The Delilah Complex

Seventy-One

Nicky didn’t have to leave Daphne’s side after all.

The police-including Jordain and Perez-had found the house and were already inside and on their way down the stairs when they heard the scream.

Ambulances had followed them to the house, expecting to find the other men there-hoping to find them.

Within ten minutes, all four men plus Daphne, who was unconscious but still alive, had been taken to the local hospital in the waiting vehicles. Nicky pulled himself together, zipped up his pants and went with his wife. Holding her hand. Holding back tears. Glued to her side. Two local policemen had accompanied him.

One of the medics examined my shoulder. He didn’t think it was broken-I had too much movement and not enough pain-but he suggested I get it X-rayed by the end of the day.

Jordain, Perez, Butler and two local detectives remained behind to lock down the crime scene. But first, Jordain was taking care of me.

We sat on the steps of the house amid a spattering of dried yellow and scarlet leaves, and I tried to remember how to breathe normally.

His hand on my back moved back and forth. “Square breathing, okay? In, one, two, three, four. Hold, one, two, three, four. Let the breath out, one, two, three, four. Hold, one, two, three, four,” Jordain intoned. It was an exercise that most therapists use. Focus. Breathe. Relax. I’d taught it to him. Now he was using it to help me.

I did not know how I had gotten outside, how long I’d been sitting on the ground, how long Jordain had been sitting next to me, or when he had taken me in his arms. Nor did I know when my cheeks got so wet.

Finally, I stopped crying and my breathing had slowed down.

“I need to go back in there. Will you be okay for a few minutes?”

I nodded.

“I won’t be long,” he said.

I panicked as soon as he left me, though. Turning, I watched his back retreating into the house, repeating his last few words over and over. I won’t be long. I won’t be long.

Once he was back inside, I took a deep breath. I had to calm down. Everything was all right now. Five men were alive. Even Daphne’s wound was not life threatening.

Reaching into my bag-how did I still have my bag? I couldn’t remember, maybe Tana or Perez had given it to me-I pulled out my cell phone and called Dulcie. I didn’t think about why I needed to do that or what time it was or interrupting either her classes or rehearsals.

She answered on the third ring.

“Mom?” She’d looked at the caller ID.

I put my knuckle into my mouth and bit down to force myself from sobbing.

“Hi, sweetie.” I was surprised how shaky my voice sounded and was suddenly sorry I’d called. The last thing I wanted to do was worry her.

“What’s wrong?”

I shook my head, realized she couldn’t see me. Using all my effort and what few acting skills I had, I forced a matter-of-fact voice. “No. Nothing. I just was thinking about you. Wanting to make sure you were fine. You are fine, aren’t you?”

“That’s soooo weird.”

“Why?”

“For absolutely no reason my shoulder hurts. Not bad. But enough for me to have to take some Tylenol.”

“When did it start?”

“About a half hour ago.”

“You sure? You don’t need to go to the doctor?”

“Yes, Mom, I’m sure,” she said in that thirteen-year-old you-worry-too-much-Mom voice.

“Nothing happened? It just started hurting out of the blue?”

“I guess. Maybe I bumped into something. I don’t know. But it’s okay now.”

I felt the pain throbbing in my own shoulder. I did have to go to the doctor. I didn’t believe in coincidences, so how was it possible that we’d both hurt ourselves in the same place on the same day?

“Mom?”

“Yes, sweetie.”

“I have to go. They’re waiting for me.”

After we said goodbye, I held the phone in my hand for a few seconds, just staring at it. It was so difficult to focus. There was another call I needed to make. There were other people who needed to know what I’d found out. Not the wives and girlfriends and families of the men who had been found, the police would tell them. But the other women, the secret sisters who cared in their own way. They deserved to find out, too, now, from me, not from some television report or newspaper article tomorrow.

Shelby Rush answered right away, and without going into too much detail-because I didn’t think the police would want me to do that-I told her what had happened.

Once in group, Shelby had said she could not yet feel grief for the men who had died-worry, despair, confusion, anger, yes-but she couldn’t cry for them.

Now, finding out that they were alive, she burst into tears. And I sat and listened to her sobs.

“How did she manage to keep them there?” Shelby finally asked.

“They were drugged. Enough, it looked like, to keep them in a zombie-like state. But probably not so much that they couldn’t eat or drink.”

“She tied them down, didn’t she? She left them there. Under her control.”

“Yes.”

“It’s like a game we played in the society.” Shelby’s voice quavered. “But we never hurt anyone. We never did anything to hurt anyone. You said they are all alive. You said that, didn’t you?”

“Yes. It looks like she took care of them. In her own strange way,” I added.

“It’s so awful. Five men. Trapped. Like animals. For weeks.”

