With the opportunity for so many things to go wrong with just trying to get out, the last thing I wanted was to risk asking help from a stranger who turned out to be a worse monster than the one I was leaving. And I didn’t want to break into a stranger’s house to use the phone and find a huge dog protecting it, either. Or even worse yet, think I was breaking into an empty house and have the homeowner come creeping around the corner with a gun.
I never used to worry about much of anything, now I worry about everything. Don’t get me wrong, I would have broken out of that house one way or another with this chance that I had been afforded, but I was glad the current was cooperating and doing what I had wanted it to do.
Besides containing family members, the summer house would have clothes waiting for me at the other end of this swim. At least, it would if they haven’t cleared out my two dresser drawers by now. If not, I’d have to raid someone else’s drawers.
I drifted under the interstate bridge, and by now I was passing by the tip of the island, and could begin to see the outlines of a few tents on it. Every weekend, there were a few people who deemed having a vacation home in the area as not being enough for them. So they packed up their boats with camping gear and made their way over to the island to rough it for a night or two. There was absolutely nothing on the island for them. They had to beach the boat and then set up camp on the beach, as well. But it was a free place to go, and the people were most always friendly. You just had to be careful about setting the anchor and pitching your tent high enough on shore because the beach got very narrow at high tide, and the forested part of the island was too thick to just set up house within. I smiled at the memory of the time two of my friends and I woke up to find the water had risen to the door of the tent and we’d had to pile out and move it in the middle of the night.
The butterflies in my stomach kicked into overdrive. I was still sure of my course, but I wondered at how I would be received. Were they all asleep? Should I knock? Should I look around for their cars to see who was there? Or should I just go ahead and break on in? The windows might actually be open, the night wasn’t too hot, and there was a breeze blowing. I usually slept on the couch under the living room windows that overlooked the porch. I wondered who was sleeping there now, because once I peeked inside to see, it would be their name I whispered through the screen to wake them up and get that person to unlock the door for me.
The marina was coming up, and I could make out two people sitting on the floating dock. One of them had just casted a fishing line out. I should have expected to find fishers on the dock with the full moon out. Fish saw the light and jumped above the surface, perhaps trying to reach it, and this made for good fishing. I started swimming in the direction of the shore, so I would be close enough to catch the ladder on the dock as I floated on by. I did not want to miss it and have to fight the current to get back to it. Although, if I did miss it, a more intelligent person would catch the ladder on the next marina’s pier and then walk back over to this one…
“There’s someone out there,” I heard a voice that I would recognize anywhere say. It was my oldest cousin, Keith.
“Oh, God, please,” I heard Jared’s voice say as he reeled in his line.
I wanted to answer, I did, but I was panting with my effort to get lined up with the ladder.
They quickly put their fishing poles down, and I saw two silhouettes crowd together at the corner closest to me on the pier. I could feel their eyes straining to identify the nighttime swimmer.
Would they think that I was a camper from the island, swimming for help? Maybe they thought I was someone who’d taken a boat out and it had broken down, or I’d fallen overboard and was swimming to shore. Or maybe even a drunken partier from another marina who’d fallen in and the current had carried me away…
“Erica?” they both called in unison.
Stunned disbelief shot through me at the sound of my name, I almost froze on the spot and stopped swimming. Keeping an eye out for me was one thing, expecting me to magically show up in the water was another. Suddenly, a feeling of safe security washed over me. I tried to answer them, I had wanted to shout ‘Yes!’ in victory, but my mind and my body seemed to be detached from each other in that moment. Only a muffled cry of my exertion escaped from my lips. My entire body was focused on swimming to that ladder.
Jared jumped into the river and swam hard for me. There was no time for a tender reunion once he reached me and grabbed me around my waist. “Hold on to me, sweetheart, I got ‘cha,” he said, and started swimming towards the dock.
My baggies floated on down the river when I let go of them to cling to Jared.
He grabbed hold of the ladder and braced his body against it as he pushed me up the ladder, ahead of himself.
Keith reached down and grabbed both of my arms, hauling me up and out of the water. “Where the hell have you been?”
I collapsed onto the pier as I shot him an incredulous look and harrumphed through my panting. “Oh, just floating around.”
“You know what I mean.”
Jared finished pulling himself up the ladder and squatted down beside me and took me into his arms. “Are you okay?”
I melted into his familiar embrace and buried my face against his chest. I’m home, in Jared’s arms, where I belong. “As okay as I can be.”
He put his lips to my ear and whispered, “I love you.”
Oh, thank God. I sighed in exhausted relief. “I love you, too.”
Keith gave us a moment while he waited for me to catch my breath. “I hate to break this up,” he said, “but let’s get her inside and dried off.”
“He’s right,” Jared said, standing and then reaching down for me, “let’s go.”
We started walking up the pier, with Keith leading the way. “Hey, Grandpa!” he yelled, not caring who he might wake up.
