Up Close And Gone
Page 5
Shana’s heart was beating heart attack rhythm, and it had nothing to do with her captor’s bizarre choice of shelter. “This house is sold?”
“Yep. Appraiser’s already been here, as have the new owners. Know what that means?”
She remained silent, praying this was a nightmare from which she’d soon awaken.
Her captor gave her a pitying smile. “No one’s coming through this house until final inspection, when the new owners move in.”
“When’s that?” she asked half-heartedly.
Her captor consulted his watch: one more oddity given his millennial status.
“Monday, May 25 at 9 a.m. Exactly one week from today.”
Shana groaned.
Her captor knelt down. “Just you and me for the next seven days.”
Vomit spilled from her lips. “I didn’t mean to…,” she gasped.
His voice was eerily calm as he swatted a wet wipe across her lips and neck. “No problem. By now, I’m used to your bodily liquids.”
“Are you going to k-kill me?”
He kissed her forehead. “There you go again, thinking gruesome thoughts.”
Shana felt so confused, she couldn’t answer.
Her captor pulled a small key—it looked brand new—from his shirt pocket and unlocked her shackles. “Just to show you I’m working in good faith.”
Shana winced as her arms fell to her sides. “Why now?”
“A little bird tells me you’re not apt to escape in your birthday suit.”
She attempted to pick up the kitchen towel, to cover her breasts with that tiny piece of cloth, but her arms fell to her sides, aching from that slight effort. An image of Eve and Adam cowering before God’s all-knowing eyes flitted through her mind.
“Why am I here?” she protested, her voice hoarse.
In response, he tied a nylon boy-scout knot around her ankles and tossed her a roll of paper towels. “In case you get cold.”
He assembled his cleaning supplies and grabbed the empty food plate.
Then a shocking memory hit and Shana’s bowels exploded.
Her captor jumped to his feet. “What the fuck!”
Chapter 14
Alan
January 1983
Two weeks after the funeral, Alan’s heart had already reverted to stone. Desperate for relief from pain of fatherhood stolen, he retreated into a sixty-hour work week. Electrical engineering was a stern taskmaster; no time for mourning. Each night he’d return home only to once again encounter his wife’s sorrowful expression. Oh, the countless nights he had to stifle his fight or flight response! Because he’d never take a violent hand to his wife, Alan would give her a perfunctory hug, and then head back out to “the gym.” Truth was, he was too exhausted to exercise following such grueling work hours. Truth was, she knew it.
His wife fell into a great depression. One night after Alan walked through the door, Deb made him sit down at the kitchen table, where a tumbler of root beer was waiting for him.
“We can’t pretend our babies’ deaths never occurred.”
He took a gulp of soda. “You want me to commiserate with you, but I just can’t.”
“And I can’t endure this pain all alone,” she lamented.
“Talk to your grief therapist.”
“She wants us to come in together.”
He stared across the table at the woman he loved. The woman who had borne his dead children. “You’re the one who’s depressed, not me.”
“You numb out by working crazy hours, but grief is going to catch up with you.”
Alan was silent.
“Experts say both parents need to go through the stages of grief at losing a baby.” She cast her eyes downward. “Babies.”
The key word was losing, thought Alan. God had sent an angel to stay Abraham’s hand in slaying his son. The rabbi, however, had absolved Alan of slaying his son. Did a newborn’s suffering and imminent death change the verdict? This was the answer for which Alan’s soul thirsted. But he loved his wife too much to burden her with that question.
“I understand where you’re coming from. I’m just not there yet.”
“When will you be ready to go there?” she demanded.
“I don’t know. Maybe never.”
“Experts say the more we push grief away, the more it attacks at the most inopportune moments.”
“The experts this, the experts that.” He thought about the debilitating depression he experienced during his workday: walking the hallway on the way back from lunch, buckling his pants while getting dressed for work. How his penis had betrayed him by delivering sperm that resulted in three dead babies. Telling himself to “man up” did nothing to relieve his horrible guilt and loss.
“Because they know what they’re talking about and we don’t!” said Deb.
He kissed her on the crown of her head. “I’ll go pick up some Chinese.”
She clung to him. “Don’t go. Dinner can wait.”
He wavered. What if he actually allowed her to share her grief with him? What if he took a baby step in expressing his own grief to her?
“Alan!”
