Prologue
Stephanie
Six months ago
Eight missed calls. All from the same number.
Dad.
I stare at my phone, not wanting to make the return call. Half of the reason is because I’m afraid to find out why exactly he’s calling; half because my whole body aches, courtesy of the end of a brutal twelve hour shift.
Since I’ve started in the ER, I’ve learned that no matter how supportive a shoe advertises itself to be, it’s never supportive enough. Your day ends, and you’re lucky if you have enough energy to feed yourself.
I don’t even think I could wiggle my toes if I wanted.
I sigh.
I’m still going to call him back, though. He’s my dad. Heck, he’s more than that. He’s my best friend. He’s the one I’ve always been able to count on. I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for him, and not just in the biological sense.
I pull up his name on my contact list and hit ‘call’.
After my mom passed, he was all that I had and, somehow, the wonderful man made being a single parent and managing his own business work. Somehow, he came up with the money to put me through nursing school.
I still haven’t figured that one out.
But even so, my body tenses as my phone dials him.
We talked just last Sunday. As we do practically every week, ever since I moved away to college and then to my job here in the ER at Baltimore General, on the far coast from my hometown in Arroyo Falls, California.
The phone rings and rings.
It’s just before sunrise back home. Dad should be up by now, getting ready to open the store.
Time drags on and then there’s a click of the phone picking up. When he answers, it almost doesn’t sound like my dad. He sounds faded. Drawn out. Feeble.
An alarm blares a warning inside my heart. The hairs on the back of my neck stand straight up.
“Hey pumpkin,” he says, his voice almost a sigh.
“Dad, what’s wrong?”
I don’t chit chat. This whole call doesn’t feel right, and, working in the ER, you don’t mess around with niceties when someone’s life is in danger. Especially someone you love.
“I need you to come home. As soon as you can. Please.”
My throat closes.
Something is wrong.
I’m already making plans, re-arranging my life inside my head.
“Dad, seriously, please, tell me what’s going on. What happened?”
“I’m sorry, pumpkin. I had an accident. Busted my damn hip and the doc says I’m going to be out of action for a while. They’re going to have to operate.”
“Oh, dad, I’m so sorry,” I murmur, and, in the hazy fog of my exhausted mind, I’m already pulling together a list of the things I need to do: take a lot of time off, find a plane ticket — like, now — and get a ride to the airport.
It’s calming having an objective, something to plan for.
“I’ll be on the first flight I can book, alright dad?”
“It’ll be nice to see you, pumpkin. I’m sorry about all this trouble.”
There’s a weakness in my dad’s voice that I’ve never heard before. He’s always been this energetic, strong, unshakable pillar that’s lifted me up to where I am today.
“It’s no trouble, dad. I have to go now, though. I just got off work and I need to get home and get packed. I’ll call you as soon as I’m at the airport, alright?”
“See you soon, dear.”
* * * * *
Sixteen sleepless hours later, eleven-hundred dollars poorer because last-minute airfare is total extortion, and full of more caffeine than a person should have in their system unless they want to induce heart arrhythmia, I’m stepping out of a cab and onto the sidewalk in front of my childhood home.
I take it all in.
My breath puffs in the still air.
It smells like ocean. It smells clean. Fresh.
It’s such a nice break compared to Baltimore.
When was I here last? A year ago? It was right after graduation.
It feels longer than that.
It’s morning, the sun is just peeking above the horizon and sea-birds are shaking off their slumber, cutting the still air with cawing that echoes for miles.
Home is a light-blue bungalow — the same style as hundreds of others in Arroyo Falls, and countless thousands throughout the rest of California.
Except this home holds so much of who I am.
I learned to ride a bike on the chipped asphalt of our driveway. I planted the oak tree that now shades half the front yard as part of an Earth Day project in kindergarten.
When I was thirteen, I built the tiny treehouse sheltered in it’s boughs with spare lumber from the store and screws and nails I’d swiped when I thought no one was looking.
Dad knew. When I finished it, he’d told me it was the best treehouse he’d ever seen. I was proud.
Then, I put a “No Boys Allowed” sign out front.
When I was fifteen, I took down the “No Boys Allowed” sign so I could play doctor with one of the neighbor boys: Jacob Riley. He was cute and had a nice smile and he played on the basketball team.
When I was sixteen, I had my first kiss in that treehouse with my patient. Also Jacob. We broke all sorts of doctor-patient ethics laws while ten feet above the ground.
I can’t help but smile remembering those times.
The blue paint on the house is faded now, peeling away in big finger-sized flakes. The siding’s worn and needs replacing, the lawn’s several weeks overgrown, and deep divets around the door jamb and the strike plate speak about a lifetime of hard wear and poor repair in just the year since I’ve last been here.
I’ll have to fix that. All of it.
Especially since I’ll be spending a lot of time here while dad recovers.
Rap-rap-rap.
My knuckles thud against the deep red cherry wood. Then I stop, and my hazy brain realizes it’s not like I can just expect my dad to get up and answer the door with a hip fracture.
