“Oh, God!” Adam said, dropping to his knees and uncovering me.

It was Adam, of course. But to me it was an angel as he gently pulled off the tape from my mouth. He was crying. We both were. I didn’t care that he was seeing me naked. I only cared that he’d found me.

“I was so stupid,” I said.

His gaze never traveled down my body.

“You’re going to be okay,” he told me.

Promised me.

He undid the silver tape from my bruised and bloodied wrists and then my ankles. His hands were shaking as he did that and repeated over and over, “You are going to be okay, Lee. You’re going to be fine.”

My lips hurt from the tape.

“Promise?” I asked, though really it wasn’t a request, but a plea.

He looked right into my eyes. “Would I lie to you?”

I shook my head.

“No,” he told me. “Never.”

Adam put his jacket on me and when he held me, I felt the warmth of his sweaty chest. He was breathing hard. Sharp puffs of breath brushed against the rawness of my face. For a flash it made me think of the man who took me. Only for a second. I didn’t ever want to think about him again. Or what he did to me, first in the car, and then in the vacant lot where people discard things they don’t want anymore.

I was alive. Adam found me.

I drink the rest of my glass of wine. I feel as if I’d been transported back to a moment that sometimes feels as foreign as a new experience can feel. It’s as if I’d been remembering a story that someone else told me—something they heard from a third party. Like the old game of telephone. I’m not sure if what I remember is really how it happened or if I was made to remember only the good parts: Adam finding me. Then my brother coming with a flashlight and dropping it on the ground as he took me from his best friend’s outstretched arms and carried me home.

Millicent purrs.

“He told me that everything would be okay,” I tell my cat.

She looks up in the way that felines do. It’s barely an acknowledgment that I’ve spoken to her. I put meaning into it, of course.

“I’m okay,” I say.

Millicent shifts in my lap and drops to the floor.

“Thanks,” I say as she pads toward the cat door and disappears.