Chapter 5
On the seventh day after Jack Hawthorne took me away, the Carter family held a press conference.
The headline, [We will do everything we can to protect our daughter, Emily], was huge and bold, paired with a photo of Emily smiling weakly in a hospital bed.
Bandages wrapped her neck, her face was pale, and her eyes looked soft and fragile, like some poor flower wrecked by a storm.
The comments section was full of sympathy.
Someone said: [Poor thing. She went through a kidnapping and was so scared she ended up with heart problems.]
Another echoed: [The Carter family really loves this daughter. They spent the whole press conference thanking the rescue team.]
Someone else chimed in: [I heard James personally took the shot to save Emily. That's so badass.]
Not one person mentioned me.
No one knew I had a wound on my neck too, one ten times deeper than Emily's.
No one knew that when I was dragged away, my family was busy comforting the fake heiress.
No one knew there was another daughter in this world, in some unknown corner, with her life and death still up in the air.
Jack drove for a long time.
Through a gap near the bottom of the van, I watched streetlights disappear one by one. Asphalt turned into concrete, concrete into gravel, and eventually even the gravel was gone, leaving only dirt.
By the time he yanked me out of the car, the blood on my neck had dried and stuck to my collar. Pulling at it felt like tearing off skin.
"Don't move," he said roughly, though he didn't use force this time.
He dragged me into a run-down one-story house and threw me onto a cot. A dim yellow bulb swung overhead, and the shadows dancing on the wall looked like ghosts.
Then he started tearing through drawers and cabinets.
I thought he was looking for a knife, rope, or some other tool to torture me with.
Instead, he found a dusty first-aid kit.
"Bear with it," he crouched down and cut open the collar near my neck.
The scissors hit the dried blood, and the pain made my whole body jolt.
"I said bear with it," he pressed down on my shoulder with enough force to feel like he might crush my bones.
Then the alcohol hit my wound.
I bit my lip until it bled, but I didn't scream.
He glanced at me, said nothing, and kept bandaging the wound.
Layer after layer of white gauze wrapped around my neck, and before long, red seeped through.
"You've got guts," he finally said. Then he kicked the first-aid kit aside, sat in the chair across from me, and started wiping down his knife.
The same knife that had been at my throat.
I ignored him, or maybe I didn't have the strength. I'd lost too much blood. My vision blurred, my ears rang, and it sounded like ten thousand bees were buzzing around my head.
I thought I was dying.
Dying on that moldy cot, in front of the man who kidnapped me, at the same time the Carter family were holding a press conference.
"Don't die," Jack's voice sounded far away. "If you die, who's going to hate them?"
I was unconscious for three days.
When I woke up, Jack was sitting by the doorway smoking. The sunlight behind him traced his outline in gold.
If he hadn't kidnapped me, the sight might actually have been beautiful.
"You're awake?" he didn't even turn around. "There's oatmeal on the table. Eat it yourself."
I turned my head and saw an enamel bowl by the bed. It was plain oatmeal, thick and still steaming.
I shifted a little, and pain ripped through me like I'd been run over by a truck. Every bone in my body screamed.
"I stitched the wound again," he said, still not looking back. "You had a fever the whole time you were out. You were talking in your sleep."
"... What did I say?" my voice came out rough and hoarse.
"You kept calling for Mom."
I fell silent.
"Thirty-seven times," he added.
I turned my face to the wall so he wouldn't see my expression.
He flicked ash from his cigarette. "You said another name too. Emily.
"You kept saying, 'That's my mom, not yours.'"