by Loretta Lost
What else can I do? If I talk to them, they’ll take her away from me.
At least I know she’s safe here. At least when she’s with me, I can protect her.
“Why don’t you pick up?” Melissa urges. “Maybe her friends can help. She needs help, Zack.”
“They don’t care about her,” I say stubbornly, although I know this isn’t entirely true. “They let her go off alone and get into trouble. I wouldn’t have done that, if it was up to me.”
If I were still her boyfriend.
“Zack, please,” my sister begs. “I’m a little worried that girl is going to kill herself. I don’t know how to help her other than calling 911—and you said you didn’t want me to do that. Please just talk to someone. Anyone.”
Looking down at the buzzing phone, and back up at my sister, I nod. Pressing the answer button, I lift it to my ear. “Hello?”
“Where the fuck are you, Zack?” Luciana screams. “Actually, don’t answer that. I obviously traced your phone and know you’re in Canada. But more importantly, what the fuck are you doing? How is Sophie? Is she okay? I’ve been going out of my mind here!”
“She’s okay, Lucy,” I say, holding the phone a few inches away from my ear, and wincing at her volume. “I mean, she’s mostly okay. She’s… really depressed.”
“Of course she’s fucking depressed, Zack! Look at what she’s been through. Have you taken her to the hospital? Gotten her checked out?”
“She hasn’t wanted to go to the hospital,” I inform Luciana. “She just wants to… sleep.”
Luciana lets out a frustrated sigh. “Well, Zack. I hate to tell you this—I don’t know why I’m telling you this. You really don’t deserve a heads up. I don’t even like you. But… I guess I don’t hate you enough to want you dead.”
“Tell me what?” I ask her, feeling a little unsettled by the tone of her voice.
“Cole is coming for you. He knows where you are, staying with your sister. And he’s pissed.”
“I didn’t force her to come here with me,” I tell Luciana angrily. “She wanted to escape. She needed to get away.”
“And in her current state, did you think that was the best course of action? Why didn’t you just call us? We were all searching for her. We were fairly nearby.”
“I just—” I trail off, looking at my sister, who is staring at me with worry. “I didn’t want to lose her again. She’s so fragile.” Taking a few steps away from my sister so she can’t hear me, I speak under my breath. “She’s been seeing people who aren’t there. A young girl, named Joy.”
There is a pause on the other end of the line.
“Why?” Luciana asks.
“I don’t know. She thinks it might be her daughter? A child she had with Cole, who went missing. But I think it’s more likely that it’s a girl Benjamin killed in front of her. Did you find… any bodies of children at the crime scene?”
Luciana inhales sharply. “How can you even ask that now? Like you give a shit about anything other than yourself. Maybe if you’d stuck around and helped us talk to Sophie about what actually happened under that farmhouse…”
“She didn’t want to go back there, Lucy. She didn’t want to talk about it.”
“Of course, she didn’t! But it was important. There were other bodies on the premises. We dug them up. Other young girls.”
“There were?” I ask hoarsely, and my heart skips a beat.
“Sophie could have identified at least one of the bodies,” Luciana says bitterly. “She could have told us if it was Joy. Maybe that would have helped her achieve closure, too.”
“Jesus. I’m so sorry. I didn’t know…”
“Do you actually care, Zack? Do you care about anything other than taking advantage of Sophie when she’s at her most vulnerable?”
“It’s not like that! I swear—”
“You better hope Cole finds you before I do,” she threatens. “He’s angry like Liam Neeson in Taken, but I’m angry like the Hulk, and I just want to smash your face. I don’t know what the fuck you were thinking, Zack, but you better be prepared for the consequences.”
With that, she hangs up.
Turning back toward my sister, I feel like utter shit. I know I screwed up majorly, but I don’t know what else I could have done. If I’d stuck around in New York, would Sophie really be any better? She would have been forced to look at dead bodies. She would have been forced to accept that this young girl is dead.
Was it really her daughter? I swallow.
Maybe it’s for the best that she found a way to keep her alive in her mind. Maybe it’s some kind of consolation that she believes the girl is playing outside with the other children, instead of being examined in a morgue somewhere. Glancing out at the window, I feel a shiver of dread run through me.
There actually are children playing outside. Sophie hasn’t completely lost her senses.
Who knows? Maybe she sees more than any of us.
Maybe this girl is a ghost, and really is following us around. Maybe this child suffered so much that she couldn’t move on to the next world, and decided to stay close to Sophie.
I realize that I don’t regret taking her with me. She’s been through too much.
She didn’t need to deal with seeing more dead bodies. She’s seen enough.
I decide here and now that I’m going to do everything I can to keep her safe.
“What’s going on?” Melissa asks me nervously.
“Sophie’s… ex-boyfriend is going to come looking for her,” I inform her. “We can’t stay here. I need to take her somewhere safe.”
“Is he abusive?” she asks.
“No. He’s just… not what she needs. I can’t let him take her away right now. She should be with me.”
“Why would he take her?” Melissa asks. “She wants to be here with you, right?”
