Annabel Lee ─ emily prentiss

fifteen

SIX nights later, Emily sat alone on the bed in her hotel room. She wanted to calm down by reading; instead she was completely destroying the nails on her left hand. Tomorrow morning, she would pick Bel up and bring her back to D.C. To say she was terrified would be the understatement of the century.

Everything at home was ready. The sheets on what would be Bel's bed were washed. The room was sparkling clean, as was the rest of the apartment. She'd even laid out a brand new toothbrush and an unopened bottle of toothpaste on the counter in the upstairs bathroom, just in case. Really, the only issue was that damn artificial Christmas tree.

When she got home after the argument with her mother, she realized two things. Number one, she forgot about borrowing some ornaments. Luckily, Target came through, and they were on sale. Number two, the assembly directions were not in the tree box. It had been so long since she'd used this thing that she had absolutely no memory of how to put it together. So much for that plan.

Her cell phone, which sat on the nightstand beside her, rang, scaring the living hell out of her. Emily pulled it off its charger and, upon seeing that it was Bel's social worker Dani, answered.

"Hello," she said, her heart rate relaxing. She couldn't remember the last time she was this on edge.

"Hey, it's Dani. I just wanted to confirm: nine o'clock tomorrow morning still works?"

"Yeah. I'm all set." Physically, this was true. Mentally, Emily wasn't sure.

"And you've got the address?"

"Seventeen Marshall Court, yeah."

"Good." Dani paused, tapping her pen against her desk. "That's not really why I called you. I mean, it is, but I think we should talk."

Emily furrowed her eyebrows. "About?"

"I want to make sure you're prepared for the fact that Bel's adjustment is going to be a long process. Coming to live with you isn't going to solve all her problems."

"I know. I know what kind of abuse she's gone through, what she went through with her parents, with the abduction—I'm going to find her someone to talk to."

"It's a lot more than that. Bel is used to being neglected physically and emotionally. She's not used to having free rein of a home or having someone tend to her specific needs. For three years, she's been an afterthought. Nobody asks her if she wants something specific from the grocery store or if she needs to go shoe shopping. She's expected to stay in her room and not so much as go into the cabinets for a glass of water. Learning to operate in a world where she's taken care of will take time. You have to make sure your expectations for her are managed."

That was a bit of a slap across the face, because Emily hadn't thought about that in depth. She knew she would have to walk on eggshells a little because of the abuse. Bel had been conditioned to think making the tiniest mistake meant she deserved to be hit or belittled. Learning that that wasn't right and that Emily wouldn't do that to her no matter what would take a lot of time. That Emily was aware of. But it never really occurred to her that Bel was so used to a life where she got locked in her room at night and wasn't allowed to open the refrigerator or the cabinets herself that she wouldn't know what to do with freedom, for lack of a better word. To call what should have been a basic human right "freedom" was terrible.