by Sam Mariano
Ashlynn looked a bit wounded, but she went on, “If they did though, they deserve to be punished. You know that, right?”
That was the question that held her up. The other responses had been simple, tossed out there without having to run them through her brain first; she had been prepared for those questions.
After a hesitation that lasted far too long, Willow managed a nod. “Yeah, I know,” she said with decidedly less hostility. “I do. I’m just tired, okay?”
“If you ever need… to talk to me, you have my confidence. I won’t even tell your mother if you don’t want me to.”
“I appreciate that,” Willow said, and she meant it, even if she didn’t have the energy to convey sincerity in that moment.
“And if you did want to go to the hospital—just to be safe—you could change your mind later. Going to the hospital doesn’t mean you have to pursue it, but… tonight is your best—maybe your only—shot at physical evidence if you decide you do have something else to report.”
“I’m fine,” Willow said again, shoving her dresser drawer shut.
Ashlynn nodded sadly, and Willow made a beeline for her bathroom, closing and locking the door, then leaning against it and closing her eyes.
I’m fine, she repeated, that time in her head, only for herself.
After she stripped off her clothes and turned on the shower to warm up, Willow looked at her naked body in the mirror. There were a few bruises here and there, but nothing to indicate what she had gone through. Nothing to indicate she was any different.
Foolish tears began to well up again so she turned to test the water and stepped into the shower. She pulled the curtain closed, hugging herself, squeezing her eyes shut as the water beat down on her. Behind her eyelids—images of everything that had happened that night, the dead girl bleeding all over the cold floor, the PI nearly being shot in the face. The split second before she grabbed the lamp, when she considered letting it happen. The fear coursing through her veins when she turned on Willow, and it occurred to her that attacking someone with a gun with a lamp probably wasn’t the best idea. The PI awkwardly thanking her. The discomfort of realizing she had risked her own life to save her rapist.
She opened her eyes.
The water wasn’t hot enough—she wanted it to be scalding—so she turned a little more heat on and waited, flinching when the water made it through the pipes and started hitting her. After a moment, her body adjusted to the heat and she turned around, wanting it to wash over every inch of her.
There was a purple loofah hanging off the shower hook—the same one she had used before—and she grabbed it, pouring way too much soap on and then rubbing it, lathering it up. She dragged it over her skin roughly, not satisfied until every square inch was red and agitated, and really not even satisfied then. As she washed between her legs, she was hit with a flash of that night, the man’s hands on her hips, on her butt, between her legs… There was a quickening in her chest, a fluttering of nerves. She couldn’t think about that. She scrubbed and scrubbed, but there was no scrubbing her brain. Even opening her eyes didn’t help that time. The mental image was gone, seeing the audience watching her be assaulted, nobody lifting a finger to help. But the memory was there, whether her eyes were open or closed. The one called Chuck squeezing her breast, trying to entice the other one to rape her.
The pain when he pushed past her hymen.
The blood on her thighs as she tried to will herself to go to sleep that night.
It was all too much. Part of her wanted to get out of the shower to get away from the thoughts, but it wasn’t the shower, it was her mind, and she couldn’t get out of that.
At least in the shower, her tears were washed away as quickly as they fell, so it felt less like crying.
She tried to refocus her attention, to think of anything else. She even grabbed her shampoo bottle and read the directions on the back just to keep her mind occupied, but since it was the last thing she wanted to relive, her brain kept going back to it.
After running out all of the hot water, she knew she had to get out.
When she did, she wished she hadn’t looked in the mirror. Her eyes were bloodshot, red-rimmed from crying, and her face was a puffy mess.
She hoped Ashlynn wasn’t still sitting outside waiting for her.
Somehow the smaller space of the bathroom felt safer than the bedroom. It was only her bathroom, no one else ever came in there, so instead of returning to her bedroom, after she finished pulling clothes on with considerable effort, and brushing her teeth until her gums bled, she sat down in the corner, leaned against the tub and the wall, and pulled her knees up to her chest, pulling her body in as much as she could.
She just wasn’t ready to face the world.
She leaned forward, burying her face in her arms, and welcoming the quiet, dark bubble that she felt like she had enveloped herself in.
She wished that she could stay in the bathroom until everything was back to normal.
But she wasn’t sure anything would ever be normal again.
When Ethan woke up in his own bed with his wife curled up beside him, he thought for a moment he was dreaming.
Even after realizing he was awake, it still felt as reliable as a dream.
When the police had released him, he had been genuinely confused. Relieved, but confused. He wasn’t sure how or why, but as he high-tailed it out of the police station, he hadn’t questioned his luck.
Rolling over, he spotted the baby’s pack-n-play over by Amanda’s side of the bed, his son happily snoozing, his little face so peaceful.
I shouldn’t be here, he thought. Couldn’t help thinking it.
He actually hadn’t dreamed about it that night, but he’d thought about what he had done before he fell asleep, reliving it all in his mind as Amanda nursed the baby at 3 am. There, in the familiarity of his bed, there was a level of disbelief that hadn’t been there before.