I hesitate. “We’ve had some issues lately. I just don’t want to involve him until we have a chance to work things out. And with the way she is right now…”
Melissa nods, moving closer and placing a hand on my arm. “I have a really great idea. Trust me. You have to take her to the cottage up north, in Muskoka. My friends’ parents own it, but they always let me escape there when I’m feeling overwhelmed. Why don’t you and Sophie just go enjoy the lake? It’s really relaxing. I am sure you’ll both feel better when surrounded by nature.”
“At this point, I can’t think of any other options,” I tell her. My mind quickly makes some calculations. I’ll have to leave our cell phones here, along with all our technology so that Luciana can’t trace me and tell Cole. Even my car has a GPS tracker in it. I’ll have to buy some old, beat-up piece of junk for cheap.
No one will be able to find us. We can reconnect, and grow close to each other again, and slowly begin to heal. When we eventually need to go back to the US—or if we ever do, maybe we’ll be so close that Sophie won’t even want to go back to Cole.
Maybe she’ll even want to marry me, instead.
That’s the way things were supposed to be.
She was supposed to be mine.
She’ll see that soon.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Sophie Shields, 2016
I am sitting cross legged on the dock and sipping my coffee.
After I couldn’t get out of bed for a few more days, Zack’s sister came in and gave me a lecture on overcoming depression. Then, she and her boyfriend basically sent us away to their friend’s cottage in Northern Ontario, where they said it would be impossible not to unwind and relax.
So, that is where we are now.
And it’s a little better. The sun is setting over a quiet lake, and the first stars are just popping out. The crescent moon is becoming more and more visible, along with its reflection on the water. There is even a little canoe I have paddled out onto the lake a few times. I am tempted to do it now, and just lie down and drift in the middle of the lake. But there is something comforting about just sitting here and si
pping my coffee.
I feel like I can breathe a little. For the first time in a while.
Even though my birth name was Serenity, I feel that peacefulness is the feeling that has most escaped me in my life. So, when I have it, I try to hold onto it, and this is one of those moments.
I have almost started to feel so okay that I can start thinking about the future again. I force myself to picture my next steps, and map out new goals. The problem with being in captivity like that, and so close to death, is that it erases everything your life was before. It’s hard to remember where I was, what I wanted, what I dreamed about most.
All I could focus on for days was just getting through each moment, and staying alive.
But now, I try to imagine growing old. Maybe I’ll find myself living somewhere like this someday, in a quaint little cottage on a lake. Most of the neighbors are older and retired. This seems like the perfect place to enjoy those wrinkly, golden years. But when I imagine my future, I can’t help imagining Cole, right there beside me.
Pain floods my chest.
I shut my eyes, trying to shut him out.
I need to forget. I need to forget all the beautiful things he says in my dreams, not because they are lies, but because they are true.
The reason I spent so much time sleeping lately is because it is safe.
Dreaming is like a virtual reality, where it’s fine to experience all the things I want to experience. But I am sure if I actually reached for the happiness and love I crave, I would ruin it. I would lose it.
Why bother trying?
Look at me—this shaking, damaged, trembling mess of a girl. I have been getting so many mini-blackouts lately that I must be driving Zack crazy. For the entire time that I lived with him, I don’t think I needed Snow once. He never met her. He never needed to. Now, he has to put up with two of me—or possibly three.
Zack has been so patient and kind, especially to Joy. He makes her breakfast every morning, milk and Lucky Charms. He went grocery shopping, and got her orange juice, Lunchables, and ice cream—all her favorite things.
We still haven’t taken her to the theatre to see a movie, but that’s mostly my fault. I haven’t had the energy to get dressed, or brush my hair. I have been wearing the same pajamas since we got here. However, we have watched plenty of movies on Netflix with Joy. Zack has been trying to keep me away from fiddling with the TV too much, worried that I will misuse the Internet, and it will negatively affect my health. He isn’t totally wrong.
It’s frustrating, but I think it’s working. I’m feeling a little better every day.
A little more normal.
I don’t know how long I can continue like this, really. Joy needs to be enrolled in school—although I could probably homeschool her just fine. I need to work. We will need money, eventually. But I can’t think about any of that.
All I can do is drink coffee.
Close my eyes.
Dream about Cole.
There are birds singing in the trees, and crickets chirping nearby. Nature is soothing. The cool air tickles my shoulders, but I hardly notice. I only think of Cole.
It hurts more than it did before. Or does it? I hardly remember.
But we were so close to something beautiful, this time.
I could feel it. We were close to perfection.
And I had to go and ruin it all.
It is my fault, after all. He did ask to come with me to Michigan. He did say he was worried. But I wanted to go off on some grand solo adventure to find myself, and find my family. Look at how that turned out. What a disaster.
I should have been content. I should have known that Cole was all the family I would ever need.
I should have known that any family that would turn their back on me, leaving me in a ditch to die, wasn’t worth bothering to find. It wasn’t worth the cost of letting Benjamin find me.
Or was it?
At least I know now that he’s really gone. Gone for good.
That should comfort me, at least a little, shouldn’t it? And I have Joy.
