Hold Me Close(92)

“It’s not enough. Not for me,” she said. “What if I said, let’s try? We have a child together. She’s amazing. You could get to know her. We could see what happens. We could make an effort.”

“We can’t try anything together, you and me. It will never work. You can pretty it up however you want to, or say whatever you want, but that’s the truth,” Bill said. “Me and you? Never going to happen, not like that. And you know it as well as I do, and you know why. All the wishing in the world can’t change it.”

She went at him with both fists, and he let her smack his face first, then pummel his chest, before he held her off with one hand. Sobbing, Effie collapsed against him. Bill held her for a moment before pushing her, hard, a few steps away. Without another word, he left her in the den and headed for the kitchen. He came back a minute later with his coat in one hand. Effie hadn’t moved.

At the front door, her shout stopped him long enough to face her.

“How do you know?” Effie asked.

Bill looked...sad. For a moment, something glinted in his eyes before he steeled his expression. Gave her nothing but cold.

“Locks, remember? All over that f*cking door. That’s what you are, Effie. A locked f*cking door. And it’s all you’ll ever be. At least for anyone else but him.”

After that, she had nothing else to say to him.





chapter forty

“How do you get the ideas?” Heath asks, watching her. He’s been quiet until now.

Effie’s not sure how to answer him. She uses her fingertip to smudge the lines. “My imagination. How does anyone get any ideas?”

“I have loads of ideas, but none of them could become a drawing. At least, I couldn’t draw it.”

She looks at him with a smile. “You could, if you tried.”

“Nah. You have talent. That’s not something you can learn. You have to have it already.” He gets off the bed and looks over her shoulder. He points to something she’d tried on a whim. “What’s that?”

“It’s us.” She looks at him, then touches the tiny marks she’d made inside the bark of a tree.

“A clock?”

“Yes.” Effie waits to see if he will understand.

Heath is quiet for half a minute or so. Then he says, “It’s...time. It’s all the time we’ve been down here.”

“Yes.” Effie looks up to the orangey, blurry lamps and blinks hard, but it doesn’t do any good.

Her head still hurts from concentrating so hard on the drawing in such horrible light. Yesterday the soup had tasted faintly metallic. She’s still fuzzy from the pills that must’ve been crushed up inside it. They’d saved it the longest because it was the least likely to spoil. It’s been three days since the bright lights came on and that song, the one that makes her stomach sick. It’s not the longest time they’ve gone without Daddy coming into the basement, but they have started to portion out the food in case it goes on a lot longer.

Heath looks at her. “It’s a secret.”

“Yeah. Like we are.” Effie puts down the broken nub of her pencil. She’s used up all the paints in the set. “It’s all the hours we’ve been down here.”

“All the lost hours,” Heath says.

The phrase stabs Effie in her heart. “Yeah.”

All the lost hours. She works awhile longer, smudging and shading. The clock in the tree doesn’t have regular numbers, one through twelve. She uses thirteen, fifteen. Their ages when they were taken. She uses one hundred and four, the number of weeks she’s been able to count so far. She adds some other hidden figures, just for fun.

“I wish I had something better to use. I could probably make really great paintings if I did.” She faces him before he can say a word. “I’m sorry. That’s ungrateful. I don’t mean it, Heath. I’m sorry.”


He shakes his head. “It’s okay.”

Effie sits next to him to take his hand. Her fingers are dirty with the remnants of her picture. “No. I know what it takes for Daddy to give me new supplies. I won’t have it.”

“It doesn’t matter, Effie,” Heath says in a low voice. He won’t look at her, but his fingers squeeze hers, tight. “I’ll have to do it anyway.”

Effie curls up next to him, her head on his shoulder. “Not for something as stupid as paints.”

“You hungry?” Heath asks. “We should eat before the lights go off.”

She’s always hungry, but all they have left is tiny portions of disgusting food. Yeah, sure, they picked through it all to try to get rid of anything truly foul, but sometimes she thinks eating in the dark would be better. At least then they wouldn’t have to see what Daddy’s laced the food with.

“I guess so. A little.”

“I’m thirsty.” Heath gets up to open the creaking cupboard. He pulls out a bottle of lemonade. He shakes it, holds it up to the dim lighting. “It was opened, but it looks okay.”

They share the drink and a package of stale pretzels that taste slightly bitter but don’t make her feel sick. Effie makes Heath take more than she does. He’s bigger and needs it. Besides, though she can’t say so without making him feel bad, he deserves more. He’s the one who works for it.