Still Beating

I stare at a black ant crawling along the toe of my shoe.

It’s weaving itself into confused circles on the dark suede, looking lost and unsure. It dances across my interwoven laces, likely searching for food and warmth. I can’t help but wonder how it’s surviving these brutal winter temperatures. It’s so small and fragile—so insignificant. It doesn’t stand a chance.

“Dean.”

Cora and I were ants. Small and fragile—lost in a cold, scary world. Set up to fail.

We had each other, though.

The ant is all alone.

“Dean.”

I register my name catching on a sharp gust of wind that sails by, almost knocking me off my feet. I look up from my place on the sidewalk to find Mandy spearing me with those worried eyes I’ve become so familiar with over the past two weeks. “Yeah?”

“Are you ready to go inside?”

Her microbladed eyebrow arches with concern, and I realize I zoned out in front of her parent’s house, sympathizing with an ant. I glance down at the insect, only to find that it has since left my shoe and disappeared into the cement cracks.

I hope it beats the odds.

Mandy plants a smile on her crimson lips when I nod my head, then she steps over to take my hand in hers. She is warm, and yet, a chill sweeps through me.

“It’s going to be fine,” she says idly, sensing my resistance as she threads our fingers together. “It’ll be good to have a little normalcy again.”

Normalcy. Nothing about the last five weeks has been normal, that’s for sure. And I can’t imagine this forced family dinner with her parents will feel anything close to normal. “Yeah. I guess.”

Mandy blinks her fake lashes at me, trying to mask her apprehension with another smile. “Do you need a minute?”

“No.” A minute won’t change anything. A minute doesn’t erase the damage done. A minute isn’t going to teleport me back to the safety of my own bed, where I can comfortably avoid my current reality and battle my demons in private. “Let’s go inside.”

I move forward because it’s the only choice I have. We walk up the cobblestone pathway to the bright blue Colonial-style house in a picture-perfect neighborhood. I’ve walked this path thousands of times before, but today I spot a little gnome statue next to the row of shrubs lining the front of the house. He looks rusted—worn from the elements. “Is that a new statue?” I inquire of Mandy as we reach the porch step.

“Richard the Gnome?” She scrunches up her nose. “He’s been there for, like, two decades, Mr. Observant.” Mandy shoots me a wink, attempting to be playful. “Cora named him Richard because she said he looked like Richard Marx.”

I nibble on the inside of my cheek. I can’t help but wonder how many other day-to-day things I walked right by without ever affording a glance or a thought.

We step inside the all-too-familiar home and are greeted with the smell of garlic, rosemary, and a hint of pine. I turn to see a magnificent, fresh tree in the sitting room to our left, decorated in golds and reds and priceless, homemade ornaments.

Most of the time, I don’t even know what day it is, let alone the fact that it’s almost Christmas.

“Oh, Dean.”

My head snaps up to find Bridget and Derek Lawson rushing towards me from the kitchen. Bridget’s long, brown skirt trails behind her as tears well in green eyes that bear a striking resemblance to Cora’s. Her blonde hair is cropped into a pixie cut, her crow’s feet creasing as she casts her worry and love all over me.

Derek is behind her, his salt-and-pepper hair telling his age despite his youthful appearance. He has Mandy’s eyes—hazel, more slanted, adorned with thick, brown lashes.

They are my second parents. My own father passed away almost twelve years ago from a heart attack, and my mother is in the dementia ward at Sunrise Assisted Living. I spent most of my high school afternoons here, studying with Mandy, playing board games, laughing our way through karaoke nights, and eating home-cooked meals. Bridget and Cora loved cooking together. Their meatloaf was one of my favorites.

Bridget places her kind hands against my cheeks, cradling my face like I’m her very own son.

I should have been five days ago. December 5th was supposed to be our wedding day—instead, I spent thirteen hours buried beneath my bed covers, ignoring Mandy’s phone calls and only getting up to take a piss and munch on stale, saltine crackers.

“You look better,” Bridget says, her watery smile impressively veiling the obvious lie.

