Never Let You Go (a modern fairytale) (29 page)

Griselda would be forever grateful that Maya took one look at her face and said nothing. Standing by the car, she gave Griselda a long hug before taking the pathetic brown paper bag out of her friend’s hands and placing it on the backseat.

They rode in silence for a good half hour, with Griselda staring out her open window, feeling so overwhelmed she just let the sound of the wind fill her ears and tried not to think, or feel, or remember. And Maya remained blessedly quiet.

Leaving Holden was the hardest, most painful thing Griselda had ever had to do. In some ways it was worse than leaving him in the Shenandoah because she’d had a taste of what it would be like to live with him, to be in love with him, to be free . . . to be happy. And just when she’d allowed herself to believe in it, it had been ripped away.

Because people like Griselda Schroeder didn’t get happy endings, and in the future it would be best for her to remember that.

“Thanks for coming, Maya,” she said, turning her weary head to look at her friend. Maya had changed her hair over the past few weeks. It was cut very short, in a pixie style like Halle Berry’s, and it complemented Maya’s round face and high cheekbones. “You look good.”

“Well, you look like shit.”

“Thanks.”

“When you’re ready, you’re gonna tell me everything, Zelda,” said Maya. Staring at the road, she managed to pull a package of red Twizzlers from the pocket of the car door and hand them to Griselda. “And girl, I mean
everything
.”

Griselda tore open the plastic, her eyes welling. “I can’t, Maya.”

“You have to. If you don’t, it’s going to eat you whole.” Maya grabbed a Twizzler and took a bite. “It was him, right? You finally found him?”

She and Maya hadn’t talked about Holden. Ever. After Griselda escaped, she was placed in a foster family and sent to mandatory counseling, which she belligerently attended. Her caseworker and the therapist knew she’d been abducted with a boy, and they knew she’d escaped and the boy had not. But Griselda refused to talk about her ordeal with Caleb Foster. The cellar, the long hours of gardening in the summer and canning in the winter, the cold oatmeal, the hours of Bible reading and accompanying rantings, the beatings. She’d never discussed it with anyone.

By the time she’d been transferred to Maya’s house, she was fourteen and a half, and her kidnapping and escape were old news. Not much of the story had followed her except for the broadest strokes. In the very beginning Maya had tried to get Griselda to talk about it, but she’d clammed up tighter than a lock with a lost key, and Maya eventually stopped asking.

“The boy you were kidnapped with, Zel. You found him.” Maya took another bite of her licorice. “That’s who you’ve been saving for, right? All these years? And you somehow found him.”

Griselda’s lips trembled with misery, her eyes burning, though she was sick and tired of crying. “I found him.”

Maya nodded, keeping her eyes on the road. “How is he?”

“Changed. The same. Grown up.”

“You love him?”

Griselda sniffled, taking a small bite of the candy clutched in her fist. “Yeah.”

“And he loves you?”

“Yeah,” she whispered, trying to chew, but her teeth stopped working, and her whole body went slack.

He loves me and I love him, but we can’t be together.

“So what happened?”

“His girlfriend’s pregnant.”

“Jesus,” sighed Maya. “Give me another.”

Griselda took a deep breath and started chewing again, slowly swallowing the mouthful of licorice and handing Maya another braid.

“Tell me about it.”

“Finding him?”

Maya shook her head. “No. All of it. From the beginning.”

Griselda’s hair-trigger reaction was “no.” For so long she’d kept her history a secret that she shared only with Holden. Even when they weren’t together, it bound them, somehow, that they were the only two people on earth who knew what had happened, who’d lived it, who’d survived it.

“You gotta start talking about it, Z. If you don’t? It’s eventually gonna kill you.”

“Why?”

