Page 31 of Unbroken

All of us together in the kitchen, thinking about Blakely andwhere she’d been, reminded me of the days after she’d disappeared and then the weeks after when we realized something wasn’t right.

She’d left, and it changed everything. Now she was back, and I knew it would change everything once again.

FIFTEEN

Blakely

When something traumatic happens,it’s interesting the memories that stick with you.

It would be impossible to forget those one hundred and seventeen days.

I remembered the hard, concrete floor I laid on every night. I remembered the putrid smells and the cold that permanently lived under my skin and settled in my bones. I remembered the sound of his footsteps on the old wooden stairs. And I remembered the sound of the chain tightening around my ankle when I cowered away.

I remembered being terrified that my friends were in just as much trouble. Or that if they did survive, they’d hate me.

I remembered the fear that constricted me every moment of every minute of every day.

I remembered how it felt to think I would die.

I knew I’d never escape those memories. No matter how many therapy sessions I attended, how well my anti-anxiety medication was working, or how many journal entries I penned, they would always live within me.

But there were other, less conspicuous memories that were often more potent.

I couldn’t forget the knots in my hair and the dry, rough texture of my skin after not showering for months. I remembered the way my skin scraped against the exposed brick behind me and the sensation of the blood trickling down my back before it pooled on the floor.

The memory of peanut butter slathered on dry, stale bread sticking to the roof of my mouth after I finally broke down and ate what little he gave me and washed it down, just barely, with the tepid water that tasted faintly of iron.

And afterward, the sensation of my lips was so chapped and raw that they split and bled. The first shred of kindness I’d been offered in months was by one of the teenagers who found me in that basement. She’d been staring at me intently as we waited for the police. I couldn’t imagine the way I looked, but I only thought about that afterward. At that moment, I was more concerned about getting as far away from that house as possible.

Until she reached into her pocket, pulled out cherry-flavored lip balm, and offered it to me.

The first time I applied it, it burned. But then there was relief. Pure, sweet relief.

Worried my lips would ever turn into that painful mess again, I’d started keeping lip balm and applying it—some would say obsessively. And I used to love peanut butter, but now, just the thought or mention of it made me want to gag.

That’s why I had no remorse when I unceremoniously dropped the peanut butter cookies my new neighbor had dropped off into the trash can.

I straightened up the rest of the kitchen and wiggled the mouse at my computer sitting on the kitchen table. It had been updating for several minutes already, and I let out a frustrated groan. I’d promised a website concept to a client by noon, and I needed my computer functional to do that. And to actually build the website.

Deciding to give it another few minutes before I really started to worry, I peered over at the couch and the potato curled in one corner. Not an actual potato, just my dog, Tato.

He was soaking up the sunlight that peeked through the blinds.

I’d rescued Tato from a kill shelter the day after I moved back to Austin. I’d driven past the open-air shelter when it was almost twenty degrees. The other dogs had been adopted by other good Samaritans, but he’d been left behind.

The lady working the front desk said Tato’s previous owners had surrendered him after he’d gone deaf from an untreated infection. And no one wanted him because he was a deaf Pitbull mix.

I’d paid the adoption fee on the spot and before even meeting him. I didn’t care what type of behavioral or health issues he might have, I was going to take him home and out of the cold.

But there was nothing wrong. Luke was a vet, and I’d wanted to take Tato there but thought better of it. The vet we had seen gave him a clean bill of health and confirmed his deafness.

The people at the shelter hadn’t bothered to name him.

I’d initially been concerned that naming him something he wasn’t used to being called would confuse him. But then I remembered that he was deaf and wouldn’t be able to hear me anyway.

It took me a whole two days to settle on the name Tato, short for Couch Potato, because all he wanted to do was lie around and cuddle. He enjoyed one short, sniffing walk a day, and that was enough for him. I made the mistake of taking him to a dog park once. He stood stock-still in the middle of the yard in protest. The other dogs jumped around him, nipping happily at his feet and hoping he’d play, but he didn’t budge.

As much as I saved him, Tato saved me, too. He was a reason to get out of bed in the morning when it was the last thing I wanted to do. He depended on me for everything, and I couldn’t let him down.

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