“Are you alright, Naomi?” Evelyn stopped wiping the mirror and lowered herself off the counter. “Jesse said he smoothed things over with you, but I’m worried.”
Finished with the tiles, Naomi turned and stepped out of the tub. “I’m not going to try to leave,” she said with a deep sigh, and shrugged. “There wouldn’t be any point.”
“I suppose not.” Evelyn pulled her into a hug. “Eric’s going to be with you this evening while Steve and I go out. Remember that opera I’ve been talking about for months?”
She nodded. Evelyn had been looking forward to the opera forever, and now it was finally here. “Did you get that dress?” she asked, remembering the dress Evelyn had shown her online.
“I did. It fits beautifully, but I need to decide on a necklace. Will you help me pick one later?”
“Sure.”
THAT NIGHT she stood in front of Evelyn’s dresser. Staring down at four necklaces spread across the cherry wood, she ran her fingers over the diamonds and pearls and stopped at a gold chain studded with two rows of diamonds. Rubies sparkled in the center.
Her fingers trembled as a sudden thought entered her head. Had Jesse stolen this jewelry?
She looked up to see Evelyn standing in the bathroom applying her makeup. She was stunning. The bodice of her gown was fitted and laced, the skirt suddenly full at the hips. Gathers cascaded all the way down the back, falling to the floor in a waterfall of brilliant red. She blinked her brown eyes and smiled at Naomi in the mirror.
“Choose one yet?”
“I think so.” She turned back to the necklace and picked it up, the stones cold and smooth in her hands. She imagined Jesse snatching it from a safe with gloved hands, his eyes glowing green through a mask. She set it back on the dresser.
He couldn’t have stolen it. They weren’t that stupid. They didn’t keep anything they took, except for her. They sold all the jewelry so they could live in Italy, wealthy, free and happy for the rest of their lives. She knew they hadn’t spent a dime of jewelry money, not yet. She had overheard them say it was to live on once they were in Italy. They would never have to work again, and that suited Naomi just fine. No temptations to ignore her for a career. No getting up to leave every morning. Together and happy all the time, free to do anything and go anywhere they wished. It sounded divine. Perfect.
At least, that’s what she was trying to convince herself, but thoughts of her mother kept interrupting the dream.
She lowered her gaze to a small, gold-framed photo on the dresser. It was the house in Italy. That much was obvious. It took her breath away.
Situated on a hill overlooking the countryside, it was built mostly of stone with panoramic windows and manicured trees shading the upper yard. She could see a hint of rustic furniture through the windows, and a wide patio surrounded by lattice work.
“Evelyn,” she said quietly, “why are there people living in it right now?”
Evelyn turned away from the bathroom mirror. “Oh, you found the picture of the house. I should have shown you that before.” Turning back to the mirror, she continued her makeup. “There are people living there because my grandmother sold it to a business that rents it out to temporary tenants. That’s when we moved to an apartment in Arezzo, near Florence.”
“You wanted to buy it back?”
“Of course. It’s where my mother grew up, but she never had the time or money to go back after she moved here to the States.” Her shoulders dropped. “I don’t think she would have liked that my grandmother sold it.”
“But it’s yours now, right?”
She shoved a bobby pin into her hair. “Oh, yes. It’s what I’ve always wanted most—to raise a family where I remember being so happy. It was my dream to adopt a child once we were there for a few years, but now we have you, and Steve and Eric made sure to—” She stopped, lowered her hands from her hair, and turned to Naomi with a relieved smile. “They installed a swimming pool last year. You’ll really like it there. I promise.”
A child. She figured that’s why Evelyn was so attached to her, but it was alright. It felt good for someone to want her that way.
“A swimming pool sounds nice,” she said, her voice distant. She imagined swimming under a hot, blue Italian sky with Jesse next to her. She could feel his hands caressing her waist as he pressed his lips to hers. They tasted of garlic and wine from the dinner they had eaten on the sun-drenched patio. He would read to her in the evening before bed, and hold her through the night as she dreamed about growing older. She would forget what it felt like to be a child, even at seventeen when she thought Brad was her future, when he held her in his fist like a bird with broken wings, squeezing so tightly she didn’t know what was sky and what was ground.
