Prologue

Hailey Tremaine had hardly begun preparing the cake she intended to make for her daughter’s tenth birthday when she was struck in the back of the head with something heavy and compact. The blow came as a complete surprise, and knocked her entirely off-center. She fell to the hardwood floor below; the wooden mixing spoon was sent flying off the countertop. She had no time to put out her hands to soften her fall, and so fell immediately and absolutely, hitting her head on the ground, followed rapidly by the rest of her being.

Hailey was aware something had hit her, but was amiss as to what; she realized she had closed her eyes during her fall, and so slowly pried them open. She looked in front of her, and felt, at the same time, a warm feeling all around her head. Am I bleeding? she wondered, but hardly had the strength to lift herself up in order to discern an answer to her surmization. She briefly made an attempt to place her hands in front of her so she might raise herself; finding it impossible, she quickly allowed them to fall back against her. Her brain seemed incapable of sending the necessary signals to her limbs to move; she struggled inside her mind, filled with confusion at her sudden predicament.

Through eyes that were quickly becoming glossy, Hailey ascertained a pair of red high-heeled shoes. She hadn’t heard their approach; in fact, she couldn’t seem to hear anything at all. She struggled to regain her focus and saw, through half-lidded eyes, the legs above the heels kneeling before her. She felt not the hand of the figure smooth over her countenance, but saw a movement of skin and her eyes were closed. Vibrations in the air told her the figure was speaking, but what they were saying, she could not register.

Hailey was out for a spell and, the next thing she knew, she perceived herself to be riding in the trunk of a car. She came to this realization rather abruptly upon obtaining consciousness. Still, thoughts, for the moment, escaped her. She was keenly aware of the feeling of being jostled about in the cramped space, but couldn’t find the strength to move, or to make an attempt to free herself of the enclosure. Hailey realized the futility of any effort she might make to escape and, in her weakened state, chose instead to close her eyes and allow herself to give in to the darkness.

At once, the car came to a screeching stop, and Hailey awoke with a start. She suddenly came to, and found herself in control of her faculties. She flexed her fingers and heard the car honk twice, as though it had been locked. She knew the trunk would be opened presently, and braced herself for the freedom she was about to experience. She waited with unmeasured trepidation, but it was not long at all before the trunk was opened, and she leapt out, fleeing past her captor without sparing them a glance. She sprang forward, perceived a body of water ahead of her, and raced towards it.

Hailey could not remember entering the water, but she felt the waves rush over her all the same. Her head was particularly warm, but the rest of her body was abjectly cold; she realized her head was above water, unlike her body, which explained the unevenness of temperature she was experiencing. She looked ahead and the night sky greeted her. She looked to the moon for guidance, and began to swim forward, so that she may be successful in evading her captor.

Hailey swam for an indeterminable amount of time, becoming colder as time carried on. She began to feel listless; allowing the current to carry her as long as she could float. Even floating, she could not stop the uneven feeling of hot and cold, cold and hot. The feeling expanded to warm and freezing, and she found herself feeling severely uncomfortable. Her captor had made no effort, apparently, to stop her from escaping. Hailey continued on, swimming and floating, and time remained unascertainable.

Hailey must have fallen asleep for a spell, because she awoke to an abrupt jostling of her body; she opened her eyes, and found herself on the shore of a beach, having evidently just washed up. The night was still dark, so she knew not much time had passed, and was afraid her captor may not be too far behind her. Still, she was grateful for the apparent asylum of the beach. Under the moonlight, everything was beautiful, and she decided she might sit and rest awhile, while she regained her bearings.

Hailey closed her eyes and shivered. She realized her clothes must be drenched, adding to her discomfort. She felt hands tugging at her clothing, and figured they must be her own. A sharp pain overtook her left arm, and she felt almost as though she were being dragged, but Hailey knew this was impossible. She realized she must be feeling herself tugging on her sleeves, and relaxed further. She was acutely aware her breaths were becoming slow and shallow, but thought that must simply be sleep beginning to overtake her. She smiled at the thought of seeing her daughter later that day, once the cake was finished and her daughter returned from school. The house was ready for the day’s birthday party; only the cake remained to be prepared.

Hailey felt dirt underneath her, and was quickly propelled into the next day’s festivities: she heard the laughter of her little Ella, and saw the smile of her husband. She knelt down to clean some frosting from Ella’s face with a napkin and felt, at the same time, as though she were being enveloped with something warm and heavy. Hailey embraced the object, as it provided her comfort against the ever-present cold. She felt woozy, although the details around her were vivid: the blond of her daughter’s hair was the blondest she’d ever seen, the roses in her garden were the reddest they’d ever been, and the sun was bright and welcoming.

