The Bookstore on the Beach - Brenda Novak Page 0,69
Just having a private investigator poking around would raise curiosity in this sleepy beach town.
“How does that look for the events page?” Caden asked.
She focused on the screen. “I like it.”
“Good. Laurie also wanted me to set up a better system for the news page. We can do that next.”
“We want to be able to update it ourselves.”
“I’ve been looking at other bookstores to see how they handle that sort of thing and found this site. What do you think of doing the announcements on a slide, the way they do?”
“That’s attractive.” Mary was grateful for Caden’s help, but she was struggling to take in anything new. She was too worried about Mr. Owens and the number of cards he might’ve spread around town. Not to mention the letter he’d given her. Tammy wanted to reach her, to talk to her.
Maybe she should call. What the Skinners did wasn’t Tammy’s fault...
“Are you listening, Mimi?”
She jumped when he touched her arm. “What, dear?”
“You have to pay attention if you’re going to learn how to update this page on your own. When I go back to school, I’ll be busy. You won’t want to wait for me to do it.”
“You’re right. I’m listening,” she said, but she knew, even as he was going over it, that she’d probably forget immediately after. She tried to write down a few tips that would jog her memory. But once Caden left and Autumn went to a pedicure appointment, she went online to see how much information was still out there about Bailey North, what others would find if they tried the same thing.
A Wikipedia link came up first. It was difficult to read her own story—and even more difficult to look at the pictures that were posted of Jeff and Nora at their trials. They were beautiful and impeccably dressed, as always, but their youthful faces hid such diabolical and cruel minds. And the article glossed over so much.
For seven years she hadn’t been allowed to go to a doctor or a dentist, hadn’t been allowed to go to school, hadn’t been allowed to leave the house—until the end, when they started trusting her. For the first six years, they locked her up in the basement, so that no one would know she was there, and they punished her if she ever did anything to displease them.
As she studied a picture of herself at twelve years old—the school picture that had been on all the flyers her maternal grandmother had circulated, trying to find her after she was taken—she felt a profound sense of loss. She’d been a mere child when Jeff had first raped her. And once she got pregnant and Nora could no longer pretend to believe Jeff wasn’t having sex with her, Nora’s jealousy had burned so bright. She’d been the crueler of the two, and that was saying a lot.
Closing her eyes, she leaned her head back, remembering how hard she’d tried to please the Skinners while she was with them, to find love even in that setting. That she could behave with anything other than contempt and loathing toward people who’d done what they’d done to her was the worst part of what she’d been through, because she felt as though she’d betrayed herself.
After she was rescued, the police and the media had grilled her, demanding to know why she hadn’t tried to escape when she’d had the opportunity. They cited various instances toward the end when she was allowed to go to the grocery store or answer the door and yet hadn’t tried to alert anyone.
But they didn’t understand, couldn’t understand, the toll those years had taken on her. How the Skinners had groomed and shaped her and how frightened she’d been that a failed escape would only make matters worse. Jeff had threatened to sell Autumn to a man who ran a sex-trafficking ring, said she’d never see her daughter again, and she’d believed him.
Psychologists talked about Stockholm Syndrome. She supposed that was a real thing, but for her it came down to survival and the old cliché, “The devil you know is better than the devil you don’t.” When she was finally rescued because of something Tammy said to a neighbor, Mary had been afraid to be set free. The grandmother who’d done so much for her had died while she was held captive, which left her with a mother who was on drugs and hadn’t been capable of caring for her in the first place. Although