"We better go. She needs to get back with the other kids." His eyes meet mine. The little girl walks behind him. I see her look back at him and offer him her hand.
He points at me, "No. Behave. No crying. I miss you. Go torture that cat of yours. She's had fourteen years of peace." He waves and the screen freezes. His blue eyes and her hand extended to him are all that is left of the picture.
I'm brokenhearted but I'm home. I let them be enough. My Mom squeezes my shoulders and my brother hits me in the arm, "Want a beer?"
I laugh and nod, "Yup. Please." I need one. I finally get that feeling of needing something, even if it's just a little.
He passes it to me and sits across from me at the table. His blue eyes are worried and distant. I look at him and take a drink, "You okay?" I ask in a hushed tone.
He shakes his head, "No. I think having you here is making it all real. For years I pretended it was a sad story on a show I watched and not my life at all." He smiles, "You're here and real and as annoying as I imagined you would be."
I roll my eyes, "Moving into an apartment with me and Shell wasn’t real enough? I washed your boxers last week."
He looks at me, "I may live with you until you're eighty. I can't let you out of my sight."
I grin, "The more comfortable we all get the meaner I will get." I glance at Shell who nods, "It's true. Sometimes she's kinda shitty. She has survival orphan syndrome moments still."
The room is silent except for my laugh. Shell's face is white but I'm killing myself laughing. Slowly smiles spread.
"Too soon?" She asks quietly.
I shake my head.
Lyle nods, "Yeah."
I laugh harder and mutter, "Survival orphan syndrome. It's so true." I take another drink of my beer and grimace, "I still don’t love the taste of this."
Jake takes it and drinks it. I almost have a stroke, but I laugh when I see the horrified look on Lyle's face.
Dad brings me a glass of red wine, "Try this maybe. It's what your mother and I drink."
I take the warm glass and already dread putting it up to my lips. I feel my throat thicken but take a deep breath. I tilt the glass and take a drink. The wine is bitter and I shiver. Instantly I hate it, but want more. My taste buds love it. The rest of me hates it.
I take a second drink. I nod, "This I can do."
Shell smirks, "My mom is gonna love this."
In the middle of the conversation, Mom interrupts us. "Lyle why don’t you and Jake take Michelle and Stuart and show them around town." Lyle looks like he's about to argue but he doesn’t. She stands up and everyone follows him out of the kitchen slowly. Mom sits at the table where Lyle was. She puts her hands out and touches mine. Hers are so clean and soft. Her skin is ivory.
"Honey, I need to know. I need to know how it was. I know they don’t want to know and I'm sure you don’t want to talk about it. But there is something inside of me that can't let go until I've properly understood it."
I shake my head, "It's okay." I look at the table. I can't look at her and talk. I've worked so hard to push it all down and find the normal inside of me.
I grip the glass.
"Baby, if you'd rather talk about it later, that’s okay. I just want you to know that at some point I need to know." Her soft voice is soothing.
"How much do you know?"
She shakes her head, "Not much. Eli explained that you were kept at a place you called the dirty house. That’s where he met you. I've obviously looked up the Spicers on Google."
I feel sick for her. I'm scared she's asking me to torture herself, but I talk anyway, "It wasn’t bad for me. I have limited memories of the dirty house. I remember the hole. They had a hole dug. It was round and dirty and it had a thick board on top for a lid. The smallest amount of light could get through. When Randy was edgy she put me in the hole. Only she could put kids in and take them out. The hole was off limits to him. I was off limits. If he got angry or edgy I was put in there. Laura would tell me it was for my own protection. My memories are choppy but I know he never molested me or anything like that."
She sighs and wipes away her silent tears. "When your child goes missing, you fear the worst. For you to be with the worst, well I assumed you suffered."
I shake my head, "No. It was just dirty and gross. They were bad people but not to me. I was like a child to her."
"What about the orphanage?"
I can meet her eyes. I smile, "It was amazing in comparison. I learned a million things I needed in life. I learned to be strong and to be grateful. They didn’t have time to love us, but they never hurt us. It was easy there, once I learned how to live there."
She squeezes my hand and drops her face to the table. Her back shakes and jerks with the sobs. I squeeze back, "Mom." I say softly. I rub her back the way Shell rubs mine and let her sob until she can't anymore.
She lifts her face, "I'm sorry." She sniffles and wipes her eyes. "I just am so relieved. I don’t know how it happened and how it worked but you seem so normal. I need to thank those nuns one day."
