Chương 1
"The attic door opened without resistance, and for one terrifying second I could not make myself step through it.
Seven months of locked wood had trained my body better than any command they had ever given me.
My hand stayed on the knob while I listened to Daniel and his mother arguing somewhere below.
“You're the one who left everything up there,” Marlene hissed.
“I got the camera.”
“You always get the camera.”
Their voices came from the kitchen, two floors down, muffled by walls and the low mechanical hum of the refrigerator.
I slipped into the hallway.
My knees almost folded beneath me.
The railing was six feet away, but the distance looked absurd, like something measured for another person's body.
I pressed my palm against the wall and moved sideways.
The hidden phone was tucked inside the elastic band beneath my shirt, warm against my skin.
I had forty-three recordings on it.
Maybe forty-four now.
I had stopped counting because counting had become dangerous.
Numbers encouraged hope, and hope made me imagine endings.
For months, survival had meant concentrating on smaller things.
One swallow.
One hour.
One night.
One more recording.
At the stairs, I looked down.
The house seemed unfamiliar from above.
There was the framed print Marlene had bought at a yard sale and insisted was valuable.
There was the narrow table Daniel always bumped with his hip when he carried groceries.
There was a basket of clean laundry on the landing.
My gray cardigan lay folded on top.
I stared at it longer than I should have.
Somebody had washed my clothes while keeping me locked in an attic.
The normality of that nearly broke me.
Marlene laughed downstairs.
Not a cruel laugh this time.
An ordinary one.
Daniel had apparently said something about the neighbor's dog.
I gripped the banister until the dizziness passed.
Then I took the first step.
The wood creaked.
Silence came from below.
I froze.
“What was that?” Daniel said.
“What was what?”
I waited with my mouth open because breathing through my nose suddenly seemed too loud.
Another sound came from the kitchen, a cabinet shutting.
“Nothing,” he said.
Their conversation resumed.
I descended.
The stairs were harder than standing had been.
My legs trembled uncontrollably, and the weight of my pregnancy pulled at muscles weakened by months of confinement.
Halfway down, a cramp tightened beneath my ribs.
I stopped and counted to ten.
The baby moved.
That movement had frightened me at first because I had no way to know what anything meant anymore.
Now I pressed one hand against the place where I felt it.
“I know,” I whispered.
The words were barely air.
At the second-floor landing, freedom divided into choices.
The front door was downstairs beyond the kitchen.
The guest room was ten feet to my left.
Daniel's office was at the end of the hall.
I could try the front door and risk crossing directly past them.
I could hide and wait.
Or I could get something I had spent months wishing I possessed.
A charger.
The phone showed nineteen percent the last time I checked.
Nineteen percent contained seven months of my life.
I turned toward Daniel's office.
It was unlocked.
Of course it was.
They locked me, not rooms.
The desk looked exactly as it had before I disappeared upstairs, except for two new hard drives beside the monitor.
Daniel's coffee mug had left a brown ring on a stack of unopened mail.
A baseball cap hung from the chair.
There were crumbs on the keyboard.
I hated those crumbs.
I hated them with an intensity that made no sense.
He had eaten crackers at this desk.
He had lived down here.
He had gotten hungry and opened packages and brushed salt from his fingers while I lay upstairs trying not to vomit.
I found a charging cable plugged behind the monitor.
My hands shook so badly that I knocked a pen onto the floor.
It hit the hardwood.
The sound was tiny.
Downstairs, Daniel stopped talking.
I crouched beside the desk.
Footsteps entered the hall below.
“Daniel?” Marlene called.
“Hang on.”
His steps reached the staircase.
I looked at the window.
Second floor.
Too high.
I looked under the desk, then at the closet.
Neither would hide me for long.
The phone was in my hand now.
Eighteen percent.
I opened the emergency call screen.
My thumb hovered.
Calling meant noise.
Calling meant losing control over when they discovered me.
Calling also meant another minute could put me back upstairs.
I entered 911.
Footsteps climbed.
I pressed call.
The connection seemed to take forever.
Then a woman's voice said, “911, what's the address of your emergency?”
For a moment I couldn't speak.
Hearing a stranger nearly undid me.
I had spent so long listening only to people who enjoyed my fear that simple professionalism sounded like kindness.
“Please,” I whispered.
“Ma'am, can you tell me the address?”
I gave it.
Daniel's footsteps stopped outside the office.
The doorknob moved.
I backed toward the window.
The door opened.
He looked at me.
There was no dramatic reaction.
His face simply emptied.
His eyes dropped to the phone.
“What are you doing?”
I held it behind me.
The dispatcher was speaking, but I couldn't understand the words anymore.
Daniel stepped into the room.
“Give me that.”
I shook my head.
He glanced toward the hallway.
“Mom.”
I screamed.
It came out raw and thin, nothing like the scream I had imagined during all those nights upstairs.
Daniel lunged.
I threw myself sideways around the desk.
The office chair rolled between us and struck his shin.
He cursed.
“She's out,” he shouted.
Marlene's footsteps hit the stairs.
I kept the phone clenched in my hand.
“I'm pregnant,” I said toward it.
“I've been locked in an attic.”
Daniel stopped.
Not because he was afraid for me.
Because he understood someone had heard.
His expression changed slowly.
May you like
“What did you tell them?”
I backed into the wall.
