Obstetrix(49)

I watched a little snippet of that interview, and hearing my voice stopped me cold. It’s always weird to hear your own voice recorded, but my voice sounded more wrong than it usually did. It sounded high. Sweet. Gentle. I didn’t even know how to begin dealing with that, so I shut it off.

Some of the cult members who weren’t behind bars also gave interviews. To hear them tell it, they’d all desperately wanted to escape starting at least a month or two before I was kidnapped, but had been unable to because of the cult’s control over cars and phones. “We could have risen up and seized the means of production,” I muttered, watching a tearful Natalie talk about how she was trapped. “You were watching me, Natalie! Who was watching you?”

It should not have surprised me to run into Joy, but it did.

I went into the diner with the all-day breakfast. It was the first day I’d gone anywhere at all without my father almost within arm’s reach; I’d told him I wanted to try it, and he’d agreed to have his own lunch in one of the other restaurants on the block.

It took me a second to recognize Joy: she had gotten her hair cut into a bob. She saw me, though, and waved with a bright smile; as our eyes met, she seemed to suddenly realize that I might not want to see her, and put her hand down. She was in a booth, and there was a bucket car seat on the bench next to her.

I went over. “How are you doing?” I asked.

“Oh,” she said, and looked sort of abashed. “The doctor said it was okay if I left the hospital. He said you’d done a really good job, he wouldn’t have known from my recovery that it was a surgery done in a barn if no one had told him. That’s what he said, I mean. In a barn.”

I laughed. “Can I join you?”

“If you want to. I mean, yes, of course. Are we allowed to talk to each other?”

“No one’s told me not to talk to you.”

The waitress came by and dropped off a menu. “I know what I’m having,” I said. I’d looked at the menu online. “I’d like a large coffee and the Belgian waffles with strawberries and whipped cream.”

She glanced at Joy, who was finishing a Denver omelet. “Same check or different?”

Joy flushed. “I really feel like I ought to pick up your check, but I have exactly enough money to pay for my omelet and a tip.”

“Separate checks,” I said.

When the waitress had gone, Joy said, “I’m staying at a women’s shelter, with Charlie. This is Charlie.” She patted the carrier. “Charles means free man. I don’t know where we’re going from here, though. David’s going to prison. My father, too. Well, maybe. He didn’t shoot anybody.”

“I expect they’ll come up with something to charge him with,” I said.

“Anyway, thank you,” Joy said. “For everything. Delivering him, but also that text you sent. I heard from Emma that’s how we got saved after I blurted out … ugh.” She wiped her eyes. “I really did not mean to tell them anything. I’m usually so good at keeping quiet and not letting anyone know what I’m thinking.”

“It wasn’t your fault,” I said. “You were just trying to survive the best you could.”

“If we’d waited another day…”

“My dad’s friends came in when they did because they heard the gunshot,” I said. “And if I’d had the opportunity to run, I’d have done it. I didn’t know if my father had gotten the text, I didn’t know he was planning something. It had been weeks.”

“I feel like you should know that it was because of me that they kidnapped you.”

“I mean, I think I knew that? Did you ask them to get you a doctor?”

“Kind of.”

“Normal people, if their wife or their daughter says, ‘You have to get me a doctor,’ take that person to a doctor. Like, they take them to a clinic or a hospital. Normal people do not kidnap a doctor.”

“I knew they weren’t normal people, though.”

“You know what, Joy, I don’t blame you, so just … please stop worrying about it. You’ve got enough going on.” I nodded at Charlie, who was sleeping. “How’s Charlie doing?”

“His pediatrician says he’s doing really well, all things considered.”

My waffles arrived and I dug in. Being able to choose my own food gave me a moment of delight, every time I sat down to eat. “Have you been reading since your escape?” I asked. “Like, for fun?”

Joy brightened up more than I’d ever seen her; it was like watching a sunrise. “So many books,” she said. “There’s a library here, and they’ve got everything. I told the librarian I wasn’t sure where to start and she sent me home with one book from each section…”

We talked about books until Charlie woke up and our coffee was cold.

“I’ll see you around,” she said.

I nodded, even though I had my ticket back to Minneapolis. We’d see each other at the trial, at least. “Good luck.” As we were walking out, I caught her arm. “Do you know where Bethany is?”

“She stayed with her parents. Everyone you insisted had to be brought out in the rescue, we were all treated as victims. So Bethany and JJ didn’t go into foster care. They’re staying at a family shelter run by the same folks as the women’s shelter.” She wrote down the address on the back of a placemat and gave it to me. “Are you going to go see her?”