THE CROSSING Episode 3
“A single event can awaken within us a stranger totally unknown to us. To live is to be slowly born.” —Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
10 Years Later
Next Morning
Lisa had slept late and woken to find a note on the scarred and chipped linoleum kitchen table: ‘Gone to get groceries, Lucas.’ She had looked at the Maxwell House Coffee clock on the wall over the two-seat table just as its long hand ticked to 11:45. It had been her first moments alone since he had saved her. It was her first time in years to wake up and not be afraid.
Lucas was so caring, so gentle, and kind. That first afternoon, he had not questioned her when she had been at the window, hair still wet from her shower, when a police car pulled in front of the cabin. Two officers got out, one with a clipboard. She had dropped the curtains and stepped away, unable to hide the frightened look on her face. He had noticed, and just as he seemed about to ask her something, there was a loud knock—more a bang—on the front door.
She had jumped, and he looked at her before opening it. Shaking her head, she mouthed, “Please, no!” and quickly walked to the kitchen. Still, he had gone to the door, and as he opened it, she had hidden in the kitchen pantry. She could still hear their voices.
“Good afternoon, sir.”
“What is it, officer?” Lucas’s tone had not been like that with her. It lacked any interest or inflection. Then, there was a rustling sound of shuffling through papers. She had backed further into the pantry, a smell of bleach growing stronger as she pressed against the bare rear wall. It had shifted behind her, and she had turned to see why, stopping when she heard the question she’d been afraid they would ask.
“Have you seen this woman, this young lady?” There was the rasp of a page, a photo, or maybe a drawing being pulled from the clipboard.
The voices paused, and her heart climbed in her throat as she worried what Lucas would say.
“No. I haven’t.” Lucas’s reply had been flat, emotionless.
“Well,” the officer said in a firmer, commanding tone. “You let us know if you do.”
She had heard the front door close and footsteps. Peeking around the pantry door, she had seen Lucas in the kitchen. His eyes were no longer warm and caring… they glinted as he motioned that it was okay for her to come out. She had expected him to ask why she had hidden from the police, but he hadn’t.
“Listen, I don’t like cops, either,” he had shaken his head. “Is it because you don’t want to go back to who you ran away from?”
Lisa hadn’t replied, and he had just nodded as if he had answered his question and didn’t need to ask anything further. At that moment, she was relieved, and the evening passed with her walk down to the river, his cooking dinner, a little talk while eating it, and then early to bed.
She looked at the clock, 11:55. Ten minutes had passed as all those thoughts tumbled through her mind. Now she wondered why Lucas had not wanted to know who she had run away from. A natural question, but one he hadn’t asked.
She scanned the mostly empty shelves. There had not been much in the pantry with its faint astringent odor. But she found flour, a little baking soda, sugar, and oats. With that and the last of his eggs, milk, and butter, she had enough to bake cookies. The only thing she knew how to cook that her husband hadn’t complained about.
An hour later, she set them on the table. She glanced out of the kitchen window. Dark clouds had built up, and the tops of the pine trees bent and whipped in the wind. She had taken what remained of the bag of flour back to the pantry.
Stooping to put it on the bottom shelf in the back, where it had come from—where the smell was strongest—she noticed a hole, the size of her thumb, in the wall, right-hand side, about the height of where a doorknob would be placed. She would have missed it in the shadows of the shelf beside it if not for bending down in that corner. She hooked her finger in it and tugged. A section of the wall had moved. Pulling it toward her, it scraped along the floor. The light in the pantry reached into the opening, and she had seen it… “Oh god!”
“Lisa!” The tone was what Lucas had used with the police. But with an undercurrent of tension, unlike how he had talked to them.
She shoved the wall section shut, straightened, and turned to leave the pantry. “Lucas, I…” he was at the entry, wet from fresh rain, “was putting back the flour,” she had stuttered and slid past him into the kitchen. She had to get away.
The aroma of the fresh-baked cookies filled the air as he followed her and swept the baking pan with them from the table with a gloved hand. Leaving untouched the two bags of groceries he had set there.
“What is it, Lisa?” Lucas had asked, backing her into the pool of light created by the single light bulb over the kitchen table. “Nosing around. Did you find something?” His eyes never left her as he picked through the assortment of knives in the butcher-block knife holder on the counter. “Too small,” he had sounded disappointed and reached into his back pocket. With a loud snapping noise, he unfolded a large knife and locked the long, serrated blade. “This is much better.”
His bulk had blocked the light as he came within arm’s reach of her. The stormburst rattled the window over the kitchen sink, and its rumble and howling wind smothered her cries. Waning sunlight had poured weak, watery light onto them, and the blade gleamed under the swaying bulb.
He had pinned her against the counter and turned the blade to hold it before his eyes as he admired its sheen. Then he grabbed a handful and twisted her long, dark hair. She had reached behind her and found the handle of the rolling pin she’d used earlier and not put away. Screaming, “No,” she swung and connected with the left side of his face. She heard a cracking sound as his cheekbone broke. “You bastard!”
When he backed off a step, she kneed him in the groin. His grunt had been louder than her gasp as, in reflex, he stabbed the blade into her shoulder. Swinging the rolling pin again, she had landed a crushing blow to the side of his head, and he had gone down unconscious. He would not get a chance to… it would not be like when…
Back Then…
Mama was gone, and my stepdad turned to me. And it was worse than just bruises from him yanking me by the arm and screaming: “Don’t you give me that look, or I’ll…!” But there was no ‘or I’ll’ … he always hit me. It got bad. Real bad.
The night I turned 16, he came home early from his flush-with-insurance-money after-work drinking that had become a routine and caught me coming out of the shower. He dragged me to his room. I tried not to feel him on me, the sweat dropping from his chin to fall on my face. I screamed into the grimy hand he held over my mouth. All I could think of the whole time was another me… scared, crying… and listening on the other side of the wall.
I woke up the next morning, and the blood from my mouth had pooled and dried. The pillowcase stuck to my face. At breakfast, I tried to eat… while he watched me. As soon as he left, I vomited.
Days and nights went on. I was good at hiding what was happening—what he did—to me. I was ashamed and thought everything was my fault… until one day. I wasn’t supposed to touch his toolbox unless he asked me to bring it to him. And never to open it. Then I needed to, and I did. And I found the thing that changed me. After that, what was once a time when I felt weakest became a time when I always felt strongest. At….
* * *
Continued in Episode 4