Collared Page 9

  Beside me, Torrin goes rigid, his forearms flexing like he’s bracing for something.

  “What is it?” I still sound out of breath, but my head’s clearing.

  He doesn’t blink as he stares at something in front of us just outside the big glass doors. “Shit,” he mutters.

  If I wasn’t staring at his collar, I probably wouldn’t have thought anything of it. “I didn’t think priests were allowed to cuss.”

  “We’re not, but I’m new.” His forehead folds into creases as his stare turns into a glare. “I’m still learning.”

  “Your secret’s safe with me.” When he doesn’t respond, I look to see what’s gotten his attention. When I do, I feel like I’m stuck in that elevator again. Times ten. “Shit.” I don’t mutter it.

  “There’s got to be another way out of here. I’ll pull the truck around and meet you there.” Torrin can’t stop glaring at the army of reporters waiting just outside the doors, surrounding his truck. I don’t realize I’m backing up until he looks back at me. “Wait here. They can’t come inside. I’ll figure something out.”

  He starts marching toward the reception desk, but before he can get there, I grab his arm.

  “No. Let’s go through the front door.” A few of the reporters have clearly noticed me now. Camera lights flash, and the buzzing herd turns into a crazed mass. “I want to get this over with.”

  I don’t let go of Torrin’s arm. It’s the same one I practically clawed to shreds last night, but he doesn’t wince or pull away. “You don’t have to do this, Jade. Make the vultures wait. Make them wait until they move on to the next story.”

  I swallow and find myself sliding behind Torrin, using him as a shield against the relentless flashes breaking through the glass. “They won’t move on. I know that. You know that.”

  When he clenches his jaw, it pops. “Give it some time.”

  I shake my head. “I just want to get this all over with. The sooner they can get their photos, their headlines, the sooner this will pass. I don’t want to delay the inevitable. I want it over with.”

  Torrin watches me for a minute. He watches another minute more. “You’re sure?”

  Of course I’m not, but I’m not sure of much anymore. “I’m sure.”

  He sucks in a breath like he’s preparing to make a deep dive. “Here, put this on.” He holds out his raincoat and waits.

  “Why?”

  “Just . . .” When his eyes lower to my neck, to the stained collar of my sweater, I know why. “Don’t give them anything more than you’re ready to talk about.”

  I nod, and he steps behind me and slides the jacket up my arms and over my shoulders. He even slides the hood over my head before zipping the coat up to my chin.

  He lowers his face to mine and smiles. “There. Now you’re ready to weather the storm.”

  I smile back, but I’m a ball of nerves. Get this over with. Move on. When I move toward the front door, Torrin rushes up to my side. Everyone in the lobby is still looking at me, but this time it’s because they know who I am now. That girl. The one who’d been kidnapped from one of the safest blocks in the country ten years ago.

  That girl.

  I can almost feel those words cycling through the consciousness of everyone staring at me. That’s how people will know me now. As That Girl.

  It makes my feet move faster until I’m practically charging through the sliding glass doors. Torrin’s truck is only a few meters away, but getting to it is like trying to move through a pool of cement.

  Cameras are thrown in my face. Microphones are thrust to my mouth. What feels like hundreds of people close in around me, corralling me, trapping me. In my rush to get outside, Torrin has fallen a few steps behind. Now that we’ve hit the wall of reporters, it’s next to impossible to move.

  Lights flash in my face. Questions fire at me one after another.

  “Jade, how are you?” I hear that question at least a dozen times. “Anything you’d like to say to the world?”

  I don’t answer. I just tuck my head down and try to keep moving forward. It’s impossible though. They’re too strong, and I’m too weak. I can’t break free.

  “Anything you wish you could say to Earl Rae Jackson if he were alive today?” another reporter shouts, lashing another microphone in my face.

  The flashes are relentless. I’m trying not to look at them, but they’re blinding me. I can’t see. I can’t move. I can’t talk. I’ve felt helpless like this before, but never when I haven’t been attached to a short length of chain.

