He Saved Me

by Whitney Barbetti

  With my back on the sand and my eyes closed tight, I prayed for Mira, for Six, for Julian and for the ranch.

  And after, I prayed for courage and strength.

  The following morning, the day before Thanksgiving, Julian left the house in his rental car. And I left the house in my tennis shoes, running down the beach towards the library.

  It’d been an entire day since I’d read Hawthorne’s reply. An entire day since I didn’t reply back. I wanted to make him curious. I threw the line and got a bite. But I wasn’t going to reel him in, not just yet.

  Mostly because I didn’t know what the fuck I was going to do once I’d caught him.

  Anita was at the desk when I walked through the door. She peered down her glasses at me in the most clichéd librarian way ever.

  “Don’t you drive?”

  What? I looked at her questioningly.

  She pulled her glasses off and laid them carefully on the desk. I didn’t have time for this.

  “The past two days, you’ve come into the library on foot.”

  I shrugged. “I like to run.”

  “Where are you staying? The nearest hotel isn’t for miles.”

  I wanted to ask her what the hell her deal was, but I didn’t want to lose computer privileges so soon. But how did I answer? I shifted my weight from one leg to the other, trying to figure out what to say.

  Anita seemed to take my silence as a sign that I was ignoring her and instead of forcing me to answer, she waved me away when the phone rang.

  I knew I needed to come up with a better back story, but this was my last day to access the computer before the holiday hit and I was at home with Julian.

  I logged on quickly and checked a couple of the clues I’d left on the internet. They were on Missing forums, where blithe comments like, “I know where she is,” were usually thought of as trolling. But I’d left several comments on several forums, all saying “Ask Hawthorne.” I used “LydiaMitchell” as my username when I left these comments, hoping they’d mean something to Hawthorne if he stumbled upon them.

  One blog in particular had followed a handful of stories of missing girls from the Detroit area, posting whatever new info they had frequently. I left comments there as well, on several posts that mentioned me or the documentary. The blog administrator might think I was a troll too, but I hoped my ominous comments drew enough attention to have some heat on Hawthorne.

  It made me happy to think about, to imagine Hawthorne being hassled.

  I logged into my email and found another unread email.

  I was high on the power I had in this exchange. Hawthorne may have been able to trace my IP address to Oregon, and maybe to this city. But I still held the cards. I was good at hiding. I’d been hiding for seven years.

  I opened the email feeling less nervous than I’d felt the day before.

  How’s your friend doing?

  Rage hit me in a split second. Waves upon waves of rage. My hands shook from the anger that was exploding from my bones. I closed the window and left the library in a run, out the door and down the block. Once I was around the corner, I stopped against the wall and took a breath, in and out.

  “Fuck!” My nails dug into my palms. I wanted to hit Hawthorne. I wanted to make him bleed. I wanted, needed, to relieve the blaze of anger igniting my entire body. I was burning up. So I turned and kicked the wall, over and over, until I saw the split in my shoe.

  I heard the thunder of my pulse in my ears. Boom, boom, boom. I inhaled. Then I leaned against the wall on the exhale.

  It wasn’t until I heaved in a breath that I felt the sting on my lower lip. Brushing my fingers over my lip, I felt the sting again. I pulled my hand away and saw red. My teeth had clenched it so tightly that I’d drawn blood.

  I looked around me, finally taking stock of where I was in the town. It was a part I hadn’t explored yet, so I walked further up the road, allowing the anger to slide from my body with each step. I couldn’t lose my cool. I needed to save the rage so that when I saw Hawthorne in person, I could fuel it all into my limbs. Mira taught me that, showed me that I’m a better fighter when I have a reason to throw a punch, a kick.

  When the sidewalk ended, I crossed the street and followed another road. I seemed to be entering a livelier part of the town, so I let my steps take me further.

  That was when, through the window of a florist shop across the street, I saw Julian.