Hailey began to feel fatigued, and sat on the couch in her living room; it felt odd, as if it weren’t actually there, or as though it were made from some silken material she had not noticed in the furniture before. She looked up at the wall, towards the ceiling, at the cross of a man she loved and was soon to meet, and closed her eyes one final time, bidding the man a farewell and hello.

⧫

Ella was certainly not following the orders of her stepmother this particular day. She had been instructed quite clearly to go to her room and complete her homework, and yet she was once again in the basement of her home, leafing through the items her mother had left behind. All her mother’s belongings had been moved from the bedroom to the basement upon the arrival of her stepmother, who consistently reminded Ella there was nothing to be found in the remnants left behind by her mother other than pain. This failed to discourage her, and she regularly snuck away to quietly rummage through the items her father had never had the heart to dispose of.

Ella was sitting down at the desk her mother used to write on, rifling through her files once again. There was generally nothing of particular interest to be found among them; the checkbook of a lost woman was unlikely to yield any fascinating results; neither would the graded college papers her mother had kept years after her graduation. Still, Ella dutifully went through her mother’s belongings on a frequent basis, hoping to come across some clue which would lead her to her mother’s whereabouts.

At fourteen, Ella wasn’t sure what exactly to believe when it came to her mother’s disappearance. It had all been a blur at the time it happened. It felt as though her mother had disappeared one day and been replaced by her stepmother the next. Different family members had different ideas of what might’ve taken place; her grandmother, until her death, had never given up on the idea her daughter was out there somewhere, and would return one day, while her father had seemingly immediately resigned himself to the belief his wife was certainly dead. Ella knew, deep-down, that her father was likely right-her mother had no motive to disappear, regardless of what her stepmother said. Still, it was hard not to hold onto hope that her mother would miraculously reappear one day, finish baking the cake she had started, and everything would return to the way it was before.

Ella read through her mother’s English essay on Animal Farm once again; by this time, she could practically recite it from memory, but she never ceased to be amazed by what she perceived to be the brilliance of her mother’s writing. Hailey’s analysis of the novel was far better than the one Ella had come up with for the same book only a semester earlier. She had expressed to her father how much smarter her mother had been than her, but he only suggested that, perhaps, she was a little young to be reading a novel of that caliber, and would understand more fully when she was older.

Ella finished her re-reading of the essay and picked up a shoebox, placing it on the desktop. Her mother had had a habit of placing items with no particular place in shoeboxes; old photographs, arcade tokens that would never be redeemed, pressed flowers, all went into the shoeboxes. Ella already knew the contents of the box, but opened it again regardless, hoping she may have missed something she would now find.

An important note: Ella had just learned in school what a passport looked like. She had never seen one before in real life, but her social studies teacher had taken the time to show the class a photo of a passport, in case they hadn’t seen one before, and explain to them its function. The teacher loved traveling and, believing it necessary to travel in order to become a well-rounded individual, urged her class to obtain a passport once of the appropriate age and income so they might embark on a journey of their own. Ella hadn’t thought much of her newfound knowledge at the time, but now she saw the same item she had seen several times before in the shoebox and, raising it, understood finally what it was.

Upon lifting the closed passport book, Ella was immediately filled with anxiety, a feeling she was all too used to at such a young age. She opened the book, and recognized the passport for what it was. The realization made her dumbfounded; why, she wondered, would a woman on the run, trying to start a new life, leave behind her passport?

Ella’s hand trembled as it held the passport, and she tried to convince herself that it was still possible her mother was out there--perhaps she had a new, false identity, which she had an entirely made-up passport for--or, perhaps, she never had any plans to flee the country, and so had no need for a passport. In a world so interconnected and electronic, it seemed difficult, if not impossible, for an individual to go completely off the grid, but Ella knew it could not be entirely beyond the bounds of possibility. In any case, the discovery did not appear to be a good sign.

Just as Ella was considering this revelation, she heard her stepmother call out to her from the top of the stairs and, without giving it much thought, she hastily shoved the item into her pocket.

“I’ll be right up,” Ella called out, and hopped off the seat at the desk before her stepmother could make her way down the stairs. She gave a backwards glance to the shoebox and, feeling uneasy, began to hurry up the stairs before her stepmother had a chance to scold her again.

I’ll figure this out, Ella thought to herself as she walked up the stairs. I swear I will.