My grandfather rounded the corner of the trailer, having been talking to a small group of friends still gathered at a picnic table on the opposite end of the house. Once he was in sight, Keith called out to him again, “Look at the size of the fish we just caught!”
Grandpa’s mouth gaped open as he looked, past my cousin, to me. “Erica?” he whispered. Sixty-five years old, with a gray haired comb-over, and liver spots, he started running towards me. “Erica!” he shouted.
One of his friends realized what was going on and rushed inside the trailer to wake my uncle, who had been snoozing on a couch in the living room.
“Oh Lord, girl,” Grandpa said as he all but knocked my cousin off the pier to get past him and to me. “I thought we’d lost you,” he said through streaming tears. He finally reached me and pulled me out of Jared’s arms and into his own.
I latched onto his big, bear hug, “It’s okay, Grandpa. I’m here. I’m back.”
“I’m sorry I doubted you, but I really thought we weren’t ever going to see you again.”
“There’s nothing to forgive, I thought the same thing, too.”
He pulled away, swiping a hand at his tears, “Well, I’m glad we were both wrong.”
“Me, too.” I smiled, “Grandpa, I got you all wet.”
He grabbed my hand and started pulling me in his wake, up the long pier and into the house, “Shit, girl, you can dip me in pink dye and call me the Easter bunny for all I care. Just don’t disappear on us, ever again.”
Uncle Mike met us at the door. “It’s about damn time you showed up,” he said as he pulled me into yet another hug. “We were all going gray, waiting around for you.”
“Going gray,” I scoffed into his shoulder.
He pulled away, tilted his head down, and pointed, “Do you see these?”
“You mean those three measly little strands? That’s not very impressive.”
“It’s the start of what’s to come, and none of it started until I got the phone call that you were missing. Now every time I look in the mirror and see those stands, I think of you.”
My eyes turned glassy with tears
, “I’ve missed you, Uncle Mike.”
His eyes glazed over, too, “I missed you more.”
I looked around the room, “Where’s everybody else?”
Grandpa answered for him, “It’s just the four of us. We were trying to make it look like a male-bonding weekend kind of thing. I gotta go get on the horn and make some calls, let people know you’re back.” He’d started on to the next room but stopped and turned around. “You want me to call the police first, or last?”
“First. I’ve got a time-crunch going on, and I want him caught before he knows I’m out.”
Grandpa gave me a grim nod and disappeared through the doorway.
“Erica,” Uncle Mike said, “are you safe here? Does he know where you’re at?” The man suddenly looked like he was running a list of hiding places through his mind as he asked.
“I think I’m safe here. I don’t think he realized I had any connections to the area… You said this was supposed to be a male-bonding weekend, where’s Dad?”
Uncle Mike sighed, and it looked like he aged five years right before my eyes. “The police told your Mom and Dad about the store and how you’d left your fingerprints behind. They also identified you from the store’s surveillance camera and hoped that you were still in the area. So the police asked them to stay away. Their pictures and recorded pleas to the kidnapper were plastered all over the place when you went missing. The police were afraid that if the kidnapper saw and recognized your parents, he’d take you and leave the area.”
“They couldn’t ID the guy I was with?”
“No, he doesn’t match up with any mug shots. They think they managed to lift his prints from the dozens of fingerprints on the live bait case, but they didn’t match anything in the system.”
“But just because they were told to stay away didn’t mean that the rest of us had to,” Jared interrupted from behind me. “Ever since the police said you were spotted in the area, someone has been here, waiting for you to show up.”
“We’ve driven down on our days off, people on both sides of your family have taken turns using their vacation time to stay here and wait for you,” Keith said. “We even drove your car down here, knowing you have a hide-a-key hidden in it. You know, just in case someone was at the store or something when you showed up. ‘Cause maybe you wouldn’t be safe when you got here and would need a quick way to the police station.”
“You all have been holding a vigil for me,” I said in astonishment, tears cascading down my face again.
“Of course,” Uncle Mike said. “We wanted you to have someone you knew on hand, either when you showed up here, or when you got to the police station.”
“Do I still have clothes here?”
“Absolutely. You still have a tooth brush here, too,” Mike answered.
“Great.”
Everyone moved out of my way as I headed for the huge dresser we kept in the large multi-purposed room we were standing in. I pulled open the doors of the wardrobe and opened one of my drawers. But once I laid my hands on the clothing, I started to feel dizzy. It was so strange, seeing my clothes, standing with my family, being in this trailer, surrounded by so many things that were familiar to me. Or… they used to be familiar to me. It was like déjà vu. It was the same, but different.
No. It was the same. I was different. I was essentially still Erica, but I wasn’t the same young, naive girl that I was when I had last left here. So much had happened. So much of me had changed…
“Erica, honey,” Uncle Mike said as he touched my shoulder. “Do you need help getting changed? I’ll go outside and grab one of the girls. I think half the marina is awake by now and they’re all waiting outside.”
