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  Silence.

  “Do you understand me!”

  “Yes, Ma’am, yes, Your Honor,” The Doctor said, with head bowed, sitting back down.

  But then defense counsel popped up, and their table performed a Whac-A-Mole game. The Doctor popping up and down and counsel popping up. I had to suck in my cheeks and tilt my view to stare at a water stain on the court’s ceiling so as not to laugh at such slapstick. I also did that eye maneuver again so the tears could continue crocking on down my pretty little face.

  “Apologies, Your Honor, there will be no further interruption,” defense counsel said.

  Mother told me this would happen. She said I could say anything at all up on the stand because the defense would be loath to call me a liar in front of the jurors. At most, they’d question my ability to recall details and events accurately, but they wouldn’t call me a liar. Mother didn’t know in advance I was actually going to lie. I didn’t want her to bear that burden. I had no problem bearing it myself.

  Still, I did catch her skeptical look, which turned into a smirk of pride, when I tearfully pleaded with the judge about my truthful testimony. Mother knows I don’t cry, and she’d heard my account of my time in confinement a thousand times, during which I knew enough to give some vague indication that I’d heard The Doctor say certain things—but I’d never really given the details. I had wanted to keep my options open on where my story might go, make sure the tale went where the prosecution needed. So, Mother knew enough to be skeptical.

  Everyone settled back down, and Judge Rosen shouted at the prosecutor, “Well, continue then. Go on. I want to get to a good point for a recess.” Turning to me, she said, “You okay to continue?”

  “Yes, Ma’am,” I said, in a timid but confident voice.

  The prosecutor rolled around on his heels, picked up a plate and said, “Exhibit 77.” Dorothy’s Wedgwood plate.

  “Yes, sir, that is the plate. The guy who delivered my food had her plate, too, in the beginning. I saw the letter ‘D’ labeled on the front from the very start.” Lie. The prosecutor presented the note I found in the kitchen with the letter D, “Exhibit 78.” “Yes, that is the note. He must have delivered my meals first. But about a week before I escaped, he stopped bringing her plate when he came to my room. Sometimes, before that, I watched him through my keyhole eating off the same plate. In the bathroom garbage there were these Post-it notes with the letter ‘D’ on them. He ate her food.” All lies. “He must have been following The Doctor’s orders to let Dorothy starve.” Most likely, a lie.

  Defense counsel threw an apoplectic fit, practically cursing out objections to “speculation” and “lack of foundation” and blah, blah, blah, but in my side-eye inspection of the gasping jurists, I knew the damage had been done. The bell has been rung, I said in my subtle glance at The Doctor, who wrote notes and loudly whispered to his defenseless defense lawyer.

  Checkmate, bitch.

  I lied mercilessly and I sobbed on cue. Three jurists, including one man, cried. It was a disastrous day for El Doctor. Boo-hoo. Rot in hell. I have no remorse for my false testimony. Everything else I said was truthful, and I believed my testimony to be the truth anyway. If embellishing reality got the stiffest sentence possible and avoided the usual and despicable plea agreements, so be it. Justice would be served. Cold. On a toile-patterned Wedgwood china plate.

  They dredged the quarry to find three girls and two fetuses. The surviving baby, they found living in Montana with the couple that purchased him. Their story is another legal saga. The Doctor argued most vocally about the quarry and denied being involved in the “past murders.” He claimed that while on a week-long drug haze during one of his frequent Vegas benders, he met the receptionist through his bookie, who he was in to for a cool seventy grand—what with his gambling and cocaine addictions. The receptionist—who falsified her resume to get jobs at rural clinics around the country—linked the band together. The receptionist had actually scouted Dorothy months and months before she was taken, given that Dorothy tried to do the right thing and sought medical care as soon as she’d missed her period. The criminals let her stew in her pregnancy at home, until they snagged her, at which point, the receptionist had unfortunately moved on to my town.

  Anything happening before or during Dorothy’s incarceration, however, The Doctor “was not involved,” he claimed. “They brought me in because they botched some prior C-sections. They might have done the surgeries themselves, I don’t know, or they may have had another physician,” he told Agent Liu.

