Page 104 of The Sound Of Us

“I’ll miss you.” It’s a choke erupting from my throat. Life in River Valley had not been all bad.

She pulls me in for a hug. Her maternal embrace is what I’ll miss the most. So many times I’d sat right here drinking her tea, listening to her tell me to find a way to leave Frank while she nursed a black eye.

As the minutes tick by, already it’s beginning to feel like this is a different life. A past life. The goodbyes are making this far too real.

“Live and be happy, Axel. Maybe we’ll see each other again, but if we don’t, always remember you have an old lady out here in this little town who loves you and always wishes every happiness for you, okay?”

Pepper sniffs at my feet. She’s hungry.

I want to go, get my things and get back to Eli, but I also want to prolong this visit. I’m having a hard time letting go. I swallow the lump in my throat, confusion keeping me in limbo.

“Thank you for everything, Mrs. Dalton. I don’t know what I would have done without you all these years.”

“You’d have survived one way or another because you’re a survivor, Axel. Don’t ever forget that.”

“Sh—should I say goodbye to Frank?” I ask suddenly.

She shakes her head. “No. Frank’s only interest in this whole situation is how much he can control it. If you try to leave on amicable terms, he’ll only use it to try to keep you here. Don’t engage with him, Axel. I learned this too late. People like him will do and say anything to keep you under their control. Don’t talk to him. Don’t try to explain anything and don’t try to make amends before you leave. It won’t work. These types of people, you’ve got to cut them off. No contact, Axel. That’s the only way you’re going to have your boundaries respected.”

We hug for a long time. I congratulate her on her almost-here granddaughter and make her promise to send pictures to Eli’s phone.

“I’ll send you my new phone number as soon as possible,” I tell her at the door. We try to keep the tears away, but who can deny them when we share such a special bond? Two abuse survivors, bound together by our shame, our pain, our secret dreams that one day someone would come and love us back to life.

I leave her eventually. She has a flight to catch and she’ll be late, so I extract myself from her and rush around the corner with Pepper close to my side.

She sniffs the air and barks. I shush her. Her bark sounds too loud in the still morning and being back at the house is making the hair at the back of my neck stand up.

I get into the house through the back door, using the key from inside the pocket of the ceramic gnome, since the front door is locked.

The house is as I’d left it. The food is untouched. A pang of guilt bounces into my head that Frank didn’t eat last night, but I don’t let it stick.

Pepper follows me into the bedroom, sniffing the air. I’d dreamed about this moment so many times before. Every night I imagined a scenario where we’d fight and somehow I’d manage to grab my little box of memories and I’d run. I’d run and never, ever stop running until I knew I was so far away from Frank that he’d never be able to find me.

Today is that day. And it’s better than any scenario I could have ever dreamed up. I’m not leaving alone and defeated. I’m leaving with the man from my imagination. For ten years, he had no face, but he kept me safe in my darkest, most terrifying moments of utter despair. And today, I can tell you that he is more than the most beautiful thing I could ever have imagined. He is what daydreams are made of. Daydreams and midnight secrets.

Dropping to my knees, I slide my hand into the bottom cubicle of the closet for my black lace underwear, my unwashed clothes from that first night at the lake with Eli and my memory box.

It’s empty.

The cubicle is empty.

And that’s when I hear the toilet flush.

Chapter 56

Axel

How many times can an already dying warrior get up and fight before his body abandons him, leaving him lost for strength to even breathe?

Tears sting at the back of my eyes. Tears made of hot anger and poisoned defeat.

How much more? I scream inwardly toward the heavens. What more do you want from me? I question this God I’ve been so faithful to for all my life, like Job from the bible. I feel like Job.

But the screams echoing in my head cannot drown out Frank’s sneering voice.

Pepper’s overgrown toenails tick-tick-tick frantically across the floor as she tries to reach me. Frank slams the door in her face. Her scratches on the door and her whines make my stomach turn. Terror returns as if it had never left. I cling desperately to my newfound courage, but my old self claws at me, ripping me to pieces, shedding the blood of my bravery without mercy, trying to protect me the old way.

“You looking for these?” Frank’s voice reaches me from across through the room like the twisted arms of the lowliest of demons, hissing and suckling air as the sound sinks into me through my pores.

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