Chapter 29

Emily

I’ve managed to build a fire and I think I have it sheltered from the direction I ran from. I used the fire to melt the nylon rope off myself, burning my wrists really badly in the process. My poor hands have blisters on the palms from making the fire and the sides of them have scrapes from my previous attempt to remove the rope.

There’s enough underbrush on the ground that no one could sneak up on me. I used a reasonably flat piece of wood to smooth out somewhere to lie down and I have placed leaves there so I’m not too uncomfortable. My biggest concern is dehydration. If I remember correctly, that’s what gets you first, so I’m trying to conserve my energy. I even sharpened a stick on a boulder and have a pretty mean‐looking stake. I’m not going down without a fight. Not this time.

When Dane left all those years ago, our father got worse for a time but only with our mother. Not with me, that didn’t start until I got my first period. That was the first time he hit me—I was only 13. I remember my mother putting herself between us and shaking her head violently from side to side. I didn’t understand but later I would.

He tried to touch me a few times but my mother went after him in a way I had never seen her do before.

She never stood up to him, so it came as a complete surprise. It broke something in him for a time. He stopped drinking, stopped being a bully and we were like a normal family. I even had friends, which was something I had never had before. My mother never let him be alone with me, ever. Even when he wasn’t drinking, she was always vigilant.

I was twenty when she was killed. I was away at college. I went home for the funeral and I remember that he reeked of alcohol, standing beside him as he held my hand. My mother was proud of me when I went off to school. I had to work two jobs to be able to afford to go but she told me never to come back, not even for holidays. She would occasionally come up and visit but it was always alone. I know my father thought he loved her but it wasn’t really love. He wanted to possess her, to own her and to control everything she did. I think she thought she didn’t have a way out, so she stayed. I think they were happy before she died; I think Ma had resigned herself to a life with him and made the best of it.

I got my first phone call from the local police station about twelve months after she passed. Dad had been picked up trying to put his car keys into the ignition of his car but was so drunk he couldn’t find the right key. They had him in a drunk tank, but technically he hadn’t done anything wrong. If only they had let him drive and then picked him up. So, I went home for a week, threw out all his bottles, paid his bills and almost wiped out my bank accounts doing it.

The next time was about six months later and then the calls became more and more frequent until he was diagnosed with cancer. In the end, I’d missed so much school I deferred for twelve months but I never went back. I got a job in a local call center and tried to make enough money to pay for the running of the house. I even worked nights for a while but I couldn’t continue that for long; the lack of sleep was not good for me.

He’d be good for a while then he’d start drinking again. We were lucky that he was a functioning alcoholic, he had a good health plan with his work and they paid a lot of the medical bills but not all. I still have a huge debt where that’s concerned. He only tried to hit me a couple of times, but I made it clear that I would walk. I put locks on my bedroom door so that he couldn’t come into my room when I was asleep. The nights were the worst. I would sleep with a knife under my pillow and push my chest of drawers in front of the door. I was lucky I had my own bathroom; my ma insisted I have one. I think even all those years ago she knew what he was capable of and didn’t want to put me in any kind of danger. She tried her best.

If I have children, there is no way I could do what she did. She should have left and I often wonder why she didn’t.

My bedroom became my safe haven. He was fine during the days, apologetic even. I always wondered what happened to him to make him so angry, so miserable, and so hateful.

It was like I had become the parent and he the child. He was so angry at the end. He didn’t want to die; he told me that with tears running down his face. He picked at and belittled everything I did, even when I was trying to help. I had a nurse come to the house once a day to wash him and see to him that way, but in the end he didn’t even want to shower. It wore him out. Once, I accidently gave him too much morphine; he was in so much pain, and he began to hallucinate, so I called the ambulance. It is my fondest memory of him, he was happy. He told me my mother was there with us; he was smiling at her and talking to her. When the ambulance arrived, they took him to the palliative care unit in our local hospital. He lasted three more days. He was nice to me, he told me he loved me and this is how I am going to try to remember him. I want to forget the hateful bastard that dominated so much of my life.

The light is beginning to fade. I hope someone is looking for me. I throw another log on the fire and stare into it. I never thought I’d be lost in the woods, naked. Lord, please send someone to help me.