I can't remember ever being that sick before. There were a few times when I thought perhaps I'd died, and Eskimos had been right all along: the afterlife was cold. There were times when it would have been easier to just sink into the cold and let it pull me away. But I couldn't do that. Jerry wouldn't let me.

Whenever it started, whenever the fog got too thick, I'd feel him, or hear him. He'd coax and persuade, demand, and finally he begged me not to let go, and I didn't. I wonder why? I could have, just to spite him, but I didn't.

I've been on enforced house rest, not allowed outside at all. Jerry has explained, time and again, that this isn't really meant as a restriction, it's for my health. I can't go outside till I'm stronger, and properly clothed and shod. To that end, Lally came over and took my measurements. Everything: bust, waist, hips, across the back, arms, inseam, outseam. "No point in it being hand made if it don't fit good, right?" I'm warned that the first garments are going to be simple in the extreme. "Then we can take our time whipping up something nice."

A couple of days ago I was presented with two pairs of pants (denim and brown courderoy), and two shirts (both plaid flannel). All were warm, comfortable, and well fitted. Justine had knitted me a pair of long, wooly socks, and is working on another pair, but I still have only my thin city shoes. They've promised to look through the spare boots to see if there is a pair that might fit, but there is no urgency in their search. They don't say it, but it's understood that I'm still not expected to be out much, at least not without supervision.

I still don't have my panties, and my bra seems to have disappeared, too. Jerry swears he doesn't know what happened to it, that he left it with my other clothes at Justine's to be washed, and it just wasn't there when he went to pick up the laundry. I don't like it, but I don't accuse him. If he didn't want me to wear a bra, he'd simply tell me not to. He wouldn't bother to lie and sneak about it.

The afternoon my fever broke I managed to spend a little time sitting up in bed after he fed me a bowl of soup. I could tell the illness was gone, but I still felt very weak, listless. There hardly seemed any point in getting well, if I was still trapped in this one room.

Jerry sat beside me, studying me. "You look bored."

I gave him a sarcastic look. "But my life is so full."

He shrugged, then reached under the bed and pulled out a large cardboard box. Hefting it up on the bed, he said, "Maybe you can find something in there to distract you."

I peeked inside, and my fingers started itching. Books, dozens of them. Mostly paperbacks, but a few worn hardbacks. I started checking them, praying that he wasn't a western or spy thriller fan. I was mentally allergic to dust, tumbleweeds, and long, complicated European names. Science fiction, horror, mystery, detective, Bronte... Bronte? Sure enough, Jane Eyre. Damn, my favorite book of all time, and all the genres I love. This was uncanny.

"You like any of them?"

"All of them." I started sifting through them greedily, trying to decide what to read first. I hesitated. "Have you read all these?"

He put an arm around me, resting his chin on my shoulder, and drawled, "Sugar, just `cause I'm mountain don't mean I'm ignorant. I attended high school in the flats. Most miserable time of my life. I had to board out with kin. I took a test and got out a year early. They were fairly impressed. Had one of them state colleges wanted to give me a scholarship, but all I wanted was to get back here. I can always get more schoolin', if I want it." I remembered him reading the thick law book. He hadn't looked blank, or confused.

"So, I can read these?"

He snorted. "Of course. You think I want you gettin' cabin fever? Wouldn't make you very pleasant company, now, would it? I will put a condition on it, though."

Now I was apprehensive. There wasn't much I could offer in a return bargain, and he knew it. "You have to talk to me. Tell me about yourself, about your life before I brought you here. You've told me I don't know you. Well, I want to change that. Talk to me, and you can read all you want."

I had to think about it. My past was the only real barrier I had against him now. He'd broken down the physical ones, taking my body, no matter how gently. He'd broken down the personal ones with the enforced intimacy: feeding me, cleaning me, dressing and undressing me, holding me close as we slept, touching me constantly.

All that was left was my past life. Now he wanted that, too. I considered. It had been ten days since I'd been abducted. I had no information about what had happened after the robbery. I didn't know if the authorities back home were treating this as an active kidnapping, or were now looking for my body. I didn't know if anyone even had any idea that I'd been taken out of state.

They probably thought I was dumped somewhere nearby waiting to be discovered. That was certainly a more believable scenario than what had happened. They might not be looking for me except with volunteer boy scout troops combing wooded areas, and corpse sniffing dogs straining at leashes for something that wasn't there.

