Appetite for Innocence: A Dark Psychological Thriller Read online

  I shake my head. “I don’t see him.”

  Blake whips around to stare at me, unable to hide his surprise. “Take your time. Don’t rush. Look again. Did you live with one of these men?”

  I lock my eyes on John, hoping he’s proud of me. “I’ve never seen any of these men.”

  ELLA

  (NOW)

  I can’t stop shaking and crying. Randy and Mom hold me. One on each side. Mom is crying too.

  “What happens now?” she asks.

  Randy lets out a deep sigh. “To be honest, I’m not sure. Everyone expected Sarah to make a positive ID so this isn’t something we saw coming.” Anger flits across Randy’s face. It doesn’t fit with her normal calm. It looks unnatural and out of place.

  “How could she do that?” I cry. “It was him. I swear, it was him. I’m not lying.”

  “Shh. Shh,” Mom soothes, wrapping her arms tighter around me. “We know. We believe you.” She turns to look at Randy. “What would make her lie?”

  “Sarah’s bond with him is strong. In her mind, he took care of her. She’s convinced he loved her and she was a girl who was never shown love. You have to remember that she lived with him for four years. That’s a long time.” She pauses before continuing, trying to reign in her emotions. “It can take a long time to break the hold these men have over girls. They’re a lot like domestic violence victims. So many times, women call 911 while their spouses are beating them, but once the police get there, they deny it ever happened. We see it play out time and time again. It might help you explain her behavior if you can think of Sarah like a battered wife.”

  “Will the police still be able to charge him? They can’t let him go, can they?” Mom’s body is rigid next to me. I can feel her fear through her shirt.

  Randy nods, reassuringly. “He’s already been charged and I doubt he’ll post bail. I’d be surprised if they even gave him the option. The trial is when it will get tricky because they don’t have a lot on him that isn’t circumstantial. They’ve got the connections on social media to the girls, but that doesn’t necessarily prove he kidnapped them. Without Sarah’s corroboration, there’s not any evidence they were kidnapped besides Ella’s testimony. We have Enrique’s statement that he sold Sarah to John, but I have to be honest with you—they could charge him with sex trafficking for her, but it might be hard to stick especially because Enrique is a convicted felon.” She notices Mom’s horrified expression at the possibility that John could get away with what he’s done to us. “But don’t worry, they’re still gathering more evidence on him. They’re focusing all their efforts on getting him to confess and I promise you that our best guys are on the team.”

  It doesn’t make me feel better. I’m so angry with Sarah I want to run into her room and shake her. How could she do something like this? How could she lie to protect him after everything he’s done? I’ve always said she’s as sick as he is, but nobody believes me. Everyone just feels sorry for her. Maybe this will make them see what she’s really like.

  She came out of the police headquarters with a smug look on her face like she was actually proud of herself. I wanted to slap the look off her face. I want her out of my house more than ever. I can’t spend another night with her under the same roof.

  “Mom, please can we get rid of her?” I beg.

  Mom’s face is contorted in conflict. Her shoulders sag with the weight of the day. “Don’t say it like that. We’re not getting rid of anyone.”

  “You know what I mean. She needs to live somewhere else. She can’t live here. I can’t handle it.”

  Mom rubs her forehead. “She can’t help her behavior. She’s been completely brainwashed by him. Didn’t you hear what Randy said?”

  “Randy agrees with me,” I snap.

  “What?” Her eyes flare with anger.

  Randy never gets rattled. She’s the Queen of Calm and her voice doesn’t waver as she speaks. “I do. I–”

  Mom’s face is bright red. “How can you say everything you just said and then think we should kick her out onto the streets? How can you–”

  Randy raises her hand to stop her. “First and foremost, nobody’s getting kicked out onto the street. Like I told you before, there are really great therapeutic foster homes we could place her in. It’s not the same thing as having a family, but Jocelyn, this isn’t any more like a family to her than a foster home would be.”

  Mom shakes her head, refusing to give in. “But it could be. It’s only been two weeks. You said yourself that it takes a lot of time.”

  “That’s true,” Randy concedes even though she doesn’t want to. “However, having her here is making it extremely difficult for Ella. Her presence is a continual reminder of what happened. It makes this space unsafe for her and safety is the most important thing you can give her right now.”

  Mom jumps up and places her hands on her hips. “Are you saying I’m a bad mother? That I don’t care about my own daughter?”

  Randy shakes her head compulsively. “No, not at all. That’s not what I’m saying. You’re misinterpreting it. I’m only pointing out how hard it is on Ella to have her here.”

  “Ella is strong. She’s always been strong. She’s going to be okay. She’ll make it no matter what because she has so many people who care about her.” She pauses to flash me a proud and encouraging smile. “But Sarah? She doesn’t have anyone. Ella has a solid base to draw on. Sarah has never known any form of stability or care. She’s got nothing.” Her voice cracks.

  Randy stands and goes toward her. She places her hand on Mom’s back. “You have a heart of gold and I understand how difficult this must be for you too. I’m not saying you need to make any kind of a decision tonight, but do you think you could think about it? Maybe there’s someone else in your family who could take her in?”

