CHAPTER 3: DAYLIGHT

I sometimes catch a few hours of rest early in the morning. I guess mornings feel bright, safe and new. Everything is so crisp and clear in the light of day, particularly in the morning. I hardly sleep anymore. When I do, my dreams are slashed with nightmare after nightmare, mostly of her and my shame over what I have become. What I allowed to happen. How I was seduced and trapped and used. I never guessed anyone could be like Peyton. Her personality, her values, her complete disregard for human life was well outside of my experience. When I got back home to New York, I was completely beside myself. I looked for her everywhere. I was tensed for flight at the slightest provocation. I saw her face in strangers.

Less than a year ago with the help of one of her friends I had made it out. I escaped before she could realize it. She had driven thousands of miles to get me then. She began her journey to convince and collect me less than a month after I had arrived home. It took her three days of continuous driving. She played one song the entire way. She dragged Isabelle with her with promises of feasting in the city. She phoned me along the way at each stop, reassuring me. Promising me everything would be all right and she could not bear to exist without me at her side. I led her right to me. I did not say yes, but I did not say no. I hinted at “maybe,” but I was truly looking forward to escaping my new situation.

I was frightened but glad to see her when she arrived. I drove my little blue Tercel to the Thruway motel and holed up with her for a week. I was sicker than a dog. I was running a high fever, about 102. Peyton got a room with two king size beds. Isabelle took the bed near the window and was rarely in the room. I was cautious and watched Peyton’s every move, every gesture. I looked for signs of her darkness. Her insanity. She seemed fine. (How could anyone like that be fine? How I was fooling myself.) She did not raise her voice once. She did not raise her hand. She did not bare her teeth. I decided that going back with her was better than the life I was living. I felt I felt I was going nowhere. I did not have a place to stay. My pets were still there. Everything I owned was still there. And Peyton said she loved me, time and time again. And I so wanted to believe her.

Yes, I supposed people can change. Of course they could change, I told myself. I have to laugh. I’d only been back in Greenfield for three weeks. I had barely settled in. I thought then I was making the better of two mediocre choices. I was so wrong.

Like before, I had no money when I first returned here. But now I really had nothing. Less than nothing, even. I had nothing except the clothes on my back. My self was scattered in pieces like shattered glass.

I had no sense of safety. I put those cheap stick on alarms on the windows of my subsidized room in case she tried to crawl in at night. I imagine I hear her on the old wooden fire escape. And I picture her calling the local men’s shelter here and hiring some unfortunate, destitute men for a dollar or ten to snatch me from my bed or from the street as I climb out the bus. Maybe she had even sent someone from her home town, someone like Shane. For a price, hers or mine, Shane would watch me. Kidnap me. Drag me away from this mundane safety.

“Everyone has a price,” she would say with certainty and with that shining white beguiling smile. Based on a few years of experiences with her, I had no reason to believe that her claim was not true. She had a good eye for angry hungry victims down on their luck and desperate, and she could talk a good fantasy. They almost always took the bait.