He could not believe what he had done. It didn’t feel real.
But the memories did.
The girl on her knees in front of him, bent over and crying, the bloody condom. Not nice mental pictures.
Willow.
That was her name.
He checked after he got home.
He wished he didn’t know her name. Knowing nothing about her was a little easier. As just one of several nameless girls being trafficked into prostitution, she had no specific humanness, no details of who she was as a person. Obviously he had felt terrible about it, but in the counterculture he had been immersed in, in that situation, even though he wasn’t really Jack and didn’t actually take part in that kind of life, it was easier to swallow. It was almost normal behavior; he knew anyone around him would have done the same thing.
Back in the ranks of decent humanity where only wicked people did something like that to someone else, it was much harder. Knowing that Willow had two parents—or three, he still hadn’t checked into her father yet—and a brother who loved her, knowing that one week earlier she had probably been an innocent teenage girl with hobbies and crushes and dreams of her own… Ethan felt sick just thinking about it.
In 10 years, his own daughter would be Willow’s age, with her own hopes and dreams, and if anyone ever did anything to break her, he wouldn’t even hesitate to kill them with his bare hands.
He’d never had anything to be deeply ashamed of before. One week earlier, he slept well at night and wouldn’t have felt guilty when his wife gave him a good night kiss.
Amanda. It seemed like they’d been together forever—since college, anyway. She was a year younger, graduated a year later, but she was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. Long black hair, beautiful blue eyes, and the first time he saw her in her favorite black dress, he knew his single days were over.
She still had that dress. Still brought it out on special occasions. When he returned home, she demanded a date night. She hadn’t lost her baby weight from Caleb yet, so she wouldn’t be able to wear the dress, or that would hav
e been one of those occasions.
He didn’t care, she was beautiful no matter what she wore, no matter how much she weighed.
And he could hardly stand to look at her with the guilt of what he’d done weighing on his conscience.
The baby started to fuss once he woke up, and Amanda grumbled and buried her face in the pillow, so Ethan smiled a little and dragged himself out of bed.
Lifting his son out of his bassinet, he brushed a kiss across his forehead and brought him to his shoulder. “Hey there, little buddy,” he whispered, quietly walking to the door and easing it open.
The baby’s head bobbed a bit unsteadily but Ethan put his hand behind his head so he didn’t get too crazy.
“You’re going to spend a little time with Daddy right now, okay? We’re going to let Mommy sleep.”
Caleb didn’t seem entirely on board with that plan, as he started rooting for Ethan’s chest.
“Ah, sorry, nothing’s coming out of there, bud.”
After a diaper change, he went to the kitchen to get a bottle ready, checking his email while he waited. He wasn’t going into the office until later, but he should probably call his assistant and see if the Torres family had made their payment yet.
Their daughter was returned to them in the same condition as Willow, but at least in her case, he wasn’t the one who caused it.
He should also look into whether or not Willow’s father was really Antonio Castellanos. And then maybe look into relocating if he was.
---
The day after she got home, Willow got a new phone. When she was abducted, the phone had been in her pocket, and no one knew or cared where that was anymore.
Unfortunately, a means of communication with the outside world was the last thing on Willow’s mind. As soon as her number was working again, there was an outpouring of “support” from all of her friends, family, and people she had met once or twice several years earlier. She wasn’t sure why they thought she’d want to be pestered all day long, or why that was even considered supportive, but apparently people thought it would make her feel better. Then there were the people who were just blatantly curious about the details of her ordeal, and several who were apparently unaware of how inconsiderate it was to come out and ask those questions. As if she wanted to keep thinking about it.
Some reporter from the local paper had already called that morning, wanting to do a story about her.
A local business sent over an edible arrangement.
The neighbors took turns knocking on the door.
The oddest thing people felt the need to tell her was, “We’re so happy you’re home safe.”
Why would she think they wouldn’t want her to return home safely? Hoping for that outcome was a pretty normal response, so she wasn’t sure it needed to be remarked on, and she had no idea what to say back. Thanks? Thanks for preferring that I remain alive?
By the end of the day, she felt like a sideshow, and she turned her phone off to avoid the temptation of habitually checking it every time it went off.
Scott had been up her ass since she got back, too. Normally he wasn’t a clinger, but apparently having your girlfriend abducted by a group of criminals made you appreciate what you had. When he couldn’t get her on her phone after an hour, he resorted to calling the house phone; when she ignored that, he decided to just stop over.
She knew she couldn’t put him off forever, but she had been hoping for one more day before she had to face him.
Things had been awkward at first, probably because her attitude made them that way. In no way did she attempt to hide her exhaustion with people by the time he got there, so when he offered his own appreciation that she was alive, she had no polite responses left, and didn’t say a single word.
If he would have waited, given her time, maybe she would’ve been happy to see him.
Since he did not, his presence was about as welcome as a mosquito’s, and she went to no lengths to pretend otherwise.
