Watching Their Steps

by Alana Terry

  I looked into his warm green eyes and I was embarrassed. I didn’t want him to know how weak I was, how incapable I’d been. I didn’t want him to describe me as one of those “victims.” I drew my legs tighter against my body and tried to keep my spine straight. “Promise you won’t think I’m weak?”

  “You are not weak, Holly. You were drugged. Nobody in your situation could’ve done anythin’ more than you did. The fact that you had the presence of mind to throw up as much of the drug as possible so you could fight back just shows how capable you are.”

  I wasn’t sure why his opinion of me mattered so much, but it did. “Okay,” I agreed reluctantly. I described the events for him as thoroughly as I could. There were a few gaps in my memory, and I was a little fuzzy on some of the details, but he listened quietly, only interrupting with a follow-up question here and there.

  He didn’t say anything when I finished; he just sat in the chair with his elbows on his knees and his hands interlocked under his chin. He looked pensive as he stared at the floor.

  “Holly,” he began, but he paused, seeming to choose his words very carefully. When he looked up at me, there was worry in his eyes. “You weren’t . . . examined when we brought you in. You were unconscious and unable to give consent.”

  It took me a moment to understand the point he was dancing around, and then every muscle in my body tensed. “I don’t need an exam.”

  “You were unconscious when I found you, and you were alone with him for ten minutes. Given his possessiveness and the way he had his hands on you . . .”

  “No,” I choked out, stopping him before he could say anything more. This conversation dredged up too many painful memories, and if we didn’t change the subject, I was going to throw up all over him.

  “I realize it’s an uncomfortable process, but it’s . . .”

  “No one is touching me, and I’m not . . .” I struggled to push the words past the nauseating lump in my throat. “I’m not talking about this. I can’t talk about this.”

  Marx let the matter drop, but there was a question burning in his eyes as he studied me, one he couldn’t give voice to because he’d sworn he wouldn’t ask.

  I dropped my eyes and shifted my gaze to the covered window before he could pull the unwilling answer from me. The room descended into silence, and I listened to the distant murmur of voices and whirring of machines. The rhythm of the hospital was surprisingly soothing.

  A quiet knock echoed from the doorway, and I looked up to see Sam standing there. He was wearing sweatpants and a hoodie; it was a step up from the hospital gown someone had dressed me in, but it was the most relaxed attire I’d ever seen him wearing.

  “It isn’t a good time, Sam,” Marx said.

  Sam stepped into the dark room anyway, but even in the low light I could see the shadows under his eyes. He’d had a much larger dose of the ketamine than I had, and I was surprised to see him on his feet. I caught the slight flinch as his eyes landed on me.

  Apparently, I looked worse than I thought. Awesome. I shifted self-consciously and tucked my hair behind my ears.

  “I’m sorry I roofied you,” I said to break the awkward silence in the room. ‘‘And I’m glad you’re okay.”

  It took him a moment to find his voice. “Yeah . . . I’m fine.” He shot Marx a questioning glance, and a silent conversation I couldn’t follow passed between them.

  Marx stood up and said, “I’ll be right back, Holly,” before walking out of the room with Sam on his heels.

  They barely made it through the doorway before Sam demanded in a hoarse whisper, “What happened? You said she was okay. That isn’t my definition of okay.”

  “I said she was fine; I didn’t say she was uninjured,” Marx replied quietly.

  Their conversation faded as they continued down the corridor until the only voice I could hear was Sam’s, and even then I could only hear fragments.

  “. . . supposed to keep her safe. That was my only job . . . let him waltz right through the front door . . . supposed to be guarding.”

  I tried to hear the remainder of the conversation, but their voices dropped too low for me to hear anything more than agitated whispers.

  I snuggled back down beneath the covers and stretched out. It was nice to be able to feel my body again. I turned my hands over in front of my face as I studied my fingers and tested their flexibility. Normal.

