“I was kept in a basement. The windows had been filled with cinderblocks. They left me with a gallon jug of water. No food. After a while, I finished the water. I figured they weren’t coming back.” I pause to swallow, but my mouth is so dry, my throat sticks. “The floor was dirt. I found a hunk of concrete in it and dug it out. I used it to hack my way out the basement door.”
Cora’s watching me closely, but her face is blank. Not like she doesn’t care. Hard. Like this isn’t the worst thing she’s heard. Not by far. “What happened then?” she asks.
“Someone on the street found me and took me to the hospital. I was pretty dehydrated. I’d torn my hands up pretty badly.”
“Did they catch the kidnappers?” Cora has totally taken over the questioning.
I shake my head. The guys got away until Logan and Lucian were old enough to do something about it. All three are dead now, buried in a dark basement with a dirt floor.
“And the ransom?”
I snort. The kidnappers made the mistake of going to Dad instead of my grandfather with their demands. Dad was still dicking around when I got myself out. “The ransom was never exchanged.”
“Why not?”
I shrug. “I got out before Dad could pay.” Dad is always wistful when the subject of the kidnapping comes up, like it was a missed opportunity. He probably had some half-baked scheme to skim from the ransom that he’s pissed he never got to try.
“You were locked up forfour days.” Cora’s voice rises. I grab her hand and pull it onto my lap. This is supposed to be helping, not upsetting her.
I shrug again. Ultimately, it wasn’t that big of a deal. My mother didn’t even bother to come back to town, not even to visit me in the hospital. “It was four bad days. Lots of people have had it a whole lot worse.”
Cora is shaking her head as I speak. “You’d never let Winnie or Pearl be gone for four days.”
“I’d never let them be taken in the first place.” I squeeze her hand until she focuses and her eyes lock with mine. I want her to know that I mean it. Our girls will never know what it feels like to be defenseless.
Deborah takes advantage of the lapse in Cora’s questionsto pose her own. “What kind of supports did you receive afterward?”
Gideon bought us pizza when I got home from the hospital, and we stayed up all night watching everyLethal Weapon, but I’m sure that’s not what she means.
“There was follow-up. I don’t really remember. I was pretty young at the time.” It’s an evasion, and I’m not sure it flies. Deborah scratches another note on her pad. Cora moves our clasped hands to rest on her lap.
My stomach hollows. I don’t care to live in the past, but I have no problem talking about it. Objectively, the whole experience wasn’t much more than a misadventure. IV fluids fixed me up in no time, and fingernails grow back.
“It was only four days,” I repeat.
“Were you scared?” Cora asks.
Deborah’s brow knits like she’s about to take issue with the question.
“Yes,” I answer before she can.
“What was going on in your head?”
I don’t know why it’s easy to understand this kind of question when Cora asks, but the answer comes like I had it ready. Like I’ve thought about this before instead of doing everything in my power to never, ever think about it. “It was basically solitary confinement in the dark. I tried to count to track time. I’d lose track. I wondered if the kidnappers were ever coming back. What it would be like to die from thirst. Whether it’d be peaceful like people who freeze to death or if the thirst would just get worse and worse.”
Deborah has lowered her pen. She’s watching me closely. When it’s clear I’m done talking, she asks, “How would you say the experience has impacted you as an adult?”
It hasn’t, but that’s not the answer she wants. By any measure, I’m a privileged person. I have a good life. Soprivileged, in fact, that I risked losing the best part of it because I couldn’t tolerate the idea that someday she might leave me.
I have to answer the doctor, though. I could say that I’m security conscious. Good thing, too. Cora’s self-protective instincts are haphazard at best. On one of our early dates, she strolled through Central Park to meet me with earbuds in her ears and a purse slung over her shoulder.
I guess I’m also very aware of emergency exits. When I built the house, I made sure the basement had multiple points of egress.
I have nightmares.
I don’t realize I’ve taken so long thinking of an answer until Cora breaks the silence.
“It’s like he’s always bracing for something,” she says. “I don’t think he trusts anyone but his brothers.”
