“Has it been that long? Time drifts here in the dark, it’s hard to tell whether you are dead or not. I wondered. But then I heard you through the wall, and I thought, no, not yet…”

Oh, I say. Oh, oh.

“I’ve been trying to speak to you,” she says. “Had to find a time when he didn’t stop my mouth too tight, when he was asleep and the music wasn’t too loud. I wrote notes. I slipped them into his pocket, his pants, anywhere I could reach … You didn’t find them I guess but he didn’t either so that’s good. Lucky he’s so drunk, always.”

I row uselessly and turn in circles. I’m sorry, I’m so, so sorry …

She sighs and I hear the wet catch in her breath. “You’re always sorry,” she says, sounding more like her old self. “Always trying to make him feel better.”

Oh, how could he? I say. To lock up his own daughter like this …

She gives a tired little laugh. “Grow up, Olivia. I’m not his daughter.”

But you call him Dad.

“He calls me kitten when I’m good—does that mean I’m a cat?”

I shudder and my tail lashes. He calls me kitten, I say.

“I know,” she says. “There have been lots of kittens over the years.”

I think back to the night Ted found me, a kit in the woods, the night when the cord bound us together. His cuffs covered in fresh mud. The elusive scent in the back of the car, as if the seat had just been vacated. Soft fabric, yellow with blue butterflies. He wrapped me in a child’s blanket. I guess maybe I should have wondered what was he doing at night in the woods, with mud on his cuffs and a child’s blanket.

I ask, How long have you been here?

“I don’t know,” she says. “Since I was little.”

All this time, I say. It’s like looking in a mirror, to find it’s really a door. I could really hurt Ted, I could. Oh Lord, I whisper, how awful.

“You don’t know what awful is.” Lauren takes a deep breath. “I’ll tell this once and then never again.”

“Once upon a time I lived with my family. I don’t recall that too well. It was long ago and I was little. I don’t remember much about the day he took me, except that it was hot enough to fry an egg on the sidewalk. I think my mom used to say that, but I’m not sure. Lauren’s not my real name. I don’t remember that either.