by Leigh Lennon
“Do you know what day it is? How long have I been here?” she asked, her eyes protruding while cracking her knuckles. In the anger that plagued her body in this moment, she also was glad for the comfort of his company. Her Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde transformation with Nolan left her dazed. Mad was not a word she felt looking at him, but then longing for his touch, like he’d given her when she was sick, was another emotion that captured her quite often. She wasn’t sure who the anger was directed towards, Nolan or herself. In the past couple of days, she could see the more endearing side of the man who claimed his only goal in life was to keep her safe. That in itself confused the fuck out of her.
He turned around at the anger in her voice. “It has been two months, Mikayla,” he disclosed in a monotone pitch.
“Two months. Come on, please, Nolan, I can’t tell you how worried my parents are. Please, let me go.”
“I told you we would discuss this at the six-month mark, Mikayla. I’ve not changed my mind.”
“Why are you pissed at me?” she asked.
“Oh, I don’t know. You are not easy to live with at times.”
She laughed at him in a non-humorous way. “Really?”
“I don’t want to talk right now. I’m going to the living room to watch The Goonies; you can join me, or you can retreat to your room. The choice is yours.”
She’d always been the object of his affection from the day he had brought her to his farm, and though she told him daily that she’d never reciprocate those feelings, she had grown accustomed to his overprotectiveness.
She went to her room during the movie. Picking up the first Harry Potter book in the series, she’d just read where the sorting hat picked Draco Malfoy for Slytherin when she heard a small tap on her door.
“Come in!” she yelled out.
He stood at the door, watching her try to ignore him as she continued to read. “Are you a big reader?” he asked and then chuckled a bit. “I mean, you threw a book at me both times I saw you read, so you may understand why I’m a bit cautious when you have a book in your hand.”
“Yeah, well, these books are not about men killing girls, so I’m better off with this selection. And no, I’m not too big of a reader, but what else do I have to do here but kill time.” She looked up and then said, “No pun intended.”
“I think you will like these books. You will find that I have five. The newest one isn’t set to release until later this year. I enjoyed them and can’t wait for the next one, which I hear won’t be the last. But then again, I’m a voracious reader.” He stood at the door with his hands tucked in his pockets and just a touch of his blond hair shielding his dark eyes. He needed a haircut, but who was she to mention grooming when he was keeping her against her will.
“Yeah, well, I will see how well they keep my attention,” she replied, already wanting to see if Harry Potter ended up with the spoiled Malfoy. She never wanted to give him the satisfaction of knowing her even though he was starting to.
“You missed a good movie,” he added.
“Yeah, it had to have been good; I’ve only seen it fifty times. They save their parents’ house, a new catch slogan is made for baby Ruth, and Bran gets the girl.”
He smiled at her again; a smile he had that screamed his affection when he didn’t have to say a word. “You know The Goonies pretty well.” A deep chuckle escaped his lips, and she didn’t miss the way his entire face lit up, looking at her over her dry humor. “Listen, Mikayla, you drive me crazy. I know that isn’t an excuse, but you do.”
“I drive you crazy?” she asked, rage coursing through her veins.
“You drive me crazy because I care for you,” he said, pulling his hair out of his eyes with a quick flick of his hands through his thick blond hair. He could play the victim well, but he looked injured at her callous words.
“Remember, I didn’t choose this, Nolan.”
“Yes, I can’t forget because you won’t ever let me,” he said, shutting the door quietly behind him.
She needed to fight with him because she required a high tension to squash any real feelings she was experiencing from the kindness of his actions; the ones she couldn’t reconcile with the man who’d drugged and kidnapped her. If she could just continue to hate him, all of this would go away, and he’d eventually release her. Then she could rid herself of the toxic existence of the man at home who’d used her as his punching bag.
Lying on her bed, taking in every personal touch Nolan had added for her to feel at home, she thought of Ethan and how she’d betrayed her boyfriend. Deep down, Mikayla understood Nolan was taking over her heart. Ethan, had come out of nowhere, and she thought their love was the real deal until Nolan appeared in her life.
“No, Mikayla, get that out of your mind,” she said out loud to stun her back to reality.
“Who are you talking to?” Nolan asked, walking by her room.
“Just myself,” she replied.
“I’m not a bad guy, Mikayla,” he said, and she wanted to think of him as a monster, but she couldn’t.
He entered her room, this time without permission, and she didn’t stop him. As she sat with her ass planted on her bed, he walked toward her, stopping when his knees touched hers. She didn’t look at him, but he grasped her chin, tipping her head to his. “You have to know what I feel for you is as real as the snow outside.”
Her eyes tried to avoid his gaze, but the more she felt his stare, the more it drew her eyes to look at his. “Mikayla, tell me to leave the room, and I will.”
She sat silently, not saying a word. “Mikayla, tell me not to touch you, and I won’t.”
Again, she said nothing.
“Mikayla, tell me you don’t have feelings for me, and I will believe you.”
Again, she couldn’t speak. At the moment, she was mute.
