Appetite for Innocence: A Dark Psychological Thriller Read online

I stood up, swallowing the sobs in my throat and took the gun back. I didn’t breathe. He pulled her head back up again. I placed the gun against the back of her head, closed my eyes, and pulled the trigger. The shot rang out into the night.

  I cried the entire way home. He kept saying he’d never been more proud of me and wanted to give me a new name because I was a new person. We were leaving Petra in the desert, buried along with Tiffany, and I was now Sarah. He picked Sarah because it meant princess.

  “We’re family now,” he said.

  I often think back to that night—the night that changed everything. I could’ve shot him instead of Tiffany, but I couldn’t kill the only person who ever really loved me. If I had, I wouldn’t be living like I am now in this beautiful mansion surrounded by beautiful things.

  ELLA

  (NOW)

  Paige’s parents are here. Their flight got in late last night. They want to see us before we leave to go home. I wonder if it will be her stepdad or if her real dad decided to come too. She talked about him a lot. She always wanted to know if he was looking for her; if he cared she was gone or felt so little for her that he didn’t want to be bothered with it.

  They’re coming because yesterday they found human remains at the crime scene. That’s what they call John’s house now—the crime scene. It will be awhile before the results come back from whatever lab they have to send them to, but her parents want to be close. Mom says she understands but it seems a bit creepy to want to be close to bones.

  I want to know where Paige is as much as they do. I hope she’s alive. If the bones are Paige’s, then the search can finally be over. There’ll be some answers. But the answer means she’s dead. There’s no way for this to have a good outcome. Either she’s dead or she’s still missing.

  I don’t want to meet them. Sarah refused but Mom insisted I do. She says she’d want the same thing if she was in their position. Sometimes I wish her heart wasn’t so big. I rub my hand back and forth across my shaved head. I love the way it feels even though I look like a freak.

  Randy walks into the room with a man and woman. The man towers over the woman and he’s got his arm wrapped around her waist. She looks like she might fall over if he didn’t. Edges of pain cut into her face. Her eyes are swollen as if she’s cried the entire way here. She can’t hide her horror when she sees me.

  “Oh my God.” She brings her hand up to cover her mouth.

  Mom steps in front of me. “She shaved her head herself. He didn’t do that.”

  Paige’s mom looks her up and down.

  “I’m Jocelyn.” Mom shakes her hand.

  “I’m Melanie,” she says.

  “Why don’t we all take a seat?” Randy ushers them in the rest of the way.

  Everyone is staring at everyone, but trying to pretend like they aren’t.

  “Are you Paige’s real dad?” I break the awkward silence.

  “Ella! Don’t be rude,” Mom jumps in.

  Melanie forces a smile. “No, it’s okay. This is Paige’s stepdad, Victor.”

  Victor nods as if to say hello. He’s wearing a red flannel shirt that bulges over his waistline tucked into a pair of jeans. His eyes are hidden behind wire-rimmed glasses. He forces an awkward smile revealing crooked teeth with a slight gap between the front two. I’m glad his smile isn’t perfect.

  “Does her real dad know she’s missing?” I ask.

  Melanie looks at me through hollow eyes, tunnels of spent emotion. “He does.”

  “So, why isn’t he here?” I ask.

  “Ella. Stop,” Mom admonishes.

  I turn to look at her. “What else are we supposed to talk about?”

  Melanie waves her off. “It’s okay. Really, it is.” She clears her throat. “Did Paige talk about her real dad a lot?”

  “She talked about them both,” I say even though she talked more about her real dad. I don’t want to make Victor feel bad.

  Paige never had anything bad to say about Victor. He was really good to her and she thought of him as her father. He was kind and loving and never made her feel second place even after her twin brothers were born, but there was a hole in her heart where her real father should be. It doesn’t matter how good you have it or how much other people love you. It doesn’t change the fact that your real dad left you and the person who birthed you doesn’t care enough about you to be in your life. It leaves a mark even if you don’t want it to. Paige and I had the same wound. We all did. It’s why John liked us and what made us so attractive to him.

  “We notified him when she went missing, but... but...” Her voice trails off.

  Victor finishes what she can’t. “He never even checks to see if we’ve found her.”

  I hear Mom’s sharp intake of breath. Victor reaches out to hold Melanie’s hand. I watch her knuckles turn white as she squeezes him.

  “That’s just awful,” Mom says.

  I don’t like how she says it. She says it like we’re somehow different and I have a dad who shows up for me. Mom didn’t even have a way to contact him and let him know I was missing. He signed off on all his parental rights when I was three months old, and we’ve never heard from him since. Mom didn’t even bother to try to find him after I went missing.

  “Can you tell us about Paige?” Melanie asks, every word clothed in desperation.

  “Didn’t the detectives tell you?” I ask.

  I can’t imagine they haven’t filled them in on every detail. If they’re anything like Mom, I’m sure they haven’t left them alone. Even though they check in during the day, Mom is constantly texting one of them to see if there’s anything new to report.

  “The detectives have filled the Pratts in on all the details of the case. I think what they’re asking for is any personal information you could give them about Paige,” Randy explains.

