Janice Johnson - Making Her Way Home

So instead of sobbing or screaming or anything useless like that, she inched carefully off the mattress and explored, shuffling her feet forward and holding her hands out in front of her. She’d never been anywhere that was utterly black. That was one of the scariest parts of all.

She hadn’t encountered anything until her hands flattened on a wall. It was just a regular wall, she thought at first, until she felt downward and came to a shelf that was really rough, and discovered that the bottom half of the wall was cold and rough, too. Concrete. Okay, that made sense, if she was in a basement. She and Mom had lived in a basement apartment in Portland for a year. It was dank and mold kept growing in the shower and it had only little tiny windows high on the wall. Sicily had hated it.

She groped her way around the room, hoping she didn’t touch anything really gross, like a big spider or a cockroach. She hated cockroaches. She reached a corner and discovered that this wall didn’t have the concrete part. So it must be an inside wall. Partway along it, she came to the door. It was cold to the touch and felt different from the way her bedroom doors had always felt. That was because it was metal, she realized, and fear stabbed at her. Why would somebody put this kind of door on a bedroom unless it was to keep someone prisoner? She stood there for a minute, breathing hard, trying to picture her aunt’s face, always calm, no matter what.

Aunt Beth would be looking for her. Of course she would be. Even though Sicily wasn’t sure she’d actually wanted a kid.

But that doesn’t matter. She’ll still look. Because…because I saw the look on her face at the funeral when she put her arm around me, stared hard at Grandma and said, “Sicily will be living with me.” Just like that. No question. As if saying, “Don’t argue with me, because there’s no point.”

Reassured, Sicily calmed her breathing and wrapped her hand around the knob. It turned, but nothing else happened. So there must be a dead-bolt lock, like Aunt Beth had on her front door—except doors usually locked from the inside. But Sicily hadn’t expected to be able to just walk out. After a moment, she slid her hand along the wall. The light switch was always right next to the door, right?

But it wasn’t. It turned out to be in a weird place, on the opposite side of the door from where it should have been. If you came into the room, the switch would be behind the door, which so totally didn’t make sense. But then, she thought, her fear peeking out of hiding again, someone must have added this door later. Maybe really recently.

Maybe for her.

She hesitated, afraid of what she might see, then flicked the switch.

For a minute the bright light blinded her and she squeezed her eyes shut. Then, heart pounding, she opened them. Oh, no! There wasn’t even a window. She had really, really wanted a window, even if it was one of the kind that was in a well in the ground and you couldn’t see out of it but a slice of sky. It still might have given her a chance somehow to break the glass and get out, or attract someone’s—anyone’s—attention. But this was like being in a concrete box.

Well, not quite. She’d been right; on two sides, rough concrete reached halfway up the wall. There was a closet on one of the regular walls, but instead of a regular sliding door it had a curtain rod but no curtain, and she could see that it was totally empty. So was the rest of the room except for the mattress and…oh, wow, a bucket. Now her eyes widened. He didn’t think she was going to pee in that, did he? But why else would it be there?

She might have to puke in it pretty soon.

Sicily shivered, wondering if he could see light under the door. But maybe he didn’t care, even if he could. It wasn’t like anyone else would see that a light was on. And anyway, maybe that heavy door fit so tight there wasn’t any kind of crack around it. She hadn’t been able to see light from the other room. And she could still just barely hear voices and laughter that she was sure were coming from a television.

Sicily wrapped her arms around herself. It was kind of cold in here. She remembered how that other basement apartment had been cold all the time, too. It hadn’t had a furnace or even baseboard heaters. Mom and she had to use plug-in space heaters, and Mom always said they should never leave them on when they went out or at night when they were asleep, because they could cause fires. So they’d each had a huge heap of blankets and comforters on their beds, and Sicily had gotten used to pulling covers over her head at night. When Mom got drunk or stoned, she would forget to turn off the heaters, but Sicily never did. She would always sneak into Mom’s room after she passed out, even if there was a man with her, and hurriedly yank the plug from the wall.

Sicily looked around. This room didn’t have any heating vents or a baseboard heater, either. She was lucky it wasn’t winter.

Lucky. Right.

The bed did have a fitted sheet on it, one scrawny pillow and an old comforter with stuffing seeping out of the places where fabric had worn through.

Eventually she went back to the bed and sat down on it. She felt sick, but also hungry. She and Aunt Beth had never eaten the lunch they’d brought to the beach. And it was dark when that man carried Sicily into the house, so she’d missed dinner, too. She wondered what time it was. And if he would feed her.

Mostly, shivering, she wondered what he wanted. What seemed like hours later, she was still wondering.

* * *

BETH DID SLEEP AFTER DETECTIVE Ryan left her, even though she hadn’t thought she could. But she woke only after a few hours had passed, and lay frozen in her bed. All she could think about was Sicily. Where was she? What could have happened? And in only half an hour?

Oh, God, Rachel, you shouldn’t have trusted me. Why did you? she all but begged, but there wasn’t any answer. And she knew, anyway—Rachel’s friends weren’t the kind of people you trusted with your ten-year-old daughter, and her worst nightmare would have been for Sicily to live with her grandparents. Rachel hadn’t actually trusted Beth at all. It was only that there wasn’t anyone else.

This wasn’t what Rachel would have feared, though, if her last thoughts when she went over the ferry railing had been of her child.

But then Beth felt a burst of anger. Wasn’t abandonment as bad as abuse? How could Rachel have done that? Sicily needed her mother.

Lying in bed shuddering, Beth almost hated her sister now. But she couldn’t, because Rachel’s problems were her fault.

I could have rescued her, but I was selfish.

In the end, that’s what it came down to, didn’t it? No matter how apprehensive Beth was about suddenly having a child depending on her, there’d never been any real choice.

Ever since Beth had left home, she’d been torn by guilt. She couldn’t live under the burden of more. Maybe the person Sicily really needed was her mother, but she couldn’t have her. What she had was Beth.

And look how quickly she’d failed her.

If only I hadn’t fallen asleep.

As exhausted as she was, she struggled against it now. It was wrong that she was cozy in her own bed when Sicily was…wherever she was. Her sin was sleep. Closing her eyes and succumbing to it now felt like another betrayal.

She should have hidden and not let the detective find her at the park. She’d meant to stay, even though her rational side knew how fragile the hope was that Sicily was actually there and alive. Beth didn’t want to think he was right, that Sicily had been kidnapped or even murdered, but the terror pulsing in her agreed. Someone had taken Sicily.

As unrelenting as a sheepdog snapping at her heels, her mind spun through all the reasons someone might have wanted Sicily. Over and over and over.