Unmissing(44)

“Ten years ago, I met a man.” My throat thickens, and I interlace my fingers until my knuckles whiten. “We worked together at a diner, back in my hometown—Greenbrook, Washington. We dated for a few months. Inseparable. We were that stereotypical young, dumb, and crazy-in-love couple. Ended up eloping in Vegas one weekend. After that, he convinced me to move with him to Bent Creek—this sleepy little tourist town where his grandfather used to live. He had nothing but fond memories, told me we could find a nice restaurant and make a killing in tips. So we came here with nothing but the clothes on our backs. Found a fully furnished apartment on the east side of town for five hundred bucks a month. Eventually we were going to enroll in the community college, you know, once we were settled.”

Delphine’s slender fingertips lift to her mouth as she listens.

“And we were getting there,” I continue. “We’d been here not quite three months, and everything was going exactly the way we planned . . . before I was taken.”

She sits straight, hands falling to her lap in near slow motion. “Taken?”

I point to her phone on the counter. “You can google me. If you search Lydia Coletto Bent Creek missing woman, I’m the top result.”

She eyes her device but doesn’t move.

“I went out for a hike one Sunday afternoon,” I say. “Alone. Like I always did. Left my husband a note on the kitchen table telling him I’d be back. But an hour into my hike, someone snuck up behind me. Grabbed me. Pinned me. Knocked me out with what I can only assume was chloroform or something similar. When I woke up, I was in a small, dark cabin. Zip ties on my wrists and ankles.”

Delphine massages her lips together, her gaze pinched in my direction.

“For nine years, he held me captive in that little shack in the woods,” I continue. “I’d be left for several days at a time usually. He’d come back to empty my waste bucket and give me just enough food and water to keep me alive so he could torture me—physically, sexually, psychologically.” I wring my hands and inhale a cavernous breath so deep it burns. “I’ve blocked a lot of it out . . . learned early on how to leave my body.”

I rise and lift the left hem of my shirt just above my midriff, showing her a handful of fading scars and various marks, a half dozen souvenirs of The Monster’s abuse. Turning, I pull the right side higher, until she can read the name my captor carved into me with an X-Acto knife, which was surprisingly less painful than the hot lighters he’d pressed against my inner thighs the week before.

Delphine leans forward, squinting as she reads. “L-U-C-A.”

I cover my bare skin and take a seat again, rapping my fingertips against the tabletop in quick succession, momentarily trapped in a memory.

“He carved his name into me,” I say. “Branded me. Like a piece of property. He said I needed something to remember him by when he wasn’t there reminding me . . .”

She lifts a palm. “Wait a minute. Luca. Is that the same Luca you visited the other day? The friend who offered you a job?”

I study her face, a feeble attempt to gauge her reaction. I wouldn’t blame her if she didn’t believe me. There are times I, too, wonder if it was all a dream—a nightmare.

“Yes,” I say. “Turns out the man I married . . . was nothing more than a monster.”

“Wait—Luca was your husband?” Her eyes glow wild with natural disbelief that I don’t take personally.

“He was.” I peer into my lap, folding my hands before picking at a hangnail until it bleeds. “I loved him. Or at least I thought I did.” An endless bout of silence circles between us. “I’ve tried to make sense of it a million times. The only thing I can think of is that he was playing out some sick sexual fantasy of his. That the man I met and fell in love with was nothing more than an act. He lured me to Bent Creek with false promises of a beautiful life together, and then he waited for the right opportunity to do what he’d always planned to do. He let it slip one day that the cabin belonged to his grandfather, that he inherited it after his death years before. Everything he did had been planned. He was just waiting for the right girl to come along so he could execute it.”

She nods, quiet for another beat as she digests this. “How did he know where you were that day?”

With a hand pressed against my lips, I exhale. “There was a GPS tracking device on my backpack. A lot of hikers have them. It’s a safety thing. He would’ve known exactly where I was.”

“Sick bastard.”

“Among other things . . .”

Rising from the table, I fetch a glass of water to tamp down the nausea in my middle.

“For the first few weeks, he’d show up with that day’s paper,” I say. “I’ll never forget that first headline . . . MISSING BENT CREEK NEWLYWED . . . and below that was a blown-up picture from our Vegas wedding. He then proceeded to read the article out loud, grinning wider than a Cheshire cat during the parts that painted him as a grief-stricken husband worried sick about his missing bride. The entire thing was bullshit. Every word of it.” I return to the table. “I mean, it was but it wasn’t. The lies he fed them were the same ones he fed to me. Telling them all about the life we had planned. How I was going to nursing school in the fall. And we were going to open a restaurant someday. That we had big plans for our future. And how we were wild about each other. Even called us soul mates.”