Brett’s team tracked down Carlos Menas’ car.
Moved him from their SUV into the trunk.
Drove him back across the border, straight to the address listed on his vehicle registration, a home thirty miles outside of Albuquerque.
Forcibly returned him to his home, leaving him chained in the basement, in a cell that had, less than 72 hours before, belonged to Kitten me. Then they called Brett.
We were in my parents’ living room when the call came. Unbeknownst to me, Brett had become close with my family during the nine months of my capture. Had flown twenty times between Lauderdale and Quincy. Trusted my father with information he had never shared with me. Kept him apprised to the buying trips, to the slaves rescued, to the women - none of which were me. They hadn’t known what had happened to me, hadn’t been certain that I was taken for the slave trade, yet Brett had doubled his efforts there. My father had come to Cancun, and they had watched hotel security footage, had tracked down my helpful cabbie, had spoken to employees of the salsa club. No one remembered me, or reported sightings of the man. We had both, in the events of that night, been unmemorable enough to have never existed.
When Brett’s phone rang, he glanced at the display, then at my father. I caught the look that passed, noticed the curl of my father’s fingers against his pant leg when Brett stood up and excused himself, his voice low when he brought the phone to his ear. My father’s leg jumped, a nervous jiggle, and I wasn’t surprised when he stood up, his hurried steps carrying him outside to the patio, my eyes following them.
“Are you okay?” My mother’s hand touched my arm and I jumped, my gaze skipping to her, the pained look at my response twisting my gut.
I smiled and hoped it looked normal. “Yes, Mom. I’m just glad to be home.”
“God, when I think of what you must have been through...” her hand trembled when she covered her mouth and I noticed the absence of polish on her nails. She’d always worn polish, gets it done on Tuesdays after work, her standard appointment. I suddenly picked up on the other details. The grey at her roots, the dead cigarettes in the ashtray. I was gone for nine months and my mother fell apart. My heart squeezed at the realization. I reached out and clasped her hand, gripped it firmly. “It wasn’t what you think, Mom. He wasn’t bad. Honestly. He was a psychology freak, liked to ask questions. That was most of it.”
She swallowed and gripped my hand. Ran her other one over the top of our clasp, her cold fingers tracing the lines of my veins. “I can see your bruises, Riley. Your winces. I can hear the change in your breaths, the pain in your voice. I am, though I haven’t always been the best, your mother.”
I bit my bottom lip and tried not to cry. “You are the best mother I could ever want.”
“No,” she said softly, “but I’ll try harder to be.”
The kitchen door slammed shut and I looked up to see two sets of grim faces. “Riley,” my father said. “Forgive my interruption, but we need to make a decision and I think you should be involved.”
1 month after rescue
When Brett was born, he was the first of two. Two hearts, two sets of chubby hands, two kicking and screaming sets of skin that burst into the world as the two Betschart heirs — impossible babies born to a barren mother, an early miracle of in vitro before the practice was common. They spent the first ten months of their lives in a space no bigger than a basketball. And they came out inseparable. The day I met Brett, his heart was already taken. He’d given it to a six year old girl who let his GI Joes kidnap her Barbies. A fifteen-year-old who’d sacrificed her best friend to his heartbreaking ways. An eighteen-year-old high school senior who had begged him to stay local then sent him care packages every other weekend when he went to Duke. A girl who, at thirty years old, disappeared while at a friend’s bachelorette party in Cancun. A girl whose remains were found two years later in the Nevada desert.
I stood at her grave and stared down at the headstone of Elyse Marine Betschart. Dug my toes against the leather of my sandals and smelled fresh-cut grass. Wondered if she smelled freedom before she died. If it was in an attempt to escape, or if she died in a cell. Wondered, in her days of pain, if she, like me, held on to thoughts of Brett.
“Let’s go.” Brett’s fingers threaded through my own. His gentle pull brought my forehead to his lips. I closed my eyes and appreciated the moment, the tickle of my hair against my throat, the smell of him when he let go of my hand and wrapped his arms around my torso, pulled me to his chest. We stood there for a moment, the beat of his heart against my ear, the fuzz of his sweater the softest thing against my cheek I could ever imagine. I had worried, some sleepless nights in that cell, that I’d cringe from his touch. That the experiences I’d undergone would scar my psyche in ways unrecoverable. That one day I’d escape, yet always be imprisoned by that hell. My fear had lifted the first time Brett had touched me. Kissed me. Cried my name while cradling me in his arms. He was nothing like that man. His touch nothing like his bite. His words a galaxy away, his love a strength that would protect me until I died.
“Okay,” I said, and let him lead me to the car.
3 months after rescue
“Good morning Ms. Johnson.”
“Good morning.”
“Welcome to Fort Lauderdale.”
“Thank you.” I crossed my legs, then remembered some article about it causing varicose veins, and uncrossed them. Varicose veins. Why the hell was I thinking about that? I smoothed a crease on my new pants. They were a size 6. I’d never worn a size 6; I’d always been more in the 12 or 14 range. But nine months of a slave’s diet put me into this territory, into this body. A body I would have once killed to have and now wanted nothing to do with. I missed my curves. So did Brett. He was trying to feed me at every opportunity, yet nothing was happening. It was like my body was resistant, not letting me move past this moment in time just yet.
“Are you settled in?”
I shrugged. Looked up into the woman’s eyes. “You can call me Riley.”
She smiled. “Okay. Riley. You can call me Nicole.”
I needed my name. Needed to hear it as much as possible. I had the irrational desire to become a teenybopper and plaster it on every surface. This morning I wrote it onto the tag of all my new clothes, like I did when I was eleven and went away to camp. Then I went down to breakfast, the scratch of my nametag comforting on my neck. I told Brett, over eggs and potatoes, that I wanted a tattoo. The script of my name along the inside of my wrist. So I could look down at any moment and see it. So that, if I ever got taken again, I could hold up my hand and stare into his face and say “Look! I am not Kitten. I am Riley!” And never again would I wonder. And neither would anyone else.