Her Silent Cry

Seventy-Two

Four days later, Josie stopped outside the door to Amy Ross’s hospital room, peeking through the tiny crack in the door and listening as Lucy told her mother a story about a real luna moth she had seen in the woods when she was away with the “bad people”. She was seated cross-legged next to her mother, her tiny frame squeezed in between the guardrail and Amy’s side. As she spoke, Amy stroked her blonde hair and stared at her, a look of pure wonder on her face. Josie listened as Amy asked her questions, and listened carefully to her answers. Not for the first time, Josie felt a tremendous wave of relief and gratitude wash over her. The Ross family had lost a lot. They’d been traumatized. Amy’s secrets had been laid bare. Lucy would likely need years of therapy after the things she had witnessed while with Natalie and Gideon. They would forever mourn the loss of Jaclyn, who had been like family to them. Josie also knew that Amy carried around a lifetime’s worth of guilt over the death of Wendy Kaplan. But they were all alive, and from the looks of it, Amy’s secrets hadn’t driven her husband away. Lucy’s family unit was still intact.

“You can go right in, you know,” Colin said, appearing behind her.

Josie jumped and then laughed, turning toward him. “I didn’t want to interrupt,” she said.

In his hands was a hot tea and a milkshake. He stepped past her and nudged the door open with his elbow. “You’re not interrupting. Please. Lucy would love to see you. She was disappointed when she found out you’d been here earlier this week to talk to us without her—although I’m glad you did because she doesn’t need to know about Amy’s past. Not yet.”

Josie nodded and stepped through the door.

Lucy hopped down from the bed when they entered and ran into Josie’s arms. “Josie! I didn’t think you would come back.”

Josie touched Lucy’s cheek and smiled at her. “I just wanted to check on you and see how you and your mom were doing. How are you feeling?”

Lucy’s lips twisted. “I can’t sleep. I have bad dreams.”

Josie knelt and looked Lucy directly in the eye. “I understand. I used to have nightmares, too.”

“You did?”

“Sure,” Josie said. “I knew some bad people when I was a kid, too.”

Lucy lowered her voice. “Are they in jail?”

“Yes,” Josie said. “Yes, they are.”

“I might want to grow up to be a police officer like you,” Lucy told her. “So I can put bad people in jail.”

Josie smiled. “Then who would take care of the bugs?”

“Oh, right. My mom said she thinks I’ll be an entomologist.” She turned back to her mother. “Did I say it right?”

“You did, sweetheart,” Amy told her.

Colin walked over and handed Lucy the milkshake. “Here, Lucy. Why don’t you and I take a walk while your mom and Josie catch up?”

Lucy took the Styrofoam cup and skip-walked out the door. Colin trotted after her, calling for her not to spill her milkshake. Amy smiled as she watched them go.

Josie walked to Amy’s bedside. Amy said, “What did he say?”

“Gideon won’t see you. Also, the district attorney would prefer if you had no contact with him.”

The smile left Amy’s face. “Did you tell him the truth? About his father? What he did to me?”

“His lawyer made him aware. He still doesn’t want to see you or speak to you.”

Amy looked away from her but not before Josie saw tears in her eyes. “I didn’t want to leave him. I mean, I knew it was wrong. I tried to take him with me, but Martin caught me. He said he would kill Gideon if I ever tried to take him again. You have to understand, there was only one way out of that house, and it wasn’t with Gideon.”

“You don’t have to justify your actions to me,” Josie said. “I’m only relaying a message.”

“But I want you to understand how things were. I—I was so young. I wasn’t ready to be a mother. Poor Gideon. I didn’t know the first thing about caring for a child—especially under those conditions. I used to tell him we were going home. I don’t know why I said that. I was so stupid. I used to think maybe my mother missed me. Maybe I could take Gideon with me and she would be happy to see us—so happy she would change. She would stop doing drugs and take care of us. Then Martin told me she died, but I still told Gideon we would go. At that point, I wasn’t even talking about a physical place—it was just an idea. Home. A place where no one would hurt you, where you’d never be hungry or hurt or bored. I shouldn’t have done that.”

“Given him hope?”

Amy nodded. “I lied to him.”

“Did you?” Josie asked. “Would you have taken him with you if you could have?”

Amy looked away. Her words sounded small and raspy. “I don’t know,” she admitted. “Every time I looked at Gideon, it reminded me of all the terrible things Martin had done to me.”

“How did you come to be with Martin?” Josie asked, unable to quell her own curiosity.

“He was a truck driver. Every so often he was in Cleveland making deliveries at this warehouse near my apartment. I walked past there almost every day. He started talking to me. He was so nice at first. My mother—she was hooked on drugs. It wasn’t a good situation. Martin invited me many times to go on the road with him. Made it sound like an adventure. He was kind and funny, and he used to bring me gifts. Feed me when I was hungry.”

The parallels to Lucy’s kidnapping were chilling. “I went with him one day. I didn’t feel like his prisoner. We drove and drove. At first, it was exciting. Then he started to do things to me. Things I didn’t like. Things I didn’t even understand at the time. Whenever I tried to get him to stop, he became very angry and violent. I told him I wanted to go home, but he said I was pregnant. I didn’t even know. I was very naïve. I was young even for my age—mentally, I mean. So we settled in Buffalo. He told the few nosey neighbors there that I was his wife. No one questioned it. I never left the house. I gave birth at home. It’s a miracle either of us even survived. It was very painful.”

“No one questioned the baby? How did he even get a birth certificate?” Josie asked.

