Pretend She's Here

by Luanne Rice

  “You’re about to get a special delivery package,” she said.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “It’s a surprise,” she said.

  The word surprise lodged like a hard black walnut in my chest. It hurt and made me feel on edge. I had stopped liking anything spontaneous. I wanted to know what was going to happen every minute. I didn’t like not seeing around the corner. My mother must have spotted the worry on my face, because she leaned over and hugged me.

  “You’re home safe, honey. Nothing is going to hurt you here.”

  I shrugged. Couldn’t she imagine what it was like to be snatched off the street, ten minutes from our house, by people I’d known and loved? Was that really so alien to her? I stared into her face, the smile lines around her gray-blue eyes. She wore the same necklace Mrs. Morton had; I counted the children charms. Seven. Each had birthstone chips. Mine was topaz. A November baby, like Lizzie.

  “What did you do on my birthday?” I asked.

  Despair flashed in her eyes. “Oh, Emily. That was a hard day.”

  “But what did you do?”

  “Honestly? I couldn’t get out of bed. I tried to sleep all day because every time I opened my eyes, you weren’t there. I tried to pray, but I felt there was no one listening. I couldn’t hear God talking back to me. The priest from All Souls Church came, but I told your father not to let him in.”

  “I’m sorry.” I wanted to feel something, but my heart had turned to stone. This was my mom, she was gazing at me with the purest love in the world, and I could see how much she wanted the old me back.

  “What can I do to help?” she asked.

  “Nothing,” I said.

  “I’ll do whatever it takes. Getting through this next part—healing from the surgery, getting ready for court—I know it’s terrible for you. Believe me, Emily—I want to go to Maine right now, straight to prison, and I want to see the evil for myself, and I want to rip her throat out. I swear, I hope they never let her free.”

  Mrs. Porter.

  My mother had my attention, but I was still numb.

  “I won’t do it, of course,” she said.

  “I know.”

  “What I will do is protect you,” she said.

  But you couldn’t before, I wanted to say. But I held back, because I knew how badly it would hurt her. She pressed her forehead to mine, and I couldn’t help sniffing the air for alcohol. Since returning home, I hadn’t seen her drinking, hadn’t heard the bottles clinking.

  She caught me doing it and tilted her head back.

  “I’m sober, Em,” she said.

  “Sorry, I didn’t mean to act like I think you’re not.”

  “It’s normal that you’d wonder,” she said.

  “They told me you were drinking,” I said. “That you thinking I had run away would make you start again.”

  “The Porters?” she said.

  “Yes.”

  She shook her head hard. “No, Emily. Having you gone made me even more determined to stay sober. To keep my mind clear, so I could find you. Except for that day when I couldn’t face the world, your birthday, I never stopped looking. I was the biggest thorn in the police’s side—I called every day. And I knew you hadn’t run away.”

  “How did you know that?” I asked. I stared at her. My mom was tall and thin. Her dark hair was streaked with silver. I loved those little lines of sun and weather around her eyes when she smiled, but they had disappeared along with her smile.

  “Because I know you,” she replied. “That one time you did leave, when Lizzie helped you hide, you were giving me a message, telling me you couldn’t take my drinking anymore. And things were so different after I got home from rehab. You trusted me again. And I one hundred percent trusted you the whole time you were gone. I knew you’d been taken.” Her voice broke. “I knew someone had forced you to send those emails.”

  “I would never have sent them on my own.”

  “I know,” she said.

  “Are you mad because I didn’t try to escape?”

  “Sweetheart, no.”

  “But I could have. They let me go to school.”

  “You had to survive, Emily. The FBI told us the younger a person is when she’s taken, the easier it is for the kidnapper to brainwash her. The Porters held you prisoner psychologically, not just physically.”

  And then she did cry, big tears running down her cheeks. She hugged me. I wanted to melt into her, but my body was stiff. That hard shell was still around me, especially hearing that I’d been brainwashed—wasn’t that something that happened in spy movies? I was smart, I had always trusted myself. But practically as soon as I got to Maine, Mrs. Porter had started to warp my thinking. And she’d succeeded.

