Nada's Escape: Fighters' lies

27.3 Lies

"I take it you haven't told Penny the truth yet?" I ask Macie, setting aside an orange pair of flats with weird leather straps.

"Just Liza," she sighs, playing a hand through her brown hair. She walks along the lines of shoes I've set up, perusing the selection. I know Percival's already picked out an 'appropriate' gala ensemble for her, but from Macie's wistful look I gather that she wishes she could have picked her own.

"I thought about fighting fire with fire..." I trail through the words like someone lost in the woods. Macie nods morosely. So she's thought about enthralling Penny too. I fidget, trying to focus my eyes on the many small movements of the tree in the front yard.

"But I can't," I continue.

Macie's eyes graze over me, searching for thoughts before I voice them.

"So we lie to her," she says "And pray that she'll thank us later."

"You know where her family is?"

Macie shakes her head. "She can't remember. They're on their way here, Penny and Finley just to make sure."

I grimace.

Tanja enters first and seeing the chairs occupied with my lines of shoes curls up in the corner. Penny enters next, her bottom lip caught between her teeth in consternation. Macie directs Penny to sit on the couch, and I jump up from it to hide at a safe distance in the kitchen.

Finley meets me there, settling his forearms on the table as if bracing for the long haul.

"I hear I'm needed as a backup plan." He says quietly.

"A very, very backup plan." I hiss back, watching as Macie takes a seat beside Penny, close enough to hold her hands. There's something pitiful there in Penny's wretched façade. She looks to me, to Finley to Macie. She's worried about why she's here. She knows we're all worried but she doesn't know why.

"It's okay honey," Macie says softly, and Penny turns her face to her, like a flower to sunlight.

"We're planning something exciting, and I want to tell you what it is."

Penny's face doesn't react to the words, eyes maintaining dead stare of a doll. I've seen this look a hundred times before but still it chills me. No one should look like that.

I tighten my hand on the table. There's got to be something beyond Penny's façade. Does she want to be freed from this? What does that Penny look like? Beneath layers and layers of suffocating blankets...

"I know why you've had Tanja following me all day, but isn't there something more important she could be doing?" Finley asks.

He leans closer to me, splitting my focus between two conversations like a radio sliding between two stations. Macie begins explaining the escape to Penny, hoping she'll agree. Finley's voice is closer but secretive, introducing uncertainty I don't need into my chest.

I slide my hand along the grease on the bench top, eyeing Tanja as she scribbles away in the corner. If he knew how many cookies she'd burnt yesterday he wouldn't say that. I know, because I'd scraped the burnt bits off each of them so we wouldn't waste the last of our flour allowance.

I go back to my old tactics and ignore him, tuning back in to Macie's words.

"Like a holiday?" asks Penny, the soft edge of a smile touching her lips.

"Yeah," Macie nods, "Exactly." I skim my fingers along the grease making patterns, listening.

The corner of Penny's lip turns down as she argues, monotone, "We'd come back though, I'd see Henry."