by L. L. Akers
She continued to watch his leisurely pace to his shiny, expensive Lexus—opening the door and tossing in his briefcase, then climbing in behind it, looking like he didn’t have a care in the world. He never even looked back at the office.
As he pulled away, she looked down at the object he’d tossed on her desk. It was a book, a very old dog-eared paperback novel with yellowed pages. She had to unroll it just to read the title: The Girl in the Box.
CHAPTER 25
Olivia crouched broken and battered on the cold bathroom floor, tasting the copper tang of blood in her mouth as she sat shaking with her back against the wall and her knees in the air. She wanted to wrap her arms around herself to warm the shivers creeping through her bones, but she was in too much pain to even do that.
As she stared at the shiny white baseboards she’d scrubbed clean just today, she wished she could scrub the dirt and dust off her life just as easily. She was an idiot. She never should have believed in him. She’d wasted two more years of her life trying to change him. Years. Gone.
Olivia waited for the storm to build stronger outside, listening to the onslaught of the rain on the metal roof, and hoped for thunder. For as long as she’d known Billy, the sound of thunder would lull him to sleep. She sighed, swallowing back a sob—she was done crying—and thought about the thunder. It must lull him to sleep because it’s the only thing louder and scarier than his own rage, she thought.
As she cautiously waited for the sounds of Billy’s snores to bleed through the storm so she could leave the bathroom without further harm, her mind drifted back and replayed everything that had happened that had put her right back on this floor.
Olivia had gotten her old job back—different shift to start with but same department and title—when she returned with the “new” Billy to start over. She was welcomed back with open arms and resumed work as if she’d never been gone.
It had almost seemed like a dream come true... for the first six months or so. Then the old Billy came creeping in, one snide comment at a time, until he was back. After suffering through three more months of fists and boots, Olivia finally realized something: she already knew there was a different life out there for her—a good life. She wouldn’t stay this time.
That night after that light bulb went off, she patiently, with an even tone, told him she thought it best they agree she go back to Uncle Jackson’s. She didn’t want to find someplace new to start over. She just wanted to be where Billy wasn’t.
He seemed to take it well, asking her to go with him to discuss it over dinner. On the way, he wanted to show her the jobsite of their latest project, explain to her what he was doing now in his new job. He’d found something he was good at—artistic, he’d called it.
Olivia followed him through the woods to the clearing where a house would later be built. Just beyond that she could see piles of red dirt. Billy led her to the mounds, their feet getting muddy.
“Billy, do you really have to show me this tonight? It’s muddy out here. We’re going to track mud into the car and the restaurant,” Olivia complained.
“Yep, Olivia, I do.”
She finally caught up with his long strides and stood beside him, looking into a big concrete box in the ground. Its angles were sharp and precise, and the sides and top were as smooth as cloudy glass. It did look like skilled work.
“Did you make that?” Olivia asked, wondering what it was.
“Yeah... well, I made the hole for it. What do you think?”
“It looks... good. What is it?” Olivia asked, clueless about construction.
“It’s for the septic system. You can’t just drop shit into the ground, Olivia. Shit is toxic. It can contaminate things. I bury these boxes now.”
“How did you get to do that?”
“I’m an excavation specialist. Now I’ve got my certification from DHEC to install septic systems. First I dig a hole using that big machine over there. It’s not something just anybody can do... It’s got to be exact—measured and leveled with a transit. Then we place the box from the factory in it, connect it to the field lines, and then I bury it... and abracadabra... a concrete box!”
“Hmm. Well, good job. I’m glad you learned a skill, Billy. Can we go now?” Olivia asked impatiently.