  That made me feel incredibly hollow.

  “You’re going to have all kinds of moments,” Dr. Dean had said when I was still in Royston Hospital, “ones that make sense and others that don’t.”

  “No, I’m going to be fine as soon as I get home,” I said.

  “You’ve been through a trauma,” she said. “And your mind and body have some extraordinary, mysterious ways of protecting you from reliving it, remembering it too vividly.”

  “Like what?” I asked.

  “Some people block it out,” she said. “Kids who’ve been kidnapped, people who’ve been through a violent attack, sometimes try to forget that it happened.”

  “No one will let me forget,” I said, lying back in the bed, my chest taped up, the IV needle in the back of my hand making it ache. “It’s all anyone wants to talk about.”

  “Well, when things quiet down. You’ll see how you feel. But you might find yourself going numb. Some people describe it as going into a deep freeze. An uncomfortable stillness. If that happens, I want you to talk to someone. A counselor back home in Black Hall. Or at least your parents, for starters.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  “It’s serious, Emily. It might not feel that way—because, honestly, you might not feel anything. But it’s a big deal. It can cause problems later on if you don’t deal with your emotions.”

  “Problems?”

  “Depression is a big one. Isolation, cutting yourself off from friends, from whatever used to make you happy. Substances to keep the feelings at bay. Drinking.”

  “Never,” I said. “I will never drink.”

  “Just talk to someone. When you need to.”

  But I hadn’t believed her, that I would need anything like that. I had thought I’d be normal, fine, ready to get on with things. But it was as if there was a big wall between me and everyone else. It was made of glass: I could see through it, hear voices, talk to them. But I felt separated from them.

  A knock sounded at the door. I hung back, in the kitchen. I heard voices and finally peered into the living room. Mr. Donoghue stood there holding a battered leather guitar case. I stepped forward.

  “Emily!” he said, spotting me. “I bring greetings from Casey!”

  “Thank you,” I said. My heart sparked, hearing Casey’s name.

  “I was passing by on my way to a gig in New York, so it seemed the right thing, to stop and see you. He wanted me to.”

  I smiled, a genuine smile that I felt all through my body. Casey had kept this news to himself, not mentioned it to me.

  “How is Casey?” my mother asked. “Our family hero.”

  “He’d be happy to hear that. He’s, um … hard to say.”

  What part was hard to say? I wondered. And why was Mr. Donoghue gazing at me while he spoke?

  “He’s working on some new songs, surviving winter in Royston,” he continued.

  “Speaking of winter,” my mother said. “Let me get us some hot coffee.” She ducked into the kitchen, and I heard her running water, filling the pot.

  “Casey wanted me to deliver this to you,” Mr. Donoghue said.

  “‘This’?” I asked, not understanding.

  He handed me the guitar case. I looked at him with surprise, then
laid it on the hardwood floor and clicked open the brass fasteners. Inside was a red guitar. It said Takamine on the headstock. And on a manila tag, tied to the low E string, was a note. I recognized Casey’s writing but didn’t read it yet.

  “He misses you,” Mr. Donoghue said.

  “I miss him,” I said.

  “He’s messed up, Emily.”

  “Is that what you meant before? When you said you’re not sure how he is?”

  “It’s totally not your fault,” he said. “But he misses you badly.”

  “How does that mess him up?” I asked.

  “Not many people know what it’s like for him, since you left,” Mr. Donoghue said. “His mom was pretty much everything to him, to both of us. It’s not easy for him, me being on the road all the time, but music is how I support us. I wish I could stay home and do something normal and pay the bills. Every time I leave, I see the disappointment in his eyes. Sometimes worse than that.”

  I stared at him, unsure of what he wanted me to say.

  “That expression got a hundred times deeper after you left. It was almost despair. He wanted you to go home, of course, but he’s lonely without you.”

