Celtic Sister (31 page)

Amy and Sam regarded one another for a moment before Amy regained her composure. She sat up and placed her hands on the table.

“Brent pushed me down the stairs when I was pregnant.”

“What a—”

“He succeeded with me.”

“Huh?”

“I lost my baby.”

Emma recoiled in disbelief. She gazed over her shoulder at the door where Samantha had exited the house only a short time ago. The finality of Amy’s miscarriage moved her to tears. “I’m so sorry.”

“It’s not your fault.”

“Maybe it is. If I had reported him—”

Amy touched Emma’s hand. “Do you think anyone would’ve put Beaumont Richardson’s son in jail because a girl said he tried to push her?”

“I suppose not, but it would have been better than doing nothing.”

“You did something,” Amy said. “You protected Samantha.”

Emma nodded.

“Please continue,” Amy whispered.

“I ran. I wasn’t sure if he wanted to harm me or the baby. I was only six weeks along, but maybe he thought he could bring on a miscarriage.” She hesitated, sensitive to the fact her words might affect Amy. “He’s really evil. I get that now.” She paused. “He caught up with me in the parking lot. I didn’t have a car, so he followed me in his. All of a sudden, he was sweet again. ‘Why are you running away?’ As if it weren’t obvious he tried to push me.” She slapped the table. “And yet again, I fell for it. Second-guessed myself. Did he really try to push me or was I being paranoid? For a while I even second-guessed the rape. Thought I didn’t say
no
loud enough. That the poor bastard might have misunderstood.”

Sam sat forward.

Emma gave him a half smile. “Don’t say you’re going to kill him again. Just fantasize about it.”

“Okay.” He smiled sheepishly.

“He wouldn’t give up following me until I agreed to meet him on Sunday. I wanted to make sure it was a public place, and he agreed to a park. No stairs or balconies available. Because now I’m thinking either I’m crazy or he’s really trying to harm me.”

“Right.”

“When we met… this time he was all businesslike. Explained to me that it was fine if I didn’t want to have an abortion. His parents would send me away to a nice place to have the baby and arrange an adoption. They’d give me some money for my cooperation. Everything would be rainbows and lollipops. I got cocky. ‘What if I don’t want to give up my baby for adoption?’ That was when he grabbed my wrist and twisted it, that sickly sweet smile on his face. ‘If you don’t get rid of this baby, we will ruin your father’s business. Do you understand me? We will take him apart piece by piece until your entire family is eating dirt for dinner and lying in a ditch to keep out of the wind.’ Just like that, my world collapsed. Never in my life had I felt so powerless. Even when the pregnancy test turned out positive, I still had hope for a future, just a different future. But this image of Dad being ruined and our family lying penniless in a ditch, it broke me. I knew the Richardsons could do that. They could put a man out of business. They could ruin lives. I had never wanted to be on the radar of people like that, and there I was, pregnant and terrified, staring into the eyes of a sociopath, the pain in my wrist paling in comparison to the fear in my heart.”

Amy squirmed. Her head pounded. This sickly sweet, angry image of Brent was all too familiar. She thought about the whiskey in her purse and wondered if she’d get away with a quick bathroom break. But the story was too intense. There was no subtle way to pause it. Emma continued, oblivious to Amy’s internal drama.

“‘Okay,’ I whispered. ‘I’ll do it.’ He loosened his grip on my wrist, but he started rattling off a grocery list of requirements. I couldn’t tell anyone. I couldn’t leave any notes. I had to just disappear. ‘Don’t you think my parents are going to wonder where I am?’ I argued. ‘You’ll disappear,’ he restated emphatically. ‘You’ll take the money. You’ll fly to the shelter. You’ll have the baby. And you’ll keep your mouth shut.’

“The
keeping my mouth shut
was the main objective, obviously. No talk of rape. No embarrassing baby. ‘What am I supposed to say when I get back?’ This didn’t seem to faze him. ‘Maybe you should just stay away for a while,’ he said. ‘We’ll get you set up real nice. Make a fresh start somewhere.’ He alternated between threatening Dad and promising money. Abusive to saccharine sweet, there and back again. Eventually, I just caved. Said
whatever.
What could I say?”

What could she?

“Then he hammered on me that they would only pay me when they were convinced I hadn’t told a soul. I swore I would keep my mouth shut. I actually said, ‘I give you my word.’ I wish I’d never said that. It haunted me.” She shook her head. “When we parted that afternoon, Brent told me someone would contact me about the passport.”

