She knew she couldn’t put him off forever, but she had been hoping for one more day before she had to face him.
Things had been awkward at first, probably because her attitude made them that way. In no way did she attempt to hide her exhaustion with people by the time he got there, so when he offered his own appreciation that she was alive, she had no polite responses left, and didn’t say a single word.
If he would have waited, given her time, maybe she would’ve been happy to see him.
Since he did not, his presence was about as welcome as a mosquito’s, and she went to no lengths to pretend otherwise.
Especially when he went fishing for information with the enormously unsubtle remark, “I heard sometimes when girls are taken by people like that, they do really bad things to them.”
“Really?” she shot back, her eyes going wide as she mockingly dropped her jaw open. “I always heard they took them out to fancy dinners!”
Properly admonished, he merely added that if she needed to talk or anything, his mom knew a good shrink.
She thought it was nice that his mom’s therapist would listen to her ails, but he didn’t offer to.
Of course, she resented people who offered to lend an ear as well, so maybe she was just pissed off at the whole world and it didn’t matter what he said.
After he left, she masochistically went through the news articles related to her, but after reading many of the comments, she was more irritated than she had been when she started.
As long as the list of well-wishers was that day, her father’s name was not on it. That infuriated her, too, even though she should be used to it. On her father’s priority list, her name fell somewhere around the middle of the third page. Maybe closer to the bottom if he had other love children that he liked more, which was quite possible.
When Scott finally left, Willow changed into her pajamas and climbed into bed, but as tired as she was, she couldn’t sleep. She was completely consumed with fear.
The night before, by the time she made it to bed, she told herself there would be no nightmares. She was back in the comfort of her own bed, and the nightmare that had been her reality for several days could no longer touch her, not if she didn’t let it.
When she awoke at 4 am, her gaze jumping fearfully around the room, convinced that she was back in that awful place, the only thing that kept her from crawling out of her bed and into a corner somewhere was her sudden, all-consuming terror of the dark. Even though she knew logically that if she pushed back her covers and climbed out of bed, there would be no sleeping girls laying there, no sleazy monster with a gun to torment her, she couldn’t rely on that logic.
Emotionally, she was wrecked. All she could do was lie there, paralyzed with fear, with the covers pulled up to her neck. She stared at the ceiling and fought to regain control over her own thoughts.
It didn’t work.
For the next four hours, she stayed like that, her heavy eyelids refusing to close, with real memories and memories of her nightmares rolling through her mind. Knowing that it wasn’t real and that no one could really hurt her anymore didn’t help at all.
Then her thoughts of what could have happened kicked into high gear. Imagining what it would have been like if the police wouldn’t have busted the place, if she would have been forced into prostitution. What would her nightmares have been like then? Probably nothing that could have rivaled her reality.
She felt so disconnected from everyone in her life. As much as they cared, as much as they loved her, none of them had experienced what she had. None of them knew anything about the kind of people who had stolen control of her fate. They didn’t know how she felt, lying on a shared mattress in a dark room with other women, knowing that they were all being processed like cattle. The whole time, feeling like it couldn’t possibly be real, because things like that could never happen to someone like her. She was normal. She had a family, a life, people who missed her. Things like that couldn’t happen to girls like her.
Except that it did.
But one week earlier, she wouldn’t have been able to understand either.
Nobody in her life understood, because nobody else was there.
Never before had more people showered her with offers of love and support, and never before in her life had she felt so alone.
It had been one week since Willow’s abduction.
Her mother, armed with research she had done online, suggested that Willow go to her tennis lesson that day, telling her that doing things she had done before would help her.
That was how she referred to it, just before.
While Ashlynn was
more grounded in reality and wanted to face the issues head on and deal with them, Lauren was happy to live in denial, and as long as Willow wanted to insist that nothing bad had happened to her, Lauren would happily go on believing it.
Given Willow’s silence on the matter anytime either of her mothers attempted to delve for information about Ethan’s role in her rescue, she figured it was probably her own fault when her mother happily announced at lunch time that the man who was responsible for Willow’s rescue would be joining them for dinner that evening.
“What?” Willow demanded, not prepared for the news, so unable to hide her dismay.