“Because you can’t keep that much sorrow to yourself. I want to bear it with you. I love you like a sister, even though you keep me at arm’s length. You know all about my mama, my deadbeat daddy, my murdered sister, and my drug-dealing brothers. You know how hard I fought to get out of there. And all that time I was talking to you about it, you were helping me. Hooking me up with Miz McClellan’s babysitting agency, putting in a good word whenever you could. I got a good job now. I’m taking night classes. I’m going to be the first one in my family who gets an associate’s degree, and I might even be the first one married legit. And I got here, partially, because you listened. You stood beside me. You helped me. And Zelda, it’s my turn to do the same for you. You gotta talk about it, or you’ll be stuck back there forever.”

Tears rolled down Griselda’s weary face as she listened to Maya’s words and felt the truth and fragile hope in them. And she found that resonant, comforting, familiar “no” retreating as fast as it had flared. Finding Holden again had opened up something inside her. Knowing he had survived Caleb Foster had freed her of something, and his forgiveness for getting in the truck and leaving him behind had released her from the heavy burden of her guilt. Could she talk about it all? Could she tell Maya everything?

Suddenly her mouth started moving, telling Maya about the first time she ever saw Holden as she stood across his bedroom in the Fillmans’ hallway. She told Maya about seeing the Shenandoah for the first time and going to the store in Marisol’s place. She explained the mix-up when Caleb
Foster
insisted her
foster
parents had sent him to pick them up. As she talked about the cellar and the ankle chains and the beatings and Leviticus, she realized something important: though she and Holden had shared their feelings about being Caleb Foster’s prisoners, it had been a very long time since she’d looked at the story objectively, as a narrative, instead of a memory. And somehow, outlining it as a series of events, instead of a world of hell and heartbreak, took away some of its power over her.

She even felt a detachment to it in some ways, like she was telling one of her fantasy stories. It was her history, yes, but told as a narrative, it wasn’t quite as terrifying somehow. What shocked her the most, after keeping it a secret for so long, was how fucking
good
it felt to tell someone. To hear Maya gasp with shock and shake her head with disbelief felt comforting, and the little girl inside Griselda opened her eyes and looked longingly at Maya, loving and needing the compassion, the sympathy, the comfort of someone listening to her story.

Maybe she’d been wrong to roadblock the therapist they’d offered her so long ago. Maybe it was possible to still find one to help her.

“So there he is, fighting this other guy, and you knew it was him? At first sight?”

She shook her head. “No, I had no idea. I mean, I noted that he went by Seth—”

“Which is all sorts of fucked-up, girl.”

“—because that name . . . well, it’s a hard name for me. But he didn’t look like Holden. He looked older and meaner, and his face was unrecognizable.”

“Why’s he going by Seth?”

“He’s not . . . anymore,” said Griselda. “And Maya? My real name is Griselda.”

Maya did a double take, staring at her friend twice before focusing on the highway again. “Gris—. What?”

Griselda nodded. “They made me change my name when I came back from West Virginia. They were afraid Caleb Foster would try to find me, so they told me I had to change my name. Remember Sandy? That really old social worker with the squeaky shoes and lavender hair? She suggested Zelda. She said it would be easier for me to get used to.”

“And Shroder?”

“My birth name was spelled S-C-H-R-O-E-D-E-R.”

“God, Zel—Grisel—what the hell do I call you?”

For the first time since she’d gotten into the car, she chuckled softly. “Zelda, dummy.”

“I want to hear about what happened after the fight, but I’m wondering . . . whatever happened to the real Seth and Ruth? Do you know?”

Griselda shrugged. “The barn at their family farm caught on fire when they were teenagers. It burned to the ground, and they found items in the ashes that belonged to the twins.”

“
Caught
on fire? Or
set
on fire?”

“I don’t know, to be honest. I would have said ‘set on fire’ two weeks ago, but Caleb Foster . . .” She shook her head and sighed. “It’s more . . . complicated than that. He ended up treating Holden okay all those years. Like a little brother. Didn’t beat him. Didn’t molest him. Kept him fed and clothed. In the end, Holden was going to high school like any other kid.”

“Any other abducted kid held hostage by a psycho?”