The Lawsons visited me at the hospital in those strange, hazy forty-eight hours post-rescue, but I haven’t seen them since. I haven’t seen anyone except for Mandy, who stops by my townhouse unannounced more than I’d like her to. She has a key, though, so there’s not much I can do about it.

I’ll never tell her I thought about stealing that key and flushing it down the toilet.

“I feel a little better. Still adjusting.” I go with the lying theme. It feels simpler. “Thanks for having us over tonight.”

“Mom, give him some space. He’s not an exhibit,” Mandy scolds, pulling her snowy white hat with a furry pom-pom off her head, sending her hair into a static-infused mess.

Bridget reluctantly steps away and Derek paces over to me, squeezing my shoulder with a firm, affectionate hand. “It’s great to see you up and about. The girls made meatloaf—your favorite.”

The girls?

I hear the patio door slide open from the back of the house, squeaky and familiar, followed by the sound of exuberant paws skidding across the hardwood floors.

Blizzard must sense my presence because she careens towards me in the entryway, all sixty-five pounds of her, and promptly lands on my feet, rolling over for a tummy rub. I crouch down to scratch her belly, releasing my first genuine smile in weeks. Blizzard’s tail wags furiously beneath her. I can’t believe this old girl still has so much energy—she’s got to be twelve or thirteen by now. But her excitement at seeing me walk through that front door has never wavered over the last ten years. Not even a little.

As I rise to my feet, my eyes land on the figure standing in the kitchen and my breath hitches in the back of my throat.

Corabelle.

Mandy hangs her coat up on the nearby coat rack and clears her throat, leaning in close to her mother. “You said Cora wasn’t coming tonight,” Mandy mutters in a low voice as she tames her flyaways, her eyes dancing over to me with apology.

It’s true I wasn’t ready to face her yet.

Maybe I’ll never be ready.

“Sorry, sweetie, but your sister texted me a few hours ago and said she changed her mind.”

Their conversation begins to fade away as my eyes lock on Cora’s from across the foyer. Memories flow through me, making me feel itchy and slightly panicked, but there is also a profound comfort that stabs at my heart. She is a vision of life and light and survival. Her hair is golden blonde, shiny and healthy again, curled loosely over her thin shoulders. She’s always been petite, but her frame looks even more frail and willowy in a deep purple dress that probably fit her better five weeks ago. The neckline hangs low, revealing her bony collarbone and remnants of a few lingering, faded bruises.

Cora twists her hair over one shoulder and my eyes drift to her exposed neck. The same neck I peppered with sorrowful kisses and soaked with my tears of shame.

My jaw clenches and my heartbeats accelerate, my hands turning clammy as I swipe them along the front of my blue jeans. I’m not sure what to do, so I merely acknowledge her with a quick nod and swallow down all the things I cannot say.

But I don’t miss the flash of hurt and dismissal in her eyes before she spins around and busies herself in the kitchen.

I flinch when Mandy’s fingers begin tugging the sleeve of my winter coat, yanking me out of my messy thoughts. “Take your coat off. Stay a while,” she beams at me, then follows her parents into the family room, chattering on about her shift at the hair salon like it’s another ordinary day in Normalville.

I stay rooted to the snowman welcome mat, staring at Cora’s back as she leans over the kitchen counter, facing away from me. Her head is bowed, her shoulders taut. She is gripping the edge of the countertop as her hair falls over the sides of her face in waves.

I want to run to her. I want to take her in my arms and whisper into her ear that everything is going to be okay. We survived. It’s over.

But I don’t.

I can lie to Mandy and her parents and my friends and my boss and my therapist… but I can’t lie to her.

We all sit around the formal dining table, and for a moment, everything feels like it used to. It’s easy to pretend between four walls adorned with pretty paint colors, lace drapes, recess lighting, and holiday decorations scattered throughout. It’s easy to pretend in the company of the family I’ve come to care about over the past fifteen years while they discuss politics and trending Netflix shows as if nothing is amiss.

But the façade cracks when my eyes float over to Cora, sitting across from me, smashing her meatloaf into something unidentifiable with the tines of her fork as the candlelight illuminates the dark circles under her eyes. I push my own mushy meatloaf into my mashed potatoes, realizing I’m doing the exact same thing. I reach under the table to give Blizzard my dinner roll so it appears that I’m actually eating the meal that probably tastes delicious.

