Hold Me Close(51)

She disconnected without waiting for him to say anything and handed the phone back. Polly slipped it into her purse and gave her mother an expectant look. Effie took her keys from the ignition.

“C’mon,” she said. “Let’s call Nana instead. I bet she’ll be excited.”





chapter twenty-three

Effie wants out of the hospital. There’s nothing wrong with her. Nothing physical, anyway. Nothing they can fix with bandages or stitches or a cast. She’s sure there are pills she could take that would make a lot of the memories go away, but she’s done with drugs. The doctors are concerned about withdrawal. They told her that, without knowing what exactly Daddy had been giving them, they can’t predict how she’ll react to not taking anything. They want to monitor her.

Heath, they sent home.

He’s not a minor, and she still is. He doesn’t have insurance, and Effie, through her parents, still does. It’s not fair, she knows that, but she’s not sure if it’s because it feels as if Heath has been set free or shunted aside.

“I want to go home,” she tells her mother, who is fussing and cooing over her until Effie wants to scream. “I just want to go home.”

“Tomorrow.” That’s the promise Effie’s heard for the past three days, but her mother seems to believe it. She pats and smooths the blankets over Effie’s feet and offers her a drink from the plastic cup and straw and some pudding, and Effie chokes down everything because all she wants is to be out of here.

She wants Heath, too. They would not let him in to see her after that first day when the two of them, filthy and aching and sick and starving, had been brought in the ambulance with Officer Schmidt there to make sure everything was all right. Her father had told her Heath had been released. Her mother refused to talk about Heath at all.

Another day passes with tests and probing and being woken in the night to have her blood pressure checked. Effie is exhausted. She’s gained a pound, which seems to make the doctors happy enough to send her home. She has to sit in a wheelchair, although there’s nothing wrong with her legs. Hospital policy. When her father pushes her through the doors and out into the unexpectedly bright sunshine, Effie looks up at the sky and sneezes, hard, four or five times.

Her father laughs. “There’s my girl.”

All Effie wants to do is to stand under the shower in her own bathroom until the hot water runs out. Then she wants to put on clean pajamas and crawl into bed and sleep until she can’t sleep anymore. Yet not even that simple desire is meant to be fulfilled, because as they pull up to the house, she sees too many cars. And there are people outside in the front yard. Balloons. A sign.

Welcome Home!

Oh, no, Effie thinks as she looks out the car window. Oh, no. There’s nothing she can do about it, though. Her father has invited the neighbors. Family. And, once she gets inside, there are a few strangers who’ve made their way into the kitchen to stand with plastic cups of punch beneath the balloons. Strangers who want to ask her questions that Effie refuses to answer.


Her father throws them out, but it’s too late by that point. Effie has broken into tears and screams, retreating to her room to slam the door in the faces of everyone who wants to point and stare. The only person she really wants to see, needs to see, was not invited.

All she really wants is Heath, but though he promised he would never, ever leave her, he is gone. Her father sits on the edge of Effie’s bed and pats her shoulder awkwardly. In the past, he would have hugged her tight, but there’s a distance now between them, and Effie knows why. She’s not his little girl anymore. He thinks things happened to her in the basement, and he’s right, of course. Things did. But it shouldn’t matter to him, and it does. Maybe he thinks Effie would push him away, or that she doesn’t want his comfort, but she does, desperately.

When she tries to lean against him, her father’s stiff posture and the hesitant cough pushes her back an inch or so. She draws her knees to her chest and rests her chin on them. Her hair, wet and clinging to her face, annoys her, so she leans to reach in her nightstand for a hair tie. There were a whole bunch of them in the drawer before she was taken, and they’re still in there.

That starts her crying again. Everything in her room is the same. The house, mostly the same. Her parents look older, and they, too, are mostly the same.

Only Effie seems to have changed.

“He’s my friend,” she says. “You don’t understand.”

“I understand that the two of you formed a special relationship. But your mother and I think that it’s better for now if you have some time here, with us. To readjust. If he’s truly your...friend...he’ll understand.”

“You filled the house with people I don’t want to see. And strangers,” Effie said. “Journalists.”

Her father looks so sad that Effie wishes she hadn’t said anything. “I’m so sorry, Effie. They must’ve found out about the party somehow and showed up. Believe me, I would never have allowed them in. I thought family and friends would make you feel more at home. I thought it would help.”

“Heath would help me.”

His shoulders sag. He sighs. Her father knuckles his eyes, pressing so hard for a moment that Effie’s sure he must be seeing stars. Then he takes the phone from its cradle on her nightstand and punches in a number he must’ve memorized. At her look, her father gives Effie a sad, broken smile.