Page 31 of The Intruder

I give Eleanor an oversize T-shirt to sleep in so she doesn’t have to spend the night in a bloodstained hoodie.

It was slightly large on me, but when she comes out of the bedroom, it looks like she’s wearing a nightgown.

Her bare legs are protruding underneath, and they are so skinny, it makes me want to cry.

I know teenage girls get eating disorders, but based on how she went to town on the spaghetti, I don’t believe that’s what this is.

Somebody was responsible for feeding this girl, and whoever that person was, they dropped the ball.

I wonder what she’s been through. I wonder what brought her here. I wish she would trust me enough to talk to me.

She disappears into the bathroom again, and it suddenly hits me that she didn’t bring her backpack with her. She left it in the bedroom.

This is my chance.

I tiptoe into the bedroom as quickly as I possibly can. Her overstuffed backpack is leaning against the bed, that bloodstain still present on the side. The water turns on in the bathroom—she’s surely going to be in there for at least a few more minutes.

But I find myself hesitating. What if there really is something horrific inside? If I see a decapitated head in that bag, I will have nightmares for the rest of my life.

Moreover, I have been working hard to gain Eleanor’s trust. If she catches me rifling through her belongings, that trust will be gone in a split second, and I’ll have no chance of ever regaining it.

But at the same time, if there’s something terrible in that bag, I need to know what it is. And I need more information about Eleanor if I’m going to help her land safely on her feet after this storm is over. It’s not like I infinity promised I wouldn’t look.

I take one more quick peek at the bathroom. The door is still closed. It’s now or never.

My hands are shaking as I unzip the larger pouch. I feel a rush of relief when I discover that it is stuffed with clothes. It’s clothes—nothing more.

I start sifting through the clothes, searching for a phone or a wallet or anything that might have personal information. But as I dig deeper, I notice the clothes have more and more blood on them, and my hands are becoming wet with it. It seems strange until I discover the culprit:

A small washcloth, completely drenched in dark red liquid.

I haven’t gotten any more clues about what happened to Eleanor to bring her here tonight, but whatever it was, it was something bad. There’s no doubt in my mind.

I avoid touching the washcloth so I don’t get more blood on my hands.

I zip up the larger pocket on the backpack and try the smaller pouch next.

The first thing I see is that cigarette lighter she used to help me light the candles.

I’m tempted to pocket it, but I don’t think she’s going to do much damage here with that thing.

What I’d really like to get my hands on is that switchblade and check it for blood, but I don’t see it.

She must’ve hidden it somewhere else in the room.

Maybe she keeps it within arms’ reach at all times.

The only other thing stuffed in the bottom of the pouch is a green notebook, which is damp but readable. I pull it out, and I’m about to crack it open when I hear a voice call from the bathroom, “Casey?”

As quickly as I can, I zip her backpack up again, but I don’t put the notebook back. I dart back into the living room and stuff it under the cushions of the sofa, just as Eleanor pops her head out of the bathroom.

“Casey?” she says again.

I whirl around to face her, my heart doing jumping jacks in my chest. “Yes?”

She comes all the way out, my T-shirt ridiculously large on her delicate frame, the sleeves nearly down to her wrists. “Do you have a Band-Aid?”

“Yes, of course. Just a second.”

The first thing I do is run to the kitchen sink to wash off the blood that got on my hands.

If she sees that, she will for sure know I was nosing around her backpack.

When my hands are clean, I grab the entire first aid kit, which has Band-Aids and antiseptic, from under the sink.

I try to bring it into the bathroom, but Eleanor stands in my way.

“It’s fine. I just need the Band-Aid.”

“For what?”

“I have a cut on my arm.”

“I’d like to see it. I have a lot of experience administering first aid to kids.”

She frowns up at me. “I can do it myself.”

“I’m sure you can. But I’m here, so you should let me help you.”

Eleanor stares at me, and I can’t tell if she’s considering it or not. But then she reluctantly pulls up the sleeve of the T-shirt.

She has an impressive abrasion on the back of her left elbow that is still oozing blood, although nowhere near the amount that is in her backpack. She must have fallen at some point and scraped it up. It’s going to take more than just a Band-Aid, and I’m glad she’s letting me disinfect it.

“That looks painful,” I comment as I open up the kit.

She nods wordlessly.

I roll the sleeve of her T-shirt all the way up so that I can get at the wound, and that’s when I have to stifle a gasp. She’s got a dark bruise on her upper arm. And it’s in the unmistakable shape of somebody’s fingers.

I struggle not to react because I don’t want to upset her. But inside, I am absolutely fuming. It’s bad enough that somebody was starving the girl. The cigarette burns were horrible. And now this angry bruise. If she were one of my students, I would have called CPS the minute I laid eyes on her.

“You know,” I say, “if somebody is hurting you, you don’t have to go back to them.”

Eleanor shoots me a withering look. “Really.”

There is something very jaded about her expression that makes me sad. “I mean it. I know it might seem like you don’t have any options, but you do. I promise.”

She doesn’t answer me. Instead, she is staring up at a painting I have hung on the wall of my bathroom.

It’s a painting of two bluebirds and a birdcage—one bird slightly larger and about to fly out of its cage, and another smaller bird waiting for the other bird to join her.

It’s a very simple, amateur painting—nothing you’d ever see in an art gallery—but I feel happy every time I look at it.

“I like your painting,” she says.

“Actually,” I say, “my father painted it.”

He gave it to me when I moved out to get my first teaching job. I hope this makes you think of me in your new place, he said. You’re about to do great things.

She winces as I brush iodine on her abrasion. “Are you close with him?”

“I was,” I say. “He died last year.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Thank you.”

As I open up a bandage, I allow myself to think about my father.

After my mother passed, it was just him and me.

He wasn’t perfect, but he did the best he could.

I miss him so much, it’s painful. If he were still around, I wouldn’t have gone off the rails.

I would probably still have my job, and I wouldn’t be stuck in a cabin in the woods during a storm with a dodgy roof.

Even now, my first instinct is to pick up the phone to ask him what to do for this girl, and it aches to know that I’ll never be able to ask for his sage advice ever again.

“I don’t know my father,” Eleanor pipes up.

It’s the first piece of personal information she has shared with me, and I eat it up, happy to have more of a distraction. “Oh?”

“He abandoned my mother before I was even born,” she says casually. “He’s a terrible person.”

“If you never met him, how do you know he’s a terrible person?”

“Well, I know somebody who abandoned their baby daughter is a terrible person, right?”

“Maybe he had a good reason?”

“No.” Her voice is suddenly seething with hatred. “He did not have a good reason. Some people are just rotten, you know?”

Looking at the bruises on her arm, I can’t argue with that. Anybody who would do that to a child is just rotten. And the man who left his daughter to that fate is likely also rotten.

“But I believe,” she goes on, “that bad people always get what’s coming to them.”

I secure the bandage on her arm and step away to examine my handiwork. It looks good.

Eleanor turns to look at me. “Do you believe that, Casey?”

“Believe what?”

Her blue eyes bore into me. “Do you believe that bad people get what’s coming to them?”

I don’t like the way she is looking at me. This was not a hypothetical question. She showed up on my property, covered in blood, with a knife in her hand and a map leading to my house. Part of me is frightened that my answer to this question could determine my fate.

“I believe,” I finally say, “that everything happens as it should.”

She doesn’t blink. “Do you?”

“I do.”

“Then,” she says, “you’re very stupid.”

With those words, she pushes past me, out of the bathroom. She walks back to the bedroom and closes the door behind her, shutting me out.

But I’ve still got her notebook.