He walks into the room, uncuffs you, and says, “Let’s go.”
“What?” you ask.
He urges you with a wave. “Come on,” he says. “I don’t have all day.”
You get up—slowly, in case you are misunderstanding. But he doesn’t freak out. If anything, he wants you to go faster. He pulls you by the wrist, hurries you down the stairs.
It’s the middle of the day. A Monday. Cecilia’s at school. He’s supposed to be at work. You weren’t expecting him back until dinnertime at the earliest.
The dog. He had to come back to check on her. And while he was at it, he decided to do…whatever this is, too.
He lifts the bottom of his sweater, shows you the gun in the holster. Waits for you to nod, then opens the door.
“To the truck,” he says.
He has eyes everywhere—on you, on the pickup, on your surroundings, on the trees and houses and birds. His arm wraps snugly around your shoulder. He guides you to the truck, opens and shuts the passenger door, jogs to the other side. You can feel the atmosphere shift, his relief once you’re both inside.
“What’s going on?”
He clicks his tongue like the answer is obvious. “We’re going for a ride.”
Your stomach contracts. You have no idea what he means. He turns the key in the ignition, focuses on pulling out of the driveway. His face is blank, undecipherable.
Fuck.
He doesn’t tell you to close your eyes. You wait until the truck is on the road—a country road, trees on each side and houses, actual damn houses, but no one in sight—to ask.
“Can I…can I look?”
“You can do what you want,” he says, as if that’s not the biggest fucking lie to ever come out of his mouth.
Your eyes are glued to the window. Focus. Everything—every leaf, every window—is a vital clue. Since that night in the living room, processing information has been like pedaling in dry rice, nothing sticking, everything slipping through, but you must try.
You must try.
He drives slowly, passing house after house. The neighborhood is a residential cluster, the opposite of his former home—that large property hidden in the woods, no one else around, acres of land shielding him from view.
This isn’t a natural environment for him. So exposed, so intrusive. You put a man like this in a place like that, he’s bound to turn into a powder keg.
There are trees and power lines and not much else. No one in the front yards. The grown-ups are at work, the kids at school. You pass a herd of cows on the right. A meat plant is advertised a few feet farther, the Butcher Bros. Next to the billboard, an old well—rusty, creepy. The kind of well you read about in fairy tales from another century.
Focus.
So far, he’s gone left, left, and right. Left, left, and right. You hold on to it like a cheat code. Left, left, right, and straight ahead past the Butcher Bros.’ cattle.
A bed-and-breakfast on the left. To your right, a library. And, suddenly—open, available, free for the taking, right in front of you—a town center.
You must be hallucinating.
He drives down what you assume is Main Street. It’s too much, way too much to take in all at once—a sandwich shop and a bookstore and a coffee place and a bakery and a liquor store and a hair salon and a yoga studio and a drugstore. Around a corner, a restaurant called Amandine. It’s closed. Restaurants, you remember, often close on Mondays.
It feels so normal. Like you could step out of the car and do things again—grab a latte, catch a vinyasa class, shop for a new lipstick.
You turn to look at him. His eyes gleam, translucent in the winter sun. His palms whoosh on the steering wheel. So basic. The bookstore in the background. Hands in the ten-and-two position. A guy running errands. A dad about town. A well-respected man, living a respectable life in a respectable town.
He pulls over by the bakery. Parks behind a silver BMW, puts the engine in idle.
“So what do you think?” he asks.
You have no clue what he expects from you. You risk a glance to the side. Shouldn’t he be worried? Someone could see you. Any second now. He has spent five years hiding you, pulling shades down, locking doors behind you. What is he doing?
“It’s…lovely,” you try.
A small laugh. “That’s a good word for it,” he says. “The people are lovely, too.” He glances outside. “Speaking of…”
You follow his gaze. A man walks out of the bakery. He’s hunched over, wrapped in a gray coat, a paper bag under his arm. The man spots the truck and changes his trajectory.
He heads toward you.
As he gets closer, you can see the details of him: balding hair, brown spots lining the base of his scalp, silver band on his left ring finger. You cling to every element, captivated by his completely average physique. Five years without new faces has done this to you.
The man waves in the direction of the truck. “Aidan!”
This is it. He’s going to pull out the gun, and it will be the end of the man in the gray coat. You grip the passenger seat. Your jaws lock. Your teeth squeak against one another, a record scratch echoing through your brain.
