It was Kurt who answered. “Roger Booth.”
15
Day fourteen
My mother used to say that you can only be as happy as your least happy child. She said there was no getting around this if you were a good and loving parent. She said that’s why she only had one child. Once she had me and came to understand this about being a parent, she didn’t want to further reduce her chances of having a happy life.
My mother was a pessimist.
She never got around to telling me what happens when a child dies. And when you are the one who killed her.
I think about this while I lie in bed staring at the cracks of light that sneak in through the seams of the plywood. It covers the window from the outside. Sometimes I pull the draperies closed so I can pretend it’s just a window. Other times I don’t want to pretend.
On the frame of the bedroom doorway, he has installed a metal grate—a second door with eight vertical bars and four horizontal ones. There is a small piece that can open at the bottom with a latch on the other side. Another panel is at the same height as the door handle and it, too, has a lock. A lock with a key.
The bedroom is now a prison.
“Sorry about all this,” he said on the day he let me out of the back room. “It’s my fault, really. I should have remembered to turn off the phone.”
It has been fourteen days since the night of the storm. Two days in the house, thinking I would go home. Five days locked in the dark room with the tile floor, knowing I wouldn’t. Seven days in this bedroom, wanting to die. But knowing I can’t.
Everything now is about keeping this man away from my family. Away from Nicole.
I stare at the streaks of light and assess the state of my mind. On each of these nine days since leaving that back room, it has surprised me and I have come to view it as a separate entity. Separate from my body. Out of my control in every way.
Some mornings, I wake up not remembering where I am and I feel what I used to feel before the night of the storm—what had come to feel normal after five years, but which I now recognize as numb. It only lasts a moment before reality washes through me like a wave of nausea. That is how I feel today, on day fourteen. And I have the answer my mother never told me. What life is like when you have killed your own child. Numb. I see it now for what it is, because now it washes away with the horror of my captivity.
On other mornings, I wake up startled and I jump from the bed and stand with my back to the wall. I let out small gasps of air with cries of despair that I cover with my hand. I am alive with desperation. But I am alive.
Sometimes I don’t sleep at all, and so there is no waking up. My mind reels through the night of the storm. Through the mistakes I made. I swim in a pool of self-loathing, for Annie’s death, for Nicole’s pain, and for what I have now done to my family by walking down that road, trying to escape my life. I bathe in the agony that I feel I deserve, and my suffering soothes the guilt. I cry and shake but then accept my penance as I stare into the darkness.
But that is not the worst of the mornings. On the worst of the mornings, I wake up with Alice entangled in my arms because she is very good at sneaking. She likes to be locked in the room with me. And he allows this because somehow he knows I will not hurt another child. He is good at sneaking, too. At sneaking Alice into my room.
On those mornings, he comes to collect her, opening the gate, closing it again. Locking it shut.
I try to think that this invasion of my bed, my body, is helping me, giving me power. The more Alice needs me, the more power I will yield over her.
And power is just what I need over this little girl, my little prison guard. As long as I am a good mommy to her, there is no talk of finding a new mommy. There is no talk of Nicole.
I have come to call the man Mick. It is the name Alice gave him that night in the truck. Mickey Mouse. And for that split second, I had let myself believe he was harmless like that, like a cartoon character. I let him lead me back into this house when I might have tried to run away, into the woods. I did not know that would be my last chance to escape.
In these seven days, I have learned a lot of things about Alice and her life in this house.
She has lived here since before she can remember. She told meshe was born here, in that dark laundry room with no windows, but I have no proof of that one way or another and I will not make any more assumptions.
Her first mommy lived here until last spring. Alice has a calendar and knows how to keep track of time. She has books from a homeschool program, but there is no internet here so she does the work on paper. Mick collects her work at the end of each day and tells her he sends it off to the program and they keep track of her progress.
“Look!” she said to me one day, showing me a handwritten report. It was written by Mick, I was certain.
I studied the report.
“You did very well!” I said to Alice.
The report said little more.Your work is complete and was very good.
We pass things through the bottom panel of the prison grate. She brings me food and things to drink other than the water I can get from my bathroom sink.
She is serious about her school work. She is almost at a middle school level, which tells me she is smart and that Mick, or someone else, has been guiding her through the material. The subject matter is easy for me to teach. Simple algebra. Grammar. Earth science. The challenge comes from her impatience when she gets stuck. She is quick to anger and I am learning how to manage her moods.
