I’m so grateful to him and the feeling of betraying Mom is fading. If she’s sick, we have to protect her, that’s for sure. I’m about to run back when Dad says, “Maybe we should go on a trip on the Voyageur II tomorrow. Just you, me, and your mom, what do you think?”
My heart skips a beat. I love our trips out on the Atlantic. I get to drink orange juice from a champagne flute and I always feel so light on the ocean, like I have wind in my veins instead of blood. We haven’t been on the ocean in ages because Dad has to work so much all the time.
I look at him and I’m sure my eyes are shining. “That would be great, Dad.”
He nods. “Now go to Claire and let me talk to your mom…don’t worry, I won’t tell on you.”
A weight the size of a boulder falls from my heart. We’re not leaving Dad. Dad isn’t the bad guy. Mom is sick. She just needs to take her pills and everything will be fine.
Everything will be fine…everything will be fine. The sentence echoes in my head, but the more it repeats itself, the more unreal it seems to me and the more I feel how big the lie behind it is, the more the pain returns. I know I’m going to wake up and end up in a brutal reality, far away from Mom and Dad, far away from everyone I love.
“Mom?” I actually managed to whisper that word even though speaking was incredibly exhausting. I blinked, but Mom was gone. She had simply left me, only the strip of light remained, peeking through the narrow crack in the boards that sealed this room off from all life outside.
Maybe I deserved this.
If I hadn’t betrayed Mom that day, we would never have taken that trip on the Voyageur II. Mom wouldn’t have drowned. She would still be alive and maybe we would have left. Dad would have lost us, Mom and me. Maybe then he would have accepted Isaac as his son and would have been happy to give his love to another child. Isaac wouldn’t have ended up in prison where he had become a victim and he wouldn’t have taken out his torment on me. My half brother had never cared about Coldville, about sick people, dead people, or falsified reports, but only about revenge on my father. On his father. And maybe me too because I was the reason he thought my father had denied him, whether it was true or not.
I blinked several times, trying to remember more despite my foggy mind, but I couldn’t recall the next day on the yacht. It was still in the dark.
Had I told Mom that Dad knew everything? Had Mom and Dad made up or had Dad lost Mom without talking it out?
I didn’t know. I just knew I was guilty.
I stared apathetically at the beam of light and thought I heard Nathan’s voice, but I was certain it was merely my imagination. He couldn’t be here. Even if he knew the bayous and the Atchafalaya Basin inside and out, it would take him years to find me.
Something changed that day. The men downstairs were quieter than usual and I no longer heard music, just the occasional shout of orders. They didn’t seem to be drinking either because I didn’t hear glasses or bottles clinking. Maybe everything was the same and I no longer noticed. Still, changes, however subtle, made me panic. With superhuman strength, I tried standing in order to peer through the wooden boards, but I couldn’t stay on my knees for even three seconds before I toppled over.
At some point, someone downstairs called for Isaac, and shortly after that, the stairs creaked. I recognized Isaac’s footfalls because they sounded different than the others. More determined perhaps. My body automatically reacted with convulsions and I curled up as tight as I could, and when he pushed the door open, he studied me for a while, perhaps because he liked my reaction to his appearance so much. I’ll never know.
“Dad paid,” I heard him say, and I saw his lips move rather than hear the words. “Unfortunately, Nathan is in the area. We think he’s with Rayk, Kjertan, and Ian, at least Alvin and Maury thought they saw a group of men far from here, but not unreachably far away.” He remained silent while I tried to calm my rapidly beating heart. Nathan was here? Somewhere nearby? And Ian? Kjertan and Rayk? Had Rayk changed sides? I hadn’t expected to be able to cry, but I’d thought that many times in this hell.
You cry quite often, I think.
Nathan. For a moment, I saw his curved lips in front of me, which he always pressed together when he was angry. I heard him gently telling a story to Sparta and felt his tender fingers on my sore skin. All this time, I had banished every thought of him since the memory of the beautiful would have tormented me even more; now, however, all the wonderful things of this precious first love flowed into me even more strongly. For a few seconds, I even thought I was in the Palace of Shards becoming part of the light and shadow magic. An eternally flitting, trembling light in the wind.
“It’s time even if we haven’t completed the seven hundred and twelve. We will leave this place, but you will remain here.” Isaac didn’t take his eyes off me and my heart suddenly pumped twice as much blood through my veins. “You will die here because I will personally drown you in the Atchafalaya. Our father will never know where to look for you, but maybe one day, I will tell him. I will probably send him a few pictures or videos that I took of you on some nights…so that I always carry with me a sweet memory of this time. How you wriggled in the ropes like in a net. I’ll look at them one autumn evening when I’m drinking something better than moonshine and paying a hundred whores with our father’s money. Maybe in a clean village in Canada or maybe here in the South in the dilapidated shack where you once played with Nathan. Maybe I’ll buy it and fix it up.”
Indignation, despair, hopelessness. Some of that must have been reflected in my eyes because Isaac laughed and put the bottle of cheap booze that he so often carried around with him on the table.
Bottle, good weapon, I heard Kjertan say, but I couldn’t place the memory. Besides, the moonshine was much too far away.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Isaac undress one last time. One last time before he killed me. He took his time. First, the shirt, then the clinking belt and pants.
He took a handful of nuts from the packet that was always on the table and ate them with relish before taking another handful.
This time, I cried the whole time. This time, I thought of everyone I loved and had loved. Mom, Dad, but especially Nathan. I tried to remember them as my body rubbed helplessly across the floor and the welts from the belt blows tore and burned.A little strange, easy to control, I heard Dad say.But always good.We’ll get through it, Willa Mouse. Be brave, my child. My everything, my day and my night, my star in heaven and my earth. I love you and that will never stop.
Just before he was ready, Isaac stopped and pressed his hand to my forehead to hold me in place. I knew what was coming and pressed my lips together tightly. I wanted to throw my head back and forth, but his steely grip made it impossible. My body reared up in blind panic and I kicked and thrashed with a strength I no longer believed possible.
It was no use. He held my nose and I had to gasp for air. I wanted to scream and beg for my life, but he pushed his tongue between my lips.
My heart stopped. I tasted peanuts and smelled his scent. He kissed me deeply, as deeply as Nathan even though it wasn’t a real kiss. My stomach clenched in disgust, in fear. I didn’t notice much. It was too late and I let it happen as he came inside me one last time.
When he was finished, he stood and looked at me, pulling on his pants. “It was a pleasure, little lady…sweet sister.”
I had to cough. I felt my mucous membranes swell, my nose close up, and my throat tighten. Panic burst through my senses. I had forgotten how bad it had been back then. I gasped for air so hard that Isaac seemed frightened for a few seconds, but thenhe laughed, a strange sound as if he was both sorry and relieved. To this day, that sound echoes in my mind some nights—like so many things.
Have you ever seen someone die, Willa Nevaeh Rae?