  “Yes, yes, that’s what I mean. What was she like? How did she handle it? Were you close? Did you see her? Were the two of you allowed to talk? Was she in pain every day?” Her voice cracks at her last question. “I’m sorry. I just have so many questions.”

  “It’s okay,” I say. “Paige was a really sweet girl. We lived through a lot of pain. I’m not going to lie—he did terrible things to us. But, she never lost her sweetness. No matter what. She was kind and always thinking of ways to make things easier for me.”

  Paige possessed a special ability. She was able to take everything he’d done to us and lock it into a separate compartment. She needed time alone on her bed to put it in its place, but once it was there, she left it there. I wish I’d been able to do it too, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t tuck it away and keep it separate. It infiltrated every part of me. Nothing was untouched.

  “She held on to who she was and spent lots of time reading. I don’t know if she read before, but it was her favorite thing to do in the basement and she loved to talk.”

  Melanie bursts out laughing. She’s crying at the same time she’s laughing. “Yes, my girl loved to talk. Keep going. Please, keep going.”

  “She told me all about you and her brothers. She shared all the adventures you had last year and how she pictured herself in the RV to fall asleep at night. She said she remembered what the stars looked like out of the small window on top and that she could actually put herself back there.”

  Mom is hanging on every word just like Melanie. This is the most I’ve talked about the basement and what it was really like, how we really were down there. Most of the time I don’t want to talk about it because it’s too hard, but I do it for Paige. She’d want me to and I know how much she loved her family.

  “We played lots of games. She was the reigning Scrabble champion. I think her vocabulary was so amazing because of all the books she read. I taught her how to play Spades and she taught me how to play Kings in the Corner. She spoon-fed me soup when I was too depressed to eat. We didn’t have much down there, but everything we did have, she shared even if it was her last cracker.”

  They’re both weeping now. />
  “We would’ve been friends if we’d met on the outside. She was a good person.”

  Melanie stands and throws herself on my bed. She hugs me tightly, shaking and sobbing. It’s not me she’s hugging. I know that. She’s hugging the parts of Paige that she left in me. I let her hug me until Victor gently pulls her away from me.

  “I can’t thank you enough for taking the time to meet with us and share your stories,” Melanie says.

  “You’re welcome.” It’s a weird thing to say but I have to say something.

  Her parents and Mom step outside to have a private talk without me present, probably to talk about the case. As they shut the door behind them, all I can think about is how she won’t be thanking me if I’m the one who got her daughter killed.

  SARAH

  (THEN)

  He’s started to talk about babies and creating a family of his own. My heart skips a beat each time he brings it up. It’s been so long since we’ve had sex. Years. For a while after Tiffany, he developed a renewed interest in me. He couldn’t get enough of me once he knew the lengths I was willing to go for him, but it was only a matter of time until he returned to what he likes the most—innocent, virgin girls.

  I’ve never pictured him as the family type. He’s never even mentioned children of his own. He’s always said he hates kids because he grew up surrounded by them. I can’t imagine how I’ll keep the house clean once we have a little one running around, but I’ll figure out a way. Maybe he’ll even let me bring the baby outside. Our kid will have to go out in the real world because there’s no way he’ll keep him or her locked up here too. It’s too cruel to do to a child.

  Maybe he was just waiting for me to become an adult so he could bring me out into the world. It won’t be long until I’m eighteen. Lots of older men go for younger girls all the time and I can definitely pass for twenty especially if I do my hair and put on make-up. He might even let me buy a new wardrobe. I can’t imagine he’d let his wife run around in the real world in sweat pants and t-shirts. It’s been so long since I wore anything with color. Sometimes I think about asking for dye just so I can color my shirts, but he’d never let me.

  I’ve started imagining what room I’ll use for the nursery. For a while, I’ll want to keep the baby with me. I can get one of those cute little bassinets you put next to the bed. I’ve been watching A Baby Story on TLC ever since he brought it up. I’m learning all sorts of things about babies. I’m definitely going to breastfeed and I’m only going to prepare organic food.

  I’m going to have someone to love who’s all mine and I can’t wait.

  ELLA

  (THEN)

  I hate when he’s rough and not because it hurts even though it does. I’m used to the pain. It’s because the more he hurts me, the tighter he holds me afterward, the sweeter he is and the longer he wants to talk. Tonight, he was particularly rough and he’s had me wrapped in his arm for over an hour. It’s hard to lay still as he rambles on and on. He’s been babbling about fathers. Not his own, but becoming one.

  “I think I’m ready for it. To be a dad. It’s not like it’d be the first time I put a baby in somebody, but this time, I want to keep it. I wasn’t ready before and you have to really be ready to be a father or else it’s just not fair to the kid. But I’m ready. I think I’m going to be a great dad...”

  He keeps going, but I’m only half-listening. I’ve gotten good at faking attention while he goes off on his ridiculous tangents. Last night, he talked about how he’d make a good president.

  “Also, the timing’s never been right and I haven’t found anyone I could see myself creating life with. Until now. Until you, Ella. I want to create life with you.”

  I snap back to reality.

  “What do you think about that, sweetheart?” He kisses the top of my head softly.