“I don’t know. That must have happened after I left. Gideon looked just like him. No one would doubt his paternity. You know, all the times the police came to our house, they never asked for identification or anything like that. I told them nothing was wrong, and they left. I never once had to prove who I was. Like I said, I just stayed inside the house. Then Martin told me it was my job to take care of the baby all while he kept… assaulting me. I knew by then that’s what it was—all I did in that house was watch television. That’s how I learned about rape. Prime time drama. Soap operas.”

“How was Martin with the baby?”

“Awful,” Amy replied. “He became so much worse. Gideon wasn’t a happy baby. He cried constantly. Martin refused to get me anything I asked for, anything that might help. Things I saw in commercials or on morning shows. Martin never touched him, only me. I knew if I didn’t get away, he would kill me. When I left Gideon with him, I didn’t think he would ever hurt him. He took more of an interest in him when he got older and cried less. I know it sounds absurd, but I was just a kid. A really stupid kid.”

“You got out. Why not just go to the police?”

“And tell them what? I couldn’t even remember my old name. Well, I knew my first name was Penny. But that was it. He told me my mother was dead at some point. I had no reason not to believe him. She’d already nearly died several times before that. It wasn’t a stretch to believe she had overdosed for good. Besides, I didn’t want to be that girl: the abducted girl, raped for years on end, who had a baby in captivity. My face plastered over every magazine and newspaper in the country. Returned to a family who had wanted nothing to do with me my entire life, who didn’t care that my mom was a drug addict or that I had gone missing. I went with him. Do you understand? I went with him. He used to tell me that I couldn’t go to the police because I went willingly, that I let him do all those things to me. I thought the police would blame me. I was so stupid, it never occurred to me that he would be in trouble. He must have been pretty sure of himself—you know, that I wouldn’t tell—because I don’t think he ever tried to come after me or find me.”

“He manipulated you,” Josie said. “Just like Gideon and Natalie Oliver manipulated Lucy. That’s what people like Martin do.”

“But it worked. I knew it was wrong to leave my mother, but I went anyway. I was so stupid. I just wanted to go on an adventure. I wanted to be with Martin because I was never hungry when I was with him.”

“You were a child.”

“Yes,” Amy sighed, eyes turned toward the window. There was a resignation in her voice. “I was a child. But what happened to me—it happened to me. Then I was an adult, and I wanted to start over.”

“How did you know what to do?” Josie asked.

Amy laughed. “I didn’t. I hitchhiked out of Buffalo—only taking rides from women. Someone dropped me off in Fulton. There was a laundromat there that was open twenty-four hours. It was warm and no one bothered me. I walked around during the day and at night, I slept there. That’s where I met Amy. She used to bring her washing there. I think she felt sorry for me. She gave me some clothes. Eventually, she took me home with her. Dorothy took one look at me and said I’d always have a home with her. She was so kind to me. So were Amy and her younger sister. Only Renita didn’t like me. But it was wonderful. Then the car accident happened. I was devastated. I loved Dorothy like a mother. Everything I know about being a mother, I learned from her.”

Josie felt sadness sweep over her. Amy had had a few months with the woman. That was the extent of her knowledge of parenting. At least Josie had had her grandmother as a stable loving force her entire life to offset the horrors she had endured.

Amy continued, “I knew Renita wouldn’t let me stay. I was packing my things—I stayed in Amy’s room with her. Renita was at the funeral home. A police officer stopped by with some personal effects they’d taken from the car. Amy’s driver’s license was in there. It was a spur of the moment decision. I took it and left before Renita came home. I took the cash from Dorothy’s wallet—that was also with the personal effects— and I took a bus to New York City. By then, I had learned enough to survive. I found a shelter and stayed there until I made enough working odd jobs to get an apartment with a couple of other girls. I was Amy Walsh. I even used her high school transcripts to get into Denton University. No one ever asked any questions. Until Lucy disappeared.”

“Why didn’t you tell me about Gideon?” Josie asked.

“I never thought even for a moment that he was behind this.”

“Did you ever look him up?”

Amy shook her head. She reached over to the side table, grimacing in pain, and snagged a tissue. She dabbed tears beneath her eyes. “I only ever looked Martin up to see if he was still alive. It wasn’t until he passed away a couple of years ago—I found his obituary—that I finally felt free. The obituary didn’t say anything about Gideon. I thought… I thought he was dead, too, but I couldn’t find anything online. But I didn’t look that hard, to be honest. I wanted that part of my life to be over. I never thought it would come at such a high price. I’m so sorry.”

Josie thought about the lives lost, sadness weighing her down. As if reading her thoughts, Amy said, “I will live with the guilt of what I did and what Gideon did for the rest of my life.”

Josie nodded, unable to speak. She couldn’t help but wonder if any lives could have been preserved had Amy been completely honest with them from the very beginning. Josie knew it wasn’t her job to judge Amy. Her job had been to bring Lucy home, and she had done it. She hadn’t walked in the shoes of Penny Knight or Tessa Lendhardt or even Amy Ross. It wasn’t her place to second-guess Amy’s life choices, and it wasn’t worth wondering what might have been. They all had to live with the aftermath of what had actually happened.

Josie’s gaze swept past Amy to the windowsill behind the bed. There was a small chrysalis made from gauze pads sitting on it. She would recognize Lucy’s work anywhere. She swallowed over the lump that had formed in her throat and returned her gaze to Amy. “I’m only going to say one thing: break the cycle with Lucy. She’s so smart, so precious. Help her to be strong, like steel, to know her own mind, and draw her own conclusions. She deserves that.”

More tears slid down Amy’s face. “She does, and I will. I promise.”