The Cage (The Cage #1)(67)
Author: Megan Shepherd

Lucky had said he looked her up on the internet every few months at his library, hoping for news that would make him feel better about playing a part in her time in juvenile detention.

That whole time, Cassian had been watching?

“He felt intense guilt,” Cassian continued, “which was perplexing, since he had not directly wronged you. He felt curiosity too, and very strong attraction, though that only made his guilt increase. I began to observe you as well. Call it . . . curiosity. Your experience with captivity was somewhat unusual in a female of your age and your intelligence. Such resilience is highly desirable to us, after what happened to the previous cohorts.”

She swallowed. Her hand still felt dry from the femur bone.

“You had other traits—physical attractiveness, a quiet demeanor, an emotional strength—that would make for an interesting pairing with any of the three males selected. I already knew Boy Two would be more than interested in you. So I went against the stock algorithm. I selected you myself. The Warden strongly disapproved, but I argued that your resilience would make you highly adaptable to an environment such as this.”

“That’s what this is all about, resilience?” She clutched the glass harder. “You thought that because I was in prison before, and didn’t cause disruptions, that I’d roll over and accept this prison too? You’ve got it all wrong. The accident and my time at Bay Pines didn’t make me resilient. It left me a shell of a person. I can’t face enclosed spaces. I can’t face water. It didn’t matter where I went or who I was around after that; I didn’t belong anywhere. Not at home. Not in prison either. It changed me, Cassian.”

Her fingers were trembling on the glass. He folded his own across from her, a gesture that felt startlingly human. “Perhaps we define resiliency differently. My understanding was that resilience isn’t about weakness, but strength.”

“Exactly. I’m not strong. I can’t sleep and when I do, it’s just nightmares. I can’t even—”

Her voice failed her. She was about to say she couldn’t even love Lucky like he deserved, but Cassian didn’t need her to list her failures. He could see them in her head.

For a long time, he didn’t answer. He must be thinking about how he made a mistake. He thought she was more than she was. He saw something that wasn’t there. She didn’t think she would ever care if the monster who brought her here regretted it, but in some ripped-bare part of her, she found that she did care. Yes, she did.

She wanted to know why he thought she was resilient.

“Because of the truth about what happened with your father,” he said.

CORA’S EYES CLOSED TO the room and the starry window, as she remembered a different night long ago. It was two days after she had been released from Bay Pines.

Her welcome-home party.

The divorce had been finalized halfway through her incarceration, but her mother had flown back from Miami and drank enough pinot grigio to be able to be under the same roof as her father, though never in the same room. They’d invited all her old school friends and her father’s colleagues. Her mom had attached a silk bow to Sadie’s collar. There had been a three-tiered cake and presents, as though she’d been away at a European boarding school for the last eighteen months, and not an upstate detention facility.

No one talked about Bay Pines. No one asked her how bad the cafeteria food was or if any of the girls had attacked her. Her father had made a long toast to her return. Then the guests had left, and her parents got into one of their marathon fights and her mother stormed out, and the maids cleaned the spilled champagne, and Cora went outside to look at the night sky.

Whether she was looking up from Bay Pines or Fox Run, whether her family was together or broken, at least the stars had always looked the same.

Her father joined her, and for the first time since the night of the accident, they were alone. They exchanged a few words about the upcoming election, and the fight he’d had with her mother over the guest list, and then he’d leaned over the railing, with no warning, and let his gin glass slip into the bushes below, and covered his face with his hands.

It was the first time Cora had ever seen him cry.

“I didn’t know what to do,” he said, between sobs that made the loose skin on his neck tremble. He was already bald by then, and his manicured fingers clutched his head as though it needed to be held together. “I’d had too much to drink. I was so angry with your mother, threatening divorce.”

It had taken Cora a moment to even realize he was talking about the night of the accident, because he only ever spoke about it in vague terms, and only if he had to. As a senator, he’d always been coached in what to say, so it was rare to see him open up like this. She watched his fingers fumbling over his bald scalp, searching for something, anything. He looked older than she’d ever seen him, and it was the first time she realized that one day he would die.

“It eats at me. It should have been me. My little girl spent eighteen months in that place, and all it would have taken was a single phone call, a single confession, and you would have walked free.”

He had collapsed into a sobbing collection of tired eyes and world-worn fingers and wrinkles that hadn’t been there before that night.

Cora leaned against the railing next to him. She had tried hard not to think often about the night of the accident. That terrifying plunge off the bridge, the car filling with water, shivering together on the shore, her father reeking of alcohol. Sitting among the wet grass, she’d thought through what would happen next. The police would arrest him. He would lose his senatorship and his reputation. Her family would lose their livelihood. Her mother would divorce him for real. She and Charlie would lose a father.

Below, in the garden, the shattered pieces of his gin glass reflected the moonlight. She remembered each day of those eighteen months. The fights in the shower. The leering eyes of the guards. The lights that stayed on all night. At the time, it had seemed an eternity.

“It was my choice, Dad.” She had glanced back through the windows at her house, where her mother slept on the sofa and Charlie played video games. She felt like she was looking into another person’s life. “I wouldn’t have suggested it if I hadn’t known the consequences. I knew exactly what I was doing when I told the police that I had been behind the wheel. I was saving our family.”

“I never should have gone along with it.” Her dad sobbed. “I should have confessed. I should have served the time.”