“We’ll be back in the morning,” Lieutenant Cowan said. “Write down anything that might help us, anything you remember. We can’t stress it too much. Details are critical.”

“You’ll probably find it all on her computer,” I said. “That’s where she told me it all came about, but I don’t know any real details more than I told you,” I emphasized.

They left Kaylee’s room. I stood there for a moment looking around. If Mother has her way, I thought, she’ll turn it into a shrine. Nothing will be touched or changed, but it will be kept as clean as ever. After all, someday Kaylee will return, won’t she?

A new great thought occurred like a surprise bonus. If she did that, I’d be able to make significant changes in my room. She wouldn’t want mine to be a shrine. If she tried to duplicate it, I’d stress how important it was to preserve Kaylee’s room exactly as it was, even when I added something to mine or changed something. Finally, I could put up some posters of rock singers and movie stars I liked but Kaylee didn’t. There was so much I could do now. New doors were opening every passing moment. I felt like I could breathe better.

Mother was sedated and sleeping. I saw Daddy talking to Dr. Bloom in the hallway. They were practically whispering, and Dr. Bloom kept shaking his head as Daddy spoke. He was probably describing how nutty Mother was, I thought. Dr. Bloom patted Daddy on the shoulder to boost his hopes, and then he left and the house was quiet.

“I’m going to sleep down here,” Daddy told me. “Just call me if you need anything.”

“Why don’t you sleep in Kaylee’s room, Daddy?” I suggested. “Sleep in a comfortable bed instead of on a couch.”

He considered it.

“I like the idea that you’ll be right next door to me, Daddy. I’m not going to have an easy time falling asleep. I’ll probably have nightmares. I’m having trouble keeping from thinking about what she could be going through right now, how scared she must be.”

“Okay, sweetheart,” he said. “I’ll do that.”

I smiled. He called us sweetheart when he lived with us, but it was always sweethearts, not sweetheart. Tonight it was just me.

And it would be that way in the morning, I was sure.

Everything would be changing now.

I actually felt as if I had just been born, and all that had happened to me before, my whole life until now, was the nightmare I feared.

If I could only wipe my memory clean the way I could delete everything on a computer, life would really be perfect.

I would even be the perfect daughter all by myself.

2

Kaylee

I didn’t want to believe him when he told me how isolated we were on his family farm, that I could scream and scream as much as I wanted and no one would or could hear me. But when he left for work in the morning, the only sounds I heard were the creaks in the house above me and the harsh grating noise the chain made when it slid along the uncarpeted areas as I moved through the basement apartment. It was attached to my left ankle with a metal bracelet and then to a hook embedded in the wall.

Standing on a chair, I pressed my ear to one of the boarded windows and listened. Not only didn’t I hear any people, but I didn’t hear any cars or truck

s, either. I stood there listening for quite a while, too. If we were close to a road, it was surely a road hardly traveled. A slight breeze played against the side of the building, but the deep silence was not only deafening; it was discouraging, draining out the little hope I harbored. My chest felt like it was filled with butterflies in a panic because they were locked in a jar.

As if his cat that he had named Mr. Moccasin was a double agent, he followed me about and then sat and watched my every move. I wanted to hate him and kick him away, but he looked as lonely as I was and happy to have someone with him. Before he had gone to work, Anthony, my abductor, left me instructions for feeding Mr. Moccasin and told me to be sure he had enough water. Sometimes his words were full of affection, and sometimes they were riddled with threat.

The night before, when Anthony had come to the bed I was forced to sleep in, he had slipped beside me under the comforter and almost immediately fallen asleep. He didn’t touch me, but I was afraid to move because I might wake him. I didn’t hear him get up. I was so terrified of falling asleep that I didn’t close my eyes for hours and hours. I think I passed out rather than fell asleep. It couldn’t have been for very long. When I opened my eyes, I saw him at the stove. Just as he had promised, he had risen early and begun to prepare French toast for our breakfast and brew coffee. The aromas quickly filled the basement apartment, which had otherwise smelled rancid and damp despite how clean it was kept.

“Good morning, good morning,” he sang, seeing me awaken. “I hope you slept as well as I did. That’s a new mattress. First time anyone’s slept on it. How’d you like it?”

He turned back to the stove. As he worked, he babbled on and on about the different dinners he would prepare for us, talking enthusiastically about recipes as if I had come here willingly and was looking forward to spending the rest of my life with him.

“You have no idea how happy I am that you’re here. It’s so damn sad to have only yourself to cook and bake for,” he said. “It’s as bad as an artist creating a picture and not having anyone to look at it. Sure, you can be happy about what you’ve done, but it’s pleasing someone else that matters most, don’tcha think? That’s what Ma used ta say. Whatcha think? She was right, right? My ma was full of wisdom. Pop used ta say, ‘Your mother’s so brim full of sagacity that words come pouring out of her ears and eyes.’ I had to go look up sagacity in the dictionary. I think I told you my father was a big reader, right? He didn’t have much more formal education than high school, but he liked to read anything and everything. He’d read the back of a cereal box if there was nothing else around. He wasn’t much of a talker, though. I guess he was shy that way, but get him mad, and he’d give you a what-for that could go on for hours, even days.”

He paused and smiled. “Look at me going on and on about myself and my parents when you didn’t even have a chance to say good morning. Excitement’s no excuse for bad manners.”

How could he think I was going to say good morning? The moment I awoke, I vowed not to speak to him. Perhaps my silence would convince him that his fantasy romance would not happen, and he would give up and turn me loose. Was that hope a bigger fantasy? Was I deliberately naive because I was afraid of facing the truth that I was trapped and so well hidden that no one might find me? I could be here for years. The night had passed, and no one had come to rescue me. Surely my mother and my twin sister, Haylee, were frantic by now, but I knew the police usually wanted to wait to see if a person had deliberately disappeared, run away. It was typical of teenagers.

And yet Haylee could certainly convince them that this wasn’t the situation in my case. By now, as reluctant as she was and as guilty as she would be because it was all her fault, she would have to show them her Internet correspondence and explain how she had sent me on an errand that surely led to my abduction. She’d have to confess that our going to the movie was a ruse, that we—and there was no way I couldn’t confess to having gone along with it—were planning for her, not me, to meet her Internet boyfriend.

She’d have to explain that once we were in the theater, she’d suddenly had a terrible stomachache and thrown up in the bathroom, then sent me to tell Anthony she would not be able to meet him as they had planned. She might have a full-blown flu and still be sick to her stomach, but I was confident that Mother would force her to explain it all to the police. They would have come quickly to that closed-down coffee shop and maybe located someone who had seen something. If not, by now, Haylee would have surely shown them what she had on her computer.

Tags: V.C. Andrews The Mirror Sisters Suspense
Source: readsnovelonline.net