Margot Dalton - In Plain Sight

Cautiously Ellie raised herself on one elbow and saw him carrying a folded newspaper back to his room. He must be planning to read in bed.

She settled down under the covers, wondering what Nashville was like, imagining her mother’s look of amazement when Ellie turned up on her doorstep. “Hi there,” Ellie would say casually. “I was in the neighborhood and thought I’d drop in.”

Or she could say, “Howdy, ma’am. I heard you’re a big country-music star and I thought maybe you needed a cook and housekeeper.”

Annie was going to like that, Ellie thought drowsily. She always loved being called a star.

As she drifted off to sleep, Ellie acknowledged that she wasn’t really sure how her mother would receive her. With Annie, you never really knew. It depended on her mood, on whether she was gaining or losing weight and what else was going on in her life at the time.

Still, putting up with her mother’s moods was a whole lot better than facing Cody Pollock and his friends every day.

With a final shiver of revulsion, Ellie fell asleep and darkness closed in on the house again.

ISABEL BLINKED in the warm glow of sunlight. She opened her eyes and saw a patchwork quilt over her body, a green wall hung with framed pictures of children, a dusty nightstand and a wicker basket on the floor, piled with laundry.

She had a moment of intense panic, unable to recall where she was or how she’d come to be here.

Breathing deeply, she forced herself to stay calm and concentrate. Like images from some hazy, badly made movie, she saw herself pushing the car over the cliff, then jumping down behind it. She recalled the jarring shock of her landing, the scratches and blood, the hunger and chill and wetness as she fought her way through the brush. And the endless day that followed, when the oppressive heat had emphasized her throbbing pain, hunger and relentless thirst.

And then the sickening terror of creeping into the darkened house and being caught by that hairy giant wielding a club.

Isabel gripped the quilt and looked around wildly. Beyond that encounter, her memories weren’t nearly as clear. She’d been taking some food when he sneaked up behind her and grabbed her. After that she could dimly recall being handled and moved, the sheer bliss of finding herself immersed in warm sudsy water, and later a man giving her clothes while she pleaded with him not to tell anyone about her.

Isabel frowned in confusion and lifted her right arm, examining the neat gauze bandage. The arm was still swollen, though it didn’t feel as tender as it had the day before.

But had she also asked that hard-faced stranger to cut her hair?

Surely not. That part must have been a dream, one of the confused fantasies that kept jostling around in her mind.

Tentatively, she reached to touch her head and encountered the cropped, silky strands around her ears. She raised herself on her elbows in sudden alarm. If that man really had cut her hair, then he must also have been the one who’d helped to cover her nakedness when she almost fainted right after getting out of the bathtub. But who was he, and where was this farmhouse?

She noticed a glass of water and a plastic pill container on the nightstand, sitting on a sheet of paper with some handwriting on it. Isabel lifted the little container and saw it held several oblong yellow pills.

“If you’ve had no adverse reaction,” the note said, “take another antibiotic pill when you wake up. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

The pharmacist’s label was from Wall’s Drugstore in Crystal Creek and read “Dan Gibson: Take one tablet every four hours.”

Isabel hesitated, then took one of the pills and gulped it down with a mouthful of water. She sat upright on the edge of the bed, feeling dizzy again, and dropped her head to her knees until the feeling passed.

When her mind cleared she stood up and looked down at what she wore—a man’s white shirt and plaid cotton boxer shorts.

In a cheval mirror by the dresser, Isabel caught sight of herself and stared in horror. Her face was scratched and bruised, her eyes darkly shadowed, and the cropped hair stood up every which way. With the baggy clothes and her bandaged arm, she looked like a waif, some kind of pitiful refugee from disaster.

“Well, I guess that’s what I am,” she said aloud, almost jumping at the sound of her voice in the quiet house.

Moving cautiously, she ventured to the door of the room and peered down the hallway. She could faintly recall the man saying something about having children in the house, and the need for her to stay out of sight in the bedroom.

But nobody appeared to be home at the moment. The place was silent except for birdsong drifting through the open windows, and the distant sound of the river.

Isabel walked slowly into the messy bathroom, recalling her blissful soak in that tub and later the man standing beside her to cut and blow-dry her hair.

She went into the kitchen and found a pot of coffee on a sideboard. The room appeared to have been hastily abandoned, with dishes stacked carelessly on the counter and in the sink. Evidence of children was everywhere. A smeared high chair sat at the table next to a couple of cartoon mugs with lids and straws, and toys littered the floor all the way into the living room and out to the porch.

Isabel poured herself a cup of coffee and added some cream from the fridge, but gave up looking through the disorganized cabinets for sugar. Instead, she toasted two slices of bread and ate them hungrily.

But by the time she’d devoured a banana and most of the remaining grapes, she was starting to feel guilty. Clearly the people who lived in this house didn’t have a lot of money, yet she was gobbling all their food and had no way of paying for it.

With sudden alarm she rushed back to the bedroom, moving so quickly that her head began to throb with pain again. On the floor near the window she found her jogging pants and shirt. They’d been washed and dried but were both ragged, stained with blood. Under the clothes were her bra and panties, also clean but tattered, along with the still damp leather cross-trainers.

Isabel’s heart sank. She lifted the right shoe and shook it, but she already knew the locker key was no longer there.

“I have the key,” a voice said behind her. “I put it away for you.”

Braced to flee, she turned to face the man. But this wasn’t the hairy, half-naked giant she dimly remembered from the night before. This was a tall, youngish man with light brown hair and green eyes, broad-shoulders and a strong, calm face.

“How are you feeling?” he asked.

Isabel stood with the shoe in her hand, at a loss for words.

“Here,” he said, opening a wooden box on the dresser. “This is the key I found in your shoe.”

He held it out to her. She accepted the key, then merely clutched it in helpless silence.

“How about if I put it back?” he suggested gently. “It’ll be right here in this box.”

She nodded and gave him the key. His hands were big and square, with callused palms and surprisingly long fingers.

Nice hands, Isabel thought, remembering how they’d trimmed her hair and bandaged her arm with such gentleness.

“Thank you,” she whispered. “Thank you so much for helping me.”

He was watching her intently. “I didn’t have much choice, did I?”

“You could have thrown me out,” she said. “Lots of people would have.”

“That’s not the way we treat folks here in the country.” He moved to the door. “Care to join me?” he asked over his shoulder. “I haven’t had a chance to eat breakfast yet.”

“But aren’t your children…” Isabel began nervously.

“I took them over to my uncle’s place for a few days. None of them have any idea you’re here.”