Skip to content 
They moved several times.
Cheap motels, his friends’ apartments, and then another state.
Caleb worked irregular jobs and made Nora work too.
He kept most of what she earned.
When she tried to leave, he threatened her.
Sometimes physically.
Sometimes by telling her he’d make sure she never saw us again.
“He told her he knew where you lived and could harm you if he wanted,” Elaine said.
“Did he?”
“I don’t know.”
Michael stared at the table.
I asked, “How long?”
“Almost four years.”
I couldn’t breathe for a second.
Four years.
My 16-year-old daughter had made one reckless choice.
And then she had spent four years trapped inside it.
“How did she get away?”
Elaine said Caleb was arrested after a fight outside a bar.
Not because of Nora.
Something unrelated.
He had severely injured the other person in the fight.
He was arrested, and Nora took the opportunity to run.
She took the cash he had hidden, left the apartment, and got on a bus.
She ended up near the shelter because another woman at the station told her about it.
“She was afraid he would be released and come after her,” Elaine said.
“Was he?”
“No.”
“Where is he now?”
“I don’t know. Nora hasn’t seen him in years. She hasn’t tried to find out what happened to him.”
Michael said, “Why didn’t she call us then?”
Elaine looked at me.
This was the part I already knew would hurt.
“She was ashamed.”
I started crying before she finished.
Nora believed we would blame her because she had left voluntarily.
She believed we would ask why she stayed.
Why she didn’t escape sooner.