  I rotated my ankles and wiggled my toes beneath the blanket experimentally. Normal too. I did a methodical inventory of my entire body. All of my feeling and control had returned, and I was in pretty good shape, considering.

  “You’ll be happy to know all ten of your toes have been found and safely returned,” Marx commented from the doorway. I wasn’t sure when he’d returned or even how long he’d been gone. My perception of time was a little off.

  He leaned against the door frame with a slight smile on his lips and a plastic cup of brown liquid in his hand.

  I vaguely recalled wondering if my feet and toes had wandered off to the market together. “Where did Sam go?” I asked as I drew myself back up against the pillows.

  “Bed.” He pushed away from the doorway and strode into the room.

  “Is he angry with me?” He had a right to be angry with me; I could’ve gotten him killed.

  Marx frowned as he sat back down in his chair. “No. Nobody is angry with you. He’s been worried about you since he woke up.” At my skeptical expression, he said patiently. “You matter to people, Holly. Get used to them carin’.”

  I didn’t understand why he cared so much. I had done nothing to earn his trust or his affection, and I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop. When it finally did drop, I would probably trip over it for good measure.

  “There wasn’t any pistachio puddin’, but I brought you somethin’ better.” He held out the cup of brown liquid with a straw in it. “A sweet tea, since you were so insistent last night.”

  I smirked and accepted the drink. I played with the straw as I asked a little reluctantly, “Did I say anything else embarrassing?”

  “You mean aside from callin’ me Sugar?”

  My cheeks heated and I dropped my face into my hand. “I can’t believe I said that,” I mumbled into my palm.

  “Neither can I,” he said, holding back a laugh. “I’m fairly certain Luke got the wrong impression after you told him you were in a relationship, then looked up at me and called me Sugar.”

  I pressed my covered face into my knees and groaned, mortified. “I’m so sorry.”

  I could hear the smile in his voice as he said, “You were by far the most adorable high individual I have ever seen. If you’d been able to walk, I expect you would’ve been chasin’ invisible butterflies on a cloud of cotton candy.”

  I blamed him for that. Even drugged, I would never have been able to relax into that euphoria without someone I trusted beside me.

  “I can’t believe I lost my mind like that,” I admitted. “I’m sorry if I embarrassed you.”

  “You didn’t. But please . . . don’t ever call me Sugar again. It’s . . . unnervin’.”

  I started to laugh and then stopped short when the gash on my lip threatened to split open again. I pressed my fingertips to it to make sure it wasn’t bleeding. “No promises,” I replied. I took a small sip from the straw. Mmm, that was good. Heaven in a cup.

  A muffled ringing came from inside Marx’s jacket draped over one of the far chairs. He stood up and crossed the room to answer it. His expression shifted into neutral when he looked at the caller ID on the phone’s display screen.

  “I need to take this. It’s the Stony Brooke Sheriff’s Department. I’ll be right outside the room.” He stepped out into the hallway, and I heard his formal greeting, “Detective Marx,” before he moved too far down the hall for his words to carry.

  I thought about slipping out of bed and creeping over to the door to slake my curiosity, but I was pretty sure I would trip and fall over my own feet if I tried it;
I felt more uncoordinated than usual. I sank back into my pillows instead and sipped my sweet tea. It was a nice treat.

  It felt like ages before Marx stepped back into the room. Anxiety fluttered through me at the sight of the manila folder he carried. The last time he’d come into the room with one of those, it hadn’t contained anything good. He didn’t look angry this time, but something was responsible for the dark cloud hanging around him.

  He stopped beside the bed and tapped the folder against his palm as he worked up the nerve to give voice to whatever was troubling him. “Holly . . .” He cleared his throat. “We need to talk. About your family.”

  Chapter 30

  “THE SHERIFF’S DEPARTMENT faxed over some information for me.” Marx sat down in the chair beside my hospital bed. He wore the expression a doctor might wear when he had to tell his patient he was dying of cancer.

  “I take it it’s not good news,” I said, regarding him cautiously. I gripped the cup of tea with both hands as I braced myself.

