They arrived at the first destination over two hours later.
Rachel remembered the site from before, when she was a girl. It seemed a lifetime ago, because so much of her life since then had changed, but once she was back again, she remembered.
She remembered it so vividly that her hands shook.
"What's the matter?" Mickey asked, when he got out of the truck and stood beside her at the edge of the forest. He put his hand on her arm. "Tell me. Why are we here?"
She shook her head, unable to speak.
This was where he took her. Sadie.
In the forest, not far from the road.
Rachel stepped gingerly into the woods, her flashlight shining through the darkness. She remembered the spot because he had taken her there many times during the five years between Sadie's murder and when Rachel finally ran away.
There was a special tree, a huge redwood, that had fallen over, its trunk rotted away, moss creeping up the side. He used that tree as a landmark. Just beyond it, was Sadie's grave.
Rachel stepped carefully over the roots and branches that had fallen to the forest floor, the soft crunch of the wood beneath her feet the only sound so late at night.
Mickey followed her, and she heard his own footsteps in the crackle of the branches.
"Where are we going?"
She stopped at the grave marker. No one but her and her father would know that's what it was. To them, it would be a simple rock, but Rachel knew different. He'd used it to mark the spot so he could come back and gloat. He'd used it to threaten her into silence.
She could picture him standing there, hands on his hips, admiring the grave he'd dug, Sadie's body beside it, waiting to be buried. She was so tiny, just like Rachel, her face pale, a thin cotton nightgown covering her skinny body, bruises on her arms and legs. She looked like a broken angel, her fair hair spread out on the ground beneath her head, her neck at a strange angle.
"That's what happens to little girls who disobey," her father said as he dug a hole in the soft earth. He turned to her and narrowed his eyes. "That's what'll happen to you if you ever say a single word about this to anyone. No one. If you tell your mother, I'll kill her in front of you and then I'll have you all to myself."
On her part, Rachel was too terrified to say anything in response. She cried silently because he didn't like it when she made a sound. Tears ran down her cheeks as she watched him lay Sadie on her side, her knees bent, hands folded in prayer in front of her face, a rosary cross on a long chain woven between her fingers.
"If she'd been more obedient, she'd still be alive, but she was bad. She disobeyed me," her father said, justifying his murderous ways. "She was punished. Like you'll be, if you disobey me."
He grabbed Rachel by the neck and forced her over to show her Sadie before he covered her up with the dirt.
"See? Look at her. She was a very bad girl. She disobeyed me. I'm the head of the household. I make the rules and I enforce them. If you disobey me, you'll be there beside her. I can kill all of you because you don't exist. Do you understand that? You don't even exist. There's no record of you or her. No birth certificates. No proof that you ever were born. That means I can kill you and no one will ever know."
He shoved her down on her knees in front of him and began to unzip his pants. She knew what to expect but she was too upset to comply, covering her face with her hands.
When she resisted, he slapped her across the face. "Do you want to join her right now?"
At that point, Rachel cried out loud. "No, please Daddy. I don't."
She didn't fight him.
She never fought him again because she knew what he'd do.
Now, as she stood looking down at the grave, Rachel fought back tears. She'd been able to manage five more years with him after that day. Even after he killed her mother, she stayed, because she was just too afraid. Finally, when he started to use the knife, it had all become too much, and she had to run away.
The stab wounds had been too much to bear.
He'd used a knife on her, exploring how much he could do without actually killing her. He'd stab her and then he'd sew her up. At first, the wounds were small. He seemed to enjoy seeing her blood flow. Then, they got deeper.
She knew he'd kill her one day if she stayed.
So, she ran away.
She handed the flashlight to Mickey. "Shine it on the ground here," she said and bent down to the grave. She began digging, using her hands to remove the wet earth and twigs that had fallen over top the grave. When she reached something hard, she thought it might be a rock, but it was a bone. A small bone, like that in a child's hand. She removed more of the dirt where she thought the hands would be and there it was, after all the years.
The rosary.
"What's that?" Mickey said and bent down. When his flashlight shone on Sadie's skull, he gasped out loud. "Rachel..."
"It's my sister," she said softly. "My twin. My father killed her. He buried her here. He used to come up here with me and visit her grave to gloat. He'd make me do things to him while he stood here. He thought he was smarter than everyone."
"You never told me anything about your family," Mickey said, his voice filled with horror. "I had no idea."
"I never told Craig either. If I had, he might never have gone looking for my family. My father was a monster, Mickey. He prostituted me when I was only eight years old. It went on for five years, and then he started playing torture games, using a knife on me. That's when I ran."
"Oh, sweeetheart," Mickey sighed, holding the flashlight on the skeletal remains. "I'm so sorry. I figured maybe you had a dark past, and that's why you were doing drugs and were a street kid. I didn't know it was your father you were running from."
Rachel removed the rosary from the dirt, digging a bit deeper to expose more of Sadie's skeleton. She was able to pull the rosary through the neck because the vertebrae had disarticulated. She shook the dirt off it and wiped the crucifix clean.
"That's what I came for," Rachel said and admired the cross. "It was her rosary. It belonged to my mother, but Sadie always wore it. She thought it would protect her, but nothing could. He was too evil."
Rachel stood up and slipped the rosary in her pocket. She stared down at Sadie's grave, at the bones she'd exposed, and then turned to Mickey.
"I want you to take me and Sadie somewhere," she said, her voice breaking. "We're going to leave the car here."
"Why?" Mickey asked, his voice still haunted. "Why leave the car?"
"Because I want them to find my sister. They'll finally know what he did. If we don't leave the car, no one will find it. No one found it for thirteen years."
"Why don't you just tell them?" Mickey said in protest. "I know some people in the police department from my years working with the charity. I can take you. You can report him and what he did."
Rachel shook her head. "It's too late for that now. All I can do is run away. Sadie and I will go. We'll go to Mexico. I can get work at one of the resorts. Then maybe, we'll go farther south. If we can find a permanent place to live, maybe Sadie can even go to school."
"Don't leave," Mickey protested. "Tell the police everything. They'll arrest your father. He needs to be put in jail."
But Rachel only shook her head. "It's too late for that. I need you to take me somewhere. It's not too far from here."
She grabbed the two backpacks and the duffle bag that she'd packed for her and Sadie out of the trunk and put them into Mickey's truck bed. She also removed the bag of bloody clothes, intending on dumping them somewhere much farther south where no one would find them. Then she carried Sadie from the back seat of her car and laid her onto the rear bench seat in Mickey's truck.
"Where are we going?" Mickey asked, too shocked to protest.
"To Silver Lake. We have one more stop, but we have to hurry. I want to be there before it's too late."
She gave Mickey directions and they drove off.