Chapter 23 – Who Am I?

Little Rock, Arkansas – September 15, 2014

“What are you going to do?”

Melissa was unsure whether it was Gina or Victoria that spoke as she sat in the booth, surrounded by everyone, including George, after the diner had closed that night.

“What can I do?” she asked.

“Do you even know? For sure?” Victoria asked as Melissa looked up at them.

“No,” Melissa said with a sniffle. “I don't think I want to know.”

“Well, this isn't like you're just wonderin' about yourself, ya know,” Victoria said. “Either way, ya should find out.”

Melissa shook her head a little, wiping away another tear. A baby. With Derek. The thought made her sick whether she was pregnant or not.

“I don't want to think about it.”

“So you're gonna ignore it?” Gina asked, surprised.

“I'm going to just pretend you didn't say anything earlier. I don't want a baby with Derek,” Melissa half-whispered, looking at the three of them. “It wouldn't be the baby's fault. I would love it, but...” She covered her mouth with her hand and let out a sob. She couldn't explain to them how she felt. Wiping her eyes furiously with the back of her hand, Melissa took the tissue George handed her and used it, crumpling it up and holding it in her hand.

“I need to go home. I...I have things to do.” She got up quickly and looked at them all. “Please...I don't want to talk about it anymore. Just drop it.” She glared at Gina as she was about to speak. Melissa left them sitting there as she went to get her coat.

“Just because you don't wanna talk about somethin' or wanna ignore it...that don't make it go away,” Victoria said as Melissa walked by to leave. “We care about ya, ya know?”

Melissa paused, her hand on the door, and nodded.

“I know. See you tomorrow.”

The air was getting cooler at night and she paused at Derek's truck as she unlocked it. It was barely running, but there was no money to fix it. She was just trying to make enough to make ends meet, and sometimes not doing that. The tip money she had in her pocket had to go to gas and some groceries the next day. But at the present moment, she was more terrified of the possibility of being pregnant.

Getting in the truck, she started the vehicle up and prayed it would get her back to their house. A tear slipped down her face as she pulled out into the traffic. This wasn't what she had planned on at all.

“That was fun,” Chris half-whispered, barely paying attention to the movie they were watching while laying on the couch. “I'm not sure we'll ever get the green crayon off the tub.”

He dropped a kiss on Melissa's neck, her body against his. They'd watched Liam for Lance and Adeline for the weekend. The zoo had been a success, with their young charge passing out in the car on the way home, clutching his sock monkey and a new stuffed zebra.

Melissa nodded. “It was. I'm not sure who had more fun, you or Li Li. I think I'd call it a tie for the petting zoo.” She grinned, turning her head to kiss Chris. “And yes, the green will come out of the bathtub.”

“What would you think if we had one?” Chris asked quickly, waiting for her reaction. “A baby I mean.”

Melissa felt his hand sneak under her shirt and his fingers run over her stomach towards her breasts.

“If we had a baby,” she said, “the poor kid wouldn't stand a chance in kindergarten with the name Kirkpatrick.”

“Hey, I learned to spell my last name,” Chris told her, knowing she was teasing him instead of talking to him. “It's a yes or no question, Weston.”

Her green eyes met his brown ones. “How do you know I'm the right person to have a baby with? I mean, what about other things? Like getting married. Or a joint checking account.”

She watched him pull her around to face him. She swallowed hard when he kissed her neck again.

“I thought you didn't want to marry me. You didn't even want to date me. Couldn't stand me,” he whispered. “I told you to put your name on my checking account months ago,” he added, nipping at her collarbone. “I just know you are. I watched you take Liam from me to change his diaper and his clothes. How you are with him...you'd be that way with ours.”

Her mind had wandered at that point; stomach swollen with his baby. A tiny person that was a part of both of them. It made her throat constrict and tears prick her eyes that he'd want that with her. When Melissa couldn't answer and just buried her face into Chris's chest, he just held her and rubbed her back.

“We'll just see what happens, Weston. It's just an idea...”

They hadn't actively tried, and now Melissa sat in the parking lot of her house wondering if fate was that cruel. Numb, she got out of the truck and made her way into the door.

