Lies That Bind Us(5)

I frown, marveling at my little discovery, trying not to admit how little that gave me to work with. There is also an irregularity in the wall directly across from the bed, the way I am facing and almost level with my steady, if largely useless, gaze. A panel? Or a cupboard mounted on the wall? I can just make it out as a dark rectangle. I reach for it, stretching as far as I can, but get nothing but air. I swing my feet down to the floor and get the uneven shock of finding I have one bare foot and one still wearing what feels like a sandal.

My sandal.

Thin leather straps and a little thong over the top of my foot gathering around the ankle and looping around the big toe.

My sandal. I can see it in my head, and with it comes the sense of things remembered but hidden in shadow just out of arm’s reach.

Crete. I came to Crete. To see old friends.

I remember packing, laying out colorful clothes on the bed at home, taking the plane, but after that . . . I frown and regroup. I am Jan Fletcher. I live in Charlotte and work at the Great Deal store on Tryon in the University area. I drive a white Camry, bought secondhand from the Town and Country dealership on South Boulevard. I can see my apartment in my head: the fading, hand-stenciled vines on the bathroom wall, the smell of the neighbor’s ratty terrier that poops under the gardenia bush by the front door. I am on vacation . . .

The word sounds bleakly funny, but I brush past the urge to laugh because I know it will turn into a sob, and I try to remember more. What happened after I arrived? Was I in a car accident?

I squeeze my eyes shut, trying to make sense of why I think of that first, but can recall nothing relevant, nothing connecting me to a car or a wreck. I came to see Simon and Melissa, Brad, Kristen, and Marcus. That, I’m sure of.

Marcus . . .

Did I see them? I feel sure I did but the details don’t come. I reach for them, and the effort to push through the haze to the truth of what happened next is almost physical, like straining against a heavy door in my mind.

It doesn’t open.

I set both feet and rise unsteadily. I can stand straight without straining my left arm unduly. I turn onto my side on the concrete bed with its thin mattress and take a long step with my right foot, feeling all the slack leave the chain around my left wrist as I lean away from the ring in the wall. I stretch out with my right hand, straining, reaching . . .

Nothing.

I am covering about six feet of the cell, and the cabinet on the wall—if that is what it is—will be at least a foot deep, maybe more, but if my echolocation guesstimate about the size of the cell is right, that leaves me still two feet short of reaching it. It may as well be a mile. I pull at the manacle, twisting my wrist back and forth, but the bracelet lodges at the base of my thumb and won’t move. I lean away from the wall till the pain becomes intolerable, then give up.

I sag back onto the bed, feeling far more weary than the action merits. I still can’t remember how I have wound up here and, coupled with my thin, ragged breathing, I wonder suddenly if I have been drugged.

Or assaulted.

There is still the smell of the blood, on my right hand particularly, though when I rub my fingers together, they feel dry and grainy, not slick. I smell them again, recoil at the scent, and begin feeling for injuries. The back of my head is throbbing and tender, but there’s no wetness:

a bump, not a cut.

My fingers go to my face. Then my arms. Then my legs and, with a little sob that forces its way out, up my thighs. I am wearing a dress, knee length, lowish at the neck and short sleeved. It is light and simple—cotton, I think. It feels familiar.

Mine. I know it. I can almost remember putting it on. In Crete. In a hotel? No. A house or . . . a place we had rented. A place Simon had rented.

I have a bra on underneath, also soft and comfortable, and panties, all of which feel intact. I feel no bruising, no tenderness anywhere except on the back of my head and a little ways above my right eye. A fall? Or a blow? Maybe both.

But no cuts and no sign of sexual violence.

The words come to me from a TV crime show. Sexual violence. It is one of those phrases whose bald factualness dodges a million horrors.

I have not been raped, or at least not in ways I can detect, though that is an uncomfortable proviso and points at the hole where my memory should be. I shy away from it again, the dark pit of unguessable depth, and cling instead to what I can deduce. Someone has put me here. I do not know why. If they wanted me dead, I would be. But I am not.

Which means they will come back.

I shift uneasily. My left arm already feels tired from the awkward angle I am holding it, and the wrist is chafed from the metal of the manacle. I tug at it till my hand protests but feel no give in the chain or the ring in the wall. Someone is coming back, and I am stuck here. Powerless.

And then there’s the blood, I remind myself.

Yes. I have blood on my hands, and my dress around the waist feels stiff with it too. I can’t be sure, not without light, but in my heart it makes sense, as if there is something I will eventually remember that will make sense of the gore on my hands and clothes. The dried clumps of it I feel in my hair.

I can’t remember how it got there.

I feel my body over again, rolling and adjusting to probe every inch of flesh. My head has been battered, and I must have a nasty black eye, but it is no ragged wound, no slash or puncture that would have bled like that.

Which can mean only one thing.

The blood I am caked in belongs to someone else.