Page 50 of Reckoning

Madeline

I paced all day, kicking myself for letting him leave. I yelled at Joshua for not accompanying him to work and allowing him to go off by himself without us really knowing where he was.

“I can only do so much,” he said. “If he wants me to stay with you, I stay with you.”

“Aren’t you worried about him?”

“I’m more worried about what he’d do if I left you here alone.”

“We can go together.” He shouldn’t be down there. His father would see right away that something was wrong and twist the knife to make it worse. He might not come home.

Joshua was unmovable. “And what do you think will happen when we run into Conrad down there? What excuse is he going to have for bringing you to the office?”

Every day here felt like peeling back a layer of skin to expose the fresh wound that was Conrad’s control over Meyer’s life and my own by extension. I had seen enough to expect that Meyer had to have undergone some level of psychological abuse, probably physical, too, as a child if not as an adult. It made me wonder what could have possibly drawn my mother to Conrad. Who would willingly align themselves with a man like that? Was he different in the beginning? How long did she stay with him? And what made her finally decide to leave?

Joshua made me dinner and then sat with me outside, watching while I walked with Her Majesty and then sitting next to me on the front porch as the sun sank lower and then disappeared beneath the horizon. I started to pace, convinced we had made a mistake, and he had run his car off a bridge or into a concrete wall when his headlights cut through the darkness and swept across my tired eyes.

I met him in the kitchen, mouth open to demand an update from him, but he pushed an envelope against my chest and continued walking. I stared at the paper in my hand, feeling elated and nauseous all at once when I recognized my mother’s handwriting and the trademark heart she’d drawn around my name. She did the same thing no matter the occasion, every birthday and graduation or just because card. I fell into a chair with a whoosh, every atom of oxygen leaving my body at the realization that I was holding my mother’s words in my hands. Somehow, she’d gotten a note to him, and for some reason, he’d decided to give it to me. I forced myself to open it slowly, taking care not to tear the paper.

My dearest Mads,

I hope to God this letter finds you well. I haven’t slept since the night we were told of your disappearance; your father is having an even harder time than I am, which I hadn’t thought possible. But I shouldn’t tell you that. You surely have enough troubles of your own without hearing about ours.

I don’t know how much Conrad and Meyer have told you. I don’t know how much Meyer himself knows, at least of the truth. He was very young when I knew him, and his father has had a lot of time to warp him since I left. So I’m going to tell you the truth, the real story of what happened to me and how we met. I only hope that Meyer still possesses enough gentleness to pass this along.

Conrad and I met when I was fifteen years old. He was a young single father out at the bar, and I was feeling rather proud of myself for sneaking in with my fake ID. He charmed me from the start. He saw at once that I was too young to be in such a place, but he promised not to turn me in. He flattered me with compliments of my maturity. He bought me drinks, and at the end of the night, he put me in a cab home with his number in my pocket.

I almost didn’t call him the next day, but he’d taken my wallet with my ID in it. He said that for me to get it back, I’d have to come to his house. If I’d known that he wasn’t going to let me leave, I would have risked telling my parents what happened to my wallet and cash. But I thought I could trust him. I thought he had my back.

He was coy at first, showing me around the house and offering me food and drinks like an adult. I felt so sophisticated holding a wine glass in my hand while he showed me his artwork, the fine furniture, and eventually his bedroom. He was so … I won’t tell you that. But I can tell you I felt loved and cared for that first time. He urged me to sleep, saying he’d talk to my parents. When I woke up, it was in another room, and I wasn’t alone.

The door was locked, and I pounded and screamed only as long as it took to wake up the child sleeping in the crib. I hadn’t even noticed it at first, panicked as I was. When I turned, I saw Conrad’s same bright blue eyes and blond hair looking at me through the slats of the crib. He cried and extended his arms toward me right away.

Meyer was four years old when I first met him. I doubt he remembers, but I could never forget the way he looked at me, and the purple bruises on his pale skin. He knew, somehow, that I wasn’t there to do him harm. I’d always wanted to be a mother, you know that, and this child needed me. I went to him and gathered him in my arms, and he hugged me with all the exuberance of a child who’d just found his first love.

I held him for hours, changed his diaper when needed, then fed him with food I found in the room. It was well-stocked, supplies to last us both for days. We fell asleep together in the little twin bed I’d been provided, and when I woke up, Conrad was standing over the two of us. I gathered Meyer into my arms and fell back against the wall.

“This is how it’s going to be,” he said. “You fuck me when I need to be fucked, you take care of him, and then stay out of my way otherwise. Understand?”

Any questions were met with blows. I’d never been struck before, not even spanked by my parents, but during those first weeks, I pushed him every chance I got until I was so broken I could barely walk. Then he started threatening Meyer. It turned out he didn’t need to hit me, just the baby. I gave in. He gave me freer rein of the house. I learned to creep, to sense his moods the moment he came home and make myself scarce. Sometimes I avoided him. Sometimes I couldn’t.

Four years passed like that. The first time Meyer left for school all day was the worst of my life. I was suddenly in the big house with nothing to do. But beneath the beatings and the rapes, I was relatively well cared for. Conrad had no trouble reminding me how much worse I could have it. I ate good food, I had a warm place to sleep, and he didn’t let anyone else touch me. Until the night that he did.

I’m sorry to tell you this, Mads. I know this isn’t the kind of thing you want to learn about your mother. For his thirtieth birthday, he put his true self on display for all his friends. I suppose he felt safer since I was no longer a minor, and he could show me off without worrying about one of his friends ratting him out. I’d hoped one of them would be decent enough to see the fear in my eyes or to hear my veiled cries for help. But they just looked at me with the same hunger I’d grown to recognize over the past four years, the hunger that said they’d take me with or without my consent, as long as they had Conrad’s. And they did. He handed me over to them like a piece of meat—something to be traded or sold—and there was nothing I could do. It lasted forever—not just the act itself but the pain and humiliation. You remember the days I couldn’t get out of bed, and you’d hear me crying for hours on end? Now you know why.

The night he handed me over to his friends was the night I resolved to escape or die trying. I’d come close before—to dying, that was. He’d caught me hiding knives, with one foot out the door, crammed beneath the trash in my attempts to escape. But Meyer always gave me away. He didn’t understand that he had to be quiet, or he got restless, or he’d cough at the wrong moment. So as much as it pained me, I had to leave him behind. I ran from that house without even a pair of shoes, and I never looked back. I couldn’t afford to.

I ran straight to my best friend’s house. I hadn’t spoken with anyone for four years, and I didn’t even know if he still lived there. But the moment Joseph saw me, he pulled me inside and locked the door.

“I have to hide,” I said, and he didn’t ask any more questions. He packed a bag, and we were gone thirty minutes later.

We drove for days, changing cars and gathering fake IDs along the way. He withdrew every last dollar he possessed and sold what he could to get more. When we finally settled in Iowa, he was able to get a low paying job while I hid in our grungy one-bedroom apartment.

Four weeks later, my period was late.

I ignored it. I’d been late before. But then another month passed with no blood, and Joseph finally brought home a test. We both cried as we looked at the result.

We talked a lot about what to do. He made an appointment with two doctors. But in the end … well, you know what we decided. Like I said, I’d always wanted to be a mother. I suppose most people in my position would have made a different choice, and I wouldn’t have blamed them. I told Joseph to go home and live the life he’d planned. He told me he’d loved me since we were children, and he didn’t intend to run out now. We went to the courthouse a week later for our marriage license.

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