  That hit me hard, because it was just how I felt—surrounded by my family, who I loved so much, I felt lonely without Casey. Having him next door, feeling he was somehow looking out for me, just knowing he was there, had helped me get through. And then there was the fact I was in love with him.

  “He’ll be in your band someday,” I said. “Like you said that time. Then you won’t have to be apart.”

  “I think he wants to be in a band with someone else,” Mr. Donoghue said. “In fact, I know it.” He pointed at the note written on the small cardboard tag, and I read Casey’s words:

  Keep playing, Emily. I wish you were here so I could teach you, but find a teacher there so you can come back and be in my band. Well, you already are in my band. Well, actually, you ARE my band. And I’m yours. Do you hear the music? That’s me playing a song for you, just like I do all the time. You’ve heard some of them in my texts—there are a lot more I’ll play you in person when I see you. You should know this about the guitar: When you think of someone while you’re strumming, that person can hear, or at least feel, the song. I hope you feel mine right now. O-V-E, Casey.

  I said the missing letter out loud: “L.”

  I finally felt everything I’d been holding inside. Tears scalded my eyes. That block of ice, otherwise known as my heart, melted a little. With the guitar still lying in the case, I gently brushed the strings. My mother brought out mugs of coffee, and she and Mr. Donoghue sat at the table. I heard her telling him how much she and my dad loved his band, how they had every record Dylan Thomas Revisited had ever made, how they’d seen them perform at the Newport Folk Festival.

  “We are so grateful to Casey,” my mother was saying. “The way he helped Emily escape, what he did for her after the attack. Dr. Dean told us he saved Emily’s life.”

  “I’m very proud of him,” Mr. Donoghue said.

  “You should be. We want to see him again,” my mother said. “As soon as possible.”

  “Will you be returning to Maine for the trial?” he asked.

  “Yes, and the pretrial hearings,” my mother said, lowering her voice. “They will be in Portland, in federal court. The Porters took her across state lines, so the United States is prosecuting them. We’ll show up for every single hearing. I want Ginnie Porter to see me in the courtroom, look me right in the eye. We were friends! She knows how much I love my daughter! How could they have done this to Em?”

  “I never suspected,” Mr. Donoghue said. “I had no idea the Porters were anything other than a normal family. Casey was just waiting for me to get home that day, to take Emily out of there. Emily was afraid Ginnie would hurt you—that’s why she stayed. To protect you.”

  They kept talking, but I focused on the guitar. I held it in my arms. With the fingers of my left hand I made triangles on the strings, just as Casey had shown me. With my right hand, I strummed softly. I made up a song and got lost in it.

  I wasn’t very good. My fingertips slipped, and my chords twanged and jangled. I had a long way to go. But the song filled my heart. Playing the tune, I wasn’t completely numb. Every minute, I thawed a little more. For the first time since getting out of the hospital, I could feel.

  Some words ran through my head, not lyrics, exactly, but they kept coming, over and over, like a mantra or a prayer. I heard the melody, sweet and sad with a lot of E minor. And one name that kept running through my mind, out my fingertips and up and down the strings.

  Casey, Casey …

  And also: the letter L.

  The morning I was to return to school, my parents sat me down at the breakfast table. My mom had made my favorite oatmeal with cranberries and pecans, and my dad had squeezed fresh pink grapefruits straight from my uncle in Florida to make a tall glass of juice. Patrick and Bea were going to drive me to school; they waited in the living room so my parents could have this discussion with me.

  “Are you ready for this?” my dad asked.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I guess.”

  “Your friends will be so excited to see you,” my mom said. “And I’m sure you will be to see them, right?”

  “Of course,” I said.

  “One thing we’ve been worried about,” my dad said, “is the media. They’re going to follow you. We’ve got an idea how to stop that, but we want to make sure it’s okay with you.”

  “What?” I asked.

  “Everyone wants an exclusive interview,” he said. “Lots of different news outlets have offered us a lot of money for the chance to talk to you first. Your mom and I have refused all along, wanting to protect you, but now we wonder if it’s something you might want to do.”

