at the first mention of “a witness,” I sat up straighter. My knees locked in place. I waited to see the name Lily, like Rusty had said. Waited for today’s spiral to be proven wrong in print. But as it turned out, the prologue never mentioned a Lily. Just a “girl who saw the man who took me.” A girl who knew what happened but never said a word.
My heart thumped when I read that. My stomach roiled. I had to set the book aside, curl into myself, wrap my arms around my knees. At some point, I must have drifted off to sleep—only to have Astrid’s voice follow me into dreams.
Now, I rip off my sheets, reach for my cell phone, and try without Wi-Fi to search for “Astrid Sullivan witness” and “Astrid Sullivan Lily.” But the webpages are slow to load and incomplete when they do, offering me only ad banners. I shake my phone as if it will help. When it doesn’t, I grab the memoir, flip through its pages, and blink as my vision blurs, my head spins. I clutch the bedpost, dizzy and sweat drenched.
I haven’t been drinking enough water. I’m used to our loft’s clinical cool. This muggy heat, this house with poor insulation, this revision of such an old dream—it’s boiling me up inside.
Stumbling out of my bedroom, I steady myself against the wall. I’m almost to the bathroom where I’ll slurp down water straight from the tap, but the light beneath Ted’s door catches my eye, and I head toward it. I pad barefoot across the grainy hardwood, and I open his door without a knock.
His fingers stall on the typewriter keys, but he doesn’t turn around. “Yes?”
His study is the same as it ever was: book cramped, paper crowded, lit slightly green from a banker’s lamp. The ceiling is sloped, making it difficult to stand in places, and there’s only one window. It’s pushed wide open, but the room feels airless as a coffin.
“What was I saying in my sleep?” I ask.
Ted swivels his chair to face me. “I don’t know. I was on my way back from grabbing some dinner downstairs”—he gestures to a box of Nilla Wafers on his desk—“and I heard you mumbling. You sounded agitated. Couldn’t make out exactly what you were saying, though.”
I stare at his meal. The yellow box. The crumbs on a stack of papers. When I packed for Cedar, I assumed we’d go to The Diner on my first night back. I actually salivated over the thought of Peg’s corned beef sandwiches. But here we are. Nilla Wafers. I, on the other hand, ordered Thai, which I ate alone in the kitchen—huge forkfuls of drunken noodles—until the spice of it gave me heartburn.
“You left me today,” I say.
“Left you?” He cocks an eyebrow.
“At Rusty’s.”
“I didn’t leave you. Cooper Kelley was there. I figured you’d get a ride back with him.”
“You could’ve told me you were leaving at least.”
“Actually, I couldn’t have.”
“Why not?”
His eyes twinkle, and right away I know what he’s going to say. “Ted, don’t,” I preempt.
But his hands go up, stiffening into claws. “It was the witch…”
“Stop it.”
“She cut off my tongue. Put a curse on me. And do you know what she said?”
I make a show of rolling my eyes. “That you’re ridiculous?”
He stands up and takes three shuffling steps toward me, dragging one ankle behind him as if it were broken. When he speaks, the syllables come out as elongated croaks. “She said… ‘I’m the witch from Forest Near. Now I’ll do the thing you fear.’ ” He leans his head back, throat exposed, and cackles. Then he grabs me by the arms and shakes me.
I bite my lip, try to suppress my smile, but the laughter bubbles out anyway. “You are ridiculous,” I say when he lets me go.
“The Witch from Forest Near” was the only fairy tale I was ever told. It starred Ted as both protagonist and villain. He invented the witch and, through the crackling cadence of his voice, instantly became her. His long wisps of hair, which were gray even when I was a child, transformed into her moon-silver locks. His hands turned convincingly gnarled.
I think he created her to scare me—and so, to study me—but unlike his other tactics, the fear never took. Even at five or six, I always giggled when he said his rhyme, laughed when he latched on to my arms and shook. It was like a hug. And though Eric