  I want to throw up. My mind reels. Blood pools my insides. He can’t be serious. He’s not making any sense. He’s already a father. He has Sarah. It’s just another one of his crazy ideas.

  But he doesn’t drop it the next night or the night after. He’s convinced he wants to get me pregnant and that we’ll be a great family. Just the three of us. He hints at moving me upstairs with him where Sarah can help me take care of the baby when it arrives. I don’t know why I haven’t thought about him getting me pregnant before but the thought has never crossed my mind even though it’s always been a possibility.

  The next night after he’s finished with me, he makes me lay with my legs straight up against the wall. He says it helps the sperm reach my eggs. He doesn’t let me take them down even after my legs are stiff and achy. He rubs my cheek and plays with my hair while we wait. When I’m finally allowed to stumble downstairs, I collapse on my bed. I want to cry but there’s nothing left. I’ve run out of tears.

  ELLA

  (NOW)

  “It was nice to finally meet them in person,” Mom says after Paige’s parents leave. They’d talked a lot over the phone in the last few days. “I can’t imagine what it must be like to have your daughter missing for nine months. You were only gone for four and I thought I’d die.”

  She says it was like being tortured every day. She’s already told me about everything she did to look for me. She knew something was wrong immediately when I didn’t come home after my run. I wasn’t someone who veered from my routines. I always did my evening run, came home and showered, then watched TV with her for about an hour before going to bed. I was in bed at 10:30 with lights out by 11:00. If I didn’t get my seven hours of sleep, I was a zombie in school the next day.

  She called the police immediately, but they’d blown her off at first. They assured her I’d probably ran into a friend or forgotten to tell her about something else I had to do that night.

  “Teenagers aren’t always real responsible,” they’d said.

  “You don’t know my daughter,” she’d replied.

  She still harbored guilt about not forcing them to look for me immediately. It wasn’t until almost midnight when I still hadn’t come home that they started to listen to her. Even then, they didn’t take it seriously or even consider something bad might have happened to me. They focused on whether I had a boyfriend, was into drugs, or had a secret teenage lifestyle she didn’t know about. They talked to all my friends and interviewed my teachers the next day. Even though their searches didn’t turn up any secret boyfriends or hidden addictions, they weren’t convinced someone took me.

  “Teenage girls go missing all the time,” they told her. “Most of the time, they come home on their own.”

  She was horrified at their nonchalant response and took it upon herself to alert the media that her daughter had disappeared. Unlike the police, the media grabbed on to the story immediately which forced my disappearance into the spotlight. She appeared on every TV station that would have her, created a Facebook and Instagram account for me, and raised money through our church to build a reward fund for me.

  The authorities couldn’t ignore her anymore. They helped organize search parties and went knocking door-to-door. They created human chains and covered every inch of space they could in our small town, extending out into the base of the mountains and thick forests. She told me how she walked my four-mile loop hundreds of times, even crawling at certain points to get a different vantage point, scrutinizing for any sign or clue she might have missed.

  She never went back to work. Still hadn’t. It was a full-time job leading the search for me. She printed out thousands of flyers and plastered businesses and poles with them. Her flyers were neon yellow with “missing” in capital, bold letters. She wanted them to stand out from the missing pet flyers. She stood on busy intersections handing them out to people as they passed. At one point, she’d even stood on different corners with a huge sign with my name and picture on it along with a number to call if they had any information.

  There’d never been any real leads. People from all over the world called in tips all the time saying they’d seen me,
but nothing was ever substantial. It was as if I’d vanished into thin air. It was every parents’ worst nightmare.

  But her nightmare is over now. It’s what she keeps saying since Paige’s parents left. As sad as she is for them, she can’t hide her gratitude that I’ve been found any better than they hid their jealousy. They asked me all kinds of questions. Every question they could think of except the one that mattered the most. Why did I get out and Paige didn’t?

  SARAH

  (NOW)

  Blake and Phil call me Petra every time they talk to me no matter how many times I tell them it’s not my name. It’s like they’re trying to rub my face in it. I don’t like their tone of voice or how they look at me.

  Today, they want to know when I started living upstairs. I hate that Ella has already told them so many things. Stuff they don’t have any business knowing. She needs to keep her mouth shut. She thinks she’s safe now so she can just blab whatever she wants but she has no idea.

  “Was it before or after Ella lost the baby?” Blake asks.

  My stomach coils at the mention of the baby. I don’t bother telling him we’ve already been through this. They like to ask the same question numerous times. They think they’re smart, like if they ask it enough times and in different ways they’ll trip me up and get me to tell them everything.

  “Before,” I say. “She was upstairs when she got pregnant.”

  “How did you feel when she got to live upstairs?”

  How did they think I felt? I was furious. I’d slaved over him for years and then she shows up, stays in the basement for a few months, and suddenly she gets to live upstairs? It wasn’t fair, but I’m careful not to show my anger.

  I shrug. “I didn’t care.”

  “Really?” Phil raises his eyebrows in mock surprise. “Hadn’t he just moved you up there? You must’ve felt at least a little angry that she got to move up there so quickly.”