She was relieved to find Derek passed out in his chair. He reeked of alcohol, but that was nothing unusual. The whole living room smelled that way from the containers littering the flat surfaces. The mess and disgusting living arrangements were barely tolerable to her, but this was no place for a child. It was no place for her, but she'd accepted it. With the abuse, she wasn't about to let him touch a baby.

Leaving the living room, she went to the bathroom and stripped down, avoiding looking at herself in the mirror. The hair color that was a brighter brown color was now turning brassy and her dark blonde was showing. Melissa caught a glance at her reflection and sighed at the discoloration of her skin in places. The beatings were less frequent, but they were no less worse.

Turning the water on, she let it get hot before stepping in. The water helped wash the tears down the drain as she stood in the shower and cried.

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September 16, 2014

Melissa studied the contents of her grocery cart and sighed. A gallon of milk, a loaf of bread, and some sandwich meat; a bag of chips and a small package of ground beef. It wasn't nearly enough to feed a household of two, but it would have to do. The rest of her money had gone to bills and alcohol.

She read headlines of tabloids as she waited in line, rolling her eyes at some of them. The store wasn't busy, since it was later in the morning.

“It'll be $25.28,” the girl checking her out said.

A momentary look of panic came to her. She had $18 in her pocket. The chips and the milk could wait, she hoped.

“I can't get it all,” she told her, holding back tears. It wasn't the first time she'd ever had to put things back. It had become common.

“I'll get it. And these groceries, too.”

Melissa spun quickly, her mouth hanging open at the voice she knew so well.

“Daddy.”

She threw herself into his arms, not caring that they were in a grocery store and she was crying in front of perfect strangers.

Paul Weston held his daughter, hugging her close. He couldn't be sure it was her at first, watching her for a few moments before deciding that the brunette was Melissa.

It was the first time he'd seen her in four years. They had decided it was for the best, but it still hurt when her birthday, Thanksgiving, Christmas and other holidays came and went without her there.

“Let me pay for this and we can go outside,” he said.

Melissa let him go, looking around at the other customers there to make sure no one was watching too much. Even though Derek was at home, too drunk to drive, she was still afraid he would know about this. It didn't seem to matter whether he was around or not anymore, it still felt like he had eyes all over the place watching her.

She watched the boy load up her cart with the groceries and wondered what her mom would think about him coming home with no groceries.

“Mom's not going to like you coming home with nothing,” she told him simply. She watched him pay and get money back, and when he handed her a bill, she shook her head. “Dad...”

He shoved the hundred dollar bill in her hand. “Hide it. Save it,” he told her as they walked a few feet in front of the boy pushing the cart to her truck.

Paul wasn't stupid, he saw how scared she was, the fading bruises on her face that she was trying to hide with makeup. He wanted to kill the man who did this to his baby. What stopped him was the fact that Derek wasn't above using guns or knives if he felt threatened.

The groceries were put in the trunk and Melissa stood there with her arms crossed around her middle.

“Thanks for the groceries,” she told him. “And the money.”

“You had some friends from New York come and see me and your mom a few months ago. Looking for you. Mentioned a boyfriend?”

He raised an eyebrow at her and watched her wipe tears and nod. He put his hands in his pockets and waiting for an explanation.

“Yeah...Chris. You...you would've loved him. I didn't deserve him.”

“Well you sure as hell don't deserve this,” he told her, shaking his head a little. “Is it as bad as before?”

Melissa nodded. “Worse.”

“Melissa,” he whispered. “You have to find a way to get out of here.”

The look that washed over her father's face made tears sting Melissa's eyes.

“I don't think I know how, Daddy.”

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“Who are you?”

Eric felt a stabbing, piercing pain through his eyes and on a reflex, he shut them tightly before rubbing them with his thumb and index finger. He was going on day two of fitful, tossing-and-turning sleep, and he could feel his body starting to crash on itself.

He opened his eyes wide, hoping they would adjust and give him a few more minutes, and stared at the picture in his hand.

There she was. Melissa Weston. He knew the name was familiar, but all he had to go on when he had left the elder Weston's house was a hunch and a picture of a battered and bloodied woman. So the first thing he had done when he returned to the precinct was do an internet search.

Most of the time, when using the internet as a tool in an investigation on a victim or suspect, it was hit or miss. You could find a lot of records on people, but you could never be sure you would get anything on the exact person you were looking for.