I should be happy I’ve found her, right? That’s all that matters. Whether or not she’s actually my daughter… she does bring Joy into my life.
Whenever I can stand to be awake. Am I healthy enough to take care of her? If not for Zack, I know I wouldn’t be. Am I failing her? Is she better off without me?
I lift my coffee mug to my lips, and sip.
When I hear footsteps on the dock behind me, my body tenses up. Why is Zack wearing real shoes? We have been walking around barefoot or in flip flops on the property. A shiver prickles the skin on my back and neck. These do not sound like Zack’s footsteps. They sound heavy, purposeful, angry. I listen keenly for a third sound—the sound of a cane hitting the ground. Although I know Benjamin is dead, I can still imagine the sound of his cane.
Have I fallen asleep on the deck and started dreaming?
Closing my eyes tightly, I sip my coffee.
It might be dream coffee. I’m not entirely certain.
The footsteps grow closer, slowly, hesitantly. There is no cane. Just footsteps. Kind, caring, powerful footsteps. I try to continue staring forward, telling myself little lies inside my head, so I can hold on to my little piece of serenity.
This isn’t real. He doesn’t exist.
It’s just a dream.
But even as I tell myself this, I feel someone crouching down to sit behind me on the deck. Is this really happening?
Has he somehow found me?
I don’t want him to see me like this.
I can never face him again.
Shutting my eyes tightly, I clench my jaw. “Are you really here?”
“Yes.”
I feel his breath on the sensitive skin on the back of my neck when he speaks, and tears begin to gather in my eyes. His voice. It sounds exactly like it does in all the dreams, but somehow… more tired. Knowing how messed up my mind is, I can’t really trust that this is happening. But when I feel a hand rest on my shoulder, my insides quake and tremble at the magnetism and gravitational pull of the touch.
“Zack called you,” I whisper.
“Yes.”
His hand slides over my upper arm, tentatively.
I hold my breath. I refuse to breathe. I will suffocate before I allow myself to turn around and launch myself into his arms. If this is a dream, there should be no harm in it. But I’m afraid that if I wake up and turn around, there will be nothing there but empty air. And I couldn’t bear that. I would just be crushed.
And if he is there, I will break down completely.
Everything strong and hard inside myself I’ve been trying to rebuild will be liquefied.
I can’t let myself be soft with him right now. I can’t let myself fall apart.
Because all this pain is so strong, that it’s taking every ounce of my willpower to push it down. If I let myself feel, it will tear me limb from limb, until there is nothing left of me.
So, I just keep on sipping my coffee.
I just pretend that nothing is happening.
But I feel his lips press against my shoulder. I feel his words tickle my earlobe before I can process the syllable.
“Scar?” he murmurs.
And I feel my heart quiver.
I feel my heart crack.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Zachary Small, Minutes before
I am standing in the kitchen and tossing the small bowl of milk and Lucky Charms down the sink. It’s been a real task, pretending that a whole person exists who isn’t really there at all. Most of all, it’s been painful watching Sophie interact with her.
Last night, she tucked the child into bed, and read her a bedtime story. I was standing in the doorway in disbelief, unable to speak, with tears pouring out of my eyes, crying the way no grown ass man should ever cry. I’ve watched her treating this invisible person which such incredible gentleness and love, that I didn’t know how to behave. I didn’t know what to do with myself.
All I could manage to do was buy Lucky Charms and ice cream. That seemed to make Sophie happy.
But doesn’t she notice that the spoon doesn’t move? Doesn’t she notice that there is no dent in the pillow where a small head should be resting? I keep worrying that reality will reach her, and she will be devastated to learn that the child isn’t real. How will I take care of her then?
I am afraid.
How much longer can this go on? I’m not entirely sure. But I’m prepared to be the father to a ghost girl for as long as humanly possible. I’ll do anything for Soph—anything to make her feel better.
But is this really making her feel better?
I look out of the kitchen window toward the lake. She is quite far away, a small figure sitting cross legged on the deck. She looks so peaceful. She thinks Joy is already sleeping, and trusts me to take care of her. I am confident that taking her up to this cottage has been the best decision. The best that I could manage. I just don’t know what to do next. I don’t know how to ease her pain from watching Joy get killed. Or whatever happened back there with Benjamin.
I don’t know how to help her move on.
“You pathetic piece of shit,” says a voice behind me.
It’s more amazed than accusatory.
When I turn around, I am startled to see Cole standing there, with a gun pointed at my head. There is a silencer attached to the nozzle, and a look on his face that means business. I swallow.
“Look, I haven’t done anything. I’ve been taking care of her.”
“She’s my fucking wife,” Cole says, with a look of death on his face—and amusement. He shakes his head, and I realize he thinks I’m nothing. Not even worth his time, or bullets.
“You don’t know anything about her,” he says simply. “You don’t even know half of who she is. What makes you think you could be equipped to help her through this? You fucking imbecile.”
I hold up my hands in surrender. “You don’t understand, Cole. This is different. I couldn’t make her go back there. She said she couldn’t handle seeing you in her current state. She’s been imagining this young girl who isn’t really there—”