“The passport?” Sam asked.

“Yeah. That caught me off guard.
Where are these people going to send me
? But it also got me to thinking.
Where do I want to go?
I wondered if they would let me choose. That’s when Ireland came to mind. I’d read an Irish folklore book cover to cover several times.”

“We found it. That’s how Amy figured out some of your clues.”

Emma’s eyes lit up. “Amy figured out the clues?”

“Some of them,” Amy said.

“Why all the clues, Emma?” Sam asked. “Why not just leave a note?”

“Did you not get what I said about Dad and our family?”

“So what?”

“So what? I felt responsible for that. I went and got myself pregnant and everyone else would have to suffer.”

“Then why write clues at all? Brent said you tried to give him the notebook. If you were afraid for Dad, why risk that? You aren’t making sense.”

Emma’s face fell. Sam’s words wounded her as if he’d wielded a sword.

“I’m sorry, Emma. That wasn’t nice.”

“It’s okay. It’s true. I was waffling. But that notebook only came together in the last couple of days. By that time, I started to panic. I didn’t want to
just disappear.
” She cleared her throat. “But remember that day in the park, where we just left off? I didn’t even know they intended to take me out of the country until Brent mentioned a passport.”

“Right. Let’s just listen, Sam,” Amy said. They both turned to look at her. “But first I need a quick bathroom break.”

Amy returned, sufficiently lubed up for the second installment of “Emma Foster versus the Richardsons.” Emma continued where she had left off.

“The next couple of days dragged on into eternity, what with the passport remark hanging in the air and all. I kept telling Mom and Dad I was out looking for a summer job, but I was just killing time, wandering around. Tuesday afternoon I came home, and there was a note on my bed. My bed! I don’t know who left it there. It told me to be waiting in an alley by the Jiffy Lube at nine the next morning. Easy enough. You all thought I was out job hunting, so who would think anything of it?”

“You behaved so strangely those last few days. I should have been paying closer attention,” Sam chastised himself.

“Stop it. Water under the bridge.”

“Right. Sorry.”

“So I’m waiting there behind the Jiffy Lube for at least ten minutes. Then this van pulls up, like a painter’s van, no windows in the back. The door flies open and someone grabbed me. Literally. It was like something you’d see in a movie. They even put a bag over my head.”

“Are you serious?” Amy interjected.

“The whole nine yards. We drove for about an hour before they parked somewhere and hustled me out of the car. Must have been a garage of some sort. I didn’t feel the sun on my skin, and their voices echoed a bit. When they finally removed my hood, I was in a small room with an overweight man sitting at a desk. He had thinning dark hair and a three-day-old beard. Kind of nerdy. Clearly on the technical side of organized crime, not like the men who had grabbed me. The man looked bored, sort of put out that he even had to deal with me. After the thugs yanked off the hood, they left the room and it was just me and the man. Said his name was Igor.”

“Igor?”

She held up three fingers as if making a pledge. “Honest to God. He had a thick Russian accent too.”

Sam chuckled. “Sorry for laughing, Em. I know it must have been traumatic.”

“Don’t be. I was almost laughing myself. I was hoping James Bond would burst into the room and save me. In the end, it was Igor who rescued me.”

“Really?” Amy asked, completely captivated.

Emma nodded, and she smiled. “Igor, my hero.”

“So what happened?”

“At first he was gruff, asking me one-worded questions. Height? Weight? Age? Eyes? That sort of thing. He stopped and looked into my eyes to see if I was telling the truth when I said green. At that moment, I chanced a question of my own. ‘Do you know where they are sending me?’ That got his attention. His whole demeanor changed. The idea that I was there against my will hadn’t quite sank in.”

“You came in with a hood on.”

She shrugged. “Apparently everyone does. It was one of Igor’s rules. He told me later. Didn’t want every Bill and Betsy to know how to find him. He did work for a lot of people, but he didn’t want to have to vet every friend of a friend who needed his services.”

“Makes sense, I guess, if you’re in the business of illegal identification,” Sam mused.

“Right. But when I meekly asked him where
they
were sending me, his expression softened. He sat back and examined me thoughtfully for at least a minute before asking, ‘How could a sweet young thing such as yourself get into trouble with the Richardson family?’” She attempted a Russian accent. “Sorry. Trying to recreate it. He had such a rich voice.”

“That sounded pretty good actually,” Amy said.

