Page 24 of Since She's Been Gone

I must have reached the mountains at some point because I was running up and down steep inclines. After it felt like I had been running for miles, I stopped to catch my breath, wiping the sweat off my brow, taking in the sounds of nature surrounding me.

The Santa Ana winds tussled the branches and leaves on the trees. Animals howled and cooed. But then I heard a different kind of sound.

At first, it sounded like an unrecognizable animal in the distance. As it got closer, I realized it was a car.

Before I knew it, headlights flashed into my eyes, and a white van screeched to a halt right in front of me. Two men, dressed in black clothes like ninjas, jumped out, one from the driver’s side, the other from the passenger side, and grabbed me.

As they strapped me into the backseat with a rope, I tried to fight them off, kicking and screaming. My futile calls for help echoed into the empty mountain valleys.

“Where are you taking me!?” I shouted.

They didn’t respond.

After they finished tying me, one of them sat next to me in the back seat while the other returned to the driver’s side, turned on the engine, and drove us away.

I couldn’t see anything out of the windows because we were in the middle of the mountains, and it was pitch black outside.

But I already knew how this story ended—rape, murder, discarding my chewed-up body into a river. I started to cry, alternating between loud and soft sobs until the rage kicked in. Rage at my father, who should’ve picked me up from Better Horizons, who I hadbeggedto pick me up. The last thought I had before the van abruptly stopped was that I hoped my demise would make him feel guilty for the rest of his life. It would serve him right.

“Time to get out,” the man sitting next to me said.

When the driver got out of his seat and walked around to my side to untie me, I saw we were parked in front of Better Horizons.

As conniving and manipulative as ED was, the folks at Better Horizons seemed to be a couple of steps ahead of him.

I was about to step out, but the man sitting next to me stopped me with his hand. “Not so fast,” he said. “I need your shoes.”

“My shoes?” I asked.

“Yup.”

“No, I only brought one pair here, and I’m not walking around barefoot.”

“You’re a flight risk now,” he said. “Harder to run away without shoes.”

He put out his hand, waiting for them.

I looked at him and considered my options. He was at least a foot taller than me, muscles popping out of his chest and arms, and could easily snap my spine in half, not to mention the driver who was still blocking my door with his body. I could only get out if I handed the shoes over.

I begrudgingly took them off and gave them to the guy, shaking my head at the indignity of having to go barefoot, too sick to understand the real indignity of what had just happened.

CHAPTER14

IHANDEDDIE THEletter I found, which he reads out loud:

Dear Margot,

If I did or said something that upset you, I apologize. I’m here if you want to pick up the conversation.

Sincerely,

Irene

“Who’s Margot?” Eddie asks me.

I have my cell phone ready with her obituary pulled up:

Margot Cadell Davis August 30, 1967—December 1, 1997

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