Near the Bone by Christina Henry (ebook reader color screen txt) 📗

it or anything, I know it’s probably upsetting for you. There was a big search for you. It was on every TV station. And every year on the anniversary of your disappearance there are stories, you know, ‘what happened to Samantha Hunter,’ those kinds of things.”

“Samantha Hunter,” Mattie said. “I forgot that name for a long time. William told me my name was Martha, and he called me Mattie.”

She paused, taking a deep breath before going on. “In all those times that you heard those stories—did they ever say anything about Heather? About my sister, Heather?”

C.P. frowned. “I don’t remember anything about her. They always talk about you and your mom and they always show this same clip from around the time you were taken, of some guy, your mom’s boyfriend talking about . . .”

Realization lit his face. “Your mom’s boyfriend—it was that guy! The guy who kidnapped you! He was talking to reporters, acting like it was such a tragedy, and that he didn’t have any idea what had happened. The police interviewed him, I remember now, and they searched his house and everything but they didn’t find any sign of you and they had to eliminate him as a suspect. What did he do, stash you somewhere while he was off pretending to be worried about finding you?”

“You have to stay here while I’m out,” William said. “I can’t trust you not to run away.”

Mattie looked at the floor, at the small multicolored rug that covered the area behind the couch. There wasn’t a rug anywhere else in the cabin.

“He put me in the Box,” she said.

“The Box?”

“The Box is for bad girls who try to run away,” she said. Her voice sounded very distant to her own ears. “I was always trying to run away at first, and he had to put me in the Box so I would learn how to be good, to listen and to obey.”

She walked toward the rug as if in a dream. C.P. pushed his chair back and followed her. She sensed his uncertainty. He didn’t know what to do or how to respond. Mattie pulled up the rug to reveal a trapdoor in the floor. She tugged the ring to open the door.

Underneath was a wooden, coffin-like structure, narrow and long. It hadn’t been used in many years, and it was dusty inside. The corners had the remnants of spiderwebs and their prey, the shells of dead, desiccated insects.

“He put you inside here?” C.P. sounded like he was going to be sick again. “And left you here?”

“Yes. When I was bad.”

“You weren’t bad. You were a little girl, and you were scared, and you wanted to go home.”

He sounded angry, but Mattie wasn’t afraid of his anger the way she’d been before. It wasn’t anger that could hurt her. She’d gone away again, away to a place where she was safe and she didn’t have to think about the door closing over her head.

“Hey,” he said, tapping her shoulder with one finger. “You weren’t bad. You didn’t deserve this. Nobody deserves this. Except maybe that sicko. I’d like to see how he’d like it if someone shoved him in a wooden box.”

Something broke inside her then, some tide of fear and hurt that she’d been bottling up for longer than she could remember.

“I just wanted to go home. I just wanted to go home to Mom and Heather. William told me that Mom gave me to him to keep, that I belonged to him forever, but I didn’t believe him and I just wanted to go home.”

She wept then, wept like she never had before, wept like she would never stop, bent over her knees with her arms over her head and the musty smell of the Box inside her nose and the feeling of this stranger’s eyes on her, helpless to stem the flood tide of her grief.

After a long while she felt dried up and exhausted, and she sat up. C.P. looked away from her, like he was embarrassed to have seen her outburst.

“Let’s cover this up,” he said. “Nobody needs to see this.”

He closed the trapdoor to the Box and pushed the rug back over it while Mattie watched him, drained and dazed.

“We’re leaving,” he said. “We’re getting off this goddamn mountain and never coming back. Come on, pull yourself together. We have to pack up some stuff and figure out how to get Jen out of here. I’m going out to see if that sled you talked about is somewhere around.”

He stood, and held out his hand for Mattie to grasp. She hesitated, because there was a part of her that was still saying William will be angry you’re not supposed to talk to strange men but she pushed that part of her down, down, down and away. That person didn’t exist anymore, that little mouse Martha. But she wasn’t quite Samantha yet, either. She was something in between.

She took C.P.’s hand, and stood on her own two feet.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Mattie went to check on Jen while C.P. was outside. Jen was still asleep, breathing lightly, but she didn’t rouse at all when Mattie touched her forehead or shook her shoulder. There was certainly something more seriously wrong with Jen than just the wound from the trap, but Mattie was at a loss. She didn’t have any real medical knowledge. If anything she was the one who’d needed medical care over the years, particularly after the losses of her children. William had always taken care of her then.

She went to the closet and took out her trousers and a heavy sweater and changed into them. At least she wouldn’t slow everyone down by trying to walk in skirts and petticoats. Her hair was falling out of its braid—it had been more than a day since she’d combed and bound it—and it was in her way as she dressed.

She didn’t have time to brush it all out—that was a