  Predictably, he pled the Fifth at trial. The prosecution forensically analyzed his past patterns and records and came up with inconclusive evidence of prior involvement. As such, Judge Rosen barred mention of the bodies in the quarry, but not the fact of the quarry’s existence on the property, as it had been a threat about which I testified. Good old Judge Rosen snapped at the prosecutor, “Connect the dots and bring me a new case on the other murders.” I was not comfortable in taking my missionary fiction to this level, so I declined to connect those dots myself. I could have easily testified, “The Doctor made reference to ‘the others in the quarry’ and ‘throw them in just as we did the others.’” But, I had a level of doubt as to his involvement with these other victims, and I had to trust that justice would find a way, eventually.

  As it turns out, “D,” Dorothy, had been in captivity for one week longer than me. When the detectives scoured the boarding school, which Brad bought in a foreclosure auction two years prior, they found a “lost and found” bin and a teachers’ lounge. They surmised my pencil case came from the bin and Dorothy’s knitting supplies and books from the lounge. They also speculated that Dorothy made my red blanket before my arrival and that my captor stole it from her. I choose to believe she knit with her fingers on fire, looping and purling with a furious intent of offering a weapon to our war chest.

  Why would a captor give his victim knitting needles? Aren’t they sharp? Can’t they do harm? From holding Dorothy myself, I can tell you, she was weak; her arms were thinner than mine. Short too, about five foot one. But worse yet, she was riddled in pain, incapable of walking down the steps for rescue without my support. You’d think the adrenaline drummed up at being freed would supply some strength. Not so. So, no, I’m sure our captor was not concerned the needles would be used against him. Plus he was dumb.

  We learned from the rough interrogation of The Obvious Couple the bizarre plan of how I had been taken as insurance in the event Dorothy and her baby did not survive, and how The Obvious Couple would raise both babies, if they both lived, as twins. In identical, lawyer-coached statements, they insisted in their separate interviews, “We swear, we never intended for the girls to be killed. We were told they would be sent home.”

  How does this reduce their culpability? The lead prosecutor said their sentence would be less than death. He showed me the law and tried to convince me that the best he could do was seek hefty sentences. I dumped his coffee in the station sink and told him to try harder. Mother urged me to give him a break.

  I dumped my hot chocolate in the sink.

  I told you she was soft. Even if she was right.

  I suppose my tempers calm as the years roll on. Still, sometimes, only sometimes, I catch myself waiting for their release. Admittedly, I’ve crafted a rough plan in the back of my mind or sketched out in a numbered itinerary and ordered progression of actions, weapons honed, assets lined.

  As for The Doctor, I was relentless, insatiable, mad with revenge. A conspiracy for justice is no aberration of the laws of Mother Nature, although it might be an aberration of a legislature’s over-generalized and unworthy laws.

  My mother took a leave of absence. She used up all her favors to get appointed to assist the prosecutor. CEOs she’d saved from white-collar jail who had senators for sons moved whatever mountains she pointed to blocking her way. “I’m not about to let some government-paid first-year second-chair this case,” she said. She had the devil in her
, just as I had.

  I did try with her, right before trial. We were once again in her study at home; she sat in her throne chair, absorbed in forcibly editing the prosecutor’s Motions in Limine—these are pre-trial motions both sides file in an attempt to bar certain evidence and bar certain arguments. Since it was early December, and since everything was picture perfect in our New Hampshire home, the Christmas lights on our early-cut tree in the adjoining foyer reflected a rainbow of colors on her deeply waxed floor. The spotlight outside her window revealed a thick falling snow on the dark night. I was warmed, standing by the roaring fire in her office fireplace, waiting for her to look up from the massacre she gave those draft motions. My baby boy was snoring upstairs, his rounded belly so full of milk and his onesie so soft on his silk skin, I figured he might sleep an eternity with a burpy baby smile etched in his perfect, chubby cheeks.

