The Last Secret You'll Ever Keep by Laurie Stolarz (summer reads txt) 📕

Is it simply a weird coincidence? Both of our captivity quarters having books? And both of our books at least somewhat related to our captive situations? Mine, with the well; hers, with the shed …

Plus, the two of us managing to escape after a handful of days …

I log back on, but she’s no longer there. Meanwhile, my phone alarm chimes. A reminder to take my meds—the fastest way to quiet my mind. Obviously, I ignore it.

NOW

24

In her memoir, Jane Anonymous, the creator of the chat site, describes her experience of being abducted. Among the items she had while in captivity, there was a book. A romance novel. Jane says she read it over and over as a way to pass the time, just as I did the water-well book. So, the fact that Peyton was given a book in captivity too …

Is leaving reading material for victims a thing that predators do? The idea of that seems completely crazy. But so is the shrine that’s become my bed, with the sweater, the syrup, and my parents’ list of rules; I’ve written the rules on card stock and set them beside the doorknob from Bailey Road.

I type Peyton’s name into the search box on my computer, along with the words missing woman and Chicago. Lots of missing-persons links pop up, but none with the name Peyton, and only a few seem to be from the greater Chicago area. Some of the links are for cases I’ve heard of—“famous” ones. Several of them involve younger kids, not even necessarily from the Midwest. But most of the stories seem to be over a year old, at least—nothing from the last eight months or even a year involving a twenty-four-year-old woman.

I try another search, using the words shack, suburb of Chicago, cornfield, and missing woman found.

A case in Northbrook, Illinois, keeps popping up, but it involves two girls—both thirty now—who’d been gone for ten years.

Another well-known case in the Chicago area concerns an eight-year-old boy believed to have been taken by his father, who’s also missing.

I click on a story involving a nineteen-year-old college student who disappeared while on a road trip with some friends. I start to scan for details, only to discover that the girl is still missing; it’s been eight years now.

None of the cases I find mention a cornfield or a shed. So, what am I doing wrong? Was there not much written about Peyton’s case? Did it somehow get even less attention than mine? Is this what happens when you’re over eighteen and taken? No one really cares. Especially if you resurface with no visible wounds?

I go to take a breath, but the tightening sensation has returned to my chest like shrink-wrap around my ribs. I reach for my bottle of pills and shake one onto my palm, over the phantom burn mark. I swallow the pill down, just as an alert jumps up on my screen: I have to be at work in an hour.

Downstairs, Aunt Dessa is in the kitchen, standing over the stove. She takes a sip from her wineglass. Something must be bothering her; she almost never drinks. “I made a fresh pot of carrot-and-ginger soup.” She stirs the pot with her back toward me. “Would you like a cup?”

“Maybe tomorrow. I have to work.”

She takes another sip. “How’s that going?”

“The library?”

“Yes. Are you getting anything out of it?”

“Well, I’m getting paid. It’s an actual job, not volunteering.”

“I’m surprised you want anything to do with that place.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, I can’t imagine many victims going back to the scene of their alleged crimes to get a job, volunteer or otherwise.”

“It’s a paid job,” I tell her again as if it even matters. “And this was the scene of my crime. He took me from this house.”

Doesn’t she remember? Redecorating my room? Back when she believed me, when my crime wasn’t just alleged, she desperately tried to clean things up, to make everything look new. And so, while I stayed on the living room sofa, not even wanting to get up to pee, Aunt Dessa repainted the walls of my room—slate blue from the former yellow—and rearranged the furniture with the help of neighbors. In the end, the room was barely recognizable. Even the windows looked different: Velvet curtains replaced stark-white blinds. My bed was draped in purple satin instead of blue-and-white checks. Gone were the pale wood floors; they’d been refinished, stained a dark cocoa color.

“Well?” she asked once the room had been finished. She stood beside me in the doorway. “What do you think?”

I couldn’t really think. I could only feel—palpitations inside my heart, wooziness in my head, and unsteadiness on my feet. I liked what she’d done, but it didn’t change the fact that I didn’t want to move. I only wanted to curl up into a ball—if not on the living room sofa, then in the corner of the redecorated space.

And so that’s what I did.

For weeks on end.

Not so much unlike when my parents died.

“Do you have the night off?” I ask, assuming she does, given the wine.

“I always take this night off.”

This night? I peek at the wall calendar, only just remembering. Today would’ve been my mother’s birthday.

“Did you forget?” she asks.

“No. It’s just…” I’m more attuned to her death. On the anniversary of the night of the fire, I walk around like a ghost, half wishing I were one, thinking the powers that be—whichever god is true—made some horrible mistake by leaving me behind. “I remembered the date last week,” I tell her, “but somehow it fell off my radar today.”

She continues to stir the pot, to take another sip, and then to refill her glass with sparkling pink, the same wine my mother drank on occasion; I recognize the rosy label. The soup is the same too, one of my mother’s favorites, made with only three ingredients, my mother used to boast.

“I really, really miss her,” I say,