feel nervous, they’re out.”

  Effie laughed. “Wow. Okay. That’s full service, right there.”

  “C’mon. It’s going to be great,” Elisabeth said.

  Effie had seen the photos of the room layout Elisabeth had sent in advance, but nothing had prepared her for how it would all look in real life. Fairy lights, gauzy fabric, candles, soft music. And, oh, her artwork everywhere. Her fingers and wrists still remembered how fiercely she’d worked, but seeing the number of pieces hung in frames or set on easels was still somewhat shocking.

  “Let me get you a glass of wine,” Elisabeth said. “White or red?”

  “White. In case I spill it all over myself.” Effie looked at her black dress. “Though I guess it wouldn’t matter.”

  “There’s a cheese and fruit table back there. Desserts in the other room. Catered hors d’oeuvres. Mingle,” Elisabeth encouraged. “I’ll be right back.”

  Before Effie had time even to worry that nobody was going to talk to her and she’d stand alone in the corner all night looking like an asshole, Naveen brought someone to meet her. To her surprise and relief, Effie had no problems after that. People came and went. Some asked about her inspirations on certain pieces. Nobody mentioned the forum or the basement. Most of them, Effie realized, didn’t seem to have any idea that any of that had ever happened.

  With a second glass of wine in her, Effie had relaxed enough to have something to eat. With a plate of cheese and crackers in one hand, she waved at Elisabeth from across the room with the other. Elisabeth, though, was deep in conversation with someone and didn’t notice her. Effie watched them a moment or so. The way they stood, angling toward each other but with enough distance between them that to touch would require an effort. The guy never took his eyes off Elisabeth’s face, and she looked at the floor. Never at him.