  Mom puts her face in her hands. “What if I tried to talk to her? What if I could get through to her about how important it is that she’s honest about Derek? That she needs to help the investigation?”

  “You can try,” Randy says, but she doesn’t sound very confident. She turns to me. “What do you think, Ella?”

  “I don’t want her here.”

  Mom moves to kneel beside by bed. “Hon—I’m sorry—Ella, I know this is hard for you, but I think it’d be hard on you even if she wasn’t here. I really do. Just think about how she must feel. Think about what it would feel like to be all alone in the world.”

  I don’t have to think about what it would feel like to be all alone in the world. I am all alone. I’ve been alone since John grabbed me and threw me in the trunk of his car and I woke up in the basement.

  SARAH

  (NOW)

  People have barely talked to me since we left the police station so I’m surprised when there’s a knock on my door after I’d already shut my light off.

  “It’s Jocelyn. Can I come in?”

  “Sure.”

  She walks in. Her eyes are puffy and red.

  “Can I sit down?” she asks pointing to my bed.

  I nod.

  She sits and rubs her forehead like she has a headache. Her disappointment in me is so strong I can feel it. She turns to look at me. “Why did you do it?”

  I don’t have to ask what she’s talking about. “I don’t know.”

  I can’t explain why I did what I did other than it was what he would’ve wanted me to do.

  “I know I don’t push you. I never make you talk about things you don’t want to talk about, but if you’re going to stay in this house, you have to be honest. We’ve all got to be on the same page and we can’t do that if you’re not telling the truth. Does that make sense?”

  I nod. There’s a lump in my throat.

  “I’m going to ask you again. Why did you do that today? I really want to understand. Please help me to understand.” She doesn’t try to hide her desperation.

  “He loves me.” It sounds pathetic, but I don’t expect her or anyone else to understand our relationship.


  “Oh sweetie, I know you think he loves you, but that’s not love. People that love each other don’t hurt each other on purpose.” She struggles to control her emotions. “What he did to you was wrong and what he made you do for him was wrong. You were desperate for love and that’s not your fault. It’s what kids do and he knew that so he took advantage of it. He was a grown man. A sick, controlling grown man.”

  Randy says the same things every time she meets with me. For so long, I’ve kept the bad things he did separate. I took all of it and tucked it away in a secret compartment in my brain and marked it “other.”

  “He took care of me. Nobody ever took care of me like he took care of me,” I say, feeling flustered.

  “Sarah, he tied you up and locked you in a basement. He starved you unless you did what he wanted you to do. He raped you.” She chokes on the word rape.

  “He didn’t rape me. I let him do it.”

  He was kind and gentle with me. He went slow and talked me through the whole thing. He explained everything he was doing as he went. When it was over, he gave me another bath and helped clean me up. He held me for a long time afterward, whispering sweet things to me.

  Jocelyn moves up the bed and sits in front of me. She crosses her legs and grabs both my hands in each of hers. “You were only a little girl. He was a grown man. You must’ve been terrified.”

  I wasn’t. The men my dad used to give me to were rough. They never cared about how I felt or what they were doing to me. They were the ones who terrified me. Dad used to stand guard while it happened, making sure they didn’t have sex with me. He drew the line there, but everything else was fair game. They were the ones who hurt me. Not John.

  “Can I tell you something I’ve never even told Ella?” she asks.

  I snap my head up. She has a secret she’s never told Ella?

  “When I was in high school, I had a boyfriend named Steve. We grew up together so I’d known him my whole life. We were best friends before we became boyfriend and girlfriend. In tenth grade, my feelings started changing and I realized I was falling in love with him. I was beyond happy when he told me he felt the same way.” Her eyes drift as she tells the story, caught up in the memories. “He was my first love. Your first love is always different and you think you’ll be together forever. I was sure he was the man I was going to marry. We went to the same church and both had the same conviction about waiting to have sex until we were married so I was surprised when he started pressuring me to have sex during the summer of our junior year. One night after a football game, he had a few beers at a party we went to afterward.” Her voice slows. The words fall further and further apart as she talks. “He forced himself on me that night. I kept trying to get him to stop, but he wouldn’t. It was like he was a different person. Afterward, he sobbed in my arms and told me how sorry he was.”

  She stops. I wait for her to go on, but she doesn’t.

  “What’d you do?” I ask.

  “I never told another soul and I told myself it was only because he was drunk. I blamed myself for being a tease because I’d worn a short skirt that night. I didn’t break up with him. I stayed with him into our senior year and it happened every few months. Eventually, I didn’t try to fight him. I just let him do it because it was easier that way.” She blinks rapidly as if she’s trying to pull herself from back there and into the present with me. “Do you know what the really sad part is?”

  I shake my head, hanging on her every word.

  “He was the one who eventually broke up with me. He moved on to another girl in our class and I was beyond devastated.” She squeezes my hands. “I know what it’s like to love someone who is hurting you and what it’s like to hate yourself for it, but feel powerless to stop it. I know the confusion, the pain, and the hurt.”

  The room fills with her secret.

  “But you seem so normal.” I don’t know if it’s the right thing to say, but it’s what comes out.