Now she knew. Now she could see the sky unfolding before her, the color of sapphires in Jesse’s open palm, his eyes telling her,
I’ll stay with you because I’ve never felt like this about anybody.
“Oh, the rubies,” Evelyn exclaimed as she walked over to her and noticed the necklace Naomi had chosen. Smiling, she lifted it from the dresser. “It was my mother’s.” She pulled the chain around her neck and her fingers fumbled with the clasp. “Naomi, could you?”
She tore her eyes from the picture and reached up to fasten the necklace. She caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror, small and plain next to Evelyn’s magnificence.
It was a familiar vision, Naomi thought bitterly. It was how she felt about her mother, how she would never be her equal, never be as beautiful, successful, or happy with what she had chosen in her life. She was nothing but a pale, silvery imitation trying to follow in her footsteps. Forever.
Her fingers slipped from the unclasped necklace as she realized that she had, in fact, never resented her mother. It was the exact opposite. She wanted to be just like her. That happy. That sure of herself.
“Oh!” Evelyn said as the necklace fell to the floor with a metallic thud.
“I’ll get it.” Her body breaking into a sweat, Naomi stepped around the full red skirt of the dress.
“Oh, thanks. I can’t bend over in this thing. It has a corset. I can barely breathe.”
Strange, Naomi thought as she scooped the necklace into her clammy hands. It was difficult for her to breathe too.
XXV
THAT NIGHT ERIC LET HER WATCH A MOVIE in the living room while he worked in his office. Halfway through the movie she went into the kitchen to fix herself a cup of hot cocoa. Evelyn bought the kind she liked with the little marshmallows in the packet. Jesse liked that kind too, and as she stirred the mix into the hot water she thought about how he had held her until she fell asleep. He was there when she woke up in the morning. He hadn’t moved an inch. Then he left.
With a sigh, she sat at the table and put her head in her hands. How many times would he leave? She felt the strongest connection to him, like a string stretching to the breaking point every time he was away. One day it would snap if he didn’t knock it off. What could he possibly have to leave for again? Eric hadn’t ordered him away.
She lifted her head and took a sip of cocoa. She could see Eric sitting at his desk in his office. He was on the phone and smiled when he looked up at her. He mouthed “Pizza,” and pointed to the phone receiver.
She nodded. Pizza sounded good. Then again, so did some fresh air. She hadn’t been outside in so long. She envied Jesse’s freedom to leave the house and drive away.
Lowering her eyes to the table, she studied the newspaper Steve had left sitting by his reading glasses.
Then she froze.
A magazine poked out from beneath the newspaper, an article partially visible. She read what she could of the title:
Revealing the Mysteries Behind Abusive Emotional Bonding: A Closer Look Into—
Somebody had gone through the article and highlighted specific sections in bright yellow, like a homework assignment. Her stomach sank. Slowly, she reached forward and pulled the article out from underneath the newspaper. A part of her wanted to ignore it, forget she had seen it, but the other part of her couldn’t stop. She had to see what it said. Yellow highlighted paragraphs. She made herself read one of them. Her fingers started to go numb.
Further research has shown that the largely accepted idea of consistent positive treatment is perhaps not the strongest way humans secure attachment to others ... hostages often bond to their captors most strongly when those captors consistently reward good behavior and severely punish bad behavior (often physically or with threats of death). This also occurs frequently in romantic relationships where abusive control is prevalent.
Naomi swallowed and pushed the article away. There were a lot more paragraphs highlighted. She wondered why they would highlight them. It was sick and wrong. Was it because they were studying better ways to gain her loyalty—to get her to bond to them more strongly than before? Standing, she met Eric’s eyes and swallowed.
