“Leaving.”I didn’t raise my voice.Didn’t need to.“And on your way out, you’re going to remember that women aren’t toys.They’re not things you get to grab when you want to play.”
“Who the fuck do you think --”
I leaned down, just a fraction, just enough to bring my face closer to his.“Fifteen years I’ve been away.Crushed the skull of a man who raped my sister.With my bare hands.”I paused, letting my words sink in.“First night home, I’d hate to go back inside for something as insignificant as you.”I smiled then, a gentle expression that never reached my eyes.“Especially since they might not find enough pieces to prove it was murder.”
The bar had gone quiet around us, the celebration paused like a held breath.The drunk stood on wobbly legs, fumbled for his wallet, and threw some bills on the bar.“Fucking freaks,” he muttered, but he kept his eyes down as he staggered toward the door.
I watched him go, the tension in my shoulders easing only when the door swung shut behind him.The server patted my arm lightly as she passed by, greeting a patron she hadn’t seen in a while.
“This round’s on me, Tiny.Welcome back.”Mike, the bartender, must have come in on the tail end of things.Now he handed me a double shot of Jack and I nodded my thanks as I took a measured sip, embarrassed by the attention.As I made my way back to my corner, conversations gradually resumed, though I felt eyes following me.
Knight was grinning when I sat back down.“Some things don’t change,” he said, raising his glass in a small salute.“Still hate bullies.”
I shrugged, uncomfortable with the praise.“Just didn’t like how he was grabbing her.Especially when she told him to stop.”
But as the celebration resumed around me, I felt something ease in my chest.Maybe there was still a place for me out here after all.Maybe some parts of me hadn’t died in that concrete box.I took another sip of my whiskey and let the noise wash over me.Seemed a little less abrasive than before.
* * *
Penny
Present day
I stuffed another sweatshirt into the duffel bag, my hands shaking so badly I nearly dropped it.The overhead light flickered like it always did, casting shifting shadows across the bedroom walls.Three duffel bags.That’s all our lives added up to after twelve years of marriage.Three bags and two daughters and the thundering of my heart so loud I was certain he would hear it, even though his car wasn’t in the driveway.Even though I’d watched him leave with my own eyes.
My ears still rang with what I’d overheard him saying on the phone yesterday.“She’s twelve, but she looks and acts older.Pretty too.You’ll like her.”
There was a pause.His next words chilled my blood and filled me with more terror than I’d ever known.“Just to be clear, I give you Zelda, my debt’s paid in full.Correct?”He said it like it was a demand rather than a question.Which didn’t really surprise me.Andy liked to think he was always the one in control.Even when he clearly wasn’t.
“Good.I’ll bring her to you in the morning when I drop her off at school.”
My daughter.My Zelda.He was going to give away my daughter.To pay a debt?
Andy left soon after and I knew this was probably the only chance we had of escape.
“Mom.”Zelda’s voice snapped me out of the dark memories.She stood with her fists clenched at her sides.Her dark eyes never stopped scanning the street below.“Someone’s coming.Blue car and it’s slow.”
My heart seized.“Andy’s car is silver,” I said, but my voice betrayed me with its tremor.
“It’s not stopping,” Kira whispered from the other window.Unlike her sister, she’d made herself small, nearly invisible behind the curtain.The threadbare stuffed rabbit she’d had since she was three was clutched against her chest, its missing eye and matted fur testimony to years of fierce love.
I tucked a stray hair behind my ear, a nervous habit I couldn’t break.“Keep watching.Both of you.”The full backpack sat where I’d hidden it, tucked behind the box of Christmas decorations we hadn’t used in two years.Black, nondescript, with a broken zipper I’d safety-pinned closed, it contained two changes of clothing for each of us, a travel pack of various toiletries, and a burner phone with its charger as well as the girls’ birth certificates and Social Security cards.I had put this pack together a month ago but hadn’t yet worked up the courage to actually use it.
I was out of time.
I climbed up on one of the shelves in the same closet.At the top was the door to the attic.There wasn’t a ladder or anything.Just an opening.I could get high enough to stick my head and shoulders through the opening.The crawlspace was close to the corner of the house.On the outside wall, shoved as far back as I could reach, was a small plastic box.Inside it was all the cash I’d managed to save for the past couple of months.Two hundred and sixty-seven dollars.That’s what stood between us and a means to leave the maniac I’d married.
The faded tattoo of two stars on my wrist caught the light.One for Zelda, one for Kira.I’d done them myself the day after they were born, these miracle twins I’d made from horror.Fifteen and terrified in that foster home, with that man.But I’d worked hard to prove I could take care of the girls.Social services couldn’t take them away from me unless I proved neglectful, though they really wanted Zelda and Kira.Regulated or not, the state adoption system was just as corrupt as everything else and infant girls whose mothers didn’t have a history of drug addiction were a rarity, something the public defender assigned to me pointed out.While there was a bunch of outrage at his accusations, once he’d voiced them the judge had no choice but to give me a fair chance.No matter how much money he stood to lose.The girls were mine, stars in the darkness.The only brightness in a world that had never been kind.
Now Andy wanted to take one of my stars and hand her over like property.
Not as long as I was still breathing.
“He said he’d be gone until nine,” I said, checking the clock for the hundredth time.“We need to be on the four-fifteen bus.”I hadn’t told the girls what I’d heard.Not the specifics.Just that we had to go, and go now, and never look back.“We’ve got thirty minutes to get to the bus station.”
But Zelda knew.Somehow, she always knew.I’d seen it in her eyes when I woke them up thirty minutes before, whispering urgent instructions to grab only what they could carry.She hadn’t asked questions.Just nodded and started organizing her sister, too adult for her twelve years.
“Mom,” Kira’s voice was barely audible.“What if he finds us?”
