Most of All You: A Love Story(67)
“Yeah. It did feel good.” I considered her question a few seconds longer. “It felt good to be able to talk about what happened to me and feel the true sense of having moved past it. Some of the stuff we talked about brought up difficult memories, but I was okay an hour later, you know? In the beginning, it took such a long time to bounce back when some memory or another assaulted me. Now … I feel like I’m the one in control.”
She nodded, and I couldn’t dismiss the pride in her eyes. It warmed me, made me feel good, as if my survival was an accomplishment I could claim. She opened her mouth to say something but then closed it, obviously reconsidering whatever she’d been about to say. I watched as several expressions moved over her face. “Ellie, you can ask me anything. The things I told Chloe are yours, too, if you want them. There isn’t anything I’d give to her that I wouldn’t give to you.”
She smiled a sad sort of smile. “I’m just not sure what to ask. I guess … I guess just how? How did you survive that kind of horror?”
I licked my lips, looking off into the field behind her, thinking how familiar this seemed to me in a strange, distorted sort of way. Lying with Eloise in the daffodil fields. “When I was first abducted, I was terrified of course. I was traumatized and confused and desperate to get out of there. But after a while, it was the boredom that started eating away at me. I knew that if I hoped to get out of there someday, I had to stay sane. I had to keep my mind occupied. I did math in my head a lot, but it didn’t help the loneliness.” I paused, thinking back to those days, remembering them as the most desolate of all the time I’d spent down there.
“One day I was scratching something into the wall with a penny I’d found on the floor, when a big chunk came loose.”
“You started digging a tunnel?” she asked, her eyes wide.
I chuckled. “No. I was in a basement. I could have chipped through the entire wall over the course of fifty years and I’d still be underground.”
Her face fell, the look in her eyes horror stricken, obviously imagining—maybe for the first time—the details of the situation I’d been in.
“I’d been carving with my dad since I was little. I had some skill for a kid, some promise anyway. I had the penny and I found a paperclip, and I used them to carve a figure, crude at first, but all I had was time and so I worked on it. I started over several times with smaller pieces I got from different places—behind the radiator, behind some boxes of old clothes he had down there, in dark corners—that wouldn’t be noticed, and I made a set of figurines and named them for the things I loved. I was so afraid I’d forget what love felt like, and they helped me remember. They were a royal court of hope and they were my friends. My only friends. They were the reason I didn’t break. They kept my mind and hands occupied and my hope alive. They reminded me that there are sparrows in the trees and fields of daffodils, and best friends, and even though I was in a cold dusty box, I might see those things again and that faith kept me alive until I did.”
“Oh, Gabriel,” she whispered, tears coming to her eyes. “They encouraged you when you had nothing else.”
I smiled softly. “Yes.” I tilted my head, thinking. “Maybe it was easier to accept the encouragement from characters, even characters I myself created, than for it to come straight from me. Funny, but it worked. It was like they embodied the people and things I loved and helped me remember their words of wisdom, the things they might have said to me if they could.”
A tear slipped down her cheek, and I caught it on my thumb. “Please don’t be sad. It’s how I survived. It’s how I saved myself. It’s how I’m lying here with you now.”
She leaned forward and kissed my lips, cupping my face in her hand. “Chloe called you extraordinary. And now I know exactly why.”
I smiled at her, glad she didn’t ask for more specifics at that moment. I’d tell her, but for some reason, I had a feeling now wasn’t the time. She’d been trapped in a dark basement, too. Not by a tormentor, but by circumstances. Circumstances that had made me feel that she didn’t belong in the Platinum Pearl when I first met her. Her circumstances had changed, but I sensed that in some ways she was still fighting for her escape.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Beautiful things happen when you least expect them.
Lemon Fair, the Queen of Meringue
ELLIE
Chloe had stayed the weekend in Morlea so she had time to do some local sightseeing. She came over that night before dinner to say goodbye and thank Gabriel for the time he’d given her.
I left the room to give them a few minutes to talk, and when I came back into the living room, they were hugging, Chloe facing me so I could see the look of affection and sadness on her face. Her eyes were squeezed tight, and for a moment I just watched them, a streak of jealousy making me feel petty. I looked away as they let go of each other, and when Chloe spotted me, she rushed over and grabbed me in a hug, too.
“We didn’t get to spend enough time together, Ellie. Next time?”
She stood back and took my hands in hers, squeezing them and smiling at me. “Will you be back?” I asked.
“Oh, definitely. I’m going to personally deliver a published copy of this paper when it’s done.” Her smile widened. “I’m going to make Gabriel proud with it.”