THE RETREAT
A Tale Of Two Hearts
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination, or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Thank you to my husband for putting up with my writing for hours on end.
Thank you to my Daniel for all his help and inspiration.
Thank you to both of them for their encouragement.
And a special thanks to Anne Rice
for her encouragement and advice.
Copyright © 2015
Introduction
This is Rosie Jones writing to you all. I am sending this out to the interwebs, hoping it will help us find our dearest Katie. She has been missing for a couple of months, and we are devastated.
I live with my husband, my sisters and our baby, at “The Resort”. We are part of the family who runs this beautiful ranch in the middle of nowhere, California. The Resort is a place for people who want to escape the rat race, and give country living a try. This has been a large thriving place for many years now. Lately things have slowed down; I am glad we have the ranch as backup. We all work together to keep this place going. I will just say, it had better times, and so have we.
Things were just fine, and our family was growing strong, everything was perfect; almost like some fantastic storybook. Katie and I have been as close as people can be to each other, for many years now. It is thanks to her that we are here now, in this beautiful place with such loving wonderful people. She always has been my everything; I can’t imagine life without her. I should have known things would not last; it was too good to be true.
It has been a rough month so far. Peter was gone to train with the Army, and I live here with my husband, my two sisters, and Peter’s parents. Peter is Katie’s husband, and my dearest friend and part time lover. Peter came back from training to find Katie was gone. She was looking forward to seeing him; she has missed him terribly, and had a very hard coping with his absence. We were all looking forward to going to pick him up at the airport that Saturday. Katie didn’t return the previous Sunday evening from her weekend in San Diego. She was supposed to be visiting her aunt.
We became concerned when it started getting late. Katie was not answering her phone, so we called Aunt Lucy. She told us that she has not seen Katie in months.
None of us had any idea of where she was going to on the weekends. She had been leaving on the weekends for a few months now. She kept saying she was going to San Diego to visit Aunt Lucy. Now thinking back, I should have paid attention. I have been so busy with our new baby Ivan and my new husband. I was distracted, and didn’t realize something was off. Mom and dad were so preoccupied with trying to keep The Resort afloat; and Alex, my husband has been helping them. We all got so wrapped up in our own situations, that we didn’t see it.
Katie was feeling lonely when Peter left. I was there for her for a few days; after that, the baby kept me busy and I figured Katie would get over it. We all thought that since we were here, and she wasn’t alone, she would be OK eventually. But we were wrong; she went from bad to worse. Mom took her to the doctor, and she came back medicated. But the medications were not working right and she still had panic attacks. I took her back a few times, other times mom took her. The doctor kept adjusting the medications, and she was seeing a psychiatrist. One day she ended up taking too many Xanax at night, and gave us a good scare. I still remember her stumbling to our little house, which is behind the big house where she lived with mom, dad, and my sisters. She was in her white nightgown, which was all torn and dirty. She looked like some crazy ghost coming out of the dark. I was in the front porch with Alex, and it was late at night. The baby had finally fallen asleep, so we sat outside for a while.
When we saw her, Alex ran to her and I followed. She said she was looking for Peter, and he must be home. We tried to tell her he isn’t here, and she doesn’t live here anymore; their home is the big house now. “Peter is in training with the Army and will be back soon,” we told her. We thought she had been drinking, but she told us that she did a bad thing. When we asked what happened, she said she could not sleep, so she took the pills. We asked what pills, and that is when she opened her hand in front of us and offered us the empty bottle. She whimpered “help me?” That is when I felt my blood go cold.
I ran to get the phone and dialed 911. When I came back, she was sitting on the ground outside in front of the house, and Alex was trying to make her throw up by putting his fingers down her throat. I was shaking, it was a terrible night. How should I deal with seeing the person I had always looked up to, as a frail lost soul? She was my rock, my angel, my love. How do I process this? My heart was breaking.
The ambulance took her, and they considered it an overdose, so they kept her three days in the hospital. At the risk of sounding cold and calculating, I will say that I am glad that my sisters didn’t witness any of it. We told them Katie was sick and had to go to the hospital.
When we brought Katie back home, she said she was all right now and she said she felt terrible about what she had done. She promised not to ever do that again.
Katie seemed fine, but seems she was irritable, not her usual self. She started swearing and whispering to herself a lot. Each time I caught a bit of it, I would ask her what’s going on; she would say “nothing”. One day I actually asked her, “what did you say?” She insisted that she said nothing at all.
She started distancing herself from me, and later from mom and dad as well. I tried to include her in activities with Alex and the children, she sometimes joined us. But later on she started spending too much time in her room. I should have paid attention and seen the signs.
Why didn’t we see it? Why didn’t we do something? She was changing, and we didn’t pay attention. Even the way she dressed when she left for the weekend was not like her. She never dressed in black like that. I saw her leave wearing a dark burgundy skirt, knee high boots, and a black corset she had covered up with a little shirt. Her clothes and her makeup made her look dark, almost as if she as headed out to hang out at the dungeon. We have not been there in quite a while; and I know she wouldn’t go there alone. But she certainly wasn’t going to see her aunt dressed like that. I didn’t want to alarm mom and dad, so I kept it to myself. I guess in the back of my mind I thought maybe she was seeing a man on the side. I didn’t really want to know if she was; so I let her keep telling them she was visiting her aunt. I was so wrong; I should have not covered up any of it.
I will say, that even with all her changes, she never took the collar Peter placed on her off. Even when she shut us out and waned to be in her room alone; even when she left us for the weekend and came back looking worn out and tired. She always smiled when she touched her collar. You can see in her eyes that she would be in her happy place. When she touched, it her eyes sparkled a little.
I wish we could have stopped her from leaving on the weekends. I wish she would have talked to me, maybe it was my fault. I didn’t try hard enough to get through to her. Maybe it was all of us; one of us should have told Peter something was wrong. We thought it would blow over and things would be all right. We didn’t want to worry Peter while he was trying to get his training done.
Well, all I can do now is publish her journal, in hopes to show the world that Katie