I turned around and looked at him, dumbstruck by it all. I was free. I didn’t have to pretend to be someone else anymore. I didn’t have to filter through what might be the one and only correct response for someone else’s benefit. All of a sudden, it was all too much. I had the liberty to make choices now, and my brain wasn’t making the adjustment back to such a thing fast enough. Something inside my head overheated and shutdown. I never realized how overwhelming the mere thought of making a choice could be.
“I’ll help her,” Jared said quietly as he took the clothing from my hands.
“Uh, Jared, I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Uncle Mike whispered.
Jared rolled his eyes and gave Mike a look that implied he thought my uncle was an idiot if he believed I had anything under my swimsuit that Jared hadn’t seen before.
Mike sighed, “Fine, as long as she’s okay with it.”
Jared took my elbow and led me through the house and into the bathroom. I had stiffened at his touch, but followed. Once I walked into the bathroom ahead of him, I froze. I heard him push the door all the way closed behind me and then felt him as he skirted his way around to stand in front of me.
He reached out and tilted my head up so he could look me in the eyes. “It’s just me. You don’t even have to take the bathing suit off. We’ll just get you dried and into your clothes.” He turned, opened the cabinet, and got a towel out. Then he turned back towards me and my eyes shot down, off to the side, and some squeaky noise rose up from my throat. I closed my eyes and tried to get a hold of myself.
Jared put the towel down and laid his hands on my shoulders. “Look at me.”
I couldn’t do it. I started shaking my head, freaked out by my own frozen response.
“Erica…”
Tears sprung from behind my eyelids, I’d missed the sound of my own name.
“It’s just me. Open your eyes and look at me.”
I took a calming breath and opened my eyes. I focused on how warm and loving his beautiful blue eyes were.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” he whispered.
“I know,” I breathed.
“I just want to get you into some clothes.”
“I know.”
“Are you going to let me help you?”
I nodded at him.
“Bathing suit, or underwear?”
“He bought the bathing suit. I don’t want the bathing suit.”
He nodded and kept his eyes on mine, “Okay… we can burn it.”
That got me to give him half a smile and a small chuckle. I turned around and he undid the clasp.
I clutched the top of the suit to my chest. “I… he…” I couldn’t say the words.
I could hear the grimace in his softened voice, “I figured… But it doesn’t change how I still feel about you.”
I sighed and relented on my death grip. After another second, I started pushing the bottom of the bathing suit down. I took it off and handed it to him, he handed me the underwear and stepped back while I put it on.
“What’s under the duct tape?”
“A present for the cops.”
“Okay,” he said gently. His eyes scanned my body as I dressed, “You have a few new scars.”
I turned back around to see him. I shrugged and whispered, “Sometimes he got mad at me.”
His eyes swept over me again, “Nothing looks too recent. That’s good.”
The tears started free-flowing. “He didn’t hurt me if I just went along with it. It was just easier to get through if I just pretended-”
“Shhh.” He pulled me to him in a strong, solid embrace. “It’s okay, no matter happened, you did what you had to do in order to survive and get home. It’s okay.”
I closed my eyes and tried to regain control over the waterworks. “You have some really good responses.”
“I’ve been practicing ever since I was told that you were spotted alive.”
“Are they just words, or do you really mean them?”
He tightened his hold on me. “I mean them. I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t.”
He released me when I pulled away. He awkwardly handed me some toilet paper to use as a tissue so that I could wipe away my tears.
Jared and I could hear people coming and going through the front door and p
assing by the bathroom on their way through the hall to the kitchen. “We won’t go out there until you’re ready for it,” he assured me.
I’d begun to almost feel human again. Just in that small act of giving him glimpses of what had happened to me, I had begun the slow and arduous task of piecing myself back together. It was like there was an Erica and then there was a Mia, and they had two very different lives. I could go back to being Erica, but I’d always have the memories of being Mia. I was going to have to reconcile who I had become with who I was before, and hope like hell that the people around me could accept the person I ended up being.
Chapter Thirteen
“That’s my girl.”
The small kitchen was all but bursting with police officers when I stepped out into the short hall and turned towards them. They all looked at me in silence as I surveyed each one. Only one cop was seated at the kitchen table, the one from the sandwich shop. The three others were standing around in a half-arch. My family members stood behind them, in the living room since there was no more room in the kitchen. When I turned my head the other way, and looked through the mudroom, I could catch a glimpse of the quiet crowd that had gathered outside. A few smiled through the screen door, one waved. All of them were whispering and waiting for something, anything, to happen.
I closed my eyes and sighed as I nodded in an effort to accept that it was time to become the center of all the attention, despite having been kept away from other people for so long. I had to pull myself together. This was game-on, and the clock was ticking.
I walked into the kitchen, sat down in the closest chair, rolled my shoulders and stretched my neck - trying to clear my head - and settled my gaze on the officer sitting across from me.
He smiled, “I’m Officer Robles.”
I returned his smile, “Erica Elaine Parker.” Damn, I’m proud of myself for remembering it. I gave him a nod, “Let’s dig in.”
Lulling the Kidnapper Page 15