Agh! The words baby step seared his heart, destroying all what ifs. Exposing their wounds would prove too raw for them to absorb without falling into a dark place of no return.
She knocked his tumbler to the floor. “Talk to me, damn it!”
As if in slow motion, Alan watched the pop spill from his glass.
He extricated himself from his wife’s arms and stormed out the door.
Alan couldn’t deny his feeling of relief as he slid behind the wheel of his Audi GT and clicked on the ignition.
Chapter 15
Shana
Shana’s captor strode toward her, fists clenched. She forced herself to stare him down. Although borne of fear, her gross potty move had bought her a few moments of silence as muddled memories bubbled to the surface. Memories she’d planned to take to the grave with her.
He pulled her up by the hair. “You got dementia, defecating all over the place?”
“What do you think?” she retorted.
Her captor threw a pail of sudsy water at the putrid mess. “I think you’re my mother.”
Shana fought against the accusation in his words, the same way she fought against the watery goulash he slammed against her thighs. Her ankles still bound, Shana grabbed the radiator in an attempt to raise herself off the floor, but her feet slipped out before her and she fell hard on her haunches.
“It took one foster home and two adoptions to figure it out,” he continued bitterly.
Still, she was in denial. “If you really are Facebook friends with Rachel, you’d know she only has a sister.”
He sauntered over to the refrigerator freezer, then tossed a bag of ice in her direction. “’Cause Rachel has no clue she’s got a brother she’s been separated from for three decades,” he said bitterly.
Amidst the wet muck, Shana managed to position the ice bag against her tailbone. “Mine was a closed adoption. Those files are sealed.”
“So you admit you did give a baby up for adoption,” he persisted.
“That may be so, but I know a money scam when I see one.”
He scooped a handful of human manure from the floor and held in her face. “If you thought this was a scam, you wouldn’t have let loose with your shit.”
Shana cringed, considering the implications for her bladder infection. “I lied when I told you my husband could afford to pay your ransom.”
Her captor washed his hands in the soapy water. “Tell me something I don’t know. If you’d seen my car, you’d know money is the last thing I need. What I want, what I need, is closure. One way or another, you’re going to give it to me.”
“Closure? What kind of closure?”
“You kidnap me, terrorize me, and then have the balls to ask me for closure? No son of mine would ever do this. I hope your birth mother, whoever she is, will be spared this truth.”
Her captor’s eyes filled to the brim with a reservoir of hurt. Then he spoke.
“My current father? He spared my grandma the truth. He didn’t tell her he was putting her into hospice to die, he just told her it was a nursing home. He said the truth would be too traumatic for her to hear.”
Shana guffawed at the irony. “You obviously don’t care whether your version of the truth will be too traumatic for me and my family to hear.”
“Perhaps your opinion of me will change after I share my story.”
When Chicago winter temperatures hit eighty degrees, Shana thought wryly.
“When I graduated college, my adoptive parents gave me two gifts. The first gift was a brand new Jeep Cherokee. The second gift was my adoption papers from the Department of Children and Family Services.”
“Which gift did you prefer?” she snarled.
The young man’s face flushed in anger.
“You are a cruel, misguided individual masquerading as my long-lost son. Out of the goodness of my heart, I will tell you my truth. Thirty-four years ago, I placed a private adoption ad through an attorney. From a handful of offers, I chose a young interfaith couple who held well-paying jobs, as well as a desire to shower their love on a new baby. They were in the hospital room when I delivered.”
He tossed her a dry kitchen towel. “Guess where I work.”
Shana tossed it back at him. “Before we play guessing games, I need a bath towel.”
He rolled the kitchen towel into a ball and threw it at her face. “Where you’re going, you won’t need a bath.”
The implication of his words terrified her, but Shana refused to react as she dried herself with the small towel.
“Department of Children and Family Services. It was the first place I applied. Got hired on the spot.”
“Let me repeat. I did private adoption.”
“You sure about that?”
“Listen, you’ve got the wrong person. Just give me some clothes and let me go.”
Ignoring her outburst, her captor continued. “I hacked into my DCFS adoption file and reached out to a Linda and Marshall Storkenheim, the couple who adopted me as a newborn infant. Linda was a nurse, her husband was a stockbroker. Recognize their names?”
Shana put her hand to her heart. A coincidence?
“The Storkenheims could have adopted other children from other birth moms.”