  “Is it true he kept you chained up in his house for ten years?” a male reporter crows above the rest of them, getting his microphone so close to me it actually bounces off my nose.

  I cry out a little. Not because it hurt but because it surprised me.

  That’s when I hear a loud growl behind me, and I start to feel space opening up around me. Someone comes up behind me, drapes their arms over my head, and guides me through the ocean of reporters.

  “I’ve got you,” Torrin says, steering me through them like he’s a sharp knife slicing through ribbon.

  “What’s your relationship to Miss Childs, Father?”

  Now that Torrin’s come into the picture, the questions are changing. The tone of them is shifting. There’s less pity in the reporters’ voices, replaced with skepticism.

  We’re almost to the truck. I can just make out the front tires. I think Torrin has to shove a few cameramen away from the door so he can open it, but he does it without hesitating. He does it like he’s moving cardboard boxes instead of grown men.

  Once the door is open, he shields my body with his until I’m all the way inside the cab. He slams the door, almost taking off a man’s hand when he sticks a microphone in after me.

  Now the reporters are focused on him, slamming their mics in his face while cameras pan in his direction as he shoves around to the driver’s side of his truck. As soon as he throws the door open, he dives inside and fires up the engine.

  “Stay down.” He has to shout above the noise, but his hand is gentle as it guides my head forward into my lap. The cameras don’t stop flashing.

  Torrin blares his horn twice, then he presses down on the gas. I hear shouts of anger as we drive away. I wonder how close he came to running someone over.

  It’s quiet for a while before he taps my back. “We dropped the reporters. You can sit up now if you want.”

  I straighten up slowly and glance out the window. Flashes of buildings and cars pass by. Looking out the window like this makes me nauseated, almost motion sick, so I turn to face forward.

  My hands are shaking in my lap. Not trembling—shaking. I stare at them and try to make them stop. I focus on them until I feel my teeth grinding together, but I can’t control them.

  They won’t stop shaking.

  I want to cry because I feel like my body is betraying me. I stare out the window again. I’d rather be nauseated than let Torrin see me cry.

  He blasts through a light that’s more red than yellow and pushes the speed when we hit the on-ramp. The truck still rattles like it’s about to fall apart whenever it breaks fifty, but now there’s a whine coming under from the hood. This scrap of familiarity is calming. In a world I don’t seem to belong in anymore, a familiar truck’s engine sputtering and spewing reminds me that there was a time when I belonged.

  An emotional tether. Even the way he glances at me from the driver’s seat, like he needs the reassurance that I’m still here, is familiar. He’s the one I’d tie myself to, but I don’t feel like I have anything left to be bound with. How can he tether me when vapor has more substance than I do?

  The trip from Seattle to Sammamish isn’t a long one. It feels even shorter now.

  He breaks the silence when he flies down the off-ramp for Sammamish. “Ready for this?”

  “Yes,” I say because it doesn’t matter if I am or not. Life’s not going to slow down just because I can’t tolerate the pace. “Does your f
amily still live in the same house?”

  His head shakes. “No. Mom sold it a few years ago and moved into a little condo. After Rory graduated and she finally kicked Caden out.”

  “How are your brothers?”

  He turns down a familiar street. The one our high school was on. “Rory’s studying biology at U-Dub, and Caden’s . . . being Caden.”

  “So you’re saying not much has changed?”

  “Other than me going into the priesthood, not much has.”

  “That still doesn’t feel real.” I twist in my seat to look at him.

  He drives his truck exactly like he used to—one hand gripping the wheel, the other arm draped over the top of it, his legs spread wide and taking up half of the bench seat. “What doesn’t?”

  “You.” I wave at his outfit. “This.”

  He glances at his shirt like I just told him he spilled ketchup down the front of it. “Yeah, well, it’s kind of surreal sitting here beside you and talking about my brothers too.”

