by Dana Becker
Chapter Five
Rose could feel herself adapting to the new situation. She was alive. And no longer in pain. Nothing else mattered. She was adjusting to her new schedule, her new life. They fed her decent food. Sometimes she got leftovers from their take-out meals. They occasionally let her poke her head out of the window. She would be blindfolded, but she could feel the warmth of the sun, the sounds of birds, the rustling of trees. In a strange way, those moments were special to her, made her appreciate the trivial things of life that you don’t usually notice.
She was, in short, comfortable enough to feel gratitude, even in captivity. In fact, more so in captivity. And gradually, because there were enough moments of grace, she slipped into a kind of Stockholm syndrome: the feeling of sympathy—or even, affection—for the very people who held her captive. Her desire to break free from her chains, or even to think about the world in terms of freedom, had evaporated.
* * *
Fall turned into winter. Even though the routines that April had gotten herself into were all completely new to her—new enough that it seemed as though she were living a completely different life—they also seemed right, right enough that they might last forever. It was remarkable how quickly she began to take it as a given that she worked a steady job, was staying sober, and that she was feeling excited about a relationship that, though far from ideal, was at least not abusive, but rather life-affirming.
It occurred to April that she might be happy. Or at least as happy as she could be knowing that, even as the seasons changed, her sister was somewhere out there, cut off and . . . who knew what. With all the good things happening to her, she could forgive her sister for abandoning her, a feeling that she knew was not rational. And she could once again get serious about the search for Rose.
Looking for Rose meant snooping around, asking questions, putting up signs, trying to push local reporters into covering the case, managing #FindRose social media accounts, even having some art friends do a fundraiser. Between all of that, her work at the bakery, her course at the community college, and her court-ordered program of meetings and community service, April was exhausted at the end of each day. She felt constantly anxious about Rose’s disappearance. But, for the first time in her life, she also felt that she was doing everything in her power to actually live up to the Serenity Prayer she recited at her NA meetings: God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference.
She might not have accepted the things she couldn’t change (yet). But for the first time in her life, she was really and truly finding the courage to change the things that were in her power to change. It might not have brought her complete serenity, but it was helping her sleep at night.
And yet, just when her new routines felt settled and healthy, something would happen to remind her how precarious her life still was.
Shortly after the first snowfall of the season, as she made her way to the bus after an NA meeting, April was approached by a guy dressed in baggy jeans and a baggier winter jacket. He’d been at the NA meeting with her. She noticed him at the meeting either because he was new, or because he kept giving her long, significant looks. Usually she’d dismiss this behavior as creepy. But there was something about this guy that didn’t read that way to her. He seemed vulnerable, naïve somehow, maybe kind. So when he approached April as she walked to the bus stop, she was a bit surprised but not alarmed to see him. That was, she didn’t feel nervous until he began to speak.
“I’m Kevin,” he said, extending his hand, politely. “But people call me Cappy.”
“Oh hey,” April said, without stopping. The two of them were now walking side by side. He seemed to be building up the courage to say something. April was mildly amused but mostly annoyed that she would have to rebuff his inevitable request to get a drink or, even more vaguely, to “hang out sometime.” He seemed harmless, but the awful ones often did. And she wasn’t in the mood to manage some strange guy’s fragile ego. It’d been a long day.
“I met your sister a couple of years ago,” he said abruptly.
April was silent. Her mind raced. It was not what she’d been expecting him to say.
“How do you know me?” she asked finally.
“I followed you to the meeting tonight.”
“Really? That’s the best you got?”
April began walking faster. This kind of unwanted attention was one unfortunate consequence of going public as a family member of a missing person. She’d discovered that some men had the audacity to treat her Find Rose events as an excuse to hit on the missing girl’s sister.
“I work with Ricky Devereux,” he said. “Well, I guess I work for him.”
“Oh,” April said. “Sorry to hear that.”
“Ha, right? I get it. Well, look, I might know some things that you’re gonna wanna know.”
A thought crossed April’s mind: to take out her phone and try to secretly record the conversation. But then she remembered that her phone was dead.
“Oh really?” she said.
“Yeah, for real.”
“So, what is it?”
“Well, first things first. You talking to the cops?”
“Ah, I get it now. Ricky’s getting nervous. Did he send you here?”
“No, actually.”
“Really? And I should believe you because . . . ?”
“Stick around and you’ll believe me. Ricky would probably kill me if he knew I was here, talking to you.”
“Well, why are you here then?”
“I got my reasons. Look, just answer my question: You talking to the cops?”
“No,” April said. “They’re useless.”
This was only a partial lie. In fact, April had very much been talking to the cops. But the conversation had run its course. The night after Ricky had dropped by the bakery and threatened her, she’d written a long, detailed description of everything that Ricky had told her about his last encounter with Rose: the date, the circumstances of it. She’d gone directly to the police with it, and laid out the whole story, along with her commentary, all the stuff she knew about Ricky and his motives. She told them that Ricky had texted Rose twice, and that he was refusing to show her the texts. Ricky, in short, was in possession of potential evidence. He certainly knew more than he was letting on, if he was not actually guilty himself.