“Sorry dad, I forgot,” I yell out as I fumble in my purse for my keys. “I’ll let myself in.”
The hinges squeak as I push it forward.
It’s a mess inside.
It’s musty. Dirty.
This isn’t the home I remember. There’s no pride here.
It feels like a stranger lives here and has swept every bit of our family’s essence under the rug.
What happened? I think as I step through the threshold.
I toss my things to the floor of the mudroom, the same way I used to toss my backpack aside every day coming home from school.
Moving forward, I come to the living room.
TV blaring in the background, some local newscaster talking about the morning commute, my eyes skip over it all and only see one thing: dad.
He’s sitting on the couch, wrapped in a blanket, and looks so much smaller than the man that carried me on his shoulders through the aisles in the store.
“Dad?”
I call out to him twice before he starts awake. His head turns to me and I see the deep furrows of sleepless nights beneath his eyes. Care, fear, concern, all worn into the creases of his forehead.
“I’m sorry, pumpkin,” he murmurs.
“Sorry for what, dad?”
He doesn’t answer.
I’m to his side in a flash, crouching down, I take his hand and squeeze it tight. My fingers slide down to his wrist, taking his pulse — I can’t help it, he just looks so messed up. I want to know what’s wrong.
“It’s ok, dad, I’m here now.”
Something foreign seizes my shoulder. Calloused, rough fingers tighten on me. Hard. Painful.
I cry out.
The scent of awful cologne, smoke, and vinegar violently penetrates my nostrils.
“Welcome home, Stephanie,” someone growls.
Hands haul me upward, hefting me like I’m a disobedient child, spinning me around and planting me face-to-face with leering ugliness.
A wicked scar. A set of soulless jaundiced eyes that show years of substance abuse. A putrid smile that means anything but compassion.
“Nice to meet you,” he says, fingertips brushing my cheek. “Your family photos don’t even come close to doing justice to just how tempting a piece of ass you are.”
“Dad, who is this?” I call out to my father.
He doesn’t say anything.
“Dad, what’s going on?” I repeat, turning to look at him.
One hand takes the back of my head, pulling my gaze back around to the leering man. The other jams itself into my mouth, fingers probing, violating me.
I’d bite down, fight back, but I’m so disturbed, I freeze up.
What is going on?
“My name is Vladimir. Now, this might surprise you, but your father didn’t have a fall. He was just late with a payment.”
My stomach heaves — spurred on by Vladimir’s fingers jabbing the back of my throat — and I barely fight down the vomit clawing it’s way up my esophagus.
Mercifully, this man takes his fingers out of my mouth and let’s go of my head. Just long enough to grab me by the arms and hurl me bodily into the kitchen.
I crash into my mom’s old spice rack, sending a cloud of cinnamon into the air.
I scream, until I inhale the choking hot spice and a different set of hands clamps down over my mouth.
One rough hand keeps a tight grip on my face, while the other takes its time, sliding around my body, brushing my breasts, until it wraps me in a tight, restraining hug.
I’m just a thing to these people.
Behind me, this man’s cock is rock hard and pressing into the small of my back. Menace ripples through his chest in a chuckle, and his smoky voice whispers in my ear: “Fight back. I love when you bitches need to be taught to submit.”
Standing in front of me, Vladimir smirks. “That’s Yuri. Think of him as your supervisor. He’ll be watching you, until I get every last thing I want from you.”
I try and scream again and it comes out as a muffled whimper.
From the other room, I hear my dad’s voice. It’s quivering, angry and afraid at the same time. “Leave her alone. You said you weren’t going to hurt her.”
Neither of my captors responds.
Vladimir saunters the last few steps to me and hunches down, bringing his face so close to mine that I can feel the spittle spray against my face as he speaks.
“If you think this is pain, say ‘no’ to me. Do it just once,” he growls, running his thumb along my cheek. “If you want to learn what it’s like to have the humanity fucked out of you, if you want to learn what it’s like to weep a lifetime’s worth of tears in a night, go ahead and piss me off.”
Yuri’s cock presses harder against my back and I can feel his thumping pulse quicken.
“Will you be a good girl?” Vladimir whispers.
I nod.
I hate it, but I nod.
He stares into my eyes, holding me petrified. He plants a gentle kiss on my forehead, then smiles and straightens up. Turning, he leaves the room, heading to the front door.
I hear it open and close with a slam.
Yuri releases me and I take a lungful of air and stand, shocked, trying to get my brain started again.
Yuri follows his boss, pausing only to smack me hard on the ass as he passes me by.
I don’t know how long it takes before I’m moving again.
I feel like so much of who I am, of what makes me me was just stripped away, and all that’s left makes me shiver in revulsion.
Somehow, I leave that kitchen.
Somehow, I force my eyes to look down at my father, still cowering on the couch.
Somehow, I spit the angry words out of my mouth.
“Dad, what did you do?”