Devil's Bargain

I look down and it takes me a moment to process what it is.

An American passport.

I pick it up, open it and see the photo of me taken hastily in one of those booths at the mall. I remember Hawk hadn’t given it back to me after our flight. I open the folder wondering if his is in there too. Maybe for safe keeping? Makes no sense though.

But when I open the top flap to see what’s underneath, the air in the room suddenly becomes thinner.

My missing flash drive, I’d forgotten about it. So much has happened that the last few days feel like months.

But this, what I’m looking at, it reminds me. Abruptly and absolutely, it reminds me.

And it’s not the flash drive.

This is worse.

It’s what’s on the drive. It’s all those files printed out. The police reports. The photographs. Everything.

I think I would be sick if I had any food in my stomach.

I’m unprepared for this.

I know these photographs. I’ve memorized every detail, and yet, every time I see them, the power they still have, it’s like those years between now and then are just stripped away.

My face is that of a child’s. My hair shorn. I remember when I’d crudely cut it, not wanting the pretty long locks they liked so much. That’s what had gotten me into trouble. They needed me pretty and my butchered hair was anything but.

I remember when it was taken. How nice the lady had been at the police station, how gentle and sweet.

And then I remember how she’d looked at me after Liza had lied to her and the Boyds had ushered me out. I remember the car ride home—no, not my home.

Their home.

My prison.

I remember how they’d punished me, and I can’t seem to drag my eyes away. Can’t stop remembering.

Because the past, it’s here.

Liza knows where I am, and Sean knows too because that man who came to the shop, who gave Deirdre the creeps, I know it had to be Sean. Nothing else makes sense.

And as much as I want to avoid this truth, as much as I want to bury my head in the sand and pretend it’s not happening, pretend the fact that I’m here on another continent, across an ocean, here in front of me is reality in full color. Here is proof that no matter how far or where I run to, the past will always be just a few steps behind.

Hawk knows. How long has he known? Since that day at the house? The files were password protected, though. How did he break the code?

But maybe he doesn’t know everything. Maybe he doesn’t know about the rest of it. The worst of it. There’s nothing about those videos on the flash drive.

Why in hell does he have these pictures? How did he get my password? Or did he get the files from somewhere else? Is there still a record buried somewhere?

I make myself look at the photos, the first one, then the next one. Whenever I open these files, I make myself look. It’s like a ritual. I make myself see. Make myself touch the bruises, the ones on my face and neck. The one on my belly.

I remember how that one had hurt.

No, they had all hurt. That was just the meanest, to kill any spawn when he got the idea I might be pregnant. Christ. I didn’t even have my period yet. I didn’t get it until I was fourteen and by then they’d been raping me for three years.

By fourteen, I had the birth control shot. The doctor didn’t even ask my permission. But then again, Senator Boyd made me out to be some sort of slut.

I turn to read through the reports, read through Liza’s lies, her betrayal.

She’d been afraid of them too, though. I have to remember that.

But was it fear that drove her to lie? Or the promise of adoption. Of belonging to that family. She was desperate for it. Desperate to belong. And look where it got her.

I turn the last page over thinking that’s it, that’s all there is, but then there’s one more thing. One more thing which tells me how Hawk guessed my password.

I recognize Sean’s handwriting. It’s a little feminine. He hit me once when I said that. Just backhanded me right there at the kitchen table. I hadn’t been in their house that long then and it was the first time he struck me.

For a long time, I wished I’d never said it, never teased him about it but I realize now the violence was always coming. Me having made the comment or not, it was coming.

Here’s that familiar handwriting again on the envelope.

Little Bitch Whore.

My hands shake, and sweat drips down the back of my neck.

I’m able to block this out for months at a time. Years. But when it comes back, when there’s any hint of him, of them, something on the news like when Senator Boyd died, or walking by a man who happens to wear the same cologne, any random thing, it’s like it sends me back in time and traps me there.