“What did you see?” I pressed.
Her eyes met mine, and there was so much sadness there it terrified me. “Nothing that can do you any good to know. You are right to believe it isn’t real.”
Her body grew weak as she slumped back into her seat with heavy eyes. “I’m very tired now. We need to rest.”
But I couldn’t rest. What she said shook me. She knew something, and I needed to know what it was. Before I could press her any further, a sharp stabbing pain ripped through my gut as I doubled forward, and my mouth began to water.
I was going to puke. And Luna was out cold. I dragged myself outside of the camp trailer just in time before I spewed the contents of my stomach onto the ground. But it didn’t end there. I continued to heave until nothing came up, and all I could do was curl into a ball and lie in a puddle of my own sweat. I didn’t know what was happening, but the flashbacks that came were the most intense I’d ever had. Closing my eyes didn’t help. Nothing helped. There was no way to block them. I could only embrace them.
“Put on the dress,” Ricky said.
My stomach hurt as I looked at the pale blue dress with white lace. It was pretty and new, and so were the shoes and ruffled socks. I liked the dress, but I didn’t want to put it on.
“Put it on,” Ricky snarled.
I curled into myself and shook my head, and his hand exploded across my face, my skull vibrating from the force of it.
“Put on the goddamn dress, or I will put it on for you.”
There was no point in arguing. He wasn’t lying. He would put it on for me, and it would hurt. I picked up the material and pulled it over my head with shaking limbs. I felt like I was going to throw up, and I knew when the man got here I would. Ricky would really punish me for that, so I asked to go to the bathroom, but he said no.
He stayed until I put on the socks and shoes, and then he forced me to sit on the bed and wait. When he disappeared, I squeezed my eyes shut and wished I could be somewhere else. But Birdie was so small, and I didn’t know how I would take care of her. I promised her that someday we would leave. We would run away together, and I wanted that now more than anything.
The door opened, and Ricky let the man inside. He was old and gray, and I couldn’t meet his eyes even when he told me to.
“Gypsy,” Ricky warned.
“It’s okay,” the man told him. “We’ll be okay.”
The door shut, and Ricky disappeared, leaving me alone with the man. He looked over the dress he’d bought me, and his face looked happy.
“You look very pretty,” he murmured. “So very pretty.”
I watched him set up the video camera, and my stomach cramped up. I put my arm across it, so I could try to hold back the sick feeling, but it never went away. The man suggested that we play more dress up games, and I did. But I knew it wasn’t what he really wanted. The dress up always made me feel sick in the end.
When he took off my clothes and touched me, I squeezed my eyes shut again and tried to imagine a different place in my mind. But he made me touch him, and I couldn’t stop the sick feeling. My stomach cramped and cramped, and I threw up on him.
He got angry and shoved me to the floor, wiping himself off in disgust. “You’re going to pay for that, you little bitch.”
It wasn’t a lie.
They always made me pay.
THE HOUSE WAS DARK WHENI walked in the door, and something odd pinched at my gut when I set my briefcase down. The aching silence I’d known for fifteen years stretched between the walls, and though it was once familiar, it had quickly become a foreign concept.
In a short amount of time, Gypsy had managed to breathe life back into this house. But that life ceased to exist in her sudden absence. With the open floor plan, almost every part of the lower level could be seen from where I stood, and my immediate instinct was to check the master suite. I doubted she’d gone to bed early, but as I stalked toward our room, I found myself wishing that were the case.
A quick glance confirmed the bed was still made, and my stomach sank. For two long minutes, I stood in the middle of the room, debating my next course of action. I considered myself an excellent poker player, and I never expected Gypsy to call my bluff. But it seems that was exactly what she’d done.
She’d left me.
The thought was sobering, and it came out of nowhere. The airway in my chest felt like it was in a vise when my eyes moved to her side of the bed. The bed where she’d slept with me for long enough that I knew it wouldn’t be the same without her.
But she didn’t mean anything to me. That was what I kept telling myself. I was only doing this to help her, and that was it. I never intended to send her to prison if she ran away. Everything I’d told her from the beginning was an empty threat. A way of manipulating her to stay and see it through.
My intentions were good, but now all I could see was the blackness dimming my vision as my hands curled at my sides. We had a contract. She couldn’t just walk away from me. We weren’t done. Not by a long shot. She signed the papers and took my name. She recited the vows that made her mine. And if she thought I was going to let her walk out halfway through the game, she was wrong.
I pulled my phone from the pocket of my trousers and swiped at the screen. But before I could do what I’d intended, something across the room caught my eye. The closet door was wide open, and inside, her belongings remained untouched.