by Apryl Baker
“I’ll teach you how to defend yourself.” Eli hugs me to him. “I’ll teach you how to hunt. We’ll get you ready to go out and face the things that can hurt you. You’ll never feel this helpless again, Ella.”
“Promise?”
“Promise.”
Minutes turn into hours, and day bleeds into night. Matt called, and Eli had to tell him what was going on. He wanted to come over, but Eli talked him out of it. He agreed to stay home with his mom and little brother. I wanted everyone safe.
“Where have you been?” Mom screeches into her phone, and I wince.
Has to be Daddy.
“I don’t care! Your daughter is missing. Get yourself to Marco’s right now.”
She hangs up on him. She’s pissed.
Unable to watch Mom struggle with her emotions, I get up and go to the kitchen. I pull out cold cuts and start to make sandwiches. None of us has eaten in hours. This gives me something to do to distract myself just the tiniest bit.
Eli comes in and leans against the counter. “Want some help?”
“No.” I start spreading mayo on slices of bread. “It’s bad that they haven’t found her yet, isn’t it?”
“I don’t know.”
“Eli, your dad was an FBI agent. Don’t lie to me.”
“If she was there, they’d have found her by now.”
My hands start to shake, and the butter knife clatters to the countertop.
Before I can break down and fall, Eli pulls me close. “Don’t go giving up on your sister yet, Ella. She’s got the same grit in her you have.”
“Ella!”
Mom’s frantic voice reaches us, and we both run down the hallway to Gramps’ den. “What, what’s wrong?”
“They found her. Your sister managed to escape, and the K-9s found her hiding in a cave.”
Thank God, thank God, thank God.
“What about the guy?”
“I don’t know. Let’s go. We’re going to the hospital.”
No one wastes any time. Gramps rides with Mom, and I go with Eli. It takes us no time to reach the hospital, and Mom starts shouting at the poor nurses even before she’s fully in the door.
Mom’s allowed back in the ER, but the rest of us have to wait in the waiting room. It’s the last thing I want, but I know the doctors have to work.
“See, told you not to give up on her.” Eli bumps his shoulder into mine. “Always trust your Guardian Angel.” The last part is whispered in my ear.
“She could have died, Eli.”
“But she didn’t. Same as you didn’t when you got run over by the car. You Banks girls are made of stronger stuff than you think.”
That, we are.
Dad arrives shortly after and is shown back to the room Cecily is in, and I get up and start to pace. I need to see her.
Eli stops me before I can really get started, nodding to my leg. I keep forgetting to limp in public. “Sit down before you give everyone in here a headache. You’re making me dizzy, Shortcake.”
Ethan comes around the corner and stops at the desk, asking about Cecily’s room. He stops when he sees us.
“Ella, I want you to know we found the man hiding in the paper mill. He’s not going to be hurting anyone else anytime soon. Cecily doesn’t have to worry.”
He’s telling me with his eyes that my information helped more than anything, even if he can’t say it out loud.
Maybe this reaping thing isn’t as bad as I originally thought if I can help people with it.
It’s another two hours before I’m allowed back to see Cecily. They have her in her own room, and Mom said they’re going to keep her overnight.
The sight of my sister huddled in a bed, hooked up to an IV and oxygen, is almost more than I can take. She’s covered in bruises, her skin torn in places and scratched up in others. I don’t know if it was from running through the woods or if it was from whatever this Derrick guy did, but if I can get my hands on him, he’s going to suffer.
“Hey, little sis.” I lean down and kiss her forehead. “You scared me.”
“I owed you one from the car accident.”
“Let’s not do this again, huh?”
“Yeah, no, never again.” Her eyes flutter, and I sit down in the chair, knowing she’ll be asleep soon. She looks exhausted.
The nurse comes and tells us visiting hours are over, and several hostile glares land on her. She backs out of the room. Good luck trying to get rid of us.
Mom and Dad are arguing, but I don’t even care about what. It feels like I’ve run a marathon three times over, and I wasn’t even the one who was taken.
Eli drags a chair over to me and sits. “You know, Ella, I think we need to rent a room out for you and Cecily.”
