“Jesus, Mel.”
“He locked me in there after I said I was done with him,” I said, feeling as though I’d been transported back to Elijah’s basement cell.
My heart was pounding. Tears welled up in my eyes and slowly rolled down my cheeks.
Sam quickly wiped them away with her thumbs. “How did you get out?”
“Luck,” I said with a snort. “He’d grabbed me through the bars, yanking me toward him… the keys fell to the ground without him noticing. When he left, I escaped.”
“Why didn’t you tell us? Or the police?” Sam asked with her mouth hanging open.
“Stupid. Scared. Embarrassed?” I looked down at my feet. “For all I know, I could have saved another woman. There could be someone trapped down there right now.”
Sam stood and paced. “No, this isn’t your fault. He’s the one that’s at fault. You can’t blame yourself.”
I felt guilty ever since that day. I should have told someone. I was just as bad of a person as Elijah was.
“Well,” Sam said. “If it makes you feel any better, he probably didn’t get anyone else down there since he was still stalking you practically until we left.”
“Maybe,” I said.
Sam sat back down. “I can tell you’re blaming yourself. You need to stop.”
“I shouldn’t have talked about it,” I said. “This was a mistake.”
“No, it wasn’t. I wish you would have told me sooner,” Sam said, scootching closer. “You know, my cousin knows someone that knows someone that could have taken care of him.”
“Yeah, because that would have made me feel better,” I said, sarcasm dripping from each word.
Sam shrugged. “Would have made me feel better.”
“Can we not talk about it?” I asked. “The whole thing still gives me nightmares.”
“Of course,” Sam said, standing again. “You did the right thing leaving him. It’s just too bad you hadn’t done it sooner.”
I clasped my hands together tightly and stared at her. Sam zipped her lips shut, locked them, and threw the pretend key across the room.
“Let’s find something to eat,” Sam said.
“Well, that zipper and key didn’t work very well, did it?” I teased.
After we ate cold soup, rain started to fall. The light coming through the windows slowly started to dissipate.
Sam looked around, noticing the change in lighting. “Think your mom has candles somewhere?”
10
Inside the lower kitchen cabinets, we’d found a box of candles. There had been a quarter-inch of dust covering them, but there were so many we wouldn’t need candles any time soon.
My mom had apparently collected them, but there were a lot of things she’d collected. Luckily the candles that were all different shapes, sizes, and scents would come in handy.
“Pine or rose?” Sam asked.
“Rose,” I said as rain tapped the windows. “Just hurry and light them before it gets too dark that you can’t see what you’re doing.”
“Happy to oblige,” Sam said, tilting her head. “I just need one thing.”
My eyes narrowed. “What’s that?”
“A lighter? Matches?”
My mom had kept a stack of matches in an unused ashtray for as long as I could remember. She could have gotten rid of it in recent years, but something told me it would be in the same exact spot.
I dug through a tall stack of old, yellowed newspaper, and at the bottom was the ashtray. I grabbed a pack of matches and tossed it to her.
Sam lit two pink candles from the box. She placed one on the edge of the kitchen table, as far away from the stacked items as she could and the other on the coffee table in the living room.
I started to clean items off the kitchen table while Sam poked around at her broken laptop. It wasn’t long before I gave up. It felt like I was just moving items from one location to another when there was nowhere to properly dispose of items.
If the solar storm hadn’t happened, a dumpster would have been delivered. Without it, cleaning the house would be difficult.
“How am I going to get back to her, Mel?” Sam asked, staring at her laptop’s dead screen.
Lightning cracked, and the entire house shook. Sam’s eyes darted up to the ceiling, watching as if she were afraid it was going to collapse.
“I wish I knew,” I said, sitting down next to her.
“She’s probably so scared,” Sam said, resting her head on my shoulder.
“I’m sure Jameson is taking good care of her. He’s a good dad.”
Lightning flickered, and thunder rumbled the earth. Sam sniffed hard.
“He is, but I still need to get back to her. She needs me just as much as I need her,” Sam said.
“I know. We’ll figure something out.” My eyes shifted toward the window. “Maybe that woman in town was right. Maybe help will come.”
Sam turned and slowly shook her head. “I don’t think anyone is coming, and even if they do, getting me back to Massachusetts isn’t going to be their priority. They are going to need to help all these people with food and water and shelter, and God knows what else.”
“Medical care.”
Sam buried her face in her hands. “We’re going to have to figure something out. I wasn’t lying when I said I’d walk if I had to. Nothing will stop me.”
“I know,” I said, biting down on my cheek, stopping when the metallic taste of blood touched my tongue. “And I’ll be right at your side.”
We sat there listening to the storm for a long time. I couldn’t even guess what time of day it was, thanks to the encapsulating darkness.
Sam was probably trying to come up with ways to get home. Or thinking about her daughter. Sam had planned to video chat with her daughter at least
