“I was short one button,” Naomi said. “So I reused one from an old dress.”
“The girl in the field isn’t Delilah,” I said. “It can’t be.”
“No,” Mother whispered. “It’s not.”
“But it is one of my sisters, isn’t it?” I said.
Lily turned to our mother, her face stricken. “Is this Sadie?”
Forty
While the man was gone, Delilah and Jayme tried to come up with a plan that they believed had a chance, the only option they thought might work. One girl couldn’t tackle the man alone, but maybe two could. “We have to convince him to let us room together,” Jayme said. “Then we’ll hide behind the door and jump him when he walks in.”
“Maybe it would be better if we both took off in opposite directions,” Delilah said. “He can’t chase both of us.”
“He might kill the one he gets his hands on,” Jayme said.
“I don’t think so,” Delilah reasoned. “I think he’ll tie her up and try to get the other one. He wants both of us.”
“He wanted the other girls, too, but when he got mad, he got rid of them,” Jayme said.
Delilah thought about that. “I don’t care if he kills me. I won’t let him do whatever he wants to me. I’m not going to give in and let him hurt me.”
Jayme didn’t respond at first but then, her voice thick with remorse, said, “I felt the same way, but I gave in. I’m scared.”
“I am, too,” Delilah admitted.
So they waited, hoping to work on the man to get him to do what they wanted. Instead, when the man returned, everything changed. He went to Delilah’s room first, and when he opened the door, he held the chain and handcuffs.
“You said I wouldn’t have to wear those anymore, not unless I was bad,” she said. “I didn’t do anything. Nothing at all.”
“Shut up and come here,” he said. “Now!”
Delilah’s hands shook when she held her arms in front of her. He jerked them together, so rough it hurt her sore shoulders. “Please, don’t make them tight,” she whimpered. “Please, don’t do that to me again.”
The man didn’t listen. The heavy chains pulled on her arms and wrists, and the handcuffs cinched so snug her little fingers went numb. She started to sit down on the mattress, assuming he’d again cuff her legs and chain her to the wall.
“Get up,” he said. “You need to walk.”
The man held the end of the chain and trailed her down the stairs. “This way,” he ordered, and he took her to a door. He pulled out a key and unlocked it. A girl Delilah assumed had to be Jayme sat off to the side, so far into a corner she appeared to be trying to disappear inside it. The two girls exchanged wary looks, fighting to understand what was happening.
Delilah wondered if the man had tricked them, if he’d come back to the house on foot, hid and heard them plotting.
“We’re going to be good, mister. You don’t have to do that to us,” Jayme pleaded. “We won’t try to run away.”
“Over here, girl,” the man said. From his pocket, he pulled a second set of handcuffs. Jayme edged forward, cautious and frightened. When she reached him, he grabbed her left arm, tightened one cuff around it and ratcheted it in place. He then twisted the chain that held the cuffs together around the longer chain, the one he’d handcuffed Delilah to. Finally, he cinched the second cuff around Jayme’s right wrist.
“That’ll hold you two,” he said, looking pleased. “We’re taking a hike. I don’t want any whining. I’ve got a place for us and no one knows it’s there.”
“In the mountains?” Jayme asked. “Why are we—”
“Don’t complain to me, it’s that woman’s fault. She’s behind all this.” The man turned to Delilah. “That damn sister of yours should have stayed in Dallas. Clara Jefferies thinks she can find you? She gets close, anywhere near me, and it won’t be pretty for you girls.”
“We’ve done everything you said,” Delilah protested. “Why would you hurt us?”
“Not ’cause I want to,” the man said. “But if that sister of yours gets close, any of them gets wise and comes after us, I won’t have a choice. You two will have to disappear.”
At that, he grabbed the long end of the chain. “Let’s go. Outside. Now!”
As she followed orders, Delilah thought about how the man said that she and Jayme might have to disappear. She tried not to cry. She didn’t want the man to see how frightened she was. She walked slowly, dreading every step. It was the first time she’d seen Jayme, and she looked different than Delilah expected. The older girl had long dark blond hair held in a single rubber band at her nape, and wore a dress that bagged on her bony frame. Her cheekbones jutted out, making her gray-flecked blue eyes appear big and round.
Not long before sunset, in the west the sun had begun to dip in the sky. Jayme followed Delilah, and the man paced behind them, holding the chain. Delilah felt a slight breeze on her cheeks as they approached a dilapidated barn and corral not far from the house.
“Over there,” the man said.
A horse waited tied up at the corral gate. As they approached the barn, an overpowering odor engulfed them, heavy and rancid, stomach-churning. It felt thick and solid, like it permeated the air with fine particles. Jayme coughed, and Delilah felt as if it seeped through her nostrils into her throat. She thought about the time a squirrel fell between the walls in the big house in town they used to live in. It took months to rot away, and the whole house reeked until it did.
The aged, dapple gray mare had a blanket thrown over its bony hips, and over the blanket a yellowed sheet knotted to form pockets that bulged with something heavy. A rifle in a long tan case was slung on one side, and a leather