“Wait a minute... I haven’t told ya the best part, Olivia. When the concrete lid goes on, it’s pitch dark in one of those things, so a person can’t see their own finger in front of their face. And it’s cold too. Real cool. See, we bury it... under all that dirt ya see down yonder. It’s like a cellar; it keeps the shit cool. If someone accidently got left in one of these, there’s no way out from inside, and with new construction, it could be months to a year before they built the house and hooked commodes up to it. Someone could scream and scream and never be heard in all that concrete and dirt. We could be working all around them and still not hear a thing! They’d be dead before someone found them,” Billy said, evil intent dripping from his tongue and shining through his eyes as he glared at Olivia.
“People would probably think ya just left me again, Olivia. Except this time ya wouldn’t have told anyone where ya were going because ya didn’t want to be found again.” He paused. “Well, I guarantee ya, if you still want to leave... you won’t be found this time.”
Olivia stood silently and still, stunned speechless as she’d watched Billy stomp back through the mud to the truck. She felt the first fat raindrop plop down on her head as he got in and drove off, gunning it with tires squealing, leaving her there alone... in the woods.
The tears forced their way through after all and rolled down Olivia’s face as she sat in the bathroom floor, remembering that night and the following year of nightmares. During her waking hours, it was the nightmare of living with Billy’s trigger-temper and the painful results of not avoiding it. During her few sleeping hours each night, she dreamt of that box and the bug-infested dirt around it—the coldness and the aloneness it evoked in her imagination.
She cried in shame for believing Billy had really changed, causing her to leave Uncle Jackson alone, and sorrow for how much more of her life she’d wasted, maltreated and abused.
She looked down and studied her bruised and bloodied fists, surprising herself to see she’d somehow managed to fight back while he hurled his words of hate and fists of fury at her. The realization came to her slowly: I finally fought back... I’m not afraid to fight back anymore. This was a revelation. It occurred to her like the whisper of an angel. If she’d overcome her fear of Billy, fighting back with her own two fists, why let the thought of the concrete box stop her anymore? She was still scared, but not filled with mind-numbing terror as she had been that day, standing at the edge looking in, and every day afterward. She felt like someone had just handed her wings. The threat of that box suddenly seemed much less menacing than the beast she was living with now.
Olivia made up her mind—again. She was leaving tomorrow. She’d just have to take her chances on being found.
CHAPTER 26
Gabby lay in her bed in her now unfamiliar bedroom, staring at the absence of Jake—the chair stripped of his dirty clothes pile, his side of the dresser missing his scattered hunting and fishing paraphernalia, and the half-empty open closet lacking his clothes, replaced by a dark empty void staring back at her. Even his dirty old camouflage ball cap that was always a familiar presence hanging on the post of the footboard where she’d bump it with her foot, knocking it to the floor—she’d harped at him about it endless times—even that would be a welcome sight now.
How did I let this happen? Gabby thought.
Her heart broke again, thinking of the look on Jake’s face when she told him she wanted a divorce. Astonished—like he couldn’t believe it was Gabby’s voice coming from her mouth. She cried as she watched him cry... packing all his things and loading up his truck, leaving her to think that of all the lies in the past six months she’d told to protect him—protect them both—that one was the worst.
G
abby didn’t want a divorce, but she couldn’t bear to see the hurt and rejection on her husband’s face anymore as he reached out to her to make love and she had to turn away—not able to let him touch her anymore—knowing she was killing their marriage, but not able to tell him why she didn’t feel good enough for him.
She was a whore—a stupid whore—who had let one man make her into this with his threats of losing her husband, her job, and her house... as well as her freedom of life, until there was nothing left but a tired, withered shell of the girl she had been.
I beat René to it, Gabby thought. It’s better for Jake to think I don’t love him anymore than to let him find out what I let René do to me. He’d be crushed with René’s twisted, sordid descriptions of how I cheated on Jake willingly—opening myself up in passion—all while avoiding Jake’s touch. To hell with the threats of his ridiculous stories to Jake. I made my peace with losing Jake on my own terms. Now all he has is the book. I’m calling his bluff...
