Collared(56)

She’s about to lower her hand when I grab it. I shake it gently. Even though touching others has gotten easier, it still burns a little. Kind of like an arm waking up after sleeping on it all night.

“I’m sorry it took me so long to do this.” I reach for the pot of coffee and pour some into all of our cups. Mom left cream and sugar out, but none of us take any. “Thanks for your patience.”

Detective Reyes is clearly taking the lead in the interview since, other than smiling at me and sliding into a chair across from me, Burnside hasn’t said a thing. I wonder if that’s because the department thought putting a female on the case would make it easier on the victim. I wonder if everyone sees me as being so damaged I won’t trust another man again.

Maybe they’re right. I don’t know.

Burnside pulls a recorder out of his jacket and sets it on the table. I stare at the thing I’m about to spill my soul out to, and I wonder if when I’m done, I’ll feel better or worse. I think I know.

“First off, how are you doing?” Reyes takes the lead with the questions as I’d guessed she would. Burnside’s probably just here as a formality.

“I’m okay,” I say on autopilot. My expression even knows the way to form so I seem convincing. “Each day gets a little easier.”

When Reyes nods at me, I get the impression she knows my secret though. She knows, but she doesn’t say anything.

“We’d like to ask you some questions. I realize some of them might be uncomfortable for you, so just take as much time as you need, okay? We cleared our schedules for the rest of the day, so we’ve got nowhere to rush off to. Take as long as you need.”

The thought of spending the rest of the day with these detectives, answering questions about those ten years, makes the room sway. I have to grip the edge of my chair to stay in it. I take a breath and nod. I’m not ready, but that doesn’t seem to matter to anyone anymore.

“The night you were taken, how did Jackson get you into his van?” Reyes folds her hands on the table and waits.

No one’s taken a drink of his or her coffee. No one’s sneaked a cookie from the plate in the middle of the table.

“He said he was lost. Had a map and was trying to find Driscoll Street.” I swallow and try to remember without reliving the scene. “When I got close enough, he injected me with something. I don’t know what, but it made me foggy right away, and then my body kind of gave out, and after that . . . I don’t know how long I was blacked out.”

“When you woke up, where were you?”

I try to figure out how to keep my voice as emotionless as Reyes’s. “In a dark closet. I didn’t know it was a closet at first, or that it was inside his house, but that’s where I woke up. I don’t know if it was hours or days later. I’m guessing days.”

The essence of the panic I awoke with floats up from the place where I’ve tried to bury it. My breaths quicken.

“And how long did he keep you in the closet?”

“I don’t know.”

“What would you guess?” Reyes presses.

I want to tell her what dark like that does to a person. How direction and time and everything are lost and totally meaningless. “I don’t know.”

“Weeks? Months?” Reyes pauses. “Years?”

I don’t know, so I go with answer B. “Months, I think.”

“And what did you do during this time?”

Besides survive? “I screamed a lot at first, thinking someone might hear me. Then I moved on to crying. Then I gave up on that and mostly just slept.”

“And what did Jackson do during this time you were in the closet?”

I know what she’s asking. I thought this had been clear and confirmed by the hospital tests, but apparently no one can believe that I spent ten years with the man who kidnapped me and wasn’t molested in some way.

“Nothing. I mean, he talked to me. Brought in fresh water and food and a fresh bucket, but that was all the contact I had with him at first.”

“What did he talk about?”

I stare at the recorder. A little red light flashes on it, and I watch that until it puts me into a trance. “He called me Sara. He referred to me as his daughter. He talked about memories of them going to the park, the time he taught her to swim. He said that he wasn’t going to let anyone take me away from him again. He promised he’d keep me safe.”

“And did you say anything back?”

I blink, focusing on the red light again. “At first I tried to convince him that I wasn’t his daughter and to let me go, but after a while, that dark closet just kinda broke me. By the end, I would have said anything, been anyone, just to get out of it.”

Burnside shifts in his chair.

“When he finally let you out, what happened then?” Reyes continues.

Even though she doesn’t have a notepad in front of her, I can tell she’s crossing off questions one at a time.

“Um . . .” I rub my neck and tug at the neck of the sweater. “He chained me up. At first the chain was only long enough to move around a bedroom, but as time went by, he kept adding a little more length until I could move around most of the first floor.”

“Did he ever take the collar off of you?” Reyes glances at my neck, but her eyes don’t linger there.