“It all gets mixed up, Maya. You want things to be black-and-white, but they aren’t. There are so many shades of gray. I hated Caleb Foster, but I can actually see he wasn’t all bad. Is that crazy?”

“Yeah,” said Maya.

“He could have killed Holden. Tortured him. Sold him. Molested him. Anything. But he didn’t do any of those things. Holden survived, in part, because Caleb Foster ensured it.”

“Stop defending him, Z. You’re making me want to slap you.”

“You don’t get it,” sighed Griselda.

“I do,” said Maya after a couple of minutes. “But it sucks because we shared a bedroom for a couple of years, and I’ve seen your back, girl. I know what he did to you.”

The scars on her back suddenly itched, and Griselda shifted in her seat.

“So tell me the rest. You saw Seth—er, Holden—at the fight, and then what?”

Griselda told Maya about Quint’s visit the next afternoon, and leaving her purse and phone at the cabin to go to Holden. She told her about seeing him for the first time, re-dressing his wounds and falling asleep on the floor next to the sofa, her hand tightly bound to his. She told Maya about Gemma appearing out of nowhere, and Quint’s kind offer to let them use the hunting cabin for Holden’s recovery. When she told Maya how Mrs. McClellan had given her a month off, Maya muttered something about Griselda having the best boss, and when she told Maya about burning her hand and ending up in bed with Holden, Maya sighed.

“Was it . . . good?”

“Yeah,” said Griselda, her eyes watering as she remembered his words:
Even when we were apart, we were still together. Even when I thought you were gone, you still lived inside my heart . . . I’m whole. You make me whole.

“So his equipment . . .?”

“No complaints,” said Griselda quickly, her cheeks flooding with heat and probably color.

“What about Jonah?”

“What about him?

“Where does he fit into all of this?”

“He doesn’t,” said Griselda. “I’m breaking things off with him when I get home.”

Maya glanced at her, concern clear in her brown eyes. “Not going to go over well, Z.”

“I can’t be with him.”

“He’s mean, though.”

Griselda hadn’t given a lot of thought to Jonah since leaving Holden an hour ago. Now her heart started thumping with worry. “Maybe I’ll get a restraining order. If he bothers me.”

“Maybe you should get a dog,” suggested Maya. “Or hey, why don’t you come stay with me and Terrence?”

“Invade the lover’s nest?” asked Griselda with a knowing side glance. “I don’t think so.”

“Couch is all yours if you want it.”

“Thanks, but I want to go home. And I need to deal with Jonah sooner or later. I’m tougher than I look, Maya.”

“If you say so,” said Maya unconvinced. “So you run away to a cabin and do the dirty . . . and then what?”

Heaven.
“We just . . . knocked around for a couple of weeks. I wrote down my stories. He read books. We went swimming, sat in the sun, ate, drank, remembered what it was like to be together.” She could still smell the fires Holden made in the evening, still feel the heavy comfort of his arm around her shoulders. She swiped away a tear and took a deep breath. “We loved each other.”

“Then you found out the girlfriend was pregnant?”

Griselda nodded. “And he insisted he’d reason with her, and it was all going to be okay.”

“One big happy family.”

Not exactly.
“She threatened to get an abortion if he stayed with me.”

“Damn, girl! What the fuck?!”

Griselda’s heart clenched as she recalled the pleading in Holden’s voice when he realized what Gemma was prepared to do.

“He wants kids,” she murmured. “He always wanted kids.”

Maya was ranting and raving about how some women should be sterilized, but Griselda didn’t hear her friend anymore. She zoned out, staring out the window at the light rain that had started to fall as they got closer and closer to Laurel, Maryland.

Would Jonah be home? She braced herself. He’d be furious, and he’d take it out on her. She thought about Maya’s offer again, but something inside her rebelled against hiding. It was
her
apartment.
Her
place. Jonah was going to have to get his ass out, and if he wouldn’t leave, she’d call the police. Satisfied with her plan, she tuned back into Maya’s rant.