  “Do you keep in touch with any of our old friends?”

  He’s just turned onto Hemlock. My hands wring together.

  “Not really. I see them around town every once in a while. A few are members of the church, but I think me becoming this . . .” He says it how I did, summing up a handful of words in a single one. “Was a little weird for them. No one wants to have their friend the priest over because they’re worried I’m going to tell on them to Jesus or something.”

  The way he says it makes me laugh.

  He smiles at me. “What? It’s true. No one wants a priest around when there’s a party, but if someone’s being born or dying, I’m on speed dial.”

  I’m still laughing. He’s still smiling. The sun’s shining, and everything is green and lush. It’s the most perfect moment I’ve had in years.

  It ends the moment Torrin turns down Madison Boulevard. My parents’ house is a few blocks down, but I can already see it. The street is lined with trucks, and the sidewalks are littered with people. It makes the scene at the hospital seem peaceful and puny.

  Torrin curses the same word from the hospital under his breath. “What do you want me to do?”

  What I really want is for him to turn around and drive until we’ve hit the coast. I want to rent a little cabin on the beach that I can make a big fire in, and I want to walk up and down the beach until I can’t take another step. I want to walk without a chain dictating how far I can go. I want to walk with him. I want to try to get caught up on the last ten years of his life. I want to laugh again like I just did.

  I want to run away.

  “I want you to keep going. Pull into the driveway, preferably without running anyone over, and walk me to the front door so I can give you your jacket back.”

  The truck slows, but it keeps rolling forward. “You can keep the jacket. It’ll help you weather the storm, remember?”

  “Then I’d like you to walk me to the front door as my personal security guard.” My hands are wringing themselves again. God, there are so many of them. It feels like every country in the free world has sent their own crew to my front porch.

  “They can’t put one foot on your parents’ property without their permission.”

  “And they probably can’t bonk someone on the nose with a giant microphone either, but journalists aren’t exactly well known for their rule abiding.”

  When we’re half a block away, a few heads turn our way. They know we’re coming.

  “My God, Jade.” Torrin leans over the steering wheel, his eyes wide. “Are you sure about this?”

  No. I’m not. “I’m sure.”

  He presses down a little more on the gas, and the truck speeds up. He’s as ready to get this over with as I am.

  The cameras are already flashing, and I can hear through the windows the roar of the reporters’ shouted questions. I don’t duck down this time, but I keep my face forward, my expression flat. I make sure the hood is still over my head and the zipper still pulled to my chin. When we get to my parents’ house, the driveway is barricaded by reporters waving their microphones and screaming their questions at me through the windshield.

  My hands start to shake again.

  Torrin blasts the truck’s horn a few times. When that doesn’t seem to do anything, he thrusts his palm onto it and doesn’t let up. A few of them cover their ears, but no one moves.

  I can see my parents’ faces through the living room window.

  Pulling off the horn, Torrin revs the engine a couple of times before creeping the truck forward. Finally, reporters move. They file to the sides, banging on Torrin’s and my windows as we pass them. I feel like a disco ball is flashing in my face from all of the photos being taken.

  “Where’s the crowd control for Christ’s sake?” I wince when I realize what I’ve just said. “Sorry.”

  Torrin blasts his horn again, and once it’s clear, he speeds up to the edge of the driveway. “It’s okay. I won’t tell on you to Jesus or anything.”

  I look into my lap to keep my smile hidden. I don’t want to share that with them. Torrin’s right; I don’t want to give them anything I’m not ready to talk about—the reason the man sitting beside me can still make me smile especially.

  I can see from the side view mirror that the reporters stay on the edge of the sidewalk, but a few have one foot in the lawn. I just want to throw the door open and run until I’ve locked the front door behind me, but I don’t want them to see that either. I don’t want them to know I’m scared. I don’t want to fulfill the profile that’s already been drawn of me by probably dozens of shrinks giving dozens of interviews. I don’t want to be That Girl whose life was ruined.

