NOW
Her name was Mary Kate Covino. She was twenty-five, an assistant marketing manager at Dowell and Associates. She’d started there straight out of college, and had climbed a couple of rungs since.
She liked her job.
She mostly liked her life, even though her jerk of a boyfriend had dumped her right before the romantic getaway she’d planned—meticulously—like a campaign.
Yesterday? The day before? She couldn’t be sure. Everything blurred. It was June—June something—2061.
She had a younger sister, Tara, a grad student at Carnegie Mellon. Tara was the smart one. And an older brother, Carter, the clever one. He’d just gotten engaged to Rhonda.
She had a roommate, Cleo—like another sister—and they shared a two-bedroom apartment on the Lower West Side.
She’d grown up in Queens and, though her parents had divorced when she’d been eleven, they’d all been pretty civilized about it. Both her parents had remarried—no stepsibs—but their second round was okay. Everybody stayed chill.
Her maternal grandparents—Gran and Pop—had given her a puppy for her sixth birthday. Best present ever. Lulu lived a happy life until the age of fourteen when she’d just gone to sleep and hadn’t woken up again.
She liked to dance, liked sappy, romantic vids, preferred sweet wines to dry, and had a weakness for her paternal grandmother’s—Nonna’s—sugar cookies.
She reminded herself of all this and more—her first date, how she’d broken her ankle skiing （first and last time）—every day. Multiple times a day.
It was essential she remember who she was, where she came from, and all the pieces of her life.
Because sometimes everything got twisted and blurred and out of sync, and she started to believe him.
She’d been afraid he’d rape her. But he never touched her that way. Never touched her at all—not when she was awake.
She couldn’t remember how she’d gotten here. The void opened up after Teeg ditched her, and all the shouting, and the bitching, her walking home from the bar, half-drunk, unhappy. Berating herself for haunting the damn stupid bar he owned, putting in hours helping out four, even five nights a damn stupid week.
For nothing but one of his killer smiles.
Then she’d woken up here, feeling sick, her head pounding. In the dark, chained up—like something in a horror vid—in a dark room with a cot.
Then he’d come, the man, looking like someone’s pale and bookish uncle.
He turned on a single light so she saw it was a basement, windowless, with concrete floors and walls of pargeted stone. He had sparkling blue eyes and snow-white hair.
He set a tray holding a bowl of soup, a cup of tea on the cot and just beamed at her.
“You’re awake. Are you feeling better, Mommy?”
An accent, a twangy southern one with a child’s cadence. She needed to remember that, but in the moment, she’d known only panic.
She’d begged him to let her go, wept, pulled against the shackles on her right wrist, left ankle.
He ignored her, simply went to a cupboard and took out clothes. He set them, neatly folded, on the bed.
“I know you haven’t been feeling good, but I’m going to take care of you. Then you’ll take care of me. That’s what mommies do. They take care of their little boys.”
While she wept, screamed, demanded to know what he wanted, begged him to let her go, he just kept smiling with those sparkling eyes.
“I made you soup and tea, all by myself. You’ll feel better when you eat. I looked and looked for you. Now here you are, and we can be together again. You can be a good mommy.”
Something came into those eyes that frightened her more than the dark, than the shackles.
“You’re going to be a good mommy and take care of me the way you’re supposed to this time. I made you soup, so you eat it! Or you’ll be sorry.”
Terrified, she eased down on the cot, picked up the spoon. It was lukewarm and bland, but it soothed her raw throat.
“You’re supposed to say thank you! You have to tell me I’m a good boy!”
“Thank you. I—I don’t know your name.”
She thought he’d kill her then. His face turned red, his eyes wild. His fisted hands pounded together.
“I’m your baby darling. Say it! Say it!”
“Baby darling. I’m sorry, I don’t feel well. I’m scared.”
“I was scared when you locked me in a room so you could do ugly things with men. I was scared when you gave me things to make me sleep so you could do them. I was scared when I woke up sick and you weren’t there, and it was dark and I cried and cried.”