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And in other news, it has now been two years since the disappearance of Riley Andersen. The girl, who would now be thirteen, is believed to have run away from her home in San Francisco. She was last seen getting off a Greyhound bus in Minneapolis.
To mark the anniversary, her parents have launched a fresh appeal to bring her home. Police say they are actively investigating all leads, and urged Riley or anyone who has seen her to come forward.
The closet door swung open with a creak that made Tina frown. She hasn’t been in here for almost a week, but that still shouldn’t have been long enough to get the hinges that upset with her. Quietly, she added oiling them to her list of tasks; nothing in her daughter’s room should be anything less than perfect.
Thankfully, the inside of the closet was still neat; just big enough to be called walk-in, its two rails were heavy with clothes, neatly washed and hung or folded, in pastel shades of blue, yellow, and pink. So many things she’d bought to make her daughter happy. But none of them were what she was looking for. No, what had brought her here was the girl herself.
Looking down, she found her, lying on her side beneath the nearer rack of clothes. She was growing fast these days, newly-thirteen and full of new ideas about independence, but she was also still her mother’s little girl, and she still fit handily inside the cramped space.
“Riley, sweetie?” Tina announced softly. In response, Riley stirred, squirming and flexing a little as wakefulness came for her.
“Mmph.” Her arms were bound tightly behind her back, wrists held parallel and shoulders pulled together by firm white ropes. More ran around her body, harnessing her torso and squishing around her stomach to keep those arms firmly pressed there, while other lengths kept her legs near-welded together. Finally, Tina had tied a length from her ankles to the back of her chest-harness, pulled tight to force Riley’s feet to tuck in against her butt.
Tape, multicoloured and pretty, completed the ensemble. It encased her hands, to keep her from picking at the ropes; it wrapped over her eyes, keeping her lost in the darkness; and it covered her mouth almost entirely, keeping in a thick sponge to muffle all of her words down to near-nothing.
“Hmmph?” Case in point; Riley was murmuring weakly, trying to move towards her mother’s voice, but she could barely move at all in the ropes and now, after the better part of a week grounded, she was no doubt stiff and sore, too.
But Tina wasn’t a monster; she could still see, under the girl’s leggings, the outline of the diaper her mother had put in place to catch the inevitable wetting. And the tape gagging Riley split in the middle, allowing enough of the sponge in her mouth to poke out for her to take fluids through it. Still, the woman felt a spike of worry as she realised the dish of water she’d left was already empty.
“I’m here, sweetie,” she announced gently, stepping in and crouching down. Riley didn’t try and shift closer again, but she didn’t try and pull away, so her mother took that as a win. “It hasn’t actually been a week yet, but I just couldn’t bear the thought of you in here all alone any longer.”
Riley let out a soft, damp “mmph,” in response, tinged by relief and exhaustion, and slumped as much as the ropes would allow her. So Tina moved in, and carefully undid the hogtie; her daughter let out a bigger muffled sigh, almost a sob, and let her legs fall back to their natural place, breathing softly and steadily.
“I’m not letting you out of all of it,” Tina admitted, gently rubbing the girl’s back between her arms and the bindings. “I’m sorry, sweetie, but I have to be fair; you’ll have to earn back all your freedoms again.”
“Mmmph,” Riley mumbled, sounding softly ashamed.
“I was so scared when you tried to run away,” her mother went on, finally shuffling up to beside the girl’s head. “If I don’t know where you are, I can’t be sure you’re safe, and I’m sorry, sweetie, but I need to know that I can trust you again before we go back to how things were.
“Hhh knhh,” Riley murmured. She knew as well as Tina did that this wasn’t the first time they’d been here; ever since Tina had adopted her, well over two years ago, the wild and wandering girl already-once a runaway, newly alone in Minnesota, she’d had to deal with her own need to care for her kid and her kid’s need to be independent.
It had taken most of the first year for Riley to earn her way free of being restrained the first time, only for her first runaway attempt to force Tina to bring it all back. And then again, and again, until now.
Now Riley was thirteen, growing bolder and bolder and wanting less and less to do with her mother, and Tina knew that was to be expected. She’d given her daughter a bigger room, let her keep her door closed, helped her choose her own clothes, and even let her decide to grow her hair out, and swap the adorable bob she’d always worn for a ponytail with the front cut short and messy.
But that didn’t mean it hadn’t stung, when her little girl had tried to run away again. That didn’t mean it hadn’t hurt, to have to do this. Still, Tina knew, that was just how kids were, and her job was a mom wasn’t to coddle her daughter forever, just to be fair and supportive when things did go wrong, one way or the other.
Realising she’d probably left it a little too long, she reached in again, moving slowly so her daughter could hear and feel her coming. And then gently, carefully, she peeled the tape away from the young teen’s eyes, taking pains to make sure she didn’t pull any of that pretty blonde hair out as she did.
Riley blinked at her first sights after almost a week, mumbling into her gag and wriggling a little. Tina felt a pang at the sight of her eyes in turn; they were red and watery, and those were definitely old sticky tear-stains down between the sweat on her face. She couldn’t help reaching in, gently brushing the worst away with a thumb as her daughter let out another soft “mmmph.”
A glance at the empty water-bowl betrayed her, and Tina felt another pang. “Do you want some water, sweetie?”
“Hmmph,” Riley admitted, looking away with a fresh flush of shame.
“That’s alright,” Tina promised. “I’m going to move you, then, okay sweetie?”
She waited for the murmur of understanding before reaching in, taking the exhausted child by the shoulders and gently shifting her up. She fell back with a breath into an awkward sitting position, blinking again at the light and stray saltwater, and her mother shifted down to sit half-facing her, meeting those blue eyes with her own and not minding the hanging clothes tickling her hair.
She reached into her handbag to find a water bottle; she always kept one, and now she was grateful for it. Then she uncapped the thing and held it out, waiting for Riley to lean in. She tipped it to meet the sponge poking through the girl’s gag, and poured slowly to make sure she wouldn’t choke on the flow; Riley drank it down desperately, taking the whole bottle as fast as she could.
When she fell back, she was flushed again, and her eyes were shining. “Thnnksh…” her face screwed up for a moment, a deep breath breaking her words. “Mmm. Hhh… hhh’m shhyry.”
Suddenly she was crying, sniffling and sobbing into her gag as it all gave way. Another pang hit her mother at the sight, and without even thinking she reached out, taking the bound teen up in her arms and pulling her in close.
“Mmm shhhryy!” Riley almost wailed, only the gag smothering it down to something soft and safe. Tina couldn’t help a gentle sigh, squeezing her tightly, trying to catch any broken pieces the ropes couldn’t.
“I know, sweetie,” she promised, rubbing gentle circles into the side of her daughter’s back. “I know.”
“Mmmph,” Riley sobbed, overwhelmed by it all. But Tina just went on holding her.
“It’s okay, sweetie, momma’s here.” She squeezed again, trying to promise that she still loved her child, so much. “Momma’s got you, and momma loves you.” And gently, she leaned in, and planted a little kiss on the girl’s forehead.
“Hhh…” Riley mumbled, letting herself fall into the embrace. Letting the woman who’d taken her, who’d kept her, become the woman holding her, the woman loving her. Letting it all go. “Hhh lhhv yhhh tmm, mmm.”
Riley’s mother, Jill, spoke directly to BBC News on Friday:
“Riley, honey, if you can hear this… your dad and I aren’t mad at you, we promise. We miss you, honey, and we’re so sorry about what happened with the move. Just… please, honey.
“Please come home.”