But he had hit pay dirt on Melissa the moment he clicked on the first article. There she was, pictured at a major, televised awards show just last year.

She was a celebrity.

Well, a celebrity of sorts. Dating a celebrity, she was no blue-collar person anymore. He got hits from TMZ, People, and MTV's website, plus many more. The articles that followed weren't about her, but she was mentioned in them as a girlfriend of Chris Kirkpatrick, of the famous boy band NSYNC.

Now only one question haunted him – how could the girlfriend of a major star like Chris Kirkpatrick go missing and no one notice it?

No one notice it. No one report it. No one even seemed to question it. Searching through police and FBI databases from across the country found him the knowledge that a Missing Persons report had never been filed.

How did that happen?

He did find through that search that a detective from the NYPD by the name of Joe Abrams had filed in one of his reports that evidence was examined because of “suspicious circumstances” surrounding her disappearance from town, but no foul play was suspected in the end. He had immediately gotten on the phone to the NYPD.

“Miss Weston is not a Missing Persons,” Joe had told Eric once he inquired about it. “The evidence that was found doesn't point to foul play.”

“With all due respect, detective,” Eric had said, “I think it does.”

“Because of what evidence?”

“The word of her parents,” Eric had said. “I've spoken to the Westons personally and from what I gather, the circumstances under which she disappeared from the state of New York are unusual and highly out-of-character for their daughter.”

“Is that the only evidence you have?” Abrams had asked. “Hearsay from grieving parents who haven't seen their estranged daughter for several years?”

“Hearsay that is backed up by a photo of her bloodied face at the hands of her former boyfriend,” Eric responded. “The words of grieving parents may not say much, but pictures speak a thousand words – and in my experience, photos of abused women tend to say even more than that.”

Abrams had sighed, seemingly in concession.

“For what it's worth,” he had said, “I agree with you. I have known Addy and Lance for a while now. I am on Addy's side; I held the note she wrote in my hand and I knew there was something off about it.”

He had paused to sigh again.

“Unfortunately, detective, I am at the mercy of the justice system,” he continued. “And in the eyes of the justice system, this case boils down to nothing more than a woman who got tired of her boyfriend and decided to pack up her stuff and leave.”

But of course, Eric didn't buy that for one moment.

“Give it up, detective,” had been Abrams' parting words. “Hang it up as another case of battered woman syndrome; another one that for whatever reason, decided to go back and bear the brunt.”

That was where the case ended. Like Joe Abrams, Eric's hands were tied; without concrete evidence of foul play, an official Missing Persons report couldn't be filed. A thirty-something woman from an abusive relationship could – and likely would – escape from any city, any relationship she wanted to for any strange or sudden reason she wanted to. She wasn't underaged, and she had left a clear note outlining why she was disappearing.

She just couldn't do it anymore.

“Do what?” Eric asked himself, looking at the photo of her he held. “What couldn't you do anymore? Why did you have to leave?”

He looked at her; smiling, glowing rather, in a beautiful evening gown, on the arm of a happy (and likely rich) man.

“Why would you leave a fairy tale and willingly step back into a horror movie?”

He stared at the picture a few moments. It was as if sleep deprivation had taken over and led to delirium. He wanted the girl in the picture to come to life and speak to him, talk to him, just give him one good reason to give up on her.

But as always, it wasn't in his nature to give up.

He sniffed in a breath of air through his nose hard, blinking his eyes a few times and running his hand over his face. He scratched at the scruff that had grown in. He needed to get a grip. He needed to shower, shave, and get some sleep before he completely lost himself.

He placed the photo back on the table and stood up from his chair, grabbing his coffee mug. He walked over to the kitchen sink and placed it in with the rest of the dirty dishes as he looked out his kitchen window.

It only took a second to hit him.

He rushed back to the table and snatched the photo up quickly, racing back to the window as he heard her car door shut. She turned and went to the trunk of the car, and he watched her carefully as she removed several grocery sacks from the car, piling them into her arms. He couldn't get a long look at her until she walked up the driveway to the door. Brown hair, a more ragged and tired appearance, and of course the obvious downgrade from evening gown to greasy diner uniform – to anyone else, there would be no similarities. But this was Eric Rowe, and he saw things that no other detective bothered to see.

He had been living right next to her all along.