“Tell me not to kiss you right now, and I won’t.”
Sitting down next to her, he moved her face to his, leaning his head toward her. “This is it, sweetness, no turning back.” Right then, she leaned in, placing her lips on his as their connection strengthened with their first kiss. It was soft. How could his lips be so tender, she thought as their tongues danced together? She couldn’t pull away. In her mind with her judgment clouded she told herself, I don’t want to stop this, not now, not ever.
Taylor
“Are you still obsessing over this case?” Alyssa asked her sister in the still pre-digital world of 2005.
“I was just looking online for some information; it has been two months. It’s odd that they have nothing on her yet.”
Alyssa was perceptive for a fourteen-year-old. “I think it’s weird that you act as if you two were the best of friends.”
“Don’t you wonder, though? What if that was me?”
She snorted at her sister. “It’s just like you to hold one large story for months and obsess about it. You did it with 9/11, the space shuttle, and the tsunami in Thailand. Now you are focusing on something local. I just think you need to feel pain in your life, and you replay it repeatedly until the next big headline hits, bringing you more pain. It’s like your endorphins need this, as though you get off on it.”
“Okay, Freud,” their father broke in, “when you get your doctorate in crazy, made-up notions, you can diagnose your sister. Until then, can you just finish your oatmeal? You are only in eighth grade, for crying out loud.”
“But gifted,” her sister quipped.
“And full of shit,” Taylor added.
Her mother joined them as she continued, “Aww, it wouldn’t be a normal morning in our house if some four-letter word wasn’t exchanged, I guess.”
“Mom, I’m tired of hearing about this Miller case. It’s so depressing.” Alyssa complained.
“And how do you think her family feels? At this rate, I heard the likelihood of them solving the case has gone down to under three percent.”
“When did you become a detective?” Alyssa asked.
“The same fucking time you
became a shrink, you bitch,” she said as her parents stopped in their tracks. Alyssa was the feisty one and prone to a large array of swear words at fourteen years old but very rarely Taylor.
Her mother looked lovingly at her father “Please tell me the upside to two very independent daughters,” her mother joked to lighten the anger of both her girls.
Her father walked up beside their mother. “Well, let’s just keep modeling what a good marriage looks like, and maybe we will marry them off one of these days.”
“Alyssa will never marry; she’s too much of …” Alyssa threw a piece of toast at her as Taylor grabbed her orange juice. When their dad intervened quickly, taking the OJ from her, he placed it in front of his plate.
With the weapons in his control, their dad quickly interrupted, “Okay, girls, I think we have had enough bad language for the day.” This didn’t stop their disagreement and like little kids they stuck their tongues out at one another.
Libby
Two months had passed, and Fallon visited her less and less. The news had stopped broadcasting Mikayla’s story. The hold on her daughter was slipping away, little by little. One day, she’d lose that grip on Mikayla altogether, and then, she’d be left without the hope of her returning to their lives.
She bonded with Delaney right away. It was as if the two, the younger and the older of the women, needed to have that connection to what they both lost. Delaney was a blond, similar to Mikayla, but fat and chubby. Delaney was an easy baby, able to sleep anywhere and anytime. She never planned to do anything on the days she had the baby.
In the meantime, for now, her other children needed her, and she required the presence of Blake and Jenna too. Between the kids and Delaney, these three depended on her, and with it, Libby had a purpose and self-worth. Her oldest daughter set a date for her wedding just four months from now. Libby saw Jenna struggle with the task of setting the date because she had wanted her little sister in the wedding. However, in the end, Adam and Trenton talked Jenna into an earlier day to bring some much-needed joy to this family.
One day when Blake arrived home from his classes earlier than normal, she saw the same longing on his face she had on her own without Mikayla. Blake had a connection with her, and his protective nature around his little sister always made Libby proud. While he stared endlessly at the wall when she walked back in the kitchen from vacuuming the downstairs, she sat down, taking her son’s hands.
“Blake, son, you okay?” He wasn’t. No one was, but it was the only question she could think to ask.
Looking down at his own hands, he replied, “The last time we talked, we fought.”
Her eyes narrowed on Blake. “What do you mean? I never heard you all fight before.”
“Well, we did, Mom. You know, you don’t know everything.” Standing up, he pushed the chair away from the table, and when it crashed on the floor, Libby jumped back in alarm. This was so out of character for her son. When Adam walked into the house as Blake was stomping away, she stopped him from confronting their son.
“We all grieve in different ways; it’s not like he’s violent in nature. Let him be, he’ll be back down to apologize.” His apology never happened, but he never showed this side to his parents again. And as Libby tended to always see the best in her kids, she let it go.
18
Present
A month after the first letter
Colette
Colette and David had a plan. He would sit on the park bench, opposite where Libby was supposed to meet her. It was cruel to play this game with Libby, but they had to make sure she was alone and find out if they could trust her with Mikayla’s identity in the future.