“… about the pregnancy.”

Mandy’s voice pushes through my fog, and I lift my head, turning towards her. Pregnancy? A silence washes over the dinner table, and I feel incredibly out of the loop. “What?” I glance from face to face, but everyone is looking down at their plates like they’re in the midst of a riveting crossword puzzle. My eyes shift back to Cora, but she’s not looking at her plate. Her eyes are wide and accusatory as she stares down a sheepish-looking Mandy.

Mandy presses her lips between her teeth, flipping her hair over one shoulder. “Sorry. I-I didn’t mean to blurt that out. We were talking about our cousin’s new baby, and it just triggered… you know. I suck at thinking before I speak.”

I blink. Cora’s fork clinks against the dinner plate as she folds her hands in her lap, but she refuses to meet my eyes. I don’t think she’s looked at me once since our stare-down from earlier. I run my tongue along the roof of my mouth, putting two and two together with a hard knot twisting in my gut. “Are you pregnant, Cora?”

Her head finally jerks towards me, alarmed by the sound of my voice addressing her for the first time in weeks. I watch her haunted eyes swirl with grief and confusion and sadness and everything in between. But the eye contact doesn’t last, and she ducks her head with fluttering lashes. “I was,” she says softly, so soft I almost don’t hear her. Then she pins her eyes back on Mandy. “I didn’t want to talk about this. I didn’t want to talk about any of this.”

Cora pushes back from the table and stands up, scratching at her wrist and making a quick escape from the dining room to the staircase.

I follow, not caring if it looks strange or inappropriate—my instincts tell me to follow her.

I can feel their eyes boring into my back, trying to understand why I’m chasing Mandy’s sister up the stairs, but they have to know.

They have to know we’re different now.

The image of Cora and me standing together, our hands interlocked, dappled in blood stains and dirt with an identical far-off look in our eyes, has made the rounds on the internet. In fact, it went viral as soon as the photo was released by the media. It has over two-million shares and hundreds of thousands of comments ranging from, “Sending prayers to those poor souls” to “This looks like the movie poster for the next Quentin Tarantino film” to “Following for future wedding announcement”. Mandy delicately questioned me about the photo, hoping for insight into our shared nightmare. Hoping for answers I wasn’t able to give her. She doesn’t know all the details of what transpired in that basement—only what she’s seen in news articles and TV broadcasts.

All I told Mandy was that we formed a friendship out of survival and fear and boredom and loneliness. It was necessary. It was inevitable. It was all we had.

She’ll never know the things I was forced to do, the lines that were crossed, or the guilt I’ll carry with me until the day I die.

And she’ll certainly never know how those lines blurred inexplicably on that final day.

I take the stairs up two at a time, passing through the loft and poking my head into each room. I find her sitting on the edge of the guest bed of her old bedroom, pinching the bed covers between white-knuckled fingers. Her breathing is labored and her hair is blocking her face.

“Cora.”

She looks up, surprised that I followed her. I watch the complex emotions flicker in her eyes as she tries to read me—tries to make sense of why I’m standing in front of her, looking just as lost and vulnerable as she is.

Cora rises to her feet, smoothing down the fabric of her slightly too-big dress, then tucking her hair behind her ears. My eyes dance across her face, drinking in her pink cheeks and those soft, full lips that I should not be so familiar with.

Then we each take a step forward. Then another. Then one more.

And before we’ve thought anything through or had time to ponder our next move, our arms are wrapped around each other, her hot breath against my neck, her hair that smells like daffodils tickling my nose. I pull her close, breathing in every ounce of her, savoring her warmth.

She feels like home.

“Dean,” she whispers, her voice breaking on my name like it split her in half.

I squeeze her tighter, my hand cradling the back of her head, my fingers tangling in her hair. I breathe in and out, slow and deep, trying not to go back to that basement where she was all I had to hold onto. “I’m sorry I haven’t called you,” I apologize, and I truly am sorry. “I didn’t know what to say.”

