Page 33 of Never Lost

“I know you don’t trust me, and it’s not surprising if someone didthatto you,” Ivy said, hands on her hips. “But I know there’sa story here, even if you won’t tell me what it is. And I know there must be someone who can do something about it.”

I took the deepest breath I could muster. “Erica Muller.”

Ivy didn’t even hesitate. She took out her phone but first turned to the kid.

“You’re awesome for helping me, as usual, kiddo. It’s way past your bedtime, though.”

Then, to my surprise, Ivy leaned down and kissed the kid’s forehead tenderly. It was as if the nameErica Mullerhad been the secret password that allowed her to demonstrate her true feelings.

“Can I play video games first?” they asked.

“I’d rather you read a book,” she replied. “And I need you to let Thalia out one more time. But sure. Only for ten minutes, though. And I will be up to check.”

In a daze, I watched the dog eagerly follow the kid out of the room, and Ivy nonchalantly crossed her legs, settled herself on the throw rug, and made the call. And one to Milagros, too, which was the only other number, besides my dad’s, that I had memorized. No answer at either. No surprise there.

Ivy set down the phone. “Do you trust me to send a friend to go to their house?”

I nodded. Based on what I’d just seen, I’d trust Ivy to do anything. Now that I realized the only reason that mistress and slave had been acting oddly was because, given my background, they weren’t sure if they could trustme.

Ivy seemed to follow my thoughts. “They’ve got a little brother, too,” she said. “He’s asleep upstairs. We have to be careful, and they know that, especially in my parents’ social set. Sometimes someone will see me treating them like people, and it’s just like this rage bomb goes off for some reason. It’s awful. It’s why I don’t have anyone over anymore, and we don’t really go out during the day. And it’s safer for me, too. I’m less likelyto relapse. In the meantime, I’m homeschooling them and doing this correspondence course for nursing, which I’m shit at, but thankfully, with the trust my dad set up for me and my mom, I don’t need a job for now, and we’ve got each other.” She gazed back at the door, shaking her head in awe. “I got clean for them. They’re the one and only reason. If it weren’t for them, I’d be dead. No doubt in my mind. They saved me.”

I laid my head back on the porcelain and stared at the vaulted ceiling, speechless. “But why?—”

“They aren’t technically mine,” Ivy explained. “They’re my mom’s. She owned their mom, who died years ago. And my mom has dementia, a really virulent kind. She’s probably only got a few years left, and then they’re both free according to the will, and I’ll get the house, too. Nothing I can do until then.” Her expression changed to one of determination. “But no one has ever hurt them, and as long as I’m around, no one ever will.”

“I-I understand.” I should just say it. Just tell her story,ourstory—mine and his. But I didn’t have ten hours, or a voice, or a way to keep from crying through it all. “Someone saved me, too.”

Ivy’s serene smile at that was enough for me to believe, just for a second, that if I had been saved, maybe weallcould be saved.

“It’s not my place to give them names, by the way. The younger one wants a different one every day, and the older one, well, they’re still thinking it over.”

I smiled.

“There’s a bed waiting for you upstairs when you’re ready. But we’re going to have to put something on these burns,” she said. “Do you think you can?—”

The cold water had turned warmer and formed a blissful cocoon around my body. The body whose wounds, for now, I didn’t have to think about or look at or remember.

“Okay. Take as long as you need,” she said, getting the picture. “By the way,” Ivy said tentatively, trailing her finger in the water, “I was so sorry to hear about Ethan.”

“Thanks. Me too.” I’d heard that before. People meant well, but…

“Have you seen him?” Ivy continued. “I mean, do they let you see him? I don’t really know how it works.”

From the other side of the door came a tentative knock. Ivy tilted her ear slightly, but she turned back when I sat straight up in the tub, water streaming off my shoulders.

“What’s the matter?”

“Doeswholet us see him?”

Ivy still looked confused as the knock grew more insistent. And from somewhere else in the house came Thalia’s alarm bark.

What was going on?

“Whoever bought him.”

“What?”

“Ivy! Ivy!”