Aspiring

Sydney, Mikayla, and Lillian - Day 2

Lillian’s POV

When I finally got up to see him, Tyler was in a peaceful sleep, lying on his side. The roll of duct tape tied on the landing, so I fetched it, ripping off a length, and stretched it round and round his wrists until they were held securely together behind his back.

Then I went downstairs and double-checked the locks and the bars on the windows. I made sure the front door was bolted as well. The door on the riverside was also Chubb-locked and bolted. I had taken extra precaution of closing the curtains, something I rarely bothered with, since we only looked out onto the path and the rive, and drew the blinds in the kitchen shut. From the outside, the house must have looked closed up, as if we had gone away. I stashed the chloroform bottle that the other two girls had used earlier in the kitchen drawer, handy for dropping into Tyler’s glass if the need arose.

Tyler was awake when I returned to him. He complained that he still ached all over. 

“What happened to my hands?” he asked, a look of alarm on his wan face. I wondered whether the illness along with the cocktail of drugs he had been feed had played havoc with his memory. Perhaps he didn’t recall anything about being strapped up in the basement. If that was the case, it was a good thing. Neither of us wanted to remember that.

I sat down on the bed and looked at him, with all the compassion I felt in my heart.

“Tyler, I think I trust you. But this first time you come upstairs, I’m taking a small extra precaution. When you’re shown me, you aren’t going to try anything foolish, you can come up or down hands free. I promise.”

“I’m going? Where to?”

I smiled. “To the kitchen. Please don’t look so frightened. We’re going to spend the afternoon together, I’ll cook and you can talk to me.”

“I’m still here?”

“In the River House, yes. You’re still here. It’s alright.”

“But I’m going home, aren’t I? You’re going to let me go. You said so.” 

I stroked the hair off his forehead. “Of course you’re going home,” I said. “Soon, now I think. Very soon.” 

The afternoon was near perfect. Tyler sat at the table, his hands behind the kitchen chair, while I cooked. I put the green and white blanket around him to keep him warm. Refilled his hot-water bottle, which I rested on his lap under the blanket. I put 99.5 on the CD player: and we listened to the country tunes of the radio station. They were playing ‘She’s in love with the boy.’

I made him a hot toddy: whisky with lemon, honey and hot water. I took the precaution of giving him a plastic tumbler, instead of a glad, even though he couldn’t hold it and had to take sips, as I put it to his lips. I didn’t think he would do anything impulse now. Something had changed between us. He understood that I was nursing him back to health. That I really did not want any harm to befall him.

I turned the piece of chicken over in flour for a casserole we would share if he had an appetite later. I sliced shallots, fried them in olive oil and added bacon. I glanced over at him, while I cooked. I supposed I was expecting to see him, as he was that first day, relaxed, his feet lolling against the table leg, as he drank his wine. So it was a shock to see the tears rolling silently down his face and plopping into the plastic beaker. The tears streaked downward in long glistening threads dripping off his upper lip, and, when he saw me looking at him, his chest started to heave.

“Oh Tyler,” I said, and moved towards him.

I wiped his face and bathed it with a clean flannel and gave him water to drink.