  “A bit of a mixture, I suppose.” He pulled a crisp sheet of paper from inside the folder without opening it, paused as if to reconsider, and then offered it to me.

  I accepted it cautiously and turned it right side up. I squinted at it, but the letters blurred together in the darkness, and the only word that stood out boldly enough for me to read was at the top of the page: MISSING.

  There was a grainy picture beneath it, but I couldn’t pick out any of the details. It looked like one of those missing child posters plastered on the back of milk cartons or stapled to telephone poles in the city. “I can’t read this in the dark.”

  “Do you think you could handle the lights?”

  I glanced at the open doorway and had to look away when the light from the corridor made my eyes throb. “No, sorry.” I shook my head and offered the page back to him.

  He took it and slipped it back into the folder. “That’s all right. I read it before I came in.” He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his thighs and interlocking all but his index fingers. “We’ve been workin’ under the assumption that you disappeared when you were ten years old. You didn’t. You were nine.”

  I blinked at him. “But that would mean . . .”

  “You’re twenty-seven years old. Not twenty-eight.”

  I released a stunned breath. No one had ever truly known how old I was because no one knew when I was born; it had been an estimate. I just seemed to pop into existence around the age of ten. “The state picked an arbitrary date for my birthday so they would have something to put in the file. June thirtieth. When . . .”

  “January eighteenth, 1989.” He didn’t even have to check the sheet.

  I didn’t know whether to smile or cry. I had a birthday. For the first time in my life, I knew when I was born. It wasn’t some meaningless date picked for convenience or record keeping by the state.

  “You’ll be twenty-eight in fifty-eight days,” he said. I counted the days on my fingers because I was awful at mental calculations—fifty-eight days and I would be twenty-eight . . . again. Marx smiled a little. “Didn’t trust my math?”

  “I’ve never had a birthday to look forward to,” I admitted.

  His eyebrows knitted together, and for a moment I thought I had somehow managed to make him sad. “You didn’t celebrate the day the state designated as your birthday?”

  “Sometimes my caseworker sent me a birthday card around that time, but I moved placements so quickly . . .”

  No one really bothered to acknowledge, let alone celebrate, my birthday. And I knew the date was no more real than my last name. So what was the point?

  “You’ve never had a cake? Presents? Balloons?”

  I thought back and settled on a moment in time when I’d blown out a candle and sliced into a long cake with a frightening-looking serrated knife while someone gripped my hands so I didn’t cut myself. “Izzy made me a cake.”

  “Drug dealers baked you a cake,” he said dryly. “Okay then.” He shook his head as if he couldn’t wrap his mind around that idea.

  “They didn’t put any extra ingredients in it if that’s what you’re wondering,” I assured him with a wry grin.

  Izzy and Paul might have dabbled in illegal substances, but they had been very careful to keep that life separate from me. There had been times when they needed to travel to “deliver packages”—as if they were nothing more than postal workers—and they decided it was safer to leave me at home. I imagined not all of their associates would have appreciated a nine-year-old witness to their criminal activities.

  The longest they left me on my own was a week, and Izzy had frantically stocked the cabin with sweets, drinks, coloring books, and anything else she could think of to keep me occupied. In hindsight, I think she was afraid I would wander off and disappear. She’d even bought me a can of pepper spray and explained how to use it in case someone tried to break into the cabin.

  I accidentally sprayed the cat.

  He didn’t like me much after that.

  “That’s good to know,” Marx grumbled, more to himself than to me. “I really don’t need any more reason to dislike that woman.”

  So I probably shouldn’t tell him about the time Izzy took me out for ice cream and we ran into one of her and Paul’s competitors on the sidewalk.

  “And we finally have your real name.”

  I sat up a little straighter against the pillows. “What is it?”

  “Holly Marie Cross.”

  It took a moment for his words to settle. Holly Marie Cross. I turned it over in my mind as I tried to absorb the name that had been lost to me nearly eighteen years ago. “Are you sure?”