It wasn’t that she had never realized what they were doing to her, but seeing those sections highlighted made her want to throw up. It made their actions seem shallow. Fake. Did they really care for her or was it only for their own benefit, their own safety, to keep her freaking mouth shut?
She left her mug on the table and headed upstairs to her room. She had to think. She went straight to her bed and grabbed her journal from the nightstand. When she opened it, the smell of ink drifted to her nose. She scanned passages about Jesse and her mother, noticing that she sometimes talked about Evelyn and the others, but not often. The entries progressed from mentions of escape and thoughts about home to nothing but Jesse and occasionally her mother.
Then, in one entry near the end, she stopped and read a line that made her hands shake.
When Jesse comes home we can talk about what happened.
She thought of this house as her home now. They had made sure she saw it that way, even if the rational side of her brain told her exactly how they had done it. Was it wrong? She saw herself standing in front of an open door, blue sky and the ocean on the other side. That door had opened when she saw her parents on TV. Could she really turn away?
She had already turned away, she realized. Now she had to turn back. A knock on the door made her slam the journal shut and throw it under the covers. Eric stepped inside, confusion on his face. “Are you alright?”
“Yeah,” she said with a shrug. “I just came up to get a book. It must be in the den.”
“I was heading there anyway. Come on. You can read while we wait for the pizza.”
Nodding, she followed him down the hall and into the den. She tried to keep her eyes away from the double glass doors where the night was already cold and black. Her heart pounded as she imagined swinging herself over the railing of the balcony—right onto the tree branch. She sat in the armchair closest to the balcony doors. Her shoulders slumped.
Eric raised his eyebrows. “Didn’t you want a book?”
She shrugged again. “Not really, I guess. I’m just hungry.”
“Well, I ordered your favorite.” He headed straight for her. “Pepperoni and olives, right?”
She looked up at him as he stopped in front of the armchair. He was dressed the same as the first time she had seen him—jeans and a black T-shirt. He was clean-shaven.
“Thank you,” she mumbled, sliding her trembling fingers beneath her thighs.
He kneeled and put a hand on her knee. “Jesse’s coming back soon. Everything will be okay.” His hand tensed. “Nothing has changed.”
She nodded, but her mind was a million miles away, focused on her journal. She hadn’t noticed before how her handwriting was just like her mother’s. It had the same feel, the same personality.
“Do you want me to get you anything?” Eric interrupted her thoughts. “Do you want a drink before our dinner comes?”
She shifted beneath the weight of his hand on her knee. He would have to leave when the pizza came to the front door. She would be alone for at least three or four minutes while he paid the delivery boy and got plates and napkins. Her eyes glazed over.
“Naomi?”
“Oh, sorry.” She changed her stupid expression to a sloppy grin. “Sure, a drink sounds good, if there’s Coke.”
She hoped there wasn’t. The last time she had looked, the stash of Coke in the fridge was gone. Eric knew as well as she did that Evelyn kept more in the pantry downstairs. The longer she could get him out of the room the better.
“Sure.” He stood and headed for the fridge. She waited with frozen breath, staring at the bookshelves. She had read so many books in the past year.
“No Coke up here,” he muttered. “There might be some down in the pantry, but it’ll be warm. Sure you don’t want anything else?”
“I can drink it with ice.”
The refrigerator door closed. “Okay. I’ll be right back.” He was halfway across the room before he turned around and walked back. “I thought you might want your iPod. I brought it from downstairs.” He fished it out of his pocket and handed it to her.
As he left, she clenched her jaw and thought about the painting in her mother’s room. A white flower. Innocence. What would her mother think if she knew she had never tried to escape this prison? She would be hurt. Her father would be hurt. Brad would be hurt. Her entire life led to this moment, this decision. She squeezed her hands into fists as fear gripped her heart. It wasn’t fear for what she was about to attempt. It was fear at what she was, at the cowardice she had let consume her. It was selfish. It was wrong.