I grin and fight back my own tears. I jump out of the chair and wrap my arms around her.
"I prayed every day we would find you, but I was terrified of what we would find. I'm so grateful."
I close my eyes, "Me too."
"You needed teeth out. It was routine but we were so stressed. The enamel hadn’t been good on your teeth. I breastfed you at night, I didn’t know it would rot your teeth. They were just going to take out two and then fill the rest. They don’t do dental work on two-year olds. They put you to sleep." Her voice is muffled and sad.
"We went and sat in the waiting room. I paced and gripped the bear. We'd brought the bear. Lyle and Jake were being naughty. I was so tired and just wanted it over with. But you never came out of that recovery room. The doctor came to tell us you were fine and it had been routine and normal and you were sleeping the drugs off. You would wake soon. But we never saw again. Not till Eli came to us. He had a photo and a story. I doubted it all until I saw the photo." She reaches into her back pocket and pulls out a photo of me, taken at a bit of a distance. It's wrinkled and worn. I imagine she has held it to her face a thousand times.
"I thought I had died and gone to heaven that day. When he told us we couldn’t see you yet, you had been traumatized and needed time to resurface, well I thought I was going to murder him right then and there. I couldn’t believe that smug little shit was keeping you from me. After fourteen years, I was dying to see you. But your father agreed that it was better to try to pull you out of the fake world you had created."
I pulled back and nodded, "It was for the best. I didn’t feel like it at the time, but it was."
She wipes my hair away and I wonder if we look the same, red nose and puffy eyes.
"You are so lucky to have each other. I've never actually seen a man love a woman as much as he loves you, Sarah. I love your father and he loves me. We have survived a lot of things, but I know in my heart of hearts our love is not as intense as yours."
I laugh. If only she knew. I shake my head, "He's just an intense person. Trust me, I don’t think I'm capable of half the love he is. But I can laugh and fun, where as he can't. He isn’t fun. Not in the way Jake and Lyle are. He's intense in everything."
She smiles, "He's been through so much. His guilt over losing you, when he went for the police, has been unbearable."
"He didn’t lose me. I assumed he had run off, hating me for shooting her." The words sting on my tongue. It's the first time I've said it without bawling like a baby.
She kisses my forehead, "I don’t ever like imagining it all."
I hug her again and melt into her.
We fly back to Boston the next day. Mom packs us food for the plane and food for our apartment. She hugged me so hard I thought I might die. She gushes about coming to Boston and helping us decorate the apartment.
On the plane I'm nestled between my brothers. I'm certain they booked the flights with the seats confirmed this way. They're smothering me but I'm cool with it. I'm certain eventually I will smother them back, with a pillow. But it won't be today, well maybe. Jake is laying his head on my shoulder and mouth breathing. I look at Lyle, scowling, "Gross." I whisper.
He looks horrified, "That’s why I put you in the middle. I've done my share of car and plane rides."
I laugh and hang my mouth open, "Hurtful. I thought you put me in the middle cause you wanted to be the big brother and protect me from sitting by strangers."
He nudges me, "Whatever."
I smile and love him. We are soul mates. I pull out some hand sani and offer it to him. He puts his hands out. I squirt his and then do my own. We rub our hands together, the exact same way.
"Dad's obsessed with it too."
I laugh.
"Hey so, Shell was saying you dated Sebastian Hollinger?"
I nod, "Yeah. You know him?" I love that he calls her Shell.
He raises his eyebrows, "Uh yeah. Everyone knows him. Quite the success story there. His dad is a fisherman or something in Maine. We were in school at the same time at MIT."
I wrinkle my nose involuntarily, "He hates me."
He raises an eyebrow, "Ended badly?"
I nod, "Yeah. I came back from meeting you guys for the first time, at the end of January. It was before Eli and I had decided we wanted to be together. I had decided I just needed to be single. I told Sebastian I was taking myself off the market to do some self-discovery, he was pissed. He felt like I had led him on I think."
He frowns, "What a wanker. Wait…did you lead him on?"
I bite my lip and nod.
He looks disappointed, "How could you?"
I shrug, "I wanted him to be the one. He's normal and sweet and kind and awesome and safe. No matter how hard I tried to make it work it didn’t. He always saw the sad little orphan. I think he liked that I was broken. Eli thinks I'm the stronger one. I like that. Plus we have a spark."