35
Day sixteen
Ihear the doorbell and the knocking and the waiting. Then more ringing and knocking until finally the door opens and closes. I look out the hole and pray Nicole is still in that car. That she is still unaware.
Footsteps bound the hallway. Smaller ones scurry behind them.
Then the lock turns. The grate opens.
Mick walks in, wearing a police uniform. He is calm and steady.
He wears a face that is smug and laden with the power he has just acquired over me. Just like the moment when I heard his cell phone ring on the kitchen counter. The moment I knew I was his prisoner.
I have a flash of memory, provoked now, by the uniform. A traffic stop somewhere along Route 7. I don’t remember the name of the town. I only remember now how John hired a lawyer to make it go away because he was worried about our insurance. And how it was never submitted by the officer. It was as though it had never happened. I thought I’d gotten lucky.
I had been traveling twenty miles over the speed limit. I hadbeen trying to get away from these dying towns, trying to get home. I hadn’t noticed how fast I’d been going.
I study his face and know it is the same man.
How long has he known me? How long has he been planning this? That stop was last spring.
Mick is a cop. Everything I have come to think about him now unravels. I try to put the pieces back in a way that fits with this new one.
Mick is a cop—a real cop. He has access to records. He can get people to pull over, the way I did. To give him their information.
What else? The cameras—at the Gas n’ Go. Mick watches people coming and going. He can see their license plates and credit cards. I think about how these pieces fit together—how perfect it is. How he can gather information, and then use it however he wants.
He knew I came every other Thursday in the afternoons from the cameras at the gas station. He got my driver’s license and car registration from the traffic stop. And how easy it was from there—one Google search and my whole life unfolded for him, like a nicely wrapped present.
I want to fight against it. I think that maybe my rage is finally big enough to overtake him, but that delusion is dispelled the moment his hands take hold of my wrists. His physical strength is undeniable.
He pulls me back to the window. Presses my face to the wood until it scrapes my skin. I can feel the small splinters as they enter and dig their way through the flesh.
“Look,” he says calmly, though his strength feels like an explosion against me.
I do as I’m told. I look at my precious daughter through the hole.
“I have her now. Nod if you understand.”
I nod. I do exactly as I’m told.
“I think she would make a good mother, don’t you? And a good wife.”
A cry leaves my mouth. I can’t hold it in.
“She is so lovely. Every inch of her, so, so lovely. And she is in love with me.”
He lets go of me and I fall to the floor.
“Nod if you understand,” he says again.
Again, I do as I am told.
Of course I understand.
If I am not the best mommy to Alice, he will take my daughter.
But then I also know the truth.