  I spun around, looking for a place to hide. When I saw none, I dove to duck behind a car. I didn’t think he’d seen me, but I’d seen him. He’d been smiling at the clerk while she wrapped something up, delivering that beautiful smile that’d blinded me when I’d first met him.

  I peeked around the car and watched as Julian left the shop.

  As luck would have it, he moved down the road in the opposite direction. I lifted my head from behind the car and saw his sleek black rental parked in front of what I recognized as the grocery store.

  I wanted to slap myself. For finding myself in the same section of town as Julian. For nearly running into him. For fucking up my shoe.

  I glanced at my watch. It’d only been 40 minutes, but Julian was backing out of his parking space, signaling to me that he finished his shopping.

  Why in the hell couldn’t he have taken longer?

  As soon as his car turned down a side road, I took off, running down the street with my broken shoe and the wind whipping pain to my cut lip.

  The moment I made it back to the beach house, I hopped onto the porch and yanked my shoe off, throwing it in the air.

  I was angry. The rage I’d felt from Hawthorne’s email hadn’t quite dissipated and now I had to deal with a broken shoe and a foot in serious pain from kicking the brick wall and then the sprint I’d done back to the beach house.

  I needed an outlet. Kicking my foot into the brick wall hadn’t helped. I looked around, for something, anything to destroy.

  The fucking thrift store chair. It sat, lonely, on the porch, its upholstery falling apart and the planks holding it together worn by weather. It was begging for me to end its life.

  So I did.

  I picked it up, holding it in the air for just a second before bringing it down on the railing of the porch.

  The chair held together which, naturally, only made me angrier. I growled as I lifted it again and brought it down.

  It bounced off the railing, jarring my arms, mocking me with its resolve to not break apart.

  With an angry heart I lifted it again and turned it, rotating it so the back of the chair met the railing as I brought it down once more.

  The wood splintered. Emboldened, I rotated the chair again, slamming it against the railing so the feet of the chair broke in half.

  Ten more swings rendered the chair into a pile of broken wood.

  And I didn’t feel much better.

  “Andra?”

  I looked to my right, seeing Julian on the other side of the screen door. “Hi,” I said, my mood heavy with mostly sadness.

  The door creaked as he opened it and joined me.

  He looked to what remained of the chair and glanced back at me. “What happened?”

  I shrugged. “I was angry.”

  He licked his lips and nodded. “And your shoe?”

  I looked down at my feet, saw that I was wearing only one shoe. “It broke.”

  I felt his hand on my jaw and lifted to meet his gaze. “Your lip?”

  I licked my lip, feeling the sting from drawing blood earlier. “I bit it.”

  Julian’s thumb pulled slightly on the lip, exposing the other side of it. “Hmm,” he said, examining me. He let go and met my eyes. “You’re kind of a mess, aren’t you?”

  Julian didn’t know the half of it. That thought burned a hole in my stomach and I shrugged, swallowing my nerves. “I am.”

  “Your hands are bleeding,” he said, turning them palm-side up. They were scraped and I saw a handful of wood splinters sticking out. Without a word, he pulled
me into the kitchen and held my hand under warm water. “Wash them, I’ll be right back.”

  I felt numb. I wasn’t worried about my hands or my lip or my shoe. The anger had melted from my bones when Julian had looked at me.

  So, without thought, I washed my hand gingerly, trying to avoid touching the splinters and watching as my blood swirled down the drain.

  Julian returned, wearing his glasses and carrying a bottle of hydrogen peroxide and tweezers.

  Before I had a chance to react, his hands were on either side of my waist and he was lifting me up onto the counter next to the seat. He grabbed one hand and held it up to the light coming through the window.

  “Why are you shaking your head?” I asked.

  He turned his head. “You have to have a dozen splinters here, Andra.”

  “Oops?” I offered with a feeble, sheepish smile. He had one eyebrow raised over his fuck-me glasses.

  “Must have been some outburst,” he commented quietly as he searched my eyes.