Had I even made the front page of a statewide paper? The point was, with every day that passed, it was more likely that this was going to be my permanent home. And it's hard to remain isolated among a group, no matter how little you want to be part of it. Especially when that group wants you to be part of it. When they're not just tolerent of your presence, but actively try to draw you in.

And I've been on the fringe for so much of my life. Hovering around the edge of this group and that, barely noticed. Not driven off, but certainly not drawn in. I've always been...Oh, not a geek or a nerd: just someone who didn't fit in.

Example? In high school, lunch time. You need to sit down. You're standing there with your tray, and there just doesn't seem to be anywhere, because the stoners don't want you, the jocks don't want you, the school politicians don't want you, the `artsy' crowd doesn't want you...Finally someone at one of the tables takes pity and clears a tiny corner, waving you to sit down. And you do, squeezing into the place, and the conversation starts to flow again, over and around you. You might as well not really be there, and they just made room, there wasn't a place waiting for you.

With the Bellewoods, there was a place. It was like coming into that same lunchroom, and one table (which? A respected one, if not a cool one. One that didn't have to worry about other clicques messing with them) had a space and a chair waiting for you. A space that they were ready to shoo anyone else away from. A place just for you, and they were going to be disappointed if you tried to sit somewhere else, because you belonged with them.

Did I want Jerry to really know about me? The idea was seductive. He didn't know me. He had no preconceived notions. He'd hear what I said, and his impressions wouldn't be clouded by the way the rest of the world reacted to me. If I did it, if I talked to him honestly, it was possible that he would end up being the only person on earth who really did know me.

"What do you want to know?"

Jerry put the box back on the floor. He lay back on the bed, pulling me back to lie in his arms, pushing my head down on his shoulder. It would be easier to talk that way, if I didn't have to look at his face, I realized. I wondered if that is why he did it. "Everything."

I was quiet. "I don't know where to start."

He stroked my hair thoughtfully. "How about that girl in the bank?"

I flinched. "Eva."

"You gave yourself up to protect her. She must be pretty important to you."

"Would you really have hurt her?"

He was quiet for a long moment. At last he said, "Probably not as bad as you feared. I wanted you pretty bad, though. I would have taken you anyway, Scribe. Threatening her made it a little easier on you. You had a reason to come along easy, and I didn't have to be so rough on you." So I hadn't been protecting Eva, but I had been easing my own way into captivity. I wasn't sure of how that made me feel. "Tell me about Eva."

I started slowly, awkwardly. Simple facts at first. Nineteen, beautiful, headstrong. She'd been living wild up until the last few months. Before getting the job at the bank, she'd worked briefly as an exotic dancer. Jerry had nodded at that (yes, she had the body, and the grace). We'd finally coaxed her into getting a `regular' job, at the bank.

I laughed weakly at the irony. We'd been worried about her working in `one of those places.' We get her into a respectable job, and she gets caught in an armed robber the first week. "It was just that we didn't want what happened to her mother..." I trail off.

He shifted on the bed, bringing his face down where he could look at me. "You said her mother is dead."

He remembers that?

"From your tone, I guess it wasn't very nice. What happened?"

"She died."

"Yes, precious." He kissed my forehead gently. "She died bad, didn't she?"

I started to shake. I don't talk about this, not to anyone. I can't talk to my family, because it rips the scars open again. I can't talk to friends, because it will always sit silent between us. I can't talk to strangers, because, my God, there are some things you don't tell strangers. But Jerry...

I looked at him. He was watching me, quiet, still, patient. Accepting. He was not family, or friend, or stranger. He was... something else. Maybe...

"So bad." I whispered. "So long ago. Eva had just turned three one week before it happened. DeeAnn was only twenty two."

I told him. About my little sister, two years younger than I, but always so advanced in life experiences that it was ridiculous. I used to say that if I lived three lifetimes, I still wouldn't have had the experience DeeAnn did by the time she was eighteen. Wild, crazy, possibly unbalanced.

Drinking, drugs, too many men. All before she was out of highschool, which she never finished. The cursing and yelling between her and my stepfather, the possibility (I almost choked on this) that his interest had been less than fatherly, and the chance that this had contributed to her wild condition. I had no proof, I never asked. I couldn't. Because if I knew...If I'd known...I might have ended up in jail, or in therapy.