  “I’m sure.”

  I mumbled the name aloud, tasting it on my tongue. There was a tingle of familiarity, as if I’d spoken it before, but it could’ve been the name of an acquaintance for all the attachment I felt to it.

  “The Stony Brooke Sheriff’s Department has been lookin’ for you for a very long time,” Marx explained. “They faxed over an old Missin’ Child flyer with your information on it. There’s no doubt it’s you.”

  It surprised me that anyone had searched for me. But I hadn’t been a transient who melted in and out of people’s lives without notice then; I had been a nine-year-old girl with a family.

  “Did you tell them I’m alive?”

  “I didn’t have to. Apparently, they never stopped believin’ you were alive.”

  I looked up at him in surprise. Who in their right mind would believe a missing child was still alive after eighteen years? I had vanished into thin air with no trail to follow.

  “I wasn’t able to reach the sheriff who originally worked your case, but I spoke to his son, Jordan Radcliffe, who seemed awfully familiar with the details of a case he’s far too young to have worked. He firmly believes you’re still alive.”

  Jordan. The name sounded familiar, and it took a moment for my mind to offer up the memory of the little boy with the football. I remembered his charming grin and his crystalline-blue eyes that twinkled with amusement as he told me to stop bouncing.

  “He was very interested to know why I was askin’ about the case,” Marx continued. “I thought it best not to mention you until we decide how to proceed.”

  I frowned in confusion. If Marx hadn’t contacted them about me specifically, then why would they send him a flyer concerning my disappearance? I doubted it was the sheriff’s department’s policy to attach MISSING posters to every fax they sent out. Although that probably was an efficient way to find missing children.

  My mind resisted when I tried to find the connection: Cross.

  The woman whose body I had tripped and fallen over the night I fled from the house had been named Cross. I had dropped my stuffed rabbit into her blood, and Marx had said it flagged an open homicide case from Stony Brooke. Any hope that she’d been a stranger trapped in a nightmare with me died instantly. “Emily . . .”

  Marx spoke carefully, as if afraid I might dissolve i
nto tears. “She was your mother.”

  My heart twisted painfully in my chest. A part of me had already known she was my mother, but it still hurt to hear it. Marx pulled another sheet of paper from the folder and handed it to me. I was about to remind him that I couldn’t see it in the dark when he pulled his phone from his pocket and flipped it open, careful to keep the light angled away from my face.

  A dim glow spilled across the image in my hand. A beautiful woman with fiery red hair and honey-brown eyes stared back at me from the picture. Her skin was as pale as porcelain, and she had a light dusting of freckles across her nose. Everything about her face exuded warmth and love. I touched the picture with my fingertips as if I might be able to feel it through the paper.

  “She was beautiful.”

  “Yes, she was,” he agreed. “It explains where you came from.”

  I smiled a little as tears gathered in the corners of my vision. There was no denying that I had her hair and her eyes, and even the pale color of her skin, but I wasn’t beautiful or warm; on my best day I could manage put-together and not completely frigid. No one would ever describe me as warm.

  It was strange learning about a mother I couldn’t remember after learning she was murdered. There was a slight tremor in my voice as I asked, “What did he do to her?”

  Marx released a slow, measured breath before saying, “You don’t need to know the details.”

  I knew what that meant. Whatever the killer had done to my mother was too horrible for Marx to put into words. He didn’t want me to know.

  “Did she suffer?”

  I lifted my gaze to his when he didn’t answer, and the hard set of his jaw delivered the answer more powerfully than words. Yes, she had suffered.

  A part of me grieved for Emily because she was my mother, and the other part of me grieved for the fact that I would never have a chance to know her. She was a stranger who shared the color of my hair and the shape of my eyes.

  I wished I could remember something about her: the way she smelled, the sound of her laughter, the tone of her voice when she reprimanded me for doing something I shouldn’t . . . which was probably often.