  There he was again, looking at me like he hoped to uncover my secrets. I clamped my lips shut in response to his look.

  He turned his attention back to my hand, squirting the hydrogen peroxide onto the first splinter. He then proceeded to squirt each of the splinters and held my hand up, waiting.

  “What does that do?”

  “It boils it out, in a way,” he answered, not moving his eyes from my hand.

  A few minutes later, he started pulling each splinter from my hand with the tweezers.

  He repeated the process with my second hand. When he was finished he removed his glasses and hung them from the collar of his shirt. I watched him do this as if it was the most fascinating thing in the world. Anything to keep my mind off of making conversation and thus having to lie some more.

  “How was shopping?” I asked, hoping to control the direction of the conversation, to distract Julian from asking me anything I couldn’t answer.

  Julian gestured to the grocery bags across the counter. “I managed without injury.”

  I smiled, hoping to keep him talking. “Was the store busy?”

  He pulled things out of the bags, one by one, filling the fridge and cabinets with his purchases. “It was fine.”

  With his back to me, I watched him pause for a moment. And then he turned around, bringing me the flowers he’d purchased from the floral shop.

  “Oh,” I said, looking down at the cluster of sunflowers. “These are beautiful,” I said. “Thank you.” I hopped off the counter and moved to Julian for a kiss.

  His returning kiss was brief before he turned away and finished putting away his purchases. I knew there were thoughts brewing in his head and my lame attempt at distraction was unsuccessful.

  When the last can was placed in the upper cabinet, he turned around and braced his hands on the countertop behind him. “You know you can talk to me, right?”

  The question caught me off guard. “Of course,” I answered immediately. Probably too quickly.

  He narrowed his eyes in thought. “I…” he faltered, rubbed a hand through his hair. “I just hope you’ll talk to me, when you’re done processing.”

  Julian was worried. About me. “I don’t think I’ll be done processing for a while.” I turned and put the flowers by the sink. “Not until this is over, at least.”

  He came up behind me, placing a hand on my shoulder. “It’ll be over soon,” he said, but his words held no intensity. He was as doubtful about our future as I was. But at least I was making proactive strides to change that.

  With my back to him, I nodded. “I’m sure it will,” I said, applying the same lack of enthusiasm to my words. My hand came up to rest on his as we looked out the window at the rolling tide.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  The following day was supposed to be a day of giving thanks, but instead it was a day of Julian cooking and me wallowing in a separate room. I couldn’t even enjoy the day with Julian because all I could think about was Mira and Six and, most disturbingly, Hawthorne.

  I’d spent a restless night going over in my mind all the things I’d wanted to say in an email reply when, around three in the morning, it finally clicked. I didn’t want to exchange emails with Hawthorne.

  I wanted to call him.

  So I waited, impatiently, in the living room while Julian cooked. At the dining table as we ate in tortured silence. Julian knew there were things going on in my head that I wasn’t sharing. And I was hurting him, not letting him in. There was no comfort in the silence between us. Instead, words unsaid hung in the air, words neither of us could see.

  After dinner had been cleaned up and leftovers placed in the fridge, I waited some more. Julian laid on the couch and I followed, putting on a movie. An hour into the movie, he was asleep and I decided to make my move.

  I grabbed my disposable phone and walked quietly down the hall, to the back porch, dialing the number I remembered.

  Before the call could connect, I heard trilling in the ear piece and held the phone away from my face. Six must have disconnected the service for the phone.

  My only other option was Julian’s phone. I swiped it off the kitchen counter, peeking into the living room to make sure Julian was still asleep. He was.

  This time, I walked out onto the deck and down the sand before dialing. But just before I pressed “Send” I changed my mind and dialed another number instead.

  “This is Rosa,” a voice barked on the other end. I nearly fell to my knees.

  “Rosa,” I croaked, emotion lodged in my throat.

  There was a pause on the other end. “Annie?”

  I wanted to laugh and cry at the same time. I cradled the phone with my other hand. “It’s me.”