“Thanks. Anyway, he asked me the question in his deep voice that was filled with concern. I looked down and touched my belly, trying to think of what to say. I mean, I promised I wouldn’t tell. I’d even agreed to take money, so I was wrestling with my integrity, as flimsy as it was. The belly touching wasn’t a calculated move. My hand just went there instinctively. But, of course, that was all it took. Igor figured it out before my eyes met his two seconds later.”

She gazed off into the distance, a loving expression formed on her face.

“‘Ah, I see. Where would you like to go, young lady?’ Igor whispered. I shrugged. ‘I don’t want to go anywhere.’ He nodded and continued to hold my gaze. ‘That’s no longer a possibility for you I’m afraid.’ ‘I understand,’ I said. By this time, tears were streaming down my face. Igor handed me a handkerchief. ‘But do not let that mean you are a prisoner for the rest of your life.’ When he said this, his voice took on a bitter, resentful flavor. ‘What do you propose I do then?’ I asked him. He fumbled through a bottom drawer on his right and pulled out something that looked like a mangled, black kitten. He threw it at me. ‘Run,’ he said.”

Emma tossed her head back and rolled her
R,
as Igor might have done. The confidence and cockiness of her accomplice’s attitude came alive in Emma’s tone and movements.

“It was a black wig. I stared at it, wondering what he was thinking. Clearly I couldn’t don the black wig and walk out of Igor’s office straight past the thugs. Finally, I stammered, ‘I… I don’t understand.’ He swung around in his chair and leapt to his feet as if he were a dancer and not a two-hundred-and-eighty-pound Russian forger. He went to the back corner of the room where he had a camera set up against a stark white wall. ‘Today we will make you two passports. The one the Richardsons asked me to make. We’ll call her Jennifer Johnson.’ I stared at him. ‘Come on,’ he said, motioning for me to join him. ‘Don’t be shy.’ So I let him arrange me for a photo. After he’d taken a couple of shots, he rummaged through another drawer and pulled out a brush and some makeup. Then he had me tuck my hair into a skullcap that matched my skin. He spent about thirty minutes fussing over me before he handed me a mirror. I was stunned. I looked like I was twenty-three. He’d managed to comb out that mangled black wig until it had a rich sheen. It had bangs, and it framed my face very nicely. I saw no freckles. They were all covered up by makeup. I looked almost olive-skinned at that point.

“Igor grinned. ‘Meet Charlotte Young, your ticket to freedom.’ Then he proceeded to take photos of me as Charlotte. He checked his screen several times. When he was satisfied, he handed me a container of baby wipes. ‘Remove every trace of makeup,’ he instructed. While I was working on removing the makeup, he was busy typing on the computer, fingers flying. There was a pounding on the door. Igor screamed some obscenities and the knocking stopped. When I handed him the wig and skullcap, he inspected my skin, looking for a trace of evidence. ‘Now,’ he asked me again, ‘where do you want to go?’ ‘Ireland,’ I told him. He nodded. ‘Interesting. Doubt that’s where they’re sending you. They typically go for north Africa or the middle east.’ This took me aback. ‘How often do they send people away?’ ‘Typically, they help people relocate in exchange for favors. It’s a mutually beneficial relationship.’ ‘So you’ve never run into someone like me who they’re trying to make disappear?’ He chuckled derisively. ‘When they want to make someone disappear, they usually don’t use my services.’ Of course I was seventeen, and I had to digest this for a moment before I understood what he meant. The expression on my face must have been priceless. He frowned. ‘Watch out for that baby,’ he told me pointing at my belly. ‘The Richardsons don’t like to lose.’

“You can imagine now, since you’ve been following my clues, I took Igor’s words to heart. I’ve been running and hiding, always looking over my shoulder, wondering when a Richardson minion would show up on my doorstep and whisk Samantha away.”

She shook her head, caught up in the debilitating emotions that had kept her prisoner all these years.

“What happened to Igor?” Amy asked. “I mean, wasn’t he afraid of crossing the Richardsons?”

Emma’s eyes flew open. “That’s what I wondered. When I got my wits about me, I realized he could get into some serious trouble. ‘Why are you doing this for me?’ I asked him. He didn’t give me a straight answer. Instead, he rattled off a bunch of nonsense. Reading between the lines, I got the feeling the Richardsons had threatened someone he loved or they were holding something over him, and he was sick of them exercising their power at a whim. He said something to the effect of ‘Maybe it’s time.’” She looked at her hands. “Eventually, they had to have figured out he helped me escape. And I have no idea what happened to him. I don’t even know if he’s alive.”