Page 9 of Keeping Ruby

How did I get here?

My mind feels fuzzy, my thoughts distant. My body is heavy in a way that makes me think I’ve been sleeping for a long time.

Slowly, I push back the covers and slide from the bed. My feet hit the floor cautiously, but as soon as they do, I get a flash of memory. Me in his office. A photo—photos—of my father.

The bodies…

A sharp sob splits the silence, and I cover it with my hand, hoping to conceal any others that dare to slip free. I need time to process this. I need time to?—

He’d been lying. The photos are photoshopped. There is no world in which my father, a man who had loved me and cherished me dearly, would ever harm another person. Another child. There is no world where my father, a man who had loved a woman like my mother, would do what the man in those photos had done.

I don’t believe it. Can’t believe it.

Mama wouldn’t have loved a man like that, and she’d loved my father with her entire heart until her dying breath.

But why, then, does he want me?

Why go to the trouble of interrogating me if he’d altered the photos? What is his angle? And what does he expect from taking me?

Why me?

I can’t seem to stop my tears as I try the door that I know leads into a hallway, into escape. The other two, I recall from my time before, lead to an ensuite and closet. And the fourth…

I don’t know what the fourth door leads to. But like it was when I first stayed in this room, it’s locked.

My tongue is fuzzy with sleep and sick, so I brush my teeth and splash my face with water. My belly roils as flashes of that terrible photo keep popping into my thoughts. But that’s not my father. My father would never do the things my captor suggested. He just—he wouldn’t.

Shoving the thoughts down deep, I change in the closet with my back against the door. As it had been when I’d first stayed in this room, it’s been packed with clothes. Surprisingly, a lot of them are from my closet at home. Including the soaps and shampoo I’d used daily, my Kindle, and a few other personal items. They’d all been brought to this place.

It must look like I just packed up and left. An intentional parting from a life too overwrought with pain and loss. A fresh start I told no one about.

Is anyone even looking for me?

Or do they all just think that after Mama’s death, I’d had a mental snap, packed up all my stuff and fled. But to where? Where could they possibly think I’d have gone?

Wearing fresh leggings and a slouchy brown sweater dress, I open the door and freeze.

Because he is standing there, hands in the pockets of his suit pants, expression the same confidently cocky expression he always wears.

“I hope you’re feeling better, Ruby.” His deep voice has ripples of fear and anxiety, and something else I’d much rather not think of surging through my body. I hate how handsome he is. He’s a terrible person.

“Why?”

“We have a lot to talk about.”

“I have nothing to say to you,” I snap, but my bravado withers at the sharpness of his glare. I fold my arms over my chest, an act of defense and defiance. “You lie every time you open your mouth.”

“I’ve never lied to you. Not once.”

“You photoshopped those photos,” I accuse hotly. “I know my father.”

His expression doesn’t change. Not at all. Saying nothing, he reaches out to close his hand around one of my wrists. He tugs my arm away from my body with a strength I have no hope to fight, and pulls me through the door.

He pulls me into the hall and down it, down a long set of wide stairs, and into the room I’ve come to know is his office.

My face flushes hot as my eyes land on the spot where I’d vomited the soup I’d eaten for dinner the night before. It’s been cleaned, but I can’t help but feel self-conscious, which is silly considering everything.

“Take a seat.” I do as I’m told. I could argue, but the reality is that I’m going to find myself sitting anyway.

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