“I don’t plan on spending a lot of time here.”
“If you want to learn to hunt, you will be spending a lot of time here.”
“Is it worse than learning to break and enter?”
He chuckles. “A little worse.”
“What was it you said…hijinks and misdemeanors. Is that what I should look forward to?”
“You betcha.”
It could be worse. I might have lost my sister.
“You’ll teach Cecily too?”
“I love her like my own sister, so yeah, I’ll teach her everything I know too. No one’s getting the jump on my girls again.”
“Son, I’m taking your Jeep home. Ethan says questioning can wait until tomorrow. He has more than enough to keep his hands full with the suspect, anyway.”
“Can you bring me some clean clothes tomorrow?”
“I’ll bring everyone breakfast in the morning. How’s that?”
“Thanks, Gramps.”
Gramps takes his leave, and I end up leaning my head against Eli’s shoulder. He’s snoring before long. I can’t blame him. He had a rough practice, then we went hiking and he carried me for most of it, and then all that worry and stress of waiting on word about Cecily drained him as much as it did me. He deserves a nap.
The room’s finally quiet, with Mom and Dad taking their argument outside, and I finally give my sister my undivided attention.
“What happened?”
She shakes her head, huddling further down into the blankets. I get she doesn’t want to talk about this, but she’s going to. I know better than anyone you have to talk about things, or you get depressed and start thinking some really awful things.
Instead of letting her hide from me and the truth, I climb into the bed, careful not to disturb Eli, and pull my sister into a hug.
“I know it’s scary, Cece, but you have to tell me.” I use the nickname from when she was a little girl. None of us really use it anymore, and I don’t know why. “You scared me, and not just today. You’ve been scaring me. Sneaking off, keeping secrets, not introducing the guy to anyone…that’s not you. I need to understand what happened.”
“I feel so stupid,” she whispers, tears in her eyes. “I knew what I was doing was wrong, and I did it anyway.”
“It’s okay. We all do stupid things we regret. It’s how we grow up and learn.”
She burrows into me, which takes some doing since she’s a full head taller than I am, but she’s still my little sister.
“He was just so…so much more grown-up than me and he liked me, El. He was in college, and he liked me.”
“College? You told me he was seventeen.”
“I lied,” she admits. “I knew no one would approve, but he made me feel so special, like I was the only girl he saw. When he asked me to keep him a secret, I never even thought twice about it after Jordan. I knew Daddy would flip out, and I didn’t want to ruin this. We always had so much fun together, and it wasn’t until I started to bug him to meet you that he got weird.”
“Got weird how?”
“Mean. He’d say hurtful things and tell me I didn’t love him. He even…”
“Even what?”
“He hit me.”
“He hit you?” I
seethe, trying my best not to get up and go down to the police station and beat the fool with a baseball bat.
“He apologized and promised not to do it again. He told me he loved me, and if I’d just be a good girlfriend, it wouldn’t have happened.”
“You know that’s BS, don’t you?”
She shrugs.
What the heck?
“Cecily Ann Banks, you listen to me, and you listen good. No man has any right to touch you with violence. Only cowards hit people who are smaller and weaker than they are. You did nothing to deserve to be hit, and you will not think like that.”
But even as the words leave my mouth, I know nothing I say will fix whatever is broken in her that made her think it was her fault that he hit her. Mom is going to be investing in some serious therapy for my baby sister.
“He asked me to meet him last night, and he sounded weird on the phone, distracted.”
She can deflect with the best of them, but I refrain from going back to the whole hitting her situation. She needs to get this out more than I need to lecture her on her own self-worth.
“I called Sherry to cover for me, and she agreed. When I showed up at our normal meetup spot, he looked distracted. I didn’t want to get in his car.”
“But you did?”
She nods, tears running down her face.
“We had a big fight last week when I went to get food with Eli after the game. He said I didn’t love him, and he’d been ignoring my texts and voicemails all week. So, when he called to meet, I didn’t want to fight anymore. I got in the car.”
What kind of head trip has this guy done on my baby sister?