I’ve spent an embarrassing amount of time over the last two weeks just staring at my phone, telling myself to dial her number or send her a quick text. Just to check in. Just to make sure she’s okay. Instead, I’ve been a coward, getting my inside information from Mandy and avoiding Cora just like I’m avoiding everything else in my life.

Cora’s hands land on the back of my neck as she pulls back, our eyes bound, our connection still palpable. The look on her face is too familiar, too reminiscent of that last day—the moment everything shifted. The moment our relationship or friendship or whatever the fuck we were was stripped down to bare bones and raw truths and more questions than we’ll ever have answers to.

I break away. I turn away from her, my hands linked behind my head as I try to sort through the murk and muck swirling around my brain. When I spin back around, Cora’s arms are folded across her breasts, her armor up, her gaze pointed at her freshly painted toenails. I inhale sharply. “You were pregnant?”

Cora sucks her bottom lip between her teeth as she scratches at her wrist and spares me the smallest glance. She looks flustered as she replies, “Yes.”

I crack on the exhale. “Jesus. Are you okay?”

A shoulder shrug. That’s all she gives me.

“Cora…”

“My HCG levels were high enough to indicate a pregnancy had occurred. But there was nothing on the ultrasound, so they told me it was either a chemical pregnancy or I miscarried early—likely when Earl kicked me until he broke six of my ribs, then tossed me down a flight of stairs like I was a bag of trash.”

She keeps scratching her wrist.

“Fuck, Corabelle…” I run a palm over my face, reeling from the knowledge that our three weeks of hell created a life—as fleeting as it was. A thought pokes me and I add, “Do you know if it was… mine?”

I watch her cheeks burn as she stares off behind my shoulder, bobbing one knee up and down. “No. There’s no way to know,” she says, refusing to look me in the eyes. Refusing to acknowledge what that question implies. “It wasn’t viable.”

I look down at the cream-colored carpet, zoning in on a matching tuff of dog hair. “You should have told me when you found out.”

I feel her eyes on me again, but I don’t look up.

“Told you? When, Dean?” Her tone is strained—accusatory. “When you were shutting me out? When you decided to abandon me after everything we went through?”

“I just needed time, Cora.”

“How much time? I noticed the look on your face when you saw me standing in the kitchen tonight. You looked like you saw a ghost,” she says, heated and ready to break. “You didn’t want me to be here.”

“That’s not true…”

“It is true. You probably would have avoided me forever.”

I spare a quick glance over my shoulder to make sure no one is standing outside the door, then I take a step forward and whisper harshly, “I raped you.”

Cora presses her lips together, her eyes glossing over. “You did what you had to do to get us out of there. I told you to do it. That’s not rape.”

“You didn’t want it. That is rape,” I counter.

We avoid the elephant in the room: the fact that maybe we both wanted it that final day.

“I wanted to live,” Cora insists, taking her own step closer to me, her voice low. “I would have done almost anything to survive at that point.”

“Everything okay?”

We spin around, moving away from each other in the process, to find Bridget standing in the doorway, her hand against the frame as she leans into the room. I swallow, bowing my head.

Cora clears her throat. “We’re just catching up, Mom. Sorry I bailed… we’ll be out in a minute.”

I raise my chin, watching as Bridget gives us a tight-lipped smile and that ‘worried mother’ look before retreating back down the hallway.

Catching up.

Like we’re two old friends reconnecting over margaritas.

Nope—just chatting about rape and abuse and miscarriages, wondering how the fuck we’re ever going to move past this and just be us again.

Cora releases a long sigh, dropping her arms to her sides and glancing up at me. “We should get back to dinner. I’m sure Blizzard is eyeing my dissected meatloaf.”

I’m about to ask her, What now? Where do we go from here? When can we talk again?

But she sweeps past me, daffodils and passionfruit and so many unknowns lingering on my skin as she disappears out the door. I watch her go with gritted teeth, hopelessness swimming through my veins.

We are bound, chained, tied—to our trauma and to each other.

We’re in this together.

And yet, I’ve never felt more alone.