“I’m okay,” I say on autopilot. My expression even knows the way to form so I seem convincing. “Each day gets a little easier.”
When Reyes nods at me, I get the impression she knows my secret though. She knows, but she doesn’t say anything.
“We’d like to ask you some questions. I realize some of them might be uncomfortable for you, so just take as much time as you need, okay? We cleared our schedules for the rest of the day, so we’ve got nowhere to rush off to. Take as long as you need.”
The thought of spending the rest of the day with these detectives, answering questions about those ten years, makes the room sway. I have to grip the edge of my chair to stay in it. I take a breath and nod. I’m not ready, but that doesn’t seem to matter to anyone anymore.
“The night you were taken, how did Jackson get you into his van?” Reyes folds her hands on the table and waits.
No one’s taken a drink of his or her coffee. No one’s sneaked a cookie from the plate in the middle of the table.
“He said he was lost. Had a map and was trying to find Driscoll Street.” I swallow and try to remember without reliving the scene. “When I got close enough, he injected me with something. I don’t know what, but it made me foggy right away, and then my body kind of gave out, and after that . . . I don’t know how long I was blacked out.”
“When you woke up, where were you?”
I try to figure out how to keep my voice as emotionless as Reyes’s. “In a dark closet. I didn’t know it was a closet at first, or that it was inside his house, but that’s where I woke up. I don’t know if it was hours or days later. I’m guessing days.”
The essence of the panic I awoke with floats up from the place where I’ve tried to bury it. My breaths quicken.
“And how long did he keep you in the closet?”
“I don’t know.”
“What would you guess?” Reyes presses.
I want to tell her what dark like that does to a person. How direction and time and everything are lost and totally meaningless. “I don’t know.”
“Weeks? Months?” Reyes pauses. “Years?”
I don’t know, so I go with answer B. “Months, I think.”
“And what did you do during this time?”
Besides survive? “I screamed a lot at first, thinking someone might hear me. Then I moved on to crying. Then I gave up on that and mostly just slept.”
“And what did Jackson do during this time you were in the closet?”
I know what she’s asking. I thought this had been clear and confirmed by the hospital tests, but apparently no one can believe that I spent ten years with the man who kidnapped me and wasn’t molested in some way.
“Nothing. I mean, he talked to me. Brought in fresh water and food and a fresh bucket, but that was all the contact I had with him at first.”
“What did he talk about?”
I stare at the recorder. A little red light flashes on it, and I watch that until it puts me into a trance. “He called me Sara. He referred to me as his daughter. He talked about memories of them going to the park, the time he taught her to swim. He said that he wasn’t going to let anyone take me away from him again. He promised he’d keep me safe.”
“And did you say anything back?”
I blink, focusing on the red light again. “At first I tried to convince him that I wasn’t his daughter and to let me go, but after a while, that dark closet just kinda broke me. By the end, I would have said anything, been anyone, just to get out of it.”
Burnside shifts in his chair.
“When he finally let you out, what happened then?” Reyes continues.
Even though she doesn’t have a notepad in front of her, I can tell she’s crossing off questions one at a time.
“Um . . .” I rub my neck and tug at the neck of the sweater. “He chained me up. At first the chain was only long enough to move around a bedroom, but as time went by, he kept adding a little more length until I could move around most of the first floor.”
“Did he ever take the collar off of you?” Reyes glances at my neck, but her eyes don’t linger there.
“No. Never. I slept in it, showered in it. It never came off.”
“So you never had a chance to escape? To get away from him?” Reyes’s index finger taps the table like she’s knocking at something.
“Never.”
Her finger stops tapping. “So you weren’t aware that when we found you, the end of chain wasn’t tied up to anything?”
My throat goes dry, but I know I’ve heard her wrong. “What?”
Burnside and Reyes exchange a look.
Reyes leans in closer. “The other end of the chain you were tied to wasn’t connected to anything. It was just sitting on the basement floor. There was a padlock attached to one of the links, but we have no idea when Jackson unlocked it.” Reyes pauses, looking at me. “Do you?”
The ground feels like it’s crumbling beneath my chair. “I’m sorry. I don’t think I heard you right.” I shake my head, trying to clear it. “Did you just say I wasn’t chained to anything when you found me?”
That can’t be what she said. I know I heard her wrong. There’s no way he took off the lock keeping me there so I could get away. There’s no way he would have chanced me getting away . . . unless he knew that I’d accepted the chain and would never try to fight it . . .