Her moving out to live a round robin existence with friends and distant relations. Seeing her only every couple of months. Her showing up on my doorstep one night, drunk or stoned *or both* on the arm of a smirking peice of what could only be termed redneck trash. I wasn't prejudice, but when he let her work at a tittie bar up to her seventh month of pregnancy without bothering to try to find a job himself.

Jerry muttered something under his breath at this. Oh, and the jokes he used to make about who was going to `drop' first: DeeAnn or their pregnant pit bull. Or the fact that he'd take the money she'd earned for rent and utilities to the pool hall and blow it all on booze, drugs, and games he wasn't skilled enough to win.

I think he hit her. If he did, I'm sure she hit him back. She wasn't one to just take it, not DeeAnn. Then there was Eva. Had at the Galveston Charity Hospital, of course. And I'd driven out to visit her and DeeAnn, making the long drive from Port Arther after a graveyard shift, almost losing myself on the unfamiliar route.

Finding DeeAnn in a semi-private room on maternity, sharing space with a quiet black girl. DeeAnn looked haggard. She was only nineteen, but she looked closer to forty. She was glad to see me. The baby had been born yesterday. The daddy, Bubba, dear God, didn't he have to be named Bubba? hadn't bothered to drop by and see them yet. Probably `celebrating'.

We talked, and waited for them to bring the baby. She showed me all the birth control literature they'd given her (condom included), and laughed bitterly. "Little fuckin' late, aren't they? And this." She held up the foil pack derisively, and I blushed. "They think he's gettin' any wheres fuckin' near me anytime soon after this? They don't have to worry about that".

An intern had come in to put an IV in the black girl. My god. Butchery. He just couldn't find the vein. He stuck her, and he stuck her, trying each arm. Moving the needle around once he got it in. She didn't move, but she started moaning. She ended up crying out steadily. He didn't stop. DeeAnn had turned even whiter. Her eyes were wide and shadowed, bruised looking. She looked at me and whispered. "I ain't having one of those. I don't care what the fuck they say."

A candy striper poked her head in, frowned, and disappeared. In a moment a nurse appeared. It took a couple of tries, but she got him to give up. Then she popped the line in, neat as you please, and the girl subsided into a quiet groan. Then the intern looked at DeeAnn and mentioned that he thought she needed an IV. DeeAnn started to swear quietly in a trembling voice. But I stepped between her and the intern and said firmly. "I don't think so. Not from you.

"But she needs..."

"Then that lady can do it. Go practice a little more on an orange or something." Oh, he didn't like that. But he reconsidered and decided that maybe she didn't need an IV after all, not right away.

As he left, they brought Eva in. I went into baby rapture immediately. All babies are miracles. Those of your own blood are beyond miraculous. I got to hold her first. She was so tiny, so perfect. Her fragile little skull was already dusted thickly with red gold fuzz. Her tiny, slitted eyes were murky blue, and her little rosy mouth pursed and relaxed. She was so light that I had to keep looking at her to assure myself that I wasn't just holding a folded blanket.

I spoke soft nonsense to her, and she gazed at me with those blurred, unfocused eyes. Then she smiled at me. I told DeeAnn excitedly, and she said, "Yeah, she probably has gas. Or she's makin' a poop." "No she isn't. She just saw an angel pass by."

Jerry chuckled. I was startled. I'd almost forgotten I was speaking to him. I don't know how, he had his arms around me. He said, "That reminds me of Janelle, and how Jacob used to do. They have their own secret little world, don't they?" And I'm surprised that he sees it as I do. Yes, they have their own world. We gradually lure them into ours.

I gave her to DeeAnn, to feed. It was a little odd, watching. I can remember the time DeeAnn showed me that rose tattoo on her left breast. She came into my store while I was on graveyard, both she and Bubba drunk to the point of weaving. She'd opened her blouse (out of range of the security camera, thank god) and showed me the brand new tattoo. It was raw looking, glistening with the antiseptic ointment, edges scabbing over.

I'd told her, in no uncertain terms, what I thought of her intellingence for letting someone stick needles in her breast. Bubba has pshawed the pain, rolling up his sleeve to show a matching tattoo on his arm. In one of the few unthinkingly vulgar moments of my life, I'd told him that needles in the arm didn't rate the same, he'd have had to upped the ante to his ass or his prick for it to be comparable.

"Was it him?" Jerry's eyes are dark. He's asking if it was Bubba who killed her, a `domestic' murder. It's a logical conclusion, from what I've told him.

"No. It was worse. A lot worse."