Jake’s gone. Now, today I’ll resign my job after exposing René to Mr. Hinson and maybe even to his wife, Mrs. Arnaud. Let the chips fall where they may. We’ll see if the book was just an idle threat meant to keep me in line. After all, I got nothing else to lose.
As the tears began to well up in her eyes, she thought back over how it all happened—how she could be so afraid of a simple book that she let it be the hinge on the door, opening her up to this seemingly never-ending nightmare. She’d gained and lost almost everything she ever wanted—in only two years—with the last six months being a harrowing, horrifying, and heartbreaking end.
She couldn’t imagine her life without Jake. It wasn’t about the house or the job. Those could be replaced. It was about living—alone—without Jake. The more she thought about it, the more she realized she didn’t want to.
A fresh tear slowly rolled down her face when she realized how alone she had become and would be until the end. She’d already lost her best friend and sister, Olivia. She missed Olivia and felt like she’d lost a part of herself. She barely ever saw her or spoke to her. Olivia had changed shortly after coming home. When they did see each other, it was as if they were two strangers trying to find common ground, neither willing to share anything of substance. If they hadn’t grown apart, and she wasn’t so full of shame, she could call her now, or six months ago, and Olivia would have helped her figure it out. Too late now.
Gabby couldn’t talk to Emma either. Not only did she seem so much younger, probably wouldn’t even understand serious adult problems, but she was even more shut down and private about her life than Olivia was. And forget about Mom; she would just think Gabby was over-dramatizing the entire thing and change the subject. That would be a waste of Gabby’s breath.
It was as if their blood ties had been cut these last few years. After they all had gotten their matching tattoos, they had ironically flittered away, living their own lives, separating instead of uniting. Nobody seemed to care about anyone else’s life anymore.
Gabby stumbled into their bathroom, her head pounding from tension and crying, and stood there looking at Jake’s side of the counter. Empty. Not even a toothbrush left behind.
She looked behind the door and found one T-shirt still hanging on the hook. The sight of that one shirt gave her more happiness than she’d felt in six months, and she hoped it wasn’t clean. She held it against her face and took a deep breath, filling her nose and lungs with the smell of Jake: Ivory soap topped with a hint of his cologne and Jake’s own unique scent with an underlying trace of oil and shop smells, the fabric soft, worn in. This was one of his favorites.
Her heart ached for him and the pain he was going through for the lies she’d told. If she had only told him the truth to start with, she wouldn’t have had to blame this on lack of love. How could he even believe she didn’t love him? Who wouldn’t love Jake? His head had to be spinning; she knew hers was.
Gabby grabbed the two prescription bottles on the counter. Klonopin to help with her sleeping condition and Tofranil to help with her bladder problem—what a farce. Jake had insisted on taking her to a sleep doctor months ago when she was unable to slow her mind enough from the whys and what ifs that jockeyed for position in her brain every single night.
Even when she was able to sleep, she would scare the living daylights out of Jake, waking up screaming from the never-changing night terror of being held captive in that box. She’d read the book—repeatedly—locked in the bathroom, hiding in the dead of the night, sitting on the commode with the lid shut, away from Jake’s eyes. Maybe death would have been more welcome than what that poor girl had lived through. When Gabby did sleep, she couldn’t stop the dreams of being forced into the same situation. For six long months she read and re-read that book at night, believing René was more than capable of following through on his threat, and living a whole other nightmare at least once a week after working hours were supposed to be over. She withdrew into herself and she knew Jake was worried; she’d practically become a zombie at home; barely functioning enough to cook dinner and eating very little, not talking, and definitely not wanting Jake to touch her—she could never feel clean enough for Jake again.
Jake insisted on going with her to the sleep doctor and after a two-day sleep study where they glued all sorts of wires to her head, as well as stuck them up her nose and on her fingers, the doctor poured over the printouts but couldn’t come up with any reason for her distress other than she couldn’t relax. Her body literally couldn’t make it to the stage in sleep past the nightmares into almost unconsciousness. She was stuck in the dream stage throughout the entire study, just teetering on the barely sleeping edge of wakefulness.
