Mud Vein, стр. 53
“It happens. We block out things that thrrreaten to break us. It’s the brain’s best defense mechanism.”
I’m struggling for air.
“This was all an experiment to you. You took advantage of your position. Of what I told you.” All my gusto is gone. I just need answers so I can get out of here. Get out of here and go where? Home, I tell myself. Whatever that is.
“Do you remember what you asked me in our last session?” I stare at her blank faced.
“You asked, ‘If there were a God, why would he let these terrible things happen to people?’”
I remember.
“With free will comes bad decisions; decisions to drink and drive and kill someone’s child. Decisions to murder. Decisions to choose whom we love, whom we spend our life with. If God decided to never let anything bad happen to people, he would have to take away their free will. He would become the dictator and they would be his puppets.”
“Why are you talking about God? I want to talk about what you did to me!”
And then I know. Saphira locking me in the house with Isaac, the man she believed was my safety and salvation, controlling the medicine, the food, what we saw, how we saw it—it was all her experimenting with free will. She became God. She’d said something once in one of our sessions: Picture yourself standing on a cliff where you not only fear falling, but dread the possibility of throwing yourself off. Nothing is holding you back, and you experience freedom.
The cliff! Why hadn’t I seen it?
“Do you know how many people there are just like you? I heard it every day; pain, sadness, regret. You wanted a second chance. So I gave it to you. I gave you not the person you wanted, but the person you needed.”
I don’t know what to say. My ten minutes are almost over.
“Don’t make out like you did this for me. You’re sick. You’re—”
“You are sick, my dear,” she interrupts. “You were self destructing. Ready to die. I just gave you some perspective. Helped you to see the truth.”
“What’s the truth?”
“Isaac is your truth. You were too blinded by your past to see that.”
I’m breathless. My mouth hangs open as I stare at her.
“Isaac has a wife. He has a baby. You act like you care so much, but you did this to him, too. Made him suffer for no reason. He almost died!”
Detective Garrison chooses that exact moment to come back. I want more time with her. I want more answers, but I know my time is up. He leads me to the door by my elbow. I look back at Saphira. She’s staring into space, serene.
“He would have died without you, too,” she says before the door closes. I want to ask her what she means, but the door swings closed. And that is the last time I ever see Saphira Elgin alive.
Detective Garrison is kind. I think this case is above his pay grade. He’s not sure what to do with me—so he tries to feed me doughnuts and sandwiches. I eat none of it, but I appreciate the sentiment. There are six people in the room with me; two of them leaning against the wall, the others sitting. I give them my statement. I tell a tape recorder what the last fourteen months looked like; each day, each hunger pain, each time I thought one of us would die. When I am finished the room is quiet. Detective Garrison is the first to clear his throat. That’s when I dare ask about Isaac. I’ve been too afraid up until now. Thinking his name alone hurts me. Hearing someone speak about him feels … wrong. He’s been with me for all this time. Now he’s not.
“Dr. Elgin got him over the Canadian border and took him to a hospital in Victoria. Took him is an ambitious word,” he says. “She dropped him outside the Emergency room and drove off. He was unconscious for twenty-four hours before he finally started to come out of it. He grabbed a nurse by the arm and managed to say your name. The nurse recognized your name right away due to the media buzz you caused when you disappeared. She notified the police. By the time they got there Isaac was able to talk. He told them you were in a cabin somewhere near a cliff, but couldn’t give them much more than that.”
I am quiet.
“So he’s okay?”
“Yes, he is. He’s with his family in Seattle.”
That hurts and brings me relief. I wonder what it was like meeting his baby for the first time.
“How did she do it? Get both of us to that house? Cross borders? She must have had help.”
He shakes his head. “We are still questioning her. She took Isaac to the hospital in an RV. She was in the same RV when she tried to cross the border back into Alaska. When they searched her vehicle they found a false floorboard with a space large enough to hold two bodies. We think she drugged you and put you both in there. We don’t know anything about help, we’re still questioning her.”
“Back into Alaska?” I ask. “She was coming back for me?”
He shakes his head. “We don’t know.”
I slam my fist on the table, frustrated. “What do you know?”
He looks affronted. I try to soften my face. This isn’t his fault. Or maybe it is.
“How did you find me, then?”
“The Canadian police put out an APB on her vehicle. She was picked up at the border. She gave us the coordinates to the house where she was keeping you.”
“Just like that?”
He nods.
“I don’t get it.”
“The house is on a large portion of land that she owns. Actually, large portion is an understatement. She owns forty thousand acres. Her late husband owned oil wells. He was also a conspiracy theorist. He published some books on Armageddon survival. We think he built the house out there as a result of those theories.”
“You know all of that, but you don’t know what she was going to do with me?”
“It’s easy to find information that is already there, Ms. Richards. Extracting information from the human mind proves a little more difficult.”
Maybe I underestimated soft s Detective Garrison.
“My mother…?” I ask. He cocks his head, his eyebrows drawing together. “Never mind.” Perhaps she had no part in this. Perhaps Saphira found her and read her book without ever contacting her.
“I want to go home,” I say, suddenly.
He nods. “Just a few more days. Bear with us…”
Chapter Forty
Nick is waiting for me when my flight lands in Seattle. I knew he would be. He contacted me through e-mail asking when I’d be coming home. He asked if he could be there. I sent him a quick response telling him the day, time, and flight number. When I come down the escalator to baggage claim, he doesn’t see me right away. He looks nervous, which is unusual for him. I hide behind a huge potted plant, and peer at him through the leaves. My muse. My ten years wasted. It used to be that when I saw him my emotions would pitch a fever. I’d feel as if I were tumbling down, down, down, into something deep. Now he just looks like a guy in a trench coat with too much gel in his hair. No, that’s unfair. He looks like a stew pot of memories; his hands are memories, his lips are memories, his body is a memory. But they don’t entrance me like they used to. Either a year of imprisonment has left me more numb, or I’ve outgrown the love of my life.
“Where did your glimmer go, Nick?” I say through the plant. I am curious to know if it’s still there. If I’ll burst open the minute we make contact, like some quintessential love story.
He is sitting; a loner in an airport chair, watching the passers-by with apprehension on his face. It’s a fine mental picture. Nick sees me as soon as I step out from my hiding place. When I walk toward him, he quickly stands. He embraces me without hesitation and with so much familiarity, my heart does a lurch. Maybe this is the spark.
He knows me. He knows what to say, what not to say. He speaks the language of my face, and waits for my expression to dictate his tone. That’s what time does. It gives you space to learn each other. I soften into his embrace. It’s no use fighting something like this.