  I watched her. She didn’t relent in marking up the pages, flipping angrily, muttering things about the prosecutor’s writing, such as, “Drivel,” “For Fucking Crying Out Loud,” “Moronic,” “Do you even know what commas are?” “Mother of all that is, what?” “Seriously?” And, “I’ll just have to write this from scratch, I guess.”

  As she continued murder-editing, I recalled my time in the VW with Brad. I remembered how I had vowed to try with Mother. While turning toward the fire and placing my palms closer to the flames for nearer warmth, I continued my maternal observations. How she moved her Cross pen across the page, biting her lip as she read new paragraphs, X’ing whole those paragraphs, I wondered, could I love her? Openly?

  I turned on my Love switch for Mother. And as I did, I remembered I had tried this long before. The experiment didn’t end up good then, nor did I think it would end well this time. The emotion for her was too painful. A slow sweat formed on my neck, and a wave of nausea buckled my stomach. It seemed as though a hand were squeezing my heart. I continued to try, but with the trying, my muscles seized in anxiety. When is she going to leave again for another trial and for how long? Will she ever look up to see me here, in her office? Will she give me any time away from her work? Play a game with me? Talk to me about nothing important? Joke? Tell me a joke?

  I continued to try. I continued to worry. My anxiety revealed itself in a deep breathing, and then I began to cry. In her office. In front of her. And embarrassment accompanied my love.

  “Lisa, Lisa. Oh my, Lisa. What is it?” she said.

  She jolted from her chair and crossed the room faster than as if I had sat my body in the well of the fireplace to burn myself. Encapsulating me, kissing my cheek, she kept repeating, “Lisa, Lisa, Lisa.” I don’t know if she remembered the time when I was eight and had tried this and reacted the same way, but I did, and I recalled how I shut it all off then, just as I was committed to do again.

  So I could convey what I really felt, I chose to keep Love on for one more minute, still fretting she’d release her hold on me and return to her work.

  Crying, I said, “Mom, I do love you. I hope you know. It’s just too hurtful to…”

  “Lisa,” she said, hushing me by pressing my face into her cashmere sweater shoulder. “Lisa, Lisa, Lisa. I am your mother. And although it breaks my heart to allow you to turn cold to me, it would be far too selfish for me to ask you to love me openly. I understand. If there’s one thing I’ve learned in growing through raising you, is I understand. You are stronger than I could ever ask to be, and I quite like you that way. You’re what I aim to be, you’re my shining hope, my love. So if you need to stay strong, then you do whatever you need to do to be as strong as you can be. You’ve saved me, you’ve saved yourself, and I want you to always be just who you are. You are perfect. You are perfect. You are everything to me. Some of us have to bury our past in papers, darling. Some of us, well actually only you, are lucky enough to turn off switches. I think you’re blessed. You’re blessed, darling. I love you. Hush now.”

  I allowed Love to encase her words in a titanium shell, locked her hug in there too, stored the whole shelled moment deep within my memory bank, and swayed with her a few more seconds in the glow of the fire. And as she pulled away to check my eyes, her hands on my biceps, I shut Love off, but kept Gratitude firmly on.

  As for my actions in captivity and my testimony during the trial, I was a girl then, but I understand now how my mind worked, even if I had not yet harnessed the rationale behind my actions. My captor threatened to kill or take my child, and he meant to follow through with both threats. Because of this, he deserved to die at my hand. The others who were complicit with these threats also deserved to die, or rot in jail while being tortured. I am not ashamed for seeking revenge or for having to lie to do so. I am, however, ashamed that I failed to exact revenge more efficiently, in one act taken them all out. My assets, although wonderful, did not afford me such luxury.

  Mostly, I’m ashamed of my abject disregard of time. Some days I can barely look myself in the mirror for having practiced so much for perfection, when I should have acted sooner and saved Dorothy.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CONVERTED PRISONS

  Today, at age thirty-three, I sit in my lab and divert my attention from examining fingerprints by writing this story. On my driftwood desk is a picture of my son, who I labeled…I’m kidding, who I named, Vantaggio, which, if you don’t know, means “asset” in Italian. We affectionately call him Vanty. He is seventeen. He is beautiful. He, too, is a scientist, thank God and his black butterfly angel.

  Vanty should be getting home from school soon. He’ll be roaring down the driveway in the used black Audi he saved to buy—such a presence he cuts across the high school campus. I’m sure all the senior girls in his grade and the juniors below, the sophomores and the freshmen, long to nuzzle into his neck and bury their faces in his blond hair. But I don’t really care how cute the rest of the world thinks he is; his after-school job is working in the lab with me, so he better get home soon and he better remember to get the mail at the end of this long driveway. No one is good enough for Vanty, anyway. And that’s not me being biased. That’s me keeping it real. I’m his mom. I would kill again and again and forever for him.

  Above a red armchair in the corner by the decontamination chamber is a framed shard of china, which I stole before forensics bagged it for evidence. There is still a smear of his browned blood on this bone fragment, which I choose to believe is both his and that damn plate’s blood, commingled in hell. When I got married, only three years ago and just as scheduled seventeen years ago, they asked if Lenny and I would like to register for china. I couldn’t breathe from laughing so hard. Lenny, knowing I had transferred hatred of toile to all china everywhere, answered through his own laughter, “We won’t be needing any china, thank you.”

  I’m looking at this framed art of crime today, thinking on the thing I need to pack in my pocket for my and Liu’s visit to Brad’s prison tomorrow.

  After the ordeal, my parents rehired my evil-eye-curse-warding nanny, dependable Gilma. Because Vanty was born in June, I finished sophomore year—with a hired home tutor—and had the summer to cuddle with him. I know I am very lucky. I do. So many other girls have not been as fortunate. I honor them by allowing the switches that control feelings of gratitude and relief to remain open; I keep those for fear, remorse, and uncertainty sealed. And while I’m sure there is judgment and social commentary to be had about teen pregnancy, this tale is not about apologies or lessons in that regard.

  My parents spent loads of money on family and personal counselors for me and for them and they supported me. I was lucky to have their unbridled love. But, I was lucky for them for other reasons too. All along, they provided Assets #34 and #35, a scientific mind and disdain, respectively. Had I not been able to divorce myself from my predicament and treat the whole event as a science problem, I would have crumbled under the weight of fear. And, had I not thought myself better than those despicable creatures, I might not have spent so many hours plotting their demise. Of those am
ong you who call me a sociopath for my unwavering disconnection, then I ask what you would do if a man put a barrel of a gun to your baby and threatened to pull the trigger. You might welcome my demeanor and resolve. You might wish you had my science and fortitude. Sure, you’d use your assets in your own way, and I don’t judge you for that, as I hope you won’t judge me. After all, we all seek justice in our own ways. I seek mine without remorse.

  My indelible time of torment is long over now, but my thoughts during it will never fade. I’ll lock this manuscript away, for I fear with its finding might go the life sentences we did secure. The Obvious Couple, they’ll be released next year, and, well, let’s just say there are other safeguards in place as far as they’re concerned.

  There are three more things to mention. First, my husband, Lenny. Lenny has been my best friend since we were four years old. He agonized over my disappearance and pleaded with investigators to keep up the search. “She did not run away,” he’d yell at them. He organized search parties and vigils and stayed up many nights with my parents strategizing my rescue. Lenny provided the very best asset of all: my condition, which ironically got me into the whole jam in the first place. Lenny—he’s the compass to this little family of ours: me, Lenny, and Vanty. There’s a few perfect lyrics in a perfect song that make me think of him. It’s basically a guitar journey by Santana with a couple of lyrics sung by Everlast: There’s an angel with a hand on my head… there’s a darkness living deep in my soul…

  There’s still a darkness inside me. Every day, every minute, I battle the darkness, I fight the switches. Lenny, he’s that angel with his hand on my head—leaving me to cool into some less malicious purpose. Perhaps Vanty too is a compass, but there are other things to consider with my developing Vanty. I lean most, we lean most, on Lenny for the moral road. Lenny’s the one who remembers when we need to call relatives on birthdays; he’s the one who handles the bills and the house maintenance and the life responsibilities. Vanty and I, it seems, are left to other requirements.