“We drove out to this old, abandoned building. He got scary, and he said I didn’t love him, that I was ruining everything. He…he beat me, Ella. He said it was all my fault, and I had to go away.”
Her whole body shakes, and I hold her as close as I can, trying to offer what little comfort I’m able to while hiding my own anger.
“I think I passed out, because when I woke up, I was locked in a room. It wasn’t dark. There was just a little bit of sunlight filtering through the broken windows. Derrick wasn’t there, and I made myself get up. It took me three tries to jump up to a window because I hurt so much, but I did it. When I got out, I ran. I found an old cave and hid in it. I knew if he found me, he’d kill me.”
“Shh,” I whisper and stroke her hair. “You’re safe now, Cece. Ethan arrested him. He’s never going to hurt you again.”
“I’m so ashamed, Ella.”
“Why?”
“Because I let this happen to myself. I caused this.”
“You didn’t cause him to be crazy, honey. He was just a bad man who manipulated you. None of this is your fault.”
I can tell she doesn’t believe me, but I’m not sure what else I can say, so I just hold her until she falls asleep.
Eli nudges my foot with his, and I realize he must have been awake for the whole confession. He looks worried.
Like me, he can fight what he can see, but how do you fight psychological wounds inflicted upon someone? How do you make them see nothing that happened was their fault?
“I don’t know how to help her,” I confess.
“Me either. Maybe we get her some professional help?”
“I was thinking that,” I whisper. “She’s never going to admit this to Mom or Dad. She blames herself too much. But she needs to talk this out with someone who can help her.”
“I’ll ask Gramps. He knows everyone.”
Eli leans back in the chair, throwing his feet up on the bottom of the bed. “Why don’t you try to get some sleep, Shortcake? Tomorrow will be a long day full of police interviews and even more poking and prodding from the doctors. Your sister’s lucky she came out of this without any major injuries, but she’s going to need you to get through tomorrow.”
He’s right, but I’m not sure I can sleep. This town has brought us nothing but pain and misery. First with my hit and run, then the Army bugging our house, demons showing up, and now my sister falling prey to a crazy person who messed with her head. If we’d never come here, none of this would be happening.
As much as I love Eli, I can’t help but wish we’d never moved to this place. It’s made me hate my dad, and I can’t stand that.
And now it’s put my sister in a situation where she believed she deserved to be hit.
How do I fight against the monsters I can’t see coming?
But I guess that’s a problem for another day.
Today’s problem is helping my sister and making sure we’re not caught unawares again. No matter the adventure or the danger, I’m not going to be helpless again.
Eli promised, and I believe him.
Things are going to get better. No matter what I have to do to ensure that.
And the ghost hovering at the door?
Tomorrow’s problem.
Closing my eyes, I try to sleep and focus on having my sister safe and sound and ignoring the whispers slithering around in my head, the ones from my coma that’s laughing at me thinking things are going to get better.
They know better.
And so do I.
But again, that’s tomorrow’s problem.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
So who am I? Well, I’m the crazy girl with an imagination that never shuts up. I LOVE scary movies. My friends laugh at me when I scare myself watching them and tell me to stop watching them, but who doesn’t love to get scared? I grew up in a small town nestled in the southern mountains of West Virginia where I spent days roaming around in the woods, climbing trees, and causing general mayhem. Nights I would stay up reading Nancy Drew by flashlight under the covers until my parents yelled at me to go to sleep.
Growing up in a small town, I learned a lot of values and morals, I also learned parents have spies everywhere and there’s always someone to tell your mama you were seen kissing a particular boy on a particular day just a little too long. So when you get grounded, what is there left to do? Read! My Aunt Jo gave me my first real romance novel. It was a romance titled “Lord Margrave’s Deception.” I remember it fondly. But I also learned I had a deep and abiding love of mysteries and anything paranormal. As I grew up, I started to write just that and would entertain my friends with stories featuring them as main characters.
Now, I live Huntersville, NC where I entertain my niece and nephew and watch the cats get teased by the birds and laugh myself silly when they swoop down and then dive back up just out of reach. The cats start yelling something fierce…lol.
I love books, I love writing books, and I love entertaining people with my silly stories.
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