chest so she’d back off, but my knuckles met nothing but air and I ended up crashing into the wall.
Kate flew upon me, yanked me by the arm, her fingers pinching my bare flesh. “You are out of control, little lady!”
I wrenched myself away from Kate’s claw-like grasp and made a run (a limp) for it again, but she seized me by my pajamas, eyes flashing with rage. Clamping me by my wrist again, she twisted my arm behind my back.
“Let go!” I yowled. “That hurts!”
Jen appeared like magic. She had that ability to float on air and conjure herself up from nowhere. “Kate, stop! Go easy. Let’s take her back to her room. She’ll injure herself.”
“Let me go!” I wailed. “Please! I’ll give you all the money you need and you can get your own apartment! A house, even. I’ll rent you a whole house, whatever you want.”
Kate tightened her grip. “We’ll have to lock her in her room. We have no choice.”
“Please!” I begged.
She pressed her big, muddy hiking boot on my bare toes. “What would you prefer? Your lovely bedroom with a drop-dead view and beautiful bathroom? Or the claustrophobic laundry room?”
I was about to choose the laundry room, now I had my Land Rover keys here and a way to escape, but Jen said, “No, Kate, that’s cruel.” Then to me, “Play nice. It’s for your safety and ours, we’ll take you to your room.”
“Just leave me here,” I pleaded. “Leave me where I am, I don’t even care anymore!”
Jen laid a gentle hand on my shoulder. “We’ll take you to your room so you can rest up, till you’re all better, okay, sweetie?”
I bucked and struggled, screaming at them to leave me here alone, but they insisted. The two of them were powerhouses versus my frail, feathery body. Kate dragged me back to my bedroom. I was defeated.
At least for now.
Thirty-Four
I heard them arguing in hissy whispers, outside my bedroom door, about which one of them should be in charge of the key. They decided to leave it in the lock.
The first thing I did, as soon as they were all asleep that night, was to jimmy the key out of the keyhole with a wire coat hanger. I managed. It dropped to the ground, and I spent hours attempting to fish it back from under the thin crack at the bottom of the door. No joy; it had fallen too wide. I tried this on several occasions over the following days until the triplets wised up.
Time chugged past like a freight train, slow and heavy, but too fast for me to jump onto. I felt weak, almost numb, no will or energy to do anything, and more depressed than ever about Juan. I was locked in my bedroom twenty-four seven, my only solace the view, the stock of books in my e-reader, and the TV.
I attacked the triplets on several occasions. Or at least tried to. But they always came in twos, usually Dan and Kate, so I caused minimal damage. After lunging at Kate one time with my bedside lamp, they removed all heavy objects from the room. The lamp, the flower vase, and anything glass. No bottles to smash over their heads. Not even a chair. They had searched my bedroom from top to bottom, under the mattress, behind books, in between magazines, under rugs. It was a good thing I hadn’t hidden my car keys here. These triplets were smart and had thought of everything. I screamed and yelled—I lunged at Dan, too, left him with a tiger’s scratch on his arm. He just laughed at me. Flipped me over his shoulder as if I were no more bothersome than a little girl having a tantrum.
But they didn’t take me back to the laundry room as I hoped they would. They just kept me locked up in my bedroom.
Helpless.
Another week went by—was it a week? My sense of time was fuzzy. Christmas must have come and gone. No landline. No cell phone. No laptop. Nothing but the deluge of rain and the triplets’ silence, except when they brought me my meals and filled up my Thermos. I had stopped eating pretty much immediately, didn’t trust the food they were giving me. I stopped taking my allergy meds, stopped my painkillers, the Mumm, but then I felt worse than ever and too weak to even think straight, and Beanie’s visits being my only solace, I needed to take my meds. My instinct