Page 71 of His to Keep
She’d been hiding her cancer for an entire year before I was taken, and I found letters of her refusing chemotherapy treatment. I also found receipts from Momma for child support that she paid every month since the time they took me into their care, even though Gran told me my parents, especially Momma, didn’t pay a dollar. She’d been transferring the money straight into Church donations. I couldn’t believe it. She made me think they really didn’t care about me while she was stealing my money and lining Father Aaron’s pocket.
But then I discovered something that made me run into the bathroom and throw up. Copies of school transcripts, report cards and grades from St. Bridget’s. All forged and fake, so no questions were raised by authorities about my whereabouts.
If Father Aaron could forge being a priest, then he could make it seem like I was in school when I wasn’t.
This new information pulled me into a dark hole my father walked in on one random day. Discovering me lying on the floor, lost in despair, having not eaten or drunk or even washed. He hospitalized me because he didn’t know how to handle his own teenage daughter. Though, I guess I would’ve died if he hadn’t come. He’d told me after he had received a random call telling him to check on the house, and didn’t know I’d even be there and asked what happened.
It was the perfect opportunity to unleash hell on him. Tell him everything I’d been through. But the words wouldn’t come out of my mouth. I never told him how much he failed me. How could I? He was a stranger to me as much as I was to him and it didn’t matter.
It took a while to get better. I stayed in the hospital for a couple of months, and Momma was called. She persuaded me to move to the city for a fresh start, where I enrolled back in school. But I felt like a fraud. On the exterior I was the picture of health. I’d had a haircut and put the weight I lost back on. I even got new, cute, city-girl clothes. But on the inside, black rotted my insides. My heart having not healed, my loneliness crippling me without Callum.
No one knew the true horrors that plagued me. That kept me awake at night where I relived everything. The hole in my chest refusing to heal no matter how much I got angry, cursed him, and hated him, I still loved him. I still wanted him.
When school started, I made friends with a few girls who loved talking about themselves and never asked me about me. Before I knew it, I was going on Starbucks trips, cinema dates, and shopping at the mall with them. I was asked out by a few boys, but I couldn’t stomach them even looking at me, never mind going on a date with them.
That was my life for a while. I’d go to school, and in the evening, I’d have dinner with Momma and her new boyfriend, Jacob. A real-life artist from Austin. His drawings were okay, but he was nowhere near as talented as Callum was. Momma and I tried to have a relationship, though she overcompensated by trying to buy me instead of trying to gain my trust again.
When I turned eighteen and graduated school, I sold Gran and Grandpa’s house. After getting my license, I got a cheap car, and went on the road without telling anyone where I was going. I ended up in Callum’s hometown, Viewmont. I wasn’t sure why, of all places, that I went there. Maybe because a part of it felt like a bad nightmare I had, and I wanted to find information about the people who had ruined my life.
It was a sleepy town, similar to Little Willow. Probably why Father Aaron chose to live there, because he knew it’d be easier to get away with things. After researching news clippings on the library computer, I came across a missing person report of a nineteen-year-old girl. Her name, Orla Gibbons. She was classed as being a runaway, and her family was desperate for any information. It tugged on my heartstrings, but how could I go and tell them about her? About how much she suffered in the end? But then, could I live with myself if I didn’t?
I called from a phone booth, and they wanted to see me straight away, giving me their address. I was so nervous, my stomach twisted into several knots. Orla’s mother answered the door when I rang the doorbell, tears brimming in her eyes.
“Ava?” I nodded, and she stepped aside, ushering me in. “Please, please, come in.”
Stepping into their house was horrible. It was a nice place—ahome.Not just walls and doors. There wasn’t any wonder they never believed their daughter ran away if she grew up here. It reeked of nurturing love, and knowing I was going to be the bearer of bad news was hard to swallow. Going into the living room, I sat, and she disappeared to get tea. When she came back, a tall, reluctant man followed her.
“This is Travis, my husband,” Orla’s mother said. “Pardon his unusual behavior, he—”
“Is sick of hearing fake news about my daughter.” He was angry. Not at me, just in general. His wife flushed as she handed me tea. They both sat opposite of me, and I thought maybe I’d made a mistake coming here. I shouldn’t have come and wanted to run. “If you’ve come to tell me she’s hooked on drugs in some brothel, you can leave right now.” He said it so coldly, even I shivered. But I couldn’t blame him.
“I’m not here to tell you that,” I said, bowing my head. Where to begin?How? I’d not said a word to anyone since I got out of that house. “I’m…I’m sorry. This is difficult for me to talk about.”
“Take your time,” Orla’s mother said kindly.
It was excruciating saying Father Aaron’s name out loud. Maybe it was the crack in my voice and how I visibly trembled in front of them that had Travis reach for his wife’s hand. They knew I spoke the truth, about a pretend priest’s obsession with virgin girls. So much so, that he believed it his calling to take them away from the world and cage them in his. I told them I hadn’t known her, and they seemed confused by this, and so I had to explain that she’d fought to the end, but it hadn’t helped her. That after I was taken, she was murdered, and as a punishment for something I did wrong, I saw her body. And she was dead.
It surprised me that they wanted details, unable to imagine their pain at hearing this. I struggled to tell them how she’d been violently whipped to death, that there wasn’t a bit of her skin left untouched. Orla’s mother sobbed, and Travis had tears in his eyes.
“We have to go to the police,” he said, and my heart dropped.
“W-what?”
He stood up, and I flinched, because it reminded me suddenly of Father Aaron. “You’ll have to come down to the station and tell the police everything. We’ve heard of these extremist cults kidnapping girls from their lives. There are quite a few of them scattered throughout the country. And you’re a survivor, Ava. You can be the voice of all these girls who have lost their lives. We can get that man charged for kidnap and murder—”
“You can’t,” I said, placing my teacup down on the table and standing. “He’s dead. This was a mistake, I’m sorry. I have to go.”
Talking to the police about anything could implicate Callum. And nothing can happen to him, or I might not survive. I’d been careful not to mention him even now, but know detectives are trained to get information.
“Travis,” Orla’s mother said when he grabbed my arm to stop me from leaving. “Let go of her, for god’s sake!”
“She knows what happened to our Orla, Marsha. We can finally get justice.” Snatching my arm from his grip, I turned to leave with my heart in my throat. But he was on my heels, bringing on a wave of terror. “Think about it, Ava. You could be the voice for those girls who are out there suffering.”
My head shook, my chest tightening. Was I having a panic attack? “L-leave me alone.”
“Let her go, Travis. You’re acting crazy.”
Realizing this, and the fear in my expression, he stepped back from me. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”