April had given the cops the trail (Ricky) and the trail markers (the texts). She’d given them a lot. If they cared, they weren’t showing it. When she spoke to one of the detectives, in his office, he didn’t write down a single thing she said, even though she was giving them a lot of detailed information. As she spoke, she found herself staring at the pen on his desk, just lying there. At certain points she wasn’t even sure he was listening. The detective seemed to be humoring her, waiting for her to finish so he could say, “Thanks for coming in” and then immediately forget everything she’d said to him.
April finally arrived at her bus stop. She zipped up her coat all the way and readjusted her scarf to keep out the wind. She wasn’t in any mood to chat with this Cappy, if that was even his name. She began impatiently looking for the distant headlights of the bus, so that she could get away from this guy and get to bed.
April sighed and looked back at Cappy, hoping that he’d be gone. He was not. He just stood there, with his kind eyes, and his mouth, slightly ajar, like a patiently eager dog.
“Well,” she said, “what is it? What is it that you got to say?”
“I don’t know where your sister is at. But I know a guy who does.”
April, who’d begun looking out for the bus headlights again, had heard but not quite processed what he’d just said. She was really too tired to puzzle out this stranger’s motives.
“What do you want from me?” she said, wearily.
“Nothing,” Cappy replied, offended. “Just don’t tell Ricky nothing. Don’t tell him you ever met me. You gotta promise me that.”
“Fine,” April said. She was getting tired of people telling her whom she shouldn’t be talking to.
Cappy gave her a date—early the next week—and strange, precise instructions about how to buzz up at a certain apartment building downtown, near South 4th Street, not far from where she lived.
“I don’t wanna go into some rando’s apartment,” April said.
“It’s the only way, April,” he said.
She didn’t like that he said her name. This guy was a bit too smooth. But she took down the directions anyway.
“Why are you helping me?” she asked.
“Like I said, I got my reasons. Just do yourself a favor and don’t ask. Trust me.”
And then he turned around and was gone.
* * *
Two days and a snowstorm later, April and Joseph boarded a Greyhound bus. It was their first trip out of town together.
“Where are you taking me?” April said as they took their seats.
They sat next to each other. But April could tell that Joseph was nervous about it. The first time they’d met, sitting next to each other on the bus, they’d been strangers—now they were anything but. The closer they’d gotten, the more uptight he’d become about being seen together. As he glanced up and down the bus aisle, April got irritated.
“Your pals aren’t here, Joey boy,” she said, “and if any of them show up, I think we’ll notice them right away. You guys kind of stand out, you know.” She gave his hat a not-very-friendly flick of her fingers.
When the bus finally departed, and the young couple was in the clear, Joseph relaxed a bit.
“I have a surprise for you,” he said.
“Oh really?”
He pulled his small suitcase from under his seat and placed it on his lap.
“Open it,” he said.
“Open it?”
“Open it!”
She opened it. And inside, she found, very neatly folded, a man’s button-down shirt and matching blue trousers, tailored in the “Plain” style: all buttons, no zippers, and suspenders stitched in. The uniform of every Amish man. April put her hand under the clothes and reached around the bag. Nothing.
“I don’t get it,” April said. “Where’s the gift?”
“Patience,” he said. “The gift is even better than something that can fit into a bag.”
“I’m gonna kill you,” April said, a bit too loudly, and then, realizing that she’d turned a few curious heads from the seats in front of them, leaned in close to him and whispered, “I’m gonna kill you.”
Joseph just grinned and turned to look out the window at the falling snow.
* * *
When they arrived at the Lancaster, PA, station, April stood up and began to gather her bags. Joseph grasped her wrist and gently but firmly pulled her back into her seat.
“We’re not getting off here,” he said.
“But I thought you said we were going to Lancaster.. . .”
“I know I did,” he said. “But we’re not getting off here.”
“Oh, okay.” April collapsed back into the seat.
* * *
Most people had gotten off at Lancaster; the bus was nearly empty when it arrived, almost twenty minutes later, at a bus stop by the side of the highway. Joseph had told the driver to stop there and when they did, only Joseph and April descended the stairs. The driver gave them a very strange look.
And then they were alone. For the first time.
Well, not quite alone, because a car or two would zip by every few minutes. But otherwise they were alone. April looked around. There was nothing. No buildings. No billboards. Just the clear winter evening sky, some patches of trees, and big open cornfields, covered in snow all the way to the horizon—untouched except for a few deer tracks here and there.
“Where are we?” April said.
“Together,” Joseph replied.
April gave him a quick, knowing look. She liked that he’d said that. No, actually, she loved it. But she wasn’t about to let him know that.
Instead, she said, “Okay, this is just creepy.”
They stood in silence for a few long moments.
“Okay, seriously, what’s going on here?” she said, looking out toward the horizon. “Are you going to kill me or something? I knew it was creepy when you were like ‘Let’s go out into the . . .’ ”
April turned around. Joseph was gone.
