Page 41 of Brave
It was probably a trick of his imagination that made him want to read more sadness in that than there actually was. She looked at her lap.
“When you’re ready,” he told her, “you can ask me for your caning.”
She nodded.
“Remember how we got to ten. I’m going to expect you to count them out.”
She nodded again.
“Buckle up,” he told her. Standing, he shut the car door, motioned for her to lock it until he got back, and then headed for the house.
Someone was watching from the window, although she quickly vanished behind the curtain the further up the walkway he came. He thought it might have been Pony right up until an older woman with Puppy’s same brown eyes and an echo of her narrow chin cracked open the front door.
“Who are you?” she asked, more wary than unfriendly.
“Carlson Garvey,” he introduced, a little sharper than he’d intended. “I have reason to believe your daughter isn’t safe in this house. Until I believe otherwise again, she’ll be staying with me. I’m here to collect her things. You can either go and get them, or let me in and I’ll do it myself.”
She gaped at him. “You can’t take my daughter.”
“Your daughter is twenty-eight, she can go where she likes, and I’m not about to leave her in an abusive situation.”
“Abusive!” Offended, the older woman jerked open the door to meet him on the porch. “That was an argument. The two are like siblings. They have them all the—wait!”
Carlson had no interest in waiting. Taking the open door for consent, he pushed past her. Passing the living room and kitchen, he ventured down the hallway with the woman following at his heels and sputtering, “Now h-hold… I didn’t say… y-you can’t… This is my house!”
Opening every closed door he came to, he finally found the bedroom he was looking for. Or at least, he assumed it was Puppy’s bedroom, but only because he found Pony sitting forlornly on the edge of a camping cot in front of the closet. The rest of the room was overwhelmingly decorated for a small child going through a princess and My Little Pony phase.
Glancing up, Pony took one look at him peeking in through the open door and erupted in panic. She kick-scooted backward, slamming up against the wall. She grabbed her pillow, the only shield she had, and hugged it fiercely close.
Just looking at her made him angry all over again, but more than that, he pitied her. Hard though it was to see it, she was every bit as much Ethen’s victim as Puppy was.
“I’m just here to collect a few things.”
Shifting to the farthest edge of her cot, she eyed him as he came into the room. He was very careful not to jostle her cot in his search for Puppy’s pack, which he found next to the nightstand at the head of the real bed. It was so surprisingly light that he did something he never, ever would have thought he’d ever do. Flipping open the top, he looked inside.
She had the notebook and pen he’d given her, a crumpled ball of paper, her pink glittery Hello Kitty wallet, what might have been a slave collar but looked more like a cheap pet store dog collar, complete with silver bone-shaped emblem, and a house key.
He turned on Pony, pack held out. “Where’s the rest?”
“The rest of what?” Puppy’s mother replied from the doorway. “If you mean her cellphone, it’s probably on the charger in the kitchen. That’s where they like to put it.”
He frowned at them both, pack held out, certain one or both of them must have removed something of importance from this mostly empty pack purse. She’d said everything she owned was in this bag. The way she often clung to it, hugging it protectively, he didn’t for a second doubt her. What he was holding in his hand couldn’t possibly be everything. Hell, it barely counted as anything at all. Something had to be missing.
“Whatever you took,” he warned, “I want it back, and I mean right God damn now.”
The two women exchanged uncomprehending glances before looking at him again.
“I’m not perfect, but I am not in the habit of stealing from my daughter,” the older one snapped.
He turned on Pony. “Did you?”
Her breathing quickening, she shook her head. A quick back and forth jerk that barely qualified as no, and yet twisted his gut into instant knots.
He looked at the stuffed animal on her bed, the My Little Pony quilt with mismatched Powerpuff Girls pillowcase. The walls were pink, the nightlamp was a unicorn carousel, and there were Hello Kitty stickers and crayon scribbles all over the white nightstand.
No longer caring about gentle, he marched to the closet and slid open the door.
“Jesus,” he breathed. Everything squeezed into the left-hand side behind the door was professional business attire, dress suits and skirts that he found far easier to imagine on Pony than Puppy. Everything on the right, was as pink as her bedroom. It was unicorns and kittens, embroidered hearts, and statements of self-worth written bubble font and glitter.