  “Oh, Annie,” she whispered. I heard various noises in the background and assumed she was secluding herself to speak privately. “How are you? Are you okay?”

  I had to lie to Rosa not just to protect my secrets but to ease her worry for me as well. “I’m fine. Julian is here,” I said, looking back to the house. “How is everything there?”

  “Good,” she said. “We’re good. I can’t say the same for my bookkeeping, but we’re good. Missing you.”

  My lips trembled. “Hopefully I’ll be back soon to sort your books out before tax time.”

  “Oh, I hope so.”

  “I can’t talk long,” I explained. “I just wanted to say hi. I miss you and everyone else.”

  “Of course.” I heard her exhale on the other line. “I’m so glad you called.”

  We spoke for a minute longer before I hung up. I glanced back at the beach house and didn’t see Julian.

  I was nervous, twitchy, as I signed into the app I knew recorded calls. I dialed Hawthorne’s phone number.

  It rang once, then again, then again. Each ring, my heart picked up pace.

  Just when I thought it would go to an answering machine, I heard the click of someone answering.

  “Hello?”

  “Asshole.” I spit the word into the phone. I couldn’t think about the memories my mind rotated forward upon hearing his voice. I had to let anger control this conversation.

  “Cora.” I heard him sigh and chuckle.

  Keep chucking, asshole, I thought. And then I hung up.

  The app only recorded incoming calls, so I waited, impatient for an incoming call to the application.

  A minute later, his number came across the dashboard of the app.

  I pressed record as soon as I opened the call. “Hawthorne,” I answered.

  “Cora,” he answered.

  “That’s not my name anymore, Hawthorne.”

  “Oh yes, Andra is it?” He was still laughing softly. I wanted to reach through the phone and chop my hand to his throat.

  “Did you murder my mother?”

  Silence stretched on the other end of the line.

  I kept shifting my weight from one leg to the other, full of nervous energy. I couldn’t believe I was talking to the Monster from my nightm
ares.

  “What, we’re not going to exchange pleasantries?”

  “Did you murder my mother?” I asked again. I didn’t want to play the way he did.

  “Your mother had a fondness for pain killers, Cora. That’s her fault.”

  My blood stopped thundering in my head and my entire body went cold, as if submerged in ice. Julian had told me that my mom’s tox screen wasn’t released. Her cause of death was listed as exsanguination. The blood loss killed her, not the pain killers. I knew, with complete certainty, that Hawthorne had killed my mother. I needed to keep him talking.

  My lips trembled and I pressed a hand to them, to still them. “She wouldn’t have killed herself.”

  “She would and she did, Cora. Now tell me, when are you coming home?”

  I thought of Julian. “I am home.”

  “Nice touch with the comments, Cora. LydiaMitchell – you really want to get your point across, don’t you?”

  I knew then that he’d seen the clues I’d left for him. “I want you to get what’s coming to you.”

  He was silent for a moment, but that moment was weighted with very controlled anger on his behalf. I could tell by the way he cleared his throat before speaking again. “There are a lot of people in Michigan interested in finding you.” His voice was even, his words spoken with care.

  “Oh?” I asked. “Are you one of them?”

  He laughed. “I already know where you are, Cora.” The way he said my birth name made me sick. It dripped from his voice with decadence, as if he savored the word itself. And I knew I’d intrigued him into coming after me.

  “Then come and get me, fucker.”

  I hung up, saved the voice file to Julian’s hard drive. I then emailed it to my new email account before deleting the sent message. Seconds later, I deleted the web-based voice calling app from Julian’s phone. The app provided a different number to call Hawthorne with, so he couldn’t trace it to Julian’s phone.

  When I’d cleared my tracks, I exhaled and let my body relax. I wasn’t sure if the info I’d gathered from Hawthorne had been enough to implicate him in my mother’s death, but it was a start at least.

  Just before I walked back up to the house, I threw up.