“Geor—June!” she says, catching on quickly, seeing what I need without understanding anything else that’s happening. They tell her the bond amount and ask if she’s willing to take me home. She quickly and emphatically agrees, practically opening her purse to get her wallet out before they’re finished. She doesn’t ask why I’m there. She just helps me.
Thirty minutes and some paperwork later, and I’m in her car with Avery asleep in the car seat that is still strapped into the back, driving back to that house. She lets the silence sit in the air until I’m ready to speak.
“Thank you. Thank you so much,” I say, my voice breaking. “I’m so sorry to involve you and have you do so much for me...”
“It’s absolutely no problem. Are you all right?”
“No. I’m not. I can’t... Please, I can’t go back,” I say, and I begin to sob. I cry so hard I can barely catch my breath and Cora pulls to the side of County Road 8 and tries her best to calm me. I can’t even speak to tell her anything else. I’m just choking on my own sobs as I try to keep them quiet and not wake up Avery, but I can barely breathe.
“Shhh, it’s gonna be okay,” she says, taking my hands, rubbing my back. “Oh, sweetheart.” Her eyes well with tears, too. “What in the world is going on?”
After I get myself under control, I still have trouble breathing as the crying remains like hiccuped spasms in my chest. My face is hot, my eyes burn. I try to tell her.
“I have to get out of here. I can’t go back. It’s not safe,” I manage, looking at Avery and back to Cora.
“He’s hurting you. I knew it,” she says.
“It’s more than that.”
“What? What’s he done, what do you mean?” she asks, and I have no choice now but to trust her, to tell her everything. I cannot go back this time.
“He’s holding me there. He won’t let me leave,” I say, and I see the realization of it all hit her—why I never go anywhere and don’t socialize or drive or anything—that I’m not a recluse, I’m a prisoner.
“But...last week, you went to town,” she says, clearly second-guessing what she had just put together. I explain the frozen camera and my attempt to get to the bank and escape. I explain the other escapes, and how I got the ID off someone on a park bench and the times before that, but I always get caught. And when I finish, I see her face, and I’ve never seen that look on anyone’s face before. It’s shock and horror, but still confusion as to how it’s possible he could be holding me prisoner in plain sight. Her face is white and frightened.
“Why didn’t you tell the police? When you were there? We have to go to the police,” she says, ready to pull out and turn the car around.
“No, stop. Please. I know. I know it sounds like it should be that easy,” I say. “He’s a judge. It’s his word against mine. I called them once, and he had a good laugh with them about how unstable I was. He has set me up as an unhinged, depressed person. There are medical records, prescriptions, the police report when I lost it and they found me to be the volatile one. They would have no evidence that what I’m saying is true. Just a respected man’s word against mine. Zero evidence. They’ll send me home with him, and he will kill me. I have to get out—get far away—but I don’t have any money or documents. I have nowhere to go. He’s made sure of that.” I tremble and bury my face in my hands. Cora turns up the heat in the car and grabs a folded-up blanket from the back and puts it around my shoulders.
“Okay, listen. We’re gonna get you out. Let me help you,” she says, and I look up at her, blinking, unbelieving.
“You’ll help me? You won’t call the police?”
“No, you can stay with me.”
“I can’t. Your family will know and I can’t—Someone will tell...they’ll slip or they’ll act nervous. The police might come by asking about me—Avery will—I can’t risk that.”
“We have a mother-in-law unit by the pool in back of the house,” she says. “Nobody has stepped foot in there in I don’t know how long. You can stay there. It’s far enough away from the house, you won’t be heard. Finn and Mia don’t have to know.”
“He’ll be across the street.” My hands are shaking so violently that she has to take them in hers again and hold them on my lap.
“This is why it will work. If he’s looking for you, he would never look there. Right? He’ll think you’re running as far away as you can. It’s just until we make a plan. I can pull out some money. We can find you a safe way to do this.”
I throw my arms around her neck and just let myself completely break down. I thank her so many times I’m sick of my own voice. I can’t believe it. I knew it would take making a friend to get help, someone who I could trust and not a stranger who would call someone or tell someone and get me killed. He made sure I never got close enough to anyone for that to happen. The camera glitch might be the only reason I’m here, that we were able to talk. Her persistence in making sure I felt cared for, even though I never returned the kindness, is the reason I’m here. Can this really be happening?
When she begins to drive again, I feel sick the closer we get to that house.
“Do you think he’s reported you missing yet?” she asks.
“I’ve thought a lot about that,” I say, “and I don’t know. Do they really make you wait twenty-four hours to report? I don’t know. If he did, did I make it out of there with seconds left before the cops figured out the missing person was June/Georgia? Maybe he won’t report it at all. He said if I ever got away he’d spend the rest of his life hunting me down, if that’s what it took, and he’d kill me.”
“I can’t believe all this time you were just right there and I didn’t know...” she says, and as we pull onto our road, she gasps and makes a sharp left. I look behind and see a cop car outside of our house.
“Okay, don’t panic,” she says.
“Oh, my God, oh, my God,” I say, starting to rock back and forth, my eyes blurring with fear. She stops the car.
“Get out,” she says.
