Page 61 of Letting Go

"Well, you can’t kidnap me."

Reaching down he grabs me under both arms and hauls me to my feet. The boat rocks and he steadies me.

For the first time, I see we are pulling up to a pier, on an island I've never been.

"This isn't a kidnapping, love. It's repatriation. You left out of fear. The contract states you need to be repatriated if you lose your way. You've lost your way, Chloe."

I sit for a moment while he knots a rope around a pier piling because I'm too dizzy to stand. My right ear hurts too. The door must have struck the side of my head the second time.

"Don't worry, we're going to make sure that you do come back and that it's your choice."

The way he says "choice" makes me shiver. I feel suddenly sick to my stomach again.

"I'm going to throw up," I say. I can’t even look around more to see where we are—I have to stay still.

"You're not going to be sick. That is the body being weak. You are stronger than that."

Just the way he says it, with such confidence, makes it seem like maybe I won't. Then I remind myself. This is how he assumes power. People give it to him.

I steel myself. I need all the power I can get right now.

It's foggy along the shoreline and I have no idea where we are. A foghorn blares loudly. The boat pitches and all I can think is I'm not going with him. I can't go with him.

Just as he steps lightly onto the pier and turns around to guide me off, I jerk my body to the right, trying to launch myself overboard, but I'm so unsteady on my feet, I just trip.

In a flash, he's back down in the boat.

"What's the matter with you," he hisses in my ear as he hauls me unceremoniously out of the boat. He retrieves my bag as well. Then he adjusts his face and smiles.

"Come luv. You don’t want to hurt yourself."

The dark and the fog prove oppressive and dangerous. It's hard to see. There's dried blood on my face from my cracked forehead and my field of vision is blocked by matted hair. Trying to shake my head to keep it out of my face is excruciating. It's hard to see where I'm going.

Where am I going?

He nudges me ahead of him, a hand gripping one arm, his other hand holding my travel bag.

When we kids were small, we'd take trips by ourselves to different islands and we became familiar with many of them. As the oldest, I traveled more, but I did not recognize this place. It looked more like Newfoundland than Maine, just a giant rock jutting out of the sea with some scrubby pines. Little islands like these have no squirrels, raccoons, deer, or other mammals and so the forests are unusually quiet.

The beach is just a rock copse and I keep slipping. Once Reed wrenched my arm to keep me from tumbling over. Hurt like hell.

"Pain is just a figment of your imagination. Nothing here is hurting you," he says as a gash opens on my knee. The rolling fog leaves the stones glassy. We move slowly along some path, first to the left and to the right. I'm trying to get my bearings on the turns. First up a small hill. Then down and around the path. I hear water, a stream. My throbbing head needs to be clear.

What island has a spring besides Rock Island?

We step over the creek. The fog is rolling fast, like whispers of cotton. A small red building looms through the mist. It's an old brick saving station built in the late 1800s by the Army Signal Corps. These buildings predated the Coast Guard and were set up to watch for boats in trouble and fires on inhabited islands. They were wired by telegraph so stations could communicate with each other. But I still can't place where I am—which island this is. I may have never been here.

Reed opens a door and pushes me inside. It’s filthy, with just an old hurricane lamp in the far corner. I stare down at my tights. They're torn and blood soaks through the fabric of my right knee.

Reed grabs my chin and pulls my face within inches of his. His whisper is fierce.

"Do you know how long it’s taken me to find you? I need you, Chloe."

"I am not one of your groupies. I never was," I say, and though my stomach churns, my voice is steady.

This infuriates him.

"I have Seekers who depend on me. On me. I need to father a child. God has chosen you for me."