  She smiles. “We all have our pain and our secrets. None of us get through this life unscathed. It took me years of therapy to work through what happened to me, but I did. I needed someone to walk me through it. I needed someone to help me untangle all the lies he told me and the ways he manipulated me, but the hardest part was letting go of my shame. I had so much shame, not just over what happened, but because I stayed after it did.”

  We sit in silence for a while. She hasn’t let go of my hands.

  “I’m only telling you this because I think it will help you and I want to help you. What I went through doesn’t compare to what you went through, but you’re not alone. You can find your way back to the truth.”

  How do I do that when my entire life has been built on lies? I don’t know how to separate the two. My brain is tangled in knots.

  “How?” My voice is barely a whisper.

  “You can start by admitting he’s the one who hurt you.”

  ELLA

  (NOW)

  She’s still here. She and Mom had some kind of big breakthrough a few nights ago and Mom’s convinced things are going to change. She says she got through to her and we just need to give it more time.

  Randy’s found a therapist for me. It’s someone she says specializes in trauma and PTSD. I always thought PTSD was for people who’d been to war, but she thinks I have it too. She’s going to find a therapist for Sarah, but I can tell she’s not happy that Mom is as convinced as ever that it’s best Sarah stays with us.

  Everything is changing since they arrested Derek. I haven’t seen Phil or Blake since the police station. They don’t need us as much now that they have him. They’re focusing on breaking him and getting him to confess. I hope it works. It feels weird without them around. I didn’t realize how used to it I was until they were gone.

  The police no longer hang around outside our house at night because there’s no reason to. They say we’re safe now, but I don’t feel safe. At night, I dream he’s escaped from jail. He sneaks through my bedroom window and grabs me. Sometimes he uses a knife. Other times it’s a gun. Once, it was even just like when he took me. He showed up in my room and said he’d lost his dog.

  Randy’s preparing to leave too. She doesn’t come right out and say it, but I know that’s what she’s getting at with all her talk about the acute phase and the long-term phase of adjustment. She says she’s mainly involved in the acute phase and long-term recovery is something that takes years.

  The phone still rings constantly. The media are the only ones who haven’t left. They’re even more obsessed with us since they found John. They’ve offered Mom all kinds of money for us to tell our stories or even just give them a picture. Everyone wants to be the first to hear what we have to say. Mom’s thinking about it even though she doesn’t want to. She’s been out of work for almost five months and it’s been a huge hit on our finances. She doesn’t talk about it but we don’t have the kind of money for her to be out of work for this long. I don’t know how she’s survived until this point.

  She’s talking about going back to work once we’re more stabilized and back at school. For now, she’s focused on how to become Sarah’s legal guardian. Sarah’s thrilled. The two of them exchange knowing glances all the time like they share some big secret.

  I’m almost out of alcohol and that’s the thing that scares me the most—going through my day without a drink. It’s the only way I get by. The wine is gone. That’s what I drink at night because I don’t have to worry if anyone smells it on me. Once Mom says good night, I’m left to myself until the morning and I drink until I fall asleep. When the nightmares wake me up, I drink until I fall back to sleep.

  I reserve the hard alcohol for the daytime. It must be true that you can’t smell vodka because nobody has said anything to me about it yet. Nobody gets too close to me anyway. I’ve gotten good at emitting a “stay away from me” vibe and it seems to be working. Yesterday when Jaycee came over, she looked at me like she was afraid of me.

  Mom popped popcorn
and made brownies for us so we could sit down and watch a movie like we used to. Of course, she included Sarah. She’s determined that we’re all going to be friends. I made it through about the first hour of the movie before I couldn’t take it anymore. The sound of Jaycee chewing her popcorn grated on my nerves and the way she laughed nervously at things that weren’t even funny got so annoying I couldn’t stand it. Finally, I just said I didn’t feel good and had to go up to my room. She looked like she wanted to cry. I wish I could care, but I don’t. She’s too shiny and clean. Everything about her sparkles. It only magnifies the dirt on me.

  I left her downstairs with Sarah. She’s fascinated with Sarah like she’s this exotic creature from the zoo and Sarah eats it up. She loves the attention. It’s fine, though. She can have it. I don’t want it. I’d rather they pay attention to her and leave me alone.

  My room is dark, just the way I like it. I keep the blinds closed at all times. Mom’s given up opening them in the morning because she knows as soon as she leaves, I just shut them again. I’m spending the day doing what I did yesterday, picking the scabs on my legs and peeling back some of the stitches. I’ve gotten lots of them out myself. I drink, pick, and then pull. Drink. Pick. Pull.

  SARAH

  (NOW)

  “You ready for this?” Jocelyn asks.

  This time I’m not alone in the police station waiting room. They let her stay with me until it’s time to see John again. She asked Phil and Blake to give me another chance to identify him and they agreed.

  I was feeling fine about it on the way here. It’s easy when Jocelyn is next to me. She’s so strong and I feed off her strength. But as soon as they open the door and usher me inside, my stomach drops to my feet. This part I have to do alone. She can’t be with me. Just Blake. They don’t want her to influence me.