Unbeknownst to Gabby, Jake had also noticed her frequent trips to the bathroom and told the doctor about that too, so Gabby covered with a shoddy excuse of feeling constant pressure to pee—a lot—through the nights. More lies.
Gabby walked out of the sleep study with two prescriptions—bladder control and a mild sedative. She took them. She didn’t care that she didn’t even have a problem with peeing. She did it to please Jake and tried to fake sleep as much as possible to reassure him she was getting rest—but she wasn’t. She was usually just lying motionless, staring at the wall or the ceiling, trying not to disturb him.
The warnings on the Tofranil said: May cause respiratory or cardiac arrest. Take as prescribed. Her heart was begging her to die. There was nothing left for her. She decided right then she wouldn’t even bother to rat René out to his boss and wife first. At this point, who cares? She’d broken Jake’s heart so she only wanted to break her own.
Gabby hugged Jake’s T-shirt to her as she gathered up the bottles and crawled back into bed. She grimaced as she dry-swallowed every pill from both of the bottles. She didn’t want it to be easy; she wanted to feel some discomfort. She wanted to punish herself, feel some pain. She hoped the cardiac arrest meant she would have a heart attack. That would be some pain. She lay back on her bed with Jake’s shirt pressed against her face, waiting for it, embracing the anticipation. She knew behind the pain would be peace... finally.
This is slow coming, she thought groggily. Maybe I should write Jake a note while I wait. Admit the truth and reassure him of her love for him. She tried to compose it in her head, but her thoughts kept scattering. Must be the Klonopin. She couldn’t gather the energy to get up and get a pen and paper.
It was probably better not to write it anyway. Jake would freak out. He wasn’t a fighter and had never been in trouble—ever—but there was no telling what he would do if he found out René had done this to her. Killed her. She couldn’t risk it. He could be arrested or worse if he confronted René. That man was a sociopath; he’d proven that.
I’ll take my secrets with me and hope Jake finds someone else to love, she thought as she drifted off to sleep.
The bright lights and beeps and buzzers were overwhelming.
Gabby could hear people yelling, but she didn’t have the strength to open her eyes eve
n if she could under the abnormally bright lights. She felt like she was floating above everyone—somewhere. She didn’t know where. She tried to sort out to whom the loud voices belonged.
The doctor watched the screen. “She’s having supraventricular tachycardia.”
He was glaring at her chart. “Did she have a psych test before being prescribed this Klonopin and Tofranil?”
Jake looked confused. “No, sir. She had a sleep study. She was having problems with sleeping... and with her bladder.”
The doctor tossed the bottles to a nurse. “Do you know how much was in these bottles?”
She caught the bottles and looked at them. “The fill date is on the bottle, Doctor.”
“Who the hell would prescribe this combination without a psych test?”
The nurse tried to get his attention away from the chart, which was distracting him, angering him at the ease some doctors scribbled out scripts. “They were just filled yesterday. They were full.”
“Get those to the hospital administrator. Have her call the prescribing doctor!” She stuck the bottles in her pocket; she could deal with that later.
The doctor looked at Jake, his attention taken away from the screen for just a moment. “Has she taken anything else?”
“Doctor, her heart is racing again!”
The doctor glanced at the screen and turned back to look at Jake. “Call the family. This is serious!”
“I am the family. I’m her husband, and I ain’t leaving her. That’ll have to wait.”
The doctor put his hand on Gabby’s arm, leaning over and speaking very loudly, as if it were her ears struggling, not her heart. “Gabby! Stay with us!”
He didn’t look up from Gabby to even glance at the monitor. “What’s her number?”
Another nurse was anticipating the question coming, and had her eyeball glued to the screen waiting for the doctor to ask. “One eighty bpm”