“Unlikely.”
“Why?”
“I was the only child in the house. Linda died in a car accident on my fourth birthday. Both sets of grandparents had passed away, and my first dad didn’t feel he could adequately care for me, so he gave me up to DCFS. You should have seen him blubber his way through recounting my story. He begged to reconnect with me now, but that’s a non-starter. I’d have to tell him about the negligent foster parents I endured after he gave me up. There’s no use him beating himself up for the rest of his life, too.”
Shana noticed he hugged himself as he spoke. “Sounds like your adoptive father’s a special person.”
“They both were. Linda took me to playgroups when I was little. We’d sing and read together all the time. Marshall would take me bird watching—who takes a little kid bird watching, right?”
Shana nodded, grudgingly curious about her captor’s early years.
“We went to the nature center a lot; I loved the snake and reptile exhibits. Dad even got me a big boy bed in the shape of a crocodile.”
Shana’s reporter instinct kicked in. “How come you refer to Marshall as ‘Dad,’ but your adoptive mom as ‘Linda’?”
He raised a fist toward her face. “Understand this. When Linda died, my world ended.”
Open mouth, stick foot in, her daughters would say. Only this time, Shana knew she was playing with fire.
“I apologize for questioning your relationship with your adoptive mother. It sounds like she and Marshall loved you very much.”
Immediately, her captor’s fist opened. Shana noticed his fingers were long and tapered, like her own.
“If you thought I was your birth mother, why wait three decades to contact me?”
Her captor slapped his knees.
“The records indicate you never searched for me. But I was OCD about finding you. I had to ask why you did it. Why you gave me up.”
How could her own battered body compare to a lifetime of emotional pain he’d endured. Still, she needed more proof.
“How did you discover my name?”
“Marshall was uncomfortable about invading your privacy, so I traced the microfiche trail—that’s all they had in those days—back to the beginning.”
Shana placed a restraining hand on his. Her eyes softened as she gazed at her son; his eyes held a speck of green, as did hers. No more denials; this was the baby she’d given up for adoption over three decades ago.
Chapter 16
David
12:00 p.m. David attempted to rouse himself from the luxurious king-sized bed, but the Roosevelt Hotel’s 800-thread sheets pulled him back like a passionate lover. Sex was the last thing he should be thinking about when his wife was missing.
He couldn’t wrap his head around the fact that his street-smart wife had gone missing. The thing was, Shana exuded an air of competency. When the girls were growing up, she’d scheduled all pediatrician appointments, volunteer experiences, Hebrew school, extracurricular activities, summer camp, and vacations. A grueling amount of activities, in addition to her working as a full-time news reporter.
His wife’s refusal to entertain mediocrity, both in her professional and in her personal life, was one of the many character traits that endeared her to him through forty years of marriage. But that determination had caused him many a sleepless night, like the frosty Saturday night she drove her beater through the south side of Chicago in order to rendezvous with an alderman who had secrets of local corruption to share.
Before the kids were born, there’d been even more frightening nights when he’d worked side-by-side her, photographing the sex traffickers, pimps, gang leaders, and police corruption she uncovered. But whether he was at her shoulder or on the other side of town, she always came home to him, all in one piece, laughing away his concerns, assuring him she had everything under control. Which was why her disappearance was so disconcerting.
Still, David was in no hurry to start his day—this first morning without his wife, who was the rudder in his life. He wanted to pretend she had gone on an interview and would return soon. But hell, they were in New York, not North Carolina. Maybe he shouldn’t have urged her to leave Chicago in the first place. Maybe he shouldn’t have used Rachel’s pregnancy as a tool to manipulate Shana to move closer to their daughter and her growing family.
The truth was, now that he was retired, he felt lonely and old. While he loved futzing around with Adobe Photoshop, Canva, and Photomatix Pro, he failed to elicit an enthusiastic response from Shana as he discussed his adventures. She would feign exhaustion after a long day at work and head to bed soon after dinner.
David had hoped Shana would wear retirement like a Tiffany necklace. Instead, their arguments had become a Virginia Wolfe marathon. He wanted more of her time, she still wanted to change the world.
His thoughts landed on infidelity. Had she met someone more exciting? More into wellness and fitness? More charming? Was she not really missing, but with her lover? These and more troubling questions itched his soul. He debated if he really wanted to discover the answers.
Sure, Shana was no tourