Becoming Abigail

Then XXX

The police search of hospitals had so far failed to turn up anyone with a missing penis.

Weeks passed and Derek visited her every day in the hospital where she was being held, although it felt more like a correctional facility. She knew it was his job, but with time she liked to pretend that he was her friend and that he came to see her because he wanted to.

They did become friends and gradually she opened up to him, told him a little about her life. He tried to put the puzzle together. Mother died during childbirth. Child probably abused by successive male relatives, ran away from home one night clutching that terrible legacy. Not uncommon. But no matter how hard he pressed, the memory of Mary’s eyes at the door on the first night of her rape kept Abigail from telling him or the police where to find Peter.

Derek’s colleagues recommended psychiatric treatment in a confined facility, but he fought them. He didn’t believe she was crazy. Meanwhile, the search for her parents turned up nothing. Even the name she gave, Abigail Tansi, drew a blank. It was like she didn’t exist. And she didn’t, because Peter had used a fake passport and a forged visa to bring her into the country and she was registered everywhere under that fake name, a name she had forgotten.

She was a ghost.