The Purgatorium

Chapter Sixteen

"Your mom was worried. She asked me to come."

"Did you just arrive?"

"Wasn't easy to find this place. Kept getting the run-around."

"So you got here today?"

"Yeah, this morning. Couldn't believe it when they didn't know where you were."

"What did they say? Who'd you talk to?"

"This black chick named Hortense Gray. Said you went off exploring and hadn't returned. She took your mom's check but wouldn't let me help with the search. In fact, she didn't seem pleased to see me. Wants me on the first boat out of here."

"They play strange games here. I was almost killed when a horse threw me."

"Are you joking?"

She searched his eyes. "Tell me the truth about what you know. I'm really tired."

"All I know is what your mother told me. You were almost killed?"

"Yes. And then I had a gun trained on me."

"A gun? Jesus!"

"We got to get off this island. We'll have to follow the coastline all the way back to Scorpion Anchorage."

"That's toward the mainland, right? We passed that coming in."

"Yeah. Let's get going." Daphne turned to go, but Brock grabbed her arm and turned her to face him. Again, a charge jolted through her from his skin through hers, something more than the sting of her burned skin.

"Wait. When was the last time you ate or drank anything?"

She pulled her arm away. "They're searching for me as we speak. Come on."

"The resort is dead except for a few women lounging by the pool. This one chick named Emma started flirting with me till she got my name. She said, 'Daphne's Brock?' I hadn't heard that in a while." He gave her a warm smile.

Daphne blushed and lowered her eyes, and the pain of what she had done flooded over her. If only she had gotten out of bed. "Yeah, well..."

"Let me run back and get some food and water and my wallet, so I can get us back home, if you're sure that's what we should do."

"If I'm sure? What did I just tell you? They had a gun on me!"

"And you know they're connected with the resort?"

"Brock, trust me."

"You gotta know how freaky it all sounds."

"I know."

"Let me get some stuff. I'll be right back."

Daphne crossed her arms and thought about this. She might be a sitting duck waiting here for Brock. "I'll go on ahead another mile or so and wait for you. Don't stop to talk to anyone if you can avoid it."

He started to touch her shoulder, but stopped. "You're so burnt."

"Listen Brock, there are cameras everywhere. They even had a camera on a fox trained to follow me." The memory of his little body curled helplessly in her arms made her wince. "I'm telling you this place is crazy, so be careful."

He stared at her and didn't say anything.

"Are you listening?"

"Yeah. I'll catch up with you."

He touched her hair, then bent and kissed the top of her head. Heat surged through her all the way down to her toes.

"I've missed you, Daph." He turned to go. "I'll find you. Keep an eye out for me."

It took her several minutes to recover. She hadn't seen Brock since New Year's Day when he came to see her in the hospital. She hadn't wanted visitors because she was still getting used to the idea that she was alive, but he had come anyway. She wouldn't look at him, wouldn't talk to him. He had said he would pray for her and had left.

Before that, it had been November. She had just dropped out of her senior year of high school even though Brock had begged her not to do it.

"You're so close," he had said.

But Kara didn't get to graduate. Joey didn't get to graduate. Why should she when it was all her fault that they hadn't? She could have saved Kara's life had she gotten out of bed. And saving Kara might have stopped Joey from falling off the deep end.

Two weeks after she dropped out, Brock came to say they should take a break. She didn't see him again until New Year's Day—the day that wasn't supposed to come for her.

And today, six months later, he took her in his arms like they were good friends, maybe even boyfriend and girlfriend, like nothing had gone wrong. Had her mother made him feel obligated to come, or had he wanted to see her?

Tears rushed from her eyes as she hiked along the thin strip of beach near the poppies toward the east, weak and dizzy and her hip hurting from where she had fallen and scraped it. A yellowish bruise formed around it.

Why had Brock come?

She laughed at herself, out loud, scaring a gull from its perch on a nearby rock. Here she was being tormented by a bunch of freaks on a remote island and her primary thought was about Brock's motives?

Come on, Daphne.

But she couldn't help herself. She had made him miserable with her inability to ever be happy again. She wouldn't allow herself to be happy and she didn't want Brock to suffer, so she had begun to shut him out little by little until he couldn't take it anymore and left her. In another world where Kara was still alive, where Joey hadn't electrocuted Grandpa and then sunk into psychosis, in that world, Daphne would love Brock like she could love no other and they would live happily ever after.

But this wasn't that world. So why had he come? He could have told her mother no, if she had indeed asked him to come—whether to bring the check as he had said or to participate in the therapeutic games. Either way, he could have said no and he hadn't.