“Anastasia,” my husband snaps.
I gasp in a desperate breath of air. “Russel?” My voice is hoarse. Like I’ve just been strangled and my windpipe has been bruised.
“Anastasia.” He repeats my name. It sounds strange coming from him for some reason. “Are you all right?”
The children are looking at me with fearful expressions, even the older ones. I glance around, half expecting to find myself facing a very alive Henry or locked in his basement again.
But that’s not what I see. I’m in the airport. My husband and children — my family — are here staring at me worriedly. Two others, an official-looking man and woman, are standing far too close, asking me questions, feeling my wrists, talking to each other in hushed tones.
“I’m all right,” I tell them. I don’t know if they’re EMTs or airport workers or what, but I can’t breathe when they’re crowding me like this. “I’m all right,” I repeat. I’m not sure who I’m most trying to convince, but I do know that none of them believe me.
It’s okay. I don’t even believe myself.
“We should get you to a doctor or something,” Russel says. “Is there someone who can give her a checkup?” he asks.
I don’t hear the woman’s response. I’m too busy reminding myself that I’m here. I’m alive. I’m safe.
More strangers approach. An old lady asks if Russel needs help watching the kids. My head is spinning, my whole body clammy.
“I think she’s coming down with something,” Russel tells the concerned onlookers.
I convince my husband in no uncertain terms that I will not be pushed through the airport in a wheelchair. He gives the gate attendants what must be his dozenth apology, then he gathers the children from where they’ve been seated, watching me fall apart.
“What’s wrong with her?” Andrew asks.
“Mom’s just a little tired,” he says, “that’s all.” Russel looks over at me, his eyes full of concern. Of fear. Of love.
I shouldn’t have kept this from him for so long. I had no reason not to tell him before. Do I have the courage now to make things right? Or will that only make everything so much worse?
Why didn’t you tell me sooner? I’m certain that’s the question he’ll ask when he learns the truth. And then, even once I come clean, how will he believe anything else I tell him from now on? He wouldn’t trust me. I wouldn’t trust me if I were in his shoes.
The Bible says to tell the truth, right? But it also says that we need to work hard to make our marriages last. So what am I supposed to do?
We’re early enough into the relationship. There may be cause for an annulment. I’ve looked it up. We were both in our right minds getting married. Neither of us were coerced or anything like that. But the state will annul a marriage in the case of fraud. Does lying about my past count as fraud? What about the fact that I never told Russel about my infertility? I was pregnant when I ran away from Henry’s. Neither of us knew it at the time. I miscarried the week after my rescue. My mother insists it was the shock. My father believed it was a merciful act of God. Either way, the resulting hemorrhaging and complications have left me unable to bear children.
I was too riddled with guilt over having left Henry to die that I hardly thought about the other life I lost. Never mourned the inability to ever conceive again.
I tried telling the policemen where Henry’s house was, but I’d been walking for so long before I found help. I couldn’t retrace my steps, no matter how hard I tried.
I told them he was sick. I told them he was old, he was weak, he was having a heart attack or something. I told them I shouldn’t have left him all alone. They told me I’d done the right thing, the brave thing, the only thing I could have done to get myself out of a terrible situation.
I still have nightmares that Henry’s dying in that basement, begging me for help, pleading with me to save his life.
A week and a half later, the police called my parents to let them know. A man had been discovered dead in his home. The basement was just as I described.
Henry was gone. My mother was ecstatic. My father furious that my captor would never stand trial.
“God himself’ll judge that monster,” he’d say. “It’s the most we can hope for now.”
I did what I could to try to adjust to life back home. Mom and Dad had left my room exactly as it had been, but the mattress was too lumpy, the pillow too soft. I woke up every night burning up from the heat. All that winter my parents kept the thermostat set at 62.
I remember that season after my escape like I remember watching documentaries in history class. I study them clinically, wonder if the final bullet that killed my parents’ marriage was the stress of my abduction or the turmoil they experienced when they realized the carefree child they lost was gone forever, dead and buried in Henry’s basement.
I didn’t cry, didn’t lash out. Mom was worried for me, begged me to open up and tell her what was wrong. I didn’t want to talk.
I just wanted to forget.