In the Valley: Stories and a Novella Based on Serena by Ron Rash

Author:Ron Rash [Rash, Ron]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Adult
ISBN: 0385544294
Amazon: B081918N71
Goodreads: 48889440
Publisher: Doubleday
Published: 2020-08-04T07:00:00+00:00

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When counting meals became too tedious to keep up with, two showers meant a week had passed. Jennifer realized, with a sense of relief, that time didn’t matter. Food and water were provided before they were missed, as were the clean sweatshirt and sweatpants, undergarments, sanitary napkins. The pills helped, and she did not resist them, even took more when offered. When Jennifer looked in the bathroom mirror, she saw prominent cheekbones, a tautness to her upper neck and chin. She slid a hand over her tightening abdomen. Jennifer thought of the Pilates class that had caused her to be alone the evening of her abduction. A seven p.m. weekend session for, as the flyer said, those with weight-management issues. The svelte, spandex-encased instructor always seemed either amused or irritated as she barked instructions. The studio was an octagon walled with mirrors. One of the most overweight girls called it the corral.

Now, as she stared into the cabin’s bathroom mirror, Jennifer thought how much easier things would have been if her father had brought home product samples. No exercise regimens, no points calculated, no stepping on scales to watch the red line shiver, then pronounce its judgment. The results might have even inspired a new ad campaign: Be pain-free and lose weight at the same time.

Jim knocked on the door, asked if Jennifer was all right.

“Just admiring myself,” she answered.

As he followed her downstairs, Jennifer asked why the ransom hadn’t been paid yet.

“Things like this take time,” he answered.

A thought came as she settled on the mattress.

“If it isn’t paid, will I die, Jim?”

“We all die,” he answered.

“I mean die here.”

“You don’t need to be worrying about that,” he said, then nodded at the magazines. “You want me to get you some new ones?”

“No,” Jennifer answered. “They’d be as boring as these are.”

Jim brought her a radio, a device as antiquated to her as a sextant. It picked up news stations, but soon Jennifer left the dial on the easy-listening channel. It was better than an iPod—no downloading the songs she liked or songs people expected her to like. This music was easy, soft and soothing and always there, requiring nothing, not even being listened to.

One day Jennifer faked taking the tablets, slid them into a pocket. But a while later after Jim left, she began to feel anxious so swallowed them. She lay on the mattress, mostly easing in and out of sleep. One of her professors had ranted about the tyranny of technology and Jennifer realized he was right. The nag of her cell phone, every call, email, text, no matter how trivial, demanded a response. Nags and gnats. The same thing, she thought, remembering the grainy clouds that drove her inside at her family’s summer house. An unceasing swirl of demands, hadn’t that been her whole life?

She and Jim didn’t talk much, but she found out a few things about him. He’d owned a small business but lost it in the recession. His wife had been an office manager at the county extension office.

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