Especially when he went fishing for information with the enormously unsubtle remark, “I heard sometimes when girls are taken by people like that, they do really bad things to them.”
“Really?” she shot back, her eyes going wide as she mockingly dropped her jaw open. “I always heard they took them out to fancy dinners!”
Properly admonished, he merely added that if she needed to talk or anything, his mom knew a good shrink.
She thought it was nice that his mom’s therapist would listen to her ails, but he didn’t offer to.
Of course, she resented people who offered to lend an ear as well, so maybe she was just pissed off at the whole world and it didn’t matter what he said.
After he left, she masochistically went through the news articles related to her, but after reading many of the comments, she was more irritated than she had been when she started.
As long as the list of well-wishers was that day, her father’s name was not on it. That infuriated her, too, even though she should be used to it. On her father’s priority list, her name fell somewhere around the middle of the third page. Maybe closer to the bottom if he had other love children that he liked more, which was quite possible.
When Scott finally left, Willow changed into her pajamas and climbed into bed, but as tired as she was, she couldn’t sleep. She was completely consumed with fear.
The night before, by the time she made it to bed, she told herself there would be no nightmares. She was back in the comfort of her own bed, and the nightmare that had been her reality for several days could no longer touch her, not if she didn’t let it.
When she awoke at 4 am, her gaze jumping fearfully around the room, convinced that she was back in that awful place, the only thing that kept her from crawling out of her bed and into a corner somewhere was her sudden, all-consuming terror of the dark. Even though she knew logically that if she pushed back her covers and climbed out of bed, there would be no sleeping girls laying there, no sleazy monster with a gun to torment her, she couldn’t rely on that logic.
Emotionally, she was wrecked. All she could do was lie there, paralyzed with fear, with the covers pulled up to her neck. She stared at the ceiling and fought to regain control over her own thoughts.
It didn’t work.
For the next four hours, she stayed like that, her heavy eyelids refusing to close, with real memories and memories of her nightmares rolling through her mind. Knowing that it wasn’t real and that no one could really hurt her anymore didn’t help at all.
Then her thoughts of what could have happened kicked into high gear. Imagining what it would have been like if the police wouldn’t have busted the place, if she would have been forced into prostitution. What would her nightmares have been like then? Probably nothing that could have rivaled her reality.
She felt so disconnected from everyone in her life. As much as they cared, as much as they loved her, none of them had experienced what she had. None of them knew anything about the kind of people who had stolen control of her fate. They didn’t know how she felt, lying on a shared mattress in a dark room with other women, knowing that they were all being processed like cattle. The whole time, feeling like it couldn’t possibly be real, because things like that could never happen to someone like her. She was normal. She had a family, a life, people who missed her. Things like that couldn’t happen to girls like her.
Except that it did.
But one week earlier, she wouldn’t have been able to understand either.
Nobody in her life understood, because nobody else was there.
Never before had more people showered her with offers of love and support, and never before in her life had she felt so alone.
It had been one week since Willow’s abduction.
Her mother, armed with research she had done online, suggested that Willow go to her tennis lesson that day, telling her that doing things she had done before would help her.
That was how she referred to it, just before.
While Ashlynn was
more grounded in reality and wanted to face the issues head on and deal with them, Lauren was happy to live in denial, and as long as Willow wanted to insist that nothing bad had happened to her, Lauren would happily go on believing it.
Given Willow’s silence on the matter anytime either of her mothers attempted to delve for information about Ethan’s role in her rescue, she figured it was probably her own fault when her mother happily announced at lunch time that the man who was responsible for Willow’s rescue would be joining them for dinner that evening.
“What?” Willow demanded, not prepared for the news, so unable to hide her dismay.
Ashlynn seemed surprised by it, but Lauren remained mostly oblivious, although her smile faltered a bit at her daughter’s tone. “Well, he has to get his check… I thought it would be a nice way to thank him.”
Willow’s whole body went so rigid that she thought she might crack in half. “You’re paying him?”
Ashlynn frowned and opened her mouth to say something, but before she could, Lauren said, “Well, yes, of course. I mean, he was the one working with the cops that night, and we contacted his office about taking the case, so it only seems right. I guess since he never technically got back to us… but that seems unfair. He put himself at great risk from what I understand, and we would’ve paid 20 times that amount if we could have.”
The initial shock had worn off, and she had enough time to get herself under control, but she couldn’t muster a very good performance, so she retreated to her bedroom.
Once there, she didn’t know what to do with herself. The last thing she needed was time to think, but being around her family was grating on her nerves. It was early so it was still light outside, but she turned the light on anyway and climbed into bed.
Somehow she needed to mentally prepare herself for dinner. She had no idea how she was supposed to sit across from him after what he had done and pretend like nothing happened. Pretend to be grateful. Her heart raced thinking about it alone in her room, when she wasn’t looking at his face. How would she be able to think of anything else? How would she be able to force down the food with memories of being on her knees before him, having to force him down her throat? Without thinking about the pain, the anguish, that his actions had caused her?