She sat at the top of the walkway where she had a view of the dog park below. The only flaw in their plan was they had instructed to meet Libby at the dog park and how could David be near if he didn’t have a dog. With Elizabeth begging for a pet, they felt that it was the least she deserved after them being away from her for the week.
Armed with an adult Golden Retriever they called Goldie, David sat in his sunglasses just far enough away, reading a newspaper. He had been on the bench for a half an hour, and as he stood to walk Goldie and stretch his legs, Libby approached the park and sat on the bench nearest the entrance.
David quickly looked up at his wife, her stature transforming the second her mom came into the picture. Quickly, her cell phone rang, and it was her husband. “Cole, honey, remember we have a plan.” He was far enough out of earshot. Walking toward his wife, he grabbed her hand and exited the park.
“Let’s drive around and see if we detect any surveillance before we leave, David.”
“Sure, sweetness.”
They circled the park several times and didn’t see anything unusual. “I think she came alone.”
“You’re right.” Grabbing her hand, David said, “But the question is, how are you doing?”
“She looks good. My mom looks really good. She has aged but considering what I’ve put her through ...” Colette hadn’t seen a picture of Libby Miller since she was abducted, then chose a life with David. However, she could pick the woman out of a crowd. Sure, she’d aged and been through a crisis, losing Mikayla so long ago, but it didn’t show. Colette’s understanding of her mother was far reaching; she knew her mother’s wounds were skin deep.
“No, Cole. I refuse to let you beat yourself up. It was not you.” He pulled over in a parking lot of an abandoned warehouse. “What did you say to me the day you realized Mikayla was dead to you?”
“That we saved one another.”
“Exactly. So please, don’t ever say you caused your mom this heartache. It was him.”
She had let this part of her life go years ago, and to this day, she didn’t understand how fresh the ache was in her heart. She thought of Liam and Elizabeth and how the time away from them stung like the worst bee sting imaginable and had a completely different outlook on her mom. Throughout the years, she justified her absence from her life as partially her mother’s fault. When deciding to become Colette, she cried for seven days over this part of her choice. In the end, she decided that somewhere deep down, her mother had to have known about the abuse. It was obvious; of course, she was looking back without blinders through her own memories. Was she fair to her mom all those years ago?
Libby
She felt like a fool, sitting at the dog park, waiting for her long-lost daughter to return. Libby watched everyone intently and wanted to talk to every woman in her early thirties who was in the park, but she knew that would raise suspicion. According to the letter Taylor had gotten from Mikayla, that was the last thing she wanted. She was sure Mikayla was there, though; she sensed it.
Before she left early in the morning, Adam’s apprehension of this absurdity played into the fight they had. “It’s obvious she left us to pick up the pieces of her life, mourning her for all these years. How can we support this? We should call Fallon and have the Royal Canadian Mounted Police bring her in.”
“I don’t think so, not now. How can we do this to our daughter without hearing her story?”
The hatred in which he looked upon Libby was never present in the almost forty years of marriage together. “I don’t fucking care. The fact is, our child faked her death, letting us believe she was dead all this time.”
“And what if she’s happy, and we ruin it? We raised this girl, so she had to have a good reason. What if she was running away from something?”
“I grieved for our baby. The pain, she could have stopped it, Libby.”
“She was young. Maybe she didn’t have a choice.” Again, she always saw the good in her kids.
In his forty years with his wife, he had never raised his voice or sworn in her presence like he just had. He wanted his children to understand a woman should be respected in any relationship. Adam’s face was unrecognizable to Libby, as if a stranger had taken his form. “I will not report our daughter, but don’t defend her to me. Ever. Go on your little jaunt but don�
�t expect me to understand or care.”
As she thought of her fight with Adam and the fact that Mikayla was clearly not coming today, she walked back to her car. She’d make this trip a million times if it meant she’d get a glimpse of her daughter.
Taylor
She was not sure how long she could hide from her husband, but she wasn’t fooling anyone; understanding he’d never let her go that easily. Blake had a strong hold on her in the form of their son. It never occurred to her that Dexter could become like his dad, abusing women as he did. Now that she knew she was not Blake’s first victim, she understood he needed help beyond what she could give. Taylor always hoped it would end when he apologized; that he would come to his senses and turn from his ways. He never became too violent and always knew when to stop or so she told herself that.
Learning the truth from Mikayla made her wonder who was Blake’s first victim. Should she tell Libby and Adam what was happening? They’d understand the reasons Mikayla fled from her family twelve years ago.
She heard a bit of the fight her in-laws had concerning Mikayla’s disappearance. If she told Libby and Adam about the reason Mikayla stayed in Canada, he would go with Libby and scour the Canadian countryside looking for their daughter.
She had just poured herself some coffee as she watched her mother-in-law reverse out of the driveway when Blake called her. Hesitating to pick it up, she was aware he’d track her down one way or the other, and the “consequences” would be worse than ever.
“Hello,” she said in a tone that she’d never have normally greeted him in.
“If you are done pouting, I expect you home tonight with my son intact, dinner on the table, and ready to talk through the shit you pulled last night.”
