Broken Wings (A Romantic Suspense)(67)

That’s what she’s like. Her eyes. Like some lizard.

“It’s going to be alright,” she says, reassuring me in a voice like honey.

I nod and turn away. She expects me to be meek, keep my eyes down, not look at her. I play my part.

The driver takes us to the airport and to a private plane. I trudge up the steps, trying to think of how I can get out of this and get to Jack. I’m drawing a blank, but I have to do something.

“Fuck,” I mutter.

“What did you say?”

“Nothing.”

Mom watches me lower myself into my seat and clips the seat belt for me, tugging it snugly around my waist. Something about the way she doesn’t quite look at me sets off alarm bells.

It’s like there’s a puzzle in my head, all the pieces swirling around. Sometimes they catch on each other and the picture starts to take shape before the wind picks up and blows them apart again. She sits down on the other side and straps herself in. The engines spin up to a steady drone and I grip the armrests, hard.

I’ve never flown before.

“It’s about a nine-hour flight. Try to get some sleep, honey.”

Sleep? I don’t need sleep, my mind is going a mile a minute. Where did they take Jack? What’s going to happen to him? Would Richard hurt his own son?

Mom toys with her phone until the plane starts to move and she slips it away into her jacket. She adjusts herself in the seat, glancing at me with every move like she’s willing me to go to sleep.

I might as well play along. I look out the window while the plane leans back and leaves the ground, staring at the runway sliding away from me. My whole body clenches in fear, but it fades quickly. The fear of flying is nothing next to my fear for Jack. My heart has been ripped out and sits beating in someone else’s hand.

Think, Ellie. I have to get back to him somehow. We have to get out of this. There has to be something I can do, someone I can call for help.

No, I’m going to have to help myself.

When we’re in the air I lean back and close my eye. Might as well play along. I won’t sleep, I can’t.

I do anyway.

I’m in the dark. Shadows and mists gather and fade away, flowing out of the black like thunderheads in a massive storm. I hear distant voices and every few seconds catch my name whispered, like a nail dragging across my skin.

No, not whispered, shouted but muffled by distance or something else. Images slide by my eyes. A street lamp rises from the mist like a mythical creature rising from the depths, bent and twisted, the broken light’s jagged teeth like a lamprey’s mouth. An animal screech in the distance drags red-hot spikes down my bones.

I can feel my body. Halfway between sleeping and waking, I know it’s a dream, but it grabs my feet and pulls me deeper into the dark. The blackness grows deeper, impenetrable. I can’t see my own hands, or maybe in this place of shadow and dust I simply don’t have any.

A familiar voice flows through the darkness, like a warm wind in my face.

“Ellie.”

That’s my dad. My dad’s voice. I haven’t heard his voice in ten years. I run toward it even if I can’t feel my feet.

“This is insane, Jessica. I’ve had enough. I took her to your goddamn personal trainer yesterday. I waited around until she changed and came out to exercise with him. I could see her ribs through her clothes. You’re not going to starve my daughter and you’re not going to push her into show business. I know what they do to girls like her. It’s not happening. Period.”

I feel wood under my hands. Old and worn smooth by age. Cold. A brass doorknob under my fingers. Where am I? I open my eyes and I’m not on a plane, I’m in the hallway. At home, in my house. The carpet is soft under my toes. The doorknob is cold in my left hand…

I can feel my hand.

My unscarred hand. The skin smooth and pale, each slender finger ending in a neatly trimmed nail. I didn’t paint my fingernails but my toenails were pink. Jack thought it was funny.

The doorknob turns easily around its oiled core, and the door swings open.

“What are you guys yelling about?”

My voice comes out of my throat high and clear, and foreign. I always knew that my voice changed after the accident but I wasn’t sure how, I had no way to compare it. There are pictures and movies but I’ve never looked at any of them, I couldn’t. I couldn’t bear to see what I’d lost.

“Nothing, honey,” Dad says.

He stands in Jessica’s office in slacks and a wool cardigan. I feel like something cold just walked on my back. It’s the set of clothes he died in.

“Don’t you have to get ready for your little date tonight?”

“Oh, yeah.”

I’m like a passenger in my own body, trapped behind my own eyes. My feet carry me back to my bedroom. It feels so much bigger, more open. I sit down at the dresser and my unscarred face stares back at me. I start to brush my hair.

Oh God, I can’t do this. Not this. Make it stop.

It’s still happening. I put my hair in a French braid. It’s not really long enough but it looks cute. I layer on too much makeup but I don’t know that, and change into the sexiest dress I’m allowed to own.

Dad is right. I can feel my ribs when I run my hands down my body. Jack… Jack said something to me about it and I got mad at him. That’s right, he said I was getting too skinny, he was going to hog-tie me and feed me pizza.