  I want to be seen as the person who survived.

  Though it’s not a story even I’m sure I believe.

  “I’ll come around and get you, then we’ll make a run for the front door.” Torrin puts the truck in park and cuts the engine. “I’ll stay on your left side so the only headlines we’ll make tomorrow will be about how the Catholic church should really find a new slacks supplier, because these things”—Torrin pinches the material of his pants—“would even make Jason Momoa’s ass look flat.”

  I smile. Again. I don’t know who Jason Momoa is, and I don’t know about those slacks not looking good on Torrin, but I like the way he’s trying to make me comfortable. I like the tone of his voice. I like that I just heard “ass” pass by a priest’s lips.

  “Well? What are you waiting for? You and your flat-ass-making slacks’ two seconds of fame are running out.” I curl my fingers around the door handle and wait.

  Torrin looks over his shoulder and inhales. Then he shoves open his door and jogs around the front of his truck. I wait until he’s standing outside my door before I open it. When I do, the questions being hollered from the sidewalk hit me, almost leveling me to the ground. There are more video cameras than I can count and just as many regular cameras. Dozens, maybe hundreds, of reporters are staring at me, calling me over, practically begging for my attention.

  Is this what my life’s going to be like? Ducking in and out of doors, evading the media at every turn? Is my story ever going to lose the public’s attention? If so, how long until that happens?

  I’d been trapped at the house in Bellingham. I’d been trapped in the hospital. I’m still trapped.

  The chain might be invisible and a little bit longer, but I’m still bound to it.

  Torrin comes around my left side as promised when I crawl out of the truck. His arm tucks around my shoulders as we rush across the lawn. The yard’s different now. My mom’s rose bushes are gone and have been replaced by river rock. The short white fence has been replaced with a taller chain link version.

  I try not to look at the walkway when we pass it. I try not to stare at the sidewalk at the end of the walkway, the very spot where I’d fallen off the face of the planet. I can still see his van parked beneath that old maple tree. I can still see the map he drew me in with. I can still
smell the inside of the van before I passed out.

  My legs give out without any warning. I’m falling, about to crash into the ground, when Torrin catches me.

  “I’ve got you,” he says as he pulls me up, more carrying me up the stairs than guiding me.

  The front door flies open when we reach the porch. My mom waves us in, but my dad steps in front of her, blocking the doorway. I look at him, but he isn’t looking at me. He’s looking at Torrin.

  “We’ve got it from here.” Dad reaches for my arm, but I pull it away.

  Behind me, the noise level climbs.

  Torrin just turns toward me. “If you need anything, give me a call. I tucked my cell number into the pocket of the jacket.” His arm is still wound around me like he’s afraid I’m going to fall again.

  “Will you stay?” I ask him.

  My dad’s chest puffs out. It’s clear he doesn’t want Torrin to step foot in his house. I can’t imagine this still has to do with the time he found us all hot and heavy up against the hall wall. If it does, Dad has some serious forgiveness issues to work out.

  “I want to,” Torrin says, angling me so my back’s to the street. “But I can’t. I’ve already missed two counseling sessions, one breakfast with the church elders, and a hospital visit. If I miss the eleven o’clock baptism, they’re going to go all medieval on me and burn me at the stake or something.”

  “You’re a busy guy.”

  He nods. “They like to keep us busy for a reason.” When I tip my head, he adds, “So we don’t have time to regret that whole vow of celibacy.” This time, he doesn’t shift. He just smiles and winks.

  My dad clears his throat. “This probably isn’t the best time to have a conversation on the front stoop.”

  “My God, Mike, invite them in.” Mom peeks her head out from behind him and waves us in.

  Behind us, the roar grows.

  Torrin and my dad have some kind of stare down. I’m not sure who wins, but my dad steps aside to clear the doorway so we can come in. I stay planted on the porch with Torrin.

  “I better get going.” Torrin backs down the first step. “I’ll check in with you later.”