A sound on your right. You risk a glimpse.
The window on the passenger side is going down.
What the fuck is happening?
“Good afternoon, Judge.”
His voice is warm and polite and syrupy. On his face is the simple, believable pleasure of running into an old pal on the street.
Now your window is fully down. The man in the gray coat leans against the truck and says hello again.
“How’s everything?” he asks. “No work today?”
The man on your left laughs, taps his fingers on the steering wheel.
“Just on a break, Judge. You know how these things go. Boss never lets me out of his sight for too long.”
The man chuckles, too. Sure, he says, don’t I know it. “Call me Francis,” he says, “I’ve told you a hundred times. No need to be so formal.”
“If you insist.” Then, in a joking tone: “Judge.”
You raise your gaze to the man in the gray coat, stare as intensely as you can without arousing suspicion from the driver’s seat. Your eyes water. Your face is burning. Look at me. Hear my thoughts. Look at me, you fucking fucker. Do you know who I am?
There must have been posters. After he took you. That was somewhere else, but it couldn’t have been that far away. If you were a judge in a nearby town, wouldn’t you have heard? Wouldn’t you remember? Wouldn’t the faces of the missing be etched in your brain forever?
The man’s gaze lands on you. Finally. For a few moments, you think it has happened. The man has recognized you. This man will save you. Then, he shifts his focus to the driver’s seat, lifts his eyebrows in a silent question, And this is…?
Your brain tries to yell it. The answer, the correct one. Your brain tries to scream your name, but nothing comes out. Like a body weighed down. Nothing will budge.
From the left, a hand on your shoulder. “This is my cousin,” he says. “Came to visit over the holidays.”
What you know: On your first day inside the house, you saw a woman in the bathroom mirror. She looked nothing like you. White streaks in her hair, sunken cheeks. Five years older. No makeup. You used to wear so much makeup. Eyeliner, foundation, every shade of lipstick. And now look at you. How could anyone recognize you, unless they were your mother and father, searching for your face in every stranger on the street?
You can’t even say your fucking name. Not even in your fucking head.
The judge nods in appreciation. He turns to you. “And where are you visiting from?”
Your tongue sticks to the roof of your mouth. Are you supposed to lie? Name a random place? What if the judge has follow-up questions? Or could you tell the truth? Could you plant a seed, say the name of the town you were taken from?
Before you can decide, the man in the driver’s seat answers for you. “Raiford, Florida. Just north of Gainesville. Whole family’s from there originally.”
The judge cracks a joke, something about coming here for the weather, enough of that Florida sunshine?
You think: Raiford, Florida? How it rolled off his tongue. What have you heard about skilled liars? That they wrap every falsehood in a thin layer of truth?
This must be where he’s from, you decide. Raiford, Florida. You picture a boy baking in the heat, humidity curling his hair, shirt sticking to his shoulders. Mosquitoes and baby alligators and knotty oak trees. Inside his head, a storm brewing.
The judge taps your side of the car.
“Well, I won’t keep you.” He nods in your direction. “Very nice to meet you. I hope you enjoy your stay. Apologies about the bitter cold. It’s a local specialty.”
A silence hangs in the air, until you remember how these conversations are supposed to go. You smile at the man. Articulate a thank-you. It sets fire to your tongue.
Don’t you recognize me? Can you really slip away from the world, like falling through the surface of a frozen lake, and no one even remembers to look for you?
The window on the passenger side slides back up. He waits for the judge to trot back to his own car, then merges back onto the road. With a final wave at his old friend, he begins the drive out of town.
You stay quiet as the scenery changes back to trees, brush, and power lines. You are grieving for a lost opportunity. For a man who could have saved you. For the person you used to look like, the one they have stopped searching for.
“Nice man, the judge.” His elbow rests against the driver’s-side window, left hand hanging in the air, the other on the wheel. “People around here are like that. Very nice. Very trusting.”
He glances at the clock on the dashboard. Inside your brain, pieces click into place: He wanted this. He wanted to run into the judge. He knew when and where to expect him. He made sure to get there on time.
He smiles at nothing in particular, takes a long, peaceful breath in. A man whose plan has just worked out perfectly.
He wanted you to see. This prison he has built for you—it’s not just about walls or roofs or cameras. It’s about the world he has created, and how you have faded from it.