“Hey! Where are you? This isn’t funny, Joseph Young!”
“Right here,” he said.
Joseph was standing about twenty feet into the little wooded area that separated the highway from the cornfield.
“Follow me,” he said, motioning her toward the woods. And when she hesitated, he smiled and urged her some more.
“C’mon, it’s fine.”
“Okay, now you’re seriously creeping me out,” April said, as she walked slowly to him. “I’m from South Philly, dude. We don’t do woods, okay? We like our trees where you can see them: one at a time, every couple of streets.”
April joined Joseph under a canopy of thin, white-barked trees.
“Do you know what this is?” Joseph said, patting a tree trunk.
“It’s a tree, Joseph.”
“Do you know what kind of tree?”
“I dunno. A tall one? I’m cold.”
“It’s a birch tree. This one is called a gray birch. Its wood has a nice ripple figuring. It makes very beautiful furniture or indoor veneers. It’s also good for firewood. But I don’t like to use it for that. It’s too special a tree to burn.”
“Are you gonna kill me or what?” April said, as she began to walk again. “I mean, I know bowl haircuts are normal where you come from, but where I’m from a white boy with a bowl cut means you’re a serial killer, okay? And this talk about ‘special tree’ is, for real, creeping me ou . . .”
April suddenly slipped on some ice and was about to tumble forward, when Joseph, in one long deft motion, quickly hopped at her and threw his arm around her waist, bracing her from behind. When both of them breathed again, they noticed that Joseph was, in fact, holding her entire body up, hoisting her about an inch off the ground. And for a long moment, he held her exactly like that, and she let herself be held. Except for their deep breaths, they didn’t move at all. She felt his heart beating against her back, felt his entire chest moving against her back. Joseph was even stronger than he looked. He was holding her entire body in the air, and hardly straining at all.
And in this brief moment, her body went warm, then hot. Her hands were hot, her feet were hot. Her ears felt scalded. The sudden spike in temperature from very cold to very hot made April feel literally delirious, and suddenly the world turned and the white birches around her cascaded and the crunch of snow and twigs underfoot was suddenly drowned out by the sound of a loud beating heart that she didn’t so much hear as feel thumping within her ears. Was the heartbeat hers or his? She closed her eyes quickly. She could feel every part of her body melting all at once. She felt she was powerfully powerless. And small but not diminished, an intensely concentrated sensation, like an atom that was being squeezed.
And then he let her go. Bringing her gently back to Earth.
“I’m sorry,” he said, gravely. “I just . . . you were falling, and . . .”
Joseph turned away from April. She watched his large, strong back working out some kind of tension. He seemed to be speaking from some faraway place.
April didn’t reply right away. She was still breathless from the near-fall, and even more breathless from the sudden feeling of being so close to Joseph’s strong body. But Joseph interpreted her tongue-tied silence as disapproval or even anger.
And so he sputtered even more. “I—I didn’t mean anything . . . I mean, I didn’t . . .”
“Joseph,” April said, finally regaining her ability to speak. “It’s fine. I mean, it’s really more than fine. You saved me. You’re my hero!”
April took a step toward Joseph. They enjoye
d another moment of closeness. And then he pulled away gently.
“Let’s keep walking,” he whispered.
“Really?” she said in a voice that was louder and harsher than she’d intended. In the cold air and desolate woods, her voice carried and echoed, startling her.
She pushed Joseph away so hard and so suddenly that he almost fell back. She’d meant it to be playful, but a sudden surge of emotion had overcome her and her eyes filled with tears.
April didn’t like how much power Joseph had over her, how physically overwhelmed she’d felt in his arms, and how quickly and profoundly rejected she’d felt when he’d said, “Let’s keep walking.” The swing of the pendulum, from feeling intensely warm and enveloped to desolate and discarded—and to not be even a bit in control of this shift—it was all just too much for her. If he felt even half of what she’d felt in his arms, how could he possibly just shrug and say, casually, “Let’s keep walking”? Everything, to him, seemed easier than it was for her. Was he suffering at all? Was he feeling out of control? Was he feeling anything?
Fine, then, thought April. Mr. Hunk Arms wants to keep walking? I’ll take the lead. April marched ahead, into the woods, without him.
“April!” he shouted after her. “Hey.”
She ignored him and kept walking.
“April,” he called again. “You’re going the wrong way.”
She slowed down and finally stopped, sighed, and turned around.
“Where are we going?” April said, feeling her agitation deepen. “I’m cold.”
“There,” Joseph replied, pointing at a path that separated them. At the end of this path, she just noticed, was a horse, stamping its feet and snorting. April adjusted her eyes to make sure she wasn’t seeing things. The vision of the black horse, surrounded by thin white trees and fresh snow, seemed like something out of a vivid dream.
Despite herself, April smiled.
“Okay, how’d you do that?” she asked.
“Had my cousin leave him here just before we arrived.”
April gave Joseph a skeptical look and started walking up the path, toward the horse. Joseph suddenly appeared next to her and scooped up her hand. She pulled it away.