  “Take money to tell what happened to me?” I asked. I felt so sick, I nearly threw up. “No, never, please don’t ever mention it again.”

  “You wouldn’t have to take the money for yourself,” my mother said. “You could decline to be paid, or you could donate the fee to charity. Or you could put it toward your college. It’s up to you. And if you don’t want to give an interview at all, that would be fine, too. We just thought it would get the press to go away. You could control your story, tell it the way you want, and then there’d be nothing for them to hound you for. It would be out in the open.”

  My story. It all haunted me, but one part more than the rest. The question everyone screamed the loudest was: What about Chloe? What part did Chloe play? What was it like to have your friend’s sister as one of your captors?

  I shivered, thinking of Chloe in the Casco Bay Youth Development Center. It had a positive-sounding name, but as one official said in an interview, “It’s rehabilitative, but it’s also jail.” She was under arrest and couldn’t leave. Her parents were in the adult jail. All three of the Porters were incarcerated, waiting to be put on trial for kidnapping me. I hated picturing Chloe there. I imagined how scared she must be.

  “I’ll think about it,” I said.

  “Okay,” my mom said, hugging me. “No pressure, not one bit.”

  “That’s right,” my dad said. “We’ll go with whatever you want to do. But for now—as if I have to tell you—don’t talk to any of them.”

  “That’s one thing you don’t have to worry about,” I said.

  I headed out the back door where the reporters couldn’t see me, toward the car to meet Patrick and Bea. But there was a gigantic surprise. Every single one of my siblings was there: Mick, Tommy, Anne, and Iggy stood in the driveway. When they spotted me in the doorway, they began to cheer. Mick and Tommy hurried toward me. I hugged them, and they swooped me up in a king’s chair and held me off the ground.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked, smiling.

  “You think we weren’t going see you off to school today?” Mick asked.

  It made me think of how they had all walked me—the baby of the family—to school
my first day of first grade. They’d all gathered around me at the hospital, kept vigil until I started getting better. But now they were back at college, beginning their second semesters. Now they were grown up. We all were.

  “You didn’t have to come,” I said.

  “It would have been really funny to see you try to stop us,” Tommy said. He half threw me up in the air. I laughed and righted myself, arms clamped around both his and Mick’s necks until they lowered me to the ground.

  Anne stepped forward. She held out a scarf woven from the softest red-jewel-colored yarn, and she wrapped it three times around my neck.

  “I made this for you, little one,” she said. “To keep you warm and so you know I’m with you always. You can do it.”

  “I thought I was ready,” I said, my eyes flooding as I stared into my oldest sister’s steady gaze. “But now I’m not sure. Everyone’s going to ask too many questions.”

  “And you don’t have to answer,” Anne said, and her eyes started watering even more than mine. “You’re as brave as ever. And you’re a Lonergan, as stubborn as your four big brothers and two big sisters. You have an Irish heart. Just remember that.”

  I nodded. I was a Lonergan. I was Emily. I wasn’t fake Lizzie Porter. I wasn’t a rag doll dressed in my old friend’s clothes, parroting her words, with her mole dotted on my cheek. I wore a knit cap to cover my roots growing out. I’d tucked the longer black part up underneath.

  I knew all that, but I wasn’t sure I could count on my Irish heart. I wondered if I had stopped, in some permanent way, having the Lonergan strength the night the Porters had locked me in that room.

  “I should have fought harder; I should have escaped when I could,” I said.

  “No, Em,” Mick said, and I was shocked to hear his voice choked up. “You should have stayed alive, exactly what you did.”

  “You were perfect,” Tommy said.

  “You’re with us now,” Anne said.

  “Faugh a Ballagh,” Mick said.

  “Clear the way,” Iggy said.

  “Here comes Emily,” Patrick said.

  Bea took my hand. She and I climbed into the back seat of the car while Patrick got into the driver’s seat. As we pulled out of the driveway, Mick, Tommy, Iggy, and Anne cheered and waved. I looked for secret worry in their eyes and saw none. They believed in me. I swallowed hard and tried to feel their strength. So far, no luck.