The Vanishing Year(80)
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He brings me trays of food, and I become fixated on the clock each time I’m awake. 6:27 a.m. 4:13 p.m. 5:42 a.m. I try to track the days, but I keep losing count and have to start over. I give up trying to remember and with my free hand, press my thumbnail into the skin along my hip bone until it comes away tinged pink with blood. One half-moon for each day. Or what I think is a day, sometimes it’s hard to remember if it was a.m. or p.m. when I woke last, and therefore has it been a day or twelve hours? I can pass my index finger over the healing lines, feel the scabs, and count. Sometimes, when I bolt awake, panicked and gasping, I feel for these small incisions. Six, I’ve been here six days. Then eight. Then ten.
I think he dresses me in Tara’s clothes, black cocktail dresses and silk pantsuits. Where would an agoraphobic wear pantsuits?
He walks me to the bathroom, two, maybe three times a day, handcuffed with the steel tip of the gun in my back and then plank-walks me back to bed. Then, he props me up, feeds me crackers and juice. Talks to me, tells me about his day. His words float around, echoing as though he’s in an airplane hangar. If I say what too many times, he gets angry. I wonder what he wants with me? Will I just be here forever? His replacement Tara, chained to the bed like an animal?
Will I die here?
Will anyone miss me?
Does anyone care?
A shot to the leg. I barely feel it.
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I’ve started getting sick. Throwing up, hot green bile on the bed, which makes Henry furiously angry.
“What will you do with me?” I ask him, weakly, a long string of spit trailing from my mouth. I’m lying on my side, my face sweating. Whatever he’s injecting me with, it’s too much. My body has started to reject it. It’s making me nauseated and weak. I will die here, in this isolated house in clothes that are not mine.
He’s toweling up my filth and he smiles, a clever, Henry-ish smile. “Yates called me, said she’s been trying to call you. I said you’d left me. You were staying at a hotel in the city and I didn’t know which one. She said she had news on Mick, so I’m guessing she’s discovered his death. A shockingly good detective for a woman. He was living under a different name. WITSEC, you know?” He says all this conversationally, as he works at a stubborn sticky spot on the bare mattress. “After you left town, he turned state’s witness, brought down the whole organization. He did a very small amount of prison time, then went into witness protection. I figured it out easily enough, but then again, I’m fairly well connected. The feds, they don’t talk much to the police.”
My head feels heavy and I let it sink down to my arm, my face wet with tears, sweat. Maybe spit. I am starting to stink.
“But what will you do with me?” I ask again, dumbly, not knowing if he’d even answered the question or not.
“We have three months until hunting season. See, you’ll come back to me then. Realize your mistake, how much you’ve missed me. You’re all alone in the world, Zoe, you have no one. You only have me. You leave your hotel, come back here. To beg for my forgiveness. You try to find me in the woods behind the house, as a surprise.” His voice has lowered to a whisper, his finger caressing my cheek. “I’ll think I’ve hit a deer. It’s tragic, really.”
“Henry, people will look for me. Officer Yates, Lydia, Cash. Someone will wonder. You can’t get away with this.”
“Tara never thought I was stupid, Zoe. But you, you question me at every turn. Honestly, it’s so infuriating.” He says this conversationally. “I asked Yates to pass it along to Cash and Lydia. We had a rather heated conversation about your past. Your secrets. I told her everything, your drug pushing. Evelyn. You are not the person everyone thinks you are.” He purrs in my ear. “You just want to be left alone. You’re afraid. You’ve run away again.” He walks over to the dresser, picks up a wad of cash, waves it in my face. “You’ve even taken some of my money.”
I had shared different pieces of my story with different people, but no one knew the whole thing. Cash knew the most, he wouldn’t be deterred. But, but, he would go to Yates first. After her talk with Henry, she’d assume I’d stolen Henry’s money and skipped town.
Henry lies on the bed, curled into me, his breath hot and wet on my neck and I want to kick him away but I can’t make my legs cooperate. Three months. He’s going to keep me here for three months.
I’ll die first.
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I wake up covered in urine. I smell it before I feel it. Henry is ripping the sheets from underneath me and I tumble against my cuffed wrist, shearing the skin until the blood runs down my arm, which enrages him even more. He is angry, yelling words I can’t understand. The sheets come away piss yellow and red. He rips off my underpants and nightgown, feels along my hip, those crusty ridges. He asks me, What the fuck is this? I answer him, It’s my clock. I don’t think it through; it just comes out and not even coherent. I can’t even be sure of what I say, it sounds garbled. All he hears is clock.
He marches to the dresser. Rips the clock cord out of the wall and slams the door behind him. With my free hand, I feel along my naked hip. Twelve days. I’ve been here twelve days.
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I think he leaves the house during the day. I force myself awake, hear the door slam, the car slide down the driveway. I scream for as long as I can. I imagine Trisha from the market down the road in a little pink warm-up suit, shiny and metallic looking, a bright purple sweatband, new sneakers, trekking past the house, on a power walk trying for the last time to lose the baby weight. I scream for Trisha. I scream until my voice gives out and I am weak, hoarse. I scream all day. Or at least what I think is all day. I scream until Henry comes home.