Chapter 81
MAGGIE ROSE Dunne wanted to live more than anything else. She understood that now.
She wanted her life to return to the way it had been. She wanted to see her mother and father so much. To see all of her friends, her Washington and Los Angeles friends, but especially Michael. What had happened to Shrimpie Goldberg? Had they let him go? Had he been ransomed, but for some reason she hadn’t?
Maggie worked picking vegetables every day, and the work was hard, but, most of all, the work was the most boring thing she could ever imagine doing. She had to put her mind somewhere else during the long days under the burning sun. She just had to get her mind off what she was doing, and where she was.
Nearly a year and a half after the kidnapping, Maggie Rose Dunne escaped from where they were hiding her.
She had disciplined herself to wake up early every morning, before any of the others. She did this for weeks before she tried anything. It was still dark outside, but she knew the sun would start to rise in almost an hour. Then it would be so hot.
She went into the kitchen in her bare feet, holding her work shoes in her hand. If they caught her now, she could say she was only going to the bathroom. Her bladder was full, a precaution she’d taken in case she was caught.
They’d told her that she would never escape, not even if she got out of that particular village. It was over fifty miles to another town, in any direction she chose. So they told her.
The mountains were full of snakes and dangerous cats. Sometimes she heard the cats growl at night. She would never make it to another town. They told her that.
And if they did catch her, they would put her under the ground for at least a year. Did she remember what it was like being buried? Never seeing the light for days at a time?
The kitchen door was locked. She had learned where the key was kept with a lot of other rusty old keys in a tool closet. Maggie Rose took the key, and also a small hammer to use as a weapon. She slid the hammer under the elastic of her shorts.
Maggie used the key for the kitchen door. It opened, and she was outside. For the first time in so long, she was free. Her heart soared like the hawks she sometimes saw flying high over the hiding place.
Just the act of walking by herself felt so good. Maggie Rose walked for several miles. She had decided to go downhill, rather than up the mountains—even though one of the children swore there was a town not far in that direction.
She had taken two hard rolls from the kitchen and she snacked on them through the early morning. It started to get warm as the sun rose. By ten o’clock, it was quite hot. She had been following a dirt road for miles, not walking in the road, but staying close enough. She always kept the road in sight.
She walked on through the long afternoon, amazed that her strength held up in the heat. Maybe all the hard work in the fields had paid off. She was stronger now than she had ever been. She had muscles everywhere.
Late in the afternoon, Maggie Rose could see the town as she continued down the mountainside. It was bigger and more modern than where she had been kept for so many months.
Maggie Rose started to run down the final hills. The dirt road finally intersected with a concrete one. A real road. Maggie followed the road a short distance, and then there was a gas station. It was an ordinary gas station. SHELL, the sign said. She’d never seen anything more beautiful in her life.
Maggie Rose looked up and the man was there.
He asked her if she felt all right. He always called her Bobbi, and she knew that the man cared about her a little. Maggie told him that she was fine. She had just been lost in a thought.
Maggie Rose didn’t tell him that she’d been making up stories again, wonderful fantasies to help her escape from her pain.