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SOUNDTRACK: Lighthouse by Adette and Jamie Macneal

~ SAM ~

I went home and got online. I’d avoided looking up her past because I knew how skewed the media was, so I’d only ever wanted to judge her story based on how she perceived it. But even though I knew her story now, there were so many details I felt like I was missing. Maybe there was a clue about where she disappeared to?

She wouldn’t be the first victim to feel compelled to return to the places she’d been harmed. Or maybe… I didn’t know what I thought I would find, but once I was digging I wanted to punch myself. And shake her a little, too.

Today was the anniversary of her mother’s death. And she hadn’t even mentioned it last night. Oh, she’d talked about feeling scared—I’d held her for a long time just to help her relax. But it had all been big, vague ideas of the time of year and triggers and a general sense of weariness.

And I’d believed her.

But here we were. Twenty years ago today she watched her father shoot her mother. And she didn’t tell me.

I hadn’t made the connection because her father wasn’t arrested until well after Christmas, which was when the case got attention. I always associated the new year with this shit because it was early in the year when he was all over the news.

But I should have known. He’d kept her on the run for weeks. And it all started today.

And then I found it… an old story that had a picture. They’d done a good job of keeping her out of the public eye, which was surprising for twenty years ago. But then I clicked on a story and there was one shot. It didn’t show her face. Just this tiny little girl walking between two very large police officers—one a plain clothes detective, according to the caption. The other a uniformed officer.

Both men had their hands on her back, and their hands dwarfed her shoulders. Her head was down, just a little, messy ponytail sticking into the back of her jacket.

A blue dress hung out of the bottom of the jacket.

Skinny little legs.

White socks and sneakers.

She was tiny. Nothing.

A fucking child.

I wanted to cry looking at that picture. Actually weep.

Elbows on my little desk, I dropped my face into my hands and made myself breathe because my chest was getting tight.

Why hadn’t she told me?

She’d told me so many other fucked up things, and she couldn’t just look at me last night and say “Tomorrow’s the day my mother died?”

But then I looked up at that picture on my laptop again. She was seven years old when this happened. A fucking baby. I’d known that, but the reality of that fact hit me square in the face.

If she was regressing, falling back into memories and trauma, tipping backwards into the dark like a little kid falling into the well. Scared of her own shadow and…

If I hadn’t worked with women and prisoners for so long, I might have struggled to put my memories of the reckless, fearless Bridget together with a woman who couldn’t talk about the anniversary of her mother’s death. But Bridget had always avoided the hard things—and done scarier things to prove to herself that she wasn’t a coward.

It all made sense now .

At seven years old, we were all obsessed with Christmas. Santa Claus, presents, yummy food, people getting together. Or consumed with the jealousy of those who got to enjoy that.

But she didn’t get to do any of it. Not ever again.

Forever, those sights, sounds, and sensations were associated with watching her mother die. Listening to her father threaten her life. And watching him kill other people too.

No wonder she’d been so tense lately. Frankly, I was stunned that she’d kept it together as much as she had..

Then I went still, remembering Jeremy in that bathroom.

No, idiot—you don’t know her. I do. I’ve known her since she was a kid. She always disappears at this time of year. A few weeks later, she comes back. We knew it was going to happen and we’re handling the fallout. For her.

I’d been wounded by those words. Seeing him know her better, not be surprised, or worried. He was handling something for her? Like she’d let him in on it, and left me out?

But I had an inkling in that moment that that wasn’t it. Not it at all.

They knew this time of year made her crazy… and they just let her be alone?

“What the fuck are you people thinking?!” I growled, my hands fisted on the laptop.

Know her? They didn’t know her at all if they thought letting her be alone right now was helping?

I shoved to my feet so fast my chair fell over backwards, but the moment I was upright, I froze again.

Where was I going to go? She hadn’t told me where she was. And I couldn’t go after Jeremy or any of that team because they’d make it about the trial.

I started pacing, clawing hands through my hair, swearing, praying. I needed to find her. But how?

I yanked out the burner phone and called her again, leaving another voicemail.

“Babe… I just figured it out… what today is. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I never looked it up. You should have—I mean… I want you to tell me. I want you to know you can tell me when this stuff is happening. I won’t freak out. I promise. But… fuck, Bridget, you’ve got me scared shitless. Where are you? Where the fuck are you? Tell me, I’ll come. I promise. I’ll make it work. Ju st… please… tell me. I love you. Call me—anytime. Day or night. Just call me.”

When I hung up I wanted to throw the phone against the wall. But instead I picked up the chair and sat back down at the computer and started digging deeper.

Would she avoid the places they went? Or was she drawn back to them? I knew from my counselling training that reaction was different for different people.

As the night waned on, I kept obsessively clicking links and searching—even finding a true crime site that gave a complete timeline with links to articles about the different deaths and culminating in his arrest.

But nothing, nowhere about what had happened to that little girl after the fact.

Even the stories about the court case didn’t show pictures or video of her, only relaying her testimony, because twenty years ago the media was finally getting a clue that kids could be seriously wounded by this stuff.

I was glad she’d been protected at least that much, but it left me ragingly frustrated.

Where did she go? Every year? How long had she been doing that? Did she return to the places that hurt her. Or did she flee them? And why wouldn’t she tell me?

Why hadn’t she trusted me with this?

The answer came in that still, silent voice that God always used: Because she blamed herself for me not being there.

I felt sick, kicking myself for just assuming she’d told me everything. Why hadn’t I thought to ask more?

The reason, of course, was because I had been struck almost mute that day she turned up at the church after Cain agreed to hunt her. For a few minutes I’d been convinced she knew exactly who I was—and I was freaking out. But then it became clear she didn’t and when she told me her story she was so obviously agitated, so clearly dredging up pain from the depths of her soul…

Lord, help me. I need help. I need to see how to help her.

The day she’d told me that story I hadn’t wanted to push. I’d known she was on the verge of fleeing and thought it was better for her to just get out what she was willing to share.

I’d urged her to tell me the after-story, the one no one was ever interested in—as demonstrated by the utter lack of interest in her life and his once the sensational trial was done. But I’d never gone back. I’d overlooked all my training and experience and just gotten consumed in her when there was still infection festering away in her mind.

I texted her again, told her to listen to the voicemail. That I wasn’t angry or upset. That I loved her and needed her.

Please don’t do anything stupid… nothing. Bridget, please… stay safe.

I was mid-prayer, asking for guidance, needing desperately to understand and know where to look for her—and how to approach this, when I opened my eyes, and for a split second the vertical blinds on the sliding door seemed like prison bars.

And even as my body flinched, it dragged up a glimpse. A memory of those days.

Specifically, a memory of her father sitting at one of those stupid metal picnic tables we had in the common area—of him turning and meeting my eyes for a second, then looking away. Because we weren’t friends. But we weren’t hostile either.

He was never someone I’d been close to. The man was a legend in the prison. I didn’t know how many of the stories were true, but whispered rumors said he still ran an entire network of men and resources outside.

I did know he was never alone in the common areas. His cellmate and a couple other big guys always stayed close.

He was the most relaxed person I ever saw in the state penitentiary. The inmates believed he had staff on payroll. I didn’t know. I never saw evidence of it. But I also never saw him get hurt or heard of him being disciplined. If it was true that he still ran organized crime outside, he did it through his lawyers or contraband phones.

I knew men like that—my father had been indebted to them. I’d worked for the guys trying to be them. Even before I changed, once I was in prison, I kept my head down. I didn’t have any desire to get myself tied down to protecting one of those guys. They had too many contacts, I knew I’d get pulled back in once I got out and…

It hit me.

Maybe there was a place to get answers about this.