“Shelby, I need to go. But I wanted to call. And to ask you to let everyone know.”

“Yes. Of course.”

“One more thing-can you do me a favor and call Liz first?”

“Yes, but why?”

I couldn’t tell her-that would be breaking a confidence. It was going to be up to Liz to explain it all to Shelby, and I was certain she would. Liz was a talented woman who had work to do on her self-esteem but she’d get there.

I couldn’t have known then that Jordain had already asked Tana Butler to call Liz, or Betsy, as the police knew her, and give her the promised exclusive and that she was driving up to Greenwich even now.

The final story in the series would be hers. The one story she could write without the police censoring her. That she would, in fact, write with their help.

My last call was to Nina.

“Are you sure you’re all right?” she asked after I’d explained what had happened. There was no sign of anger in her tone anymore, only concern. Nina was the closest thing I had to a mother and this is how mothers react. They forget and forgive everything you’ve put them through when your safety and well-being is at risk. Something I knew better from being a mother than a daughter.

“Well, I’m in one piece. My shoulder’s a little banged up, but it’s nothing. I can wait till tomorrow to deal with it.”

“You’re not alone there, are you?”

“No, Noah is with me.” I looked over. He was a few feet away, talking to Butler, glancing back at me every few minutes.

“I want to talk to him. You need to go to a hospital now and be checked out. I’ll go to the theater for you and get Dulcie later. Did you call her?”

I told Nina about the coincidence. “How can that be?” I asked.

“Love does that. It connects us in ways that sometimes defy logic. Now,” she said, “I want to talk to Noah about taking you to the hospital.”

“Nina, please. I’ve been through hell and I know I’ve been banged up a little, but I don’t need the hospital. A doctor tomorrow. I’ll do that. I really am fine.”

And I was.

Wasn’t I?

“Yes, sweetie, you are. You’re smart and brave. And I’m proud of you.”

What had she heard in my voice? How nervous I was? How distraught? All the emotions I’d been hiding from Dulcie, from her?

Jordain returned just as I was getting off the phone.

“Are you ready to go?” he asked.

I nodded and he helped me up. Keeping hold of my arm, we began walking down the steps, away from the house.

The stench of the dungeon had not dissipated. I gulped at the air, taking in huge breaths, struggling to clear the scent; still the odor persisted. I inhaled again, more deeply, more desperately.

“What are you doing, Morgan?”

As I told him about the smell, the tears flowed again. He reached out and wiped them away but his gentleness only made me cry harder.

He opened my bag and found my roll of peppermints and put one in my mouth.

I was like a rag doll. He could move me and sit me and stand me up and feed me. It didn’t matter. Who had I been fooling? I couldn’t do it all without any help. When would I learn that sometimes I had to let the people close to me in a little bit closer.

Dulcie. Nina. Maybe…even Noah.

To learn that I might have to accept that one day I could wind up needing more than what I got back or wanting more than anyone could give. I might wind up being disappointed and let down. I might.

But if my thirteen-year-old daughter could learn that lesson, certainly I could make an effort to learn it too.

I just wasn’t as optimistic about how good a student I was going to be.

We were on the path now, walking through the elaborate English garden I’d admired the first time I’d come to Greenwich three weeks earlier. Most of the flowers had long since stopped blooming, except for some daisies and one of the rosebushes. I leaned over the last of the season’s full, old-fashioned, pink roses. I breathed in. The perfume was almost too heavy. Too sweet.

Taking a step back I crushed some of the daisies. The white and yellow flowers were bright and too cheerful. It made me sad that I had crushed them and the tears came again. From where?

How could there be so many?

Jordain’s arm led me farther down the path. Crimson and scarlet, lemon and russet and rich brown leaves from the oak, maple, and birch trees sprinkled this part of the walkway. We passed wide hosta beds, the leaves still full but yellowed and withering.

Growing among these plants, towering over them, were butterfly bushes. The one plant that I knew the most about. The purple, lavender, and white flowers were mostly gone, except for three or four that had bloomed late. When the first frost came, they would freeze.

That was when I saw her. Fragile, strong, and so beautiful.

How long had she been there feeding? Was she even real? I stopped moving and beside me, so did Jordain. The brilliant monarch couldn’t be a hallucination because he was staring at her, too, watching her fold her orange, red, and black wings up behind her black body and continue feeding.

We stood side by side without saying anything.

The butterfly took her fill of the last of the season’s nectar, spread her wings, lifted up and hovered in the air for ten or twenty seconds.

I held my breath.

She was hesitant at first, trembling on the wind, waiting for some mysterious clue from the breeze to tell her what direction would speed her onward to her destination. Still tentative, she circled the bush once more and then suddenly, somehow instinctively sure of where she was going, she took flight and soared.

And then Jordain took me home.