“You know that Tony, her father, hates and blames me for what happened. But I didn’t tell you to what extent. How his sorrow turned to anger, which turned to revenge. He’s made it his life’s mission to haunt me, to destroy me.”
A deep breath calms me as the memories I’ve tried so hard to repress come flooding forward. My focus shifts to the wall behind Aiden, because if I look directly at him, I don’t think I’ll be able to continue.
“The accident happened in November of my junior year, and that was a really bad time for me. We were still living in Mayford, my hometown. I was mourning the loss of my father, who, despite everything, I loved and missed more than anything. I was thinking about what I could have done differently to prevent the death of my father and of Sabrina, playing the accident over and over in my head, torturing myself with the what-ifs. I was consumed with guilt and was an emotional wreck. Add that to my broken arm and other physical injuries from the accident, and I was not good company at the time. I wanted to be alone, and I was haunted by my father and Sabrina, an innocent little girl. I even slipped into the back of the church during her funeral, just to torture myself some more.”
His strong but gentle hand grabs my face, pulling me out of my reverie, and turns me so that I’m looking deep into his eyes.
“Thea,” Aiden starts. “It wasn’t your fault. I’ve said it before—”
“Aiden, stop.” I cut off his assurances and pull myself from his grasp. “Please. Just let me tell the whole story. No interruptions. Okay?”
He hesitates for a second but then reluctantly nods. Satisfied with his reply, I force the memories to come back to me.
“In the weeks following the accident, I’d walk. I never told anyone where I was going or how long I’d be out, because the point was to be alone. I was trying to clear my head, trying to mourn my father. Night or day, snowing or sunny, I was outside, not paying attention to my surroundings and hoping to clear my thoughts.”
My vision blurs as I recall the next part, my heart beating faster, as if I’m reliving the experience again.
“Just over a year ago, after dinner, I decided to go for a walk despite the biting cold and inky darkness spreading through the air. My thoughts consumed me and I didn’t notice that a truck had been following me since the moment I’d left my house. I didn’t turn to look when it pulled up beside me and a door opened. I barely blinked when there were heavy footsteps crunching in the snow behind me. Only when I heard my name being called did I turn around. Only then did I realize that it was too late for me to stop living in the past and to start paying attention to the present.”
My throat feels like it’s closing, and just when I’m sure I’m going to pass out, a comforting hand lands on my leg, just above my knee. Aiden’s hand tightens on my leg, and he doesn’t need to speak out loud for me to know what he’s saying. He’s here with me. I’m safe. Silently borrowing his strength, I force the words out.
“There was a man, pointing a gun at my head. Shock took over, and I didn’t recognize him at first. He held the gun on me with callous determination, his eyes dark and empty, like an open grave. Tony Derando, Sabrina’s father. He said that I killed his daughter. I replied that I didn’t, but I was sorry that she’d passed. That’s when his expression changed.”
The wall behind Aiden suddenly looks very interesting, and I keep my attention there.
I can’t explain it. He was an empty shell of a man with no hope, with no desire to move on. It was like he didn’t care about the future, didn’t care about anything except right then, that moment. It was like he saw nothing except a way to relieve the anger, relieve the pain over losing the most important—the only important—thing in his life. His rage radiated off him, and even then I knew that he had a need to exact revenge, to hurt me.
At this point I zone out, the memories rushing back to me as if a floodgate has opened and the angry water is speeding out, almost overwhelming me with how clearly I remember everything. It’s as if I’m reliving the moment my life changed forever as I share my story with Aiden.
“Tony was going to shoot me. Should I try to run, talk him down, or just accept my fate? He took the decision from me when he suddenly lifted his arm and smashed me over the head with the end of the gun, and that’s the last thing I remember.”
4
The first thing I noticed was soreness. The pounding in my head was hard to ignore, but the rest of my joints felt stiff, as if I had been thrown around. I was lying on the floor and hazily sat up, rubbing my head, my body pushing to stay conscious.
My feet were completely bare but I could’ve sworn I’d left the house with shoes on. The light-blue color of my cast wasn’t obstructed by my winter jacket. Where was my jacket? It was cold, I hadn’t left the house without it.
But I was no longer outside, I was in a small bathroom. Standing up, I assessed my surroundings. In the bathroom there was just a toilet and a sink; there were no mirrors or cabinets, and the walls were bare and windowless. There was an eerie chill in the air, which had nothing to do with the fact that I was just in jeans and a T-shirt.
The door wouldn’t open. It wasn’t locked because the knob turned, so there was probably some type of dead-bolt system added to the outside too. Heavy things seemed to be pushed in front of the door as well, since when I looked through the tiny slit between the door and the threshold, I was met with some type of sturdy, wooden furniture.
Tony had taken me, and I knew it was only a matter of time before he came to finish his plans with me. I had to get out. There were no windows, so my only hope was to escape through the door. I tried to escape for hours, sitting on the hard floor and kicking at the door until the heels of my feet bled. Desperation took hold. Even punching and clawing at the door and its hinges until my fingers were numb and my knuckles were raw and bloody did nothing. I was hopelessly trapped.
After the adrenaline and desperation of trying to escape faded, frustration at my own uselessness clawed at my chest. I wasn’t strong enough to break the door down, and I wasn’t smart enough to devise a plan. All I could do was think of all the ways Tony could hurt me—all the ways he would torture or kill me. All I could think about was how before he took me, he seemed to lack all compassion or humanity—he’d had the eyes of a desperate man with nothing to lose, nothing left to live for.
There was only one thing left to do—lay down on the floor and cry. I cried so hard that my stomach ached and I could barely breathe through the gasping. I cried until there were no more tears left for my body to expel. Laying there on the bathroom floor, staring at the white ceiling littered with pot lights, I was overtaken by a sense of emptiness.
I didn’t bother to wipe the hot tears from my face, and exhaustion took over. I had used my anger and fear to try and escape to no avail, and crying had accomplished nothing except giving me a blotchy, puffy face. It was then that the lights cut out, enveloping me in a darkness that rivaled my growing despair, a darkness that matched the hole in my heart where hope had been. I lay there in the dark, tearstained and bloody, feeling hollow and drained, and allowed sleep to distract me from my new reality. Time didn’t exist while I was trapped in the bathroom. I was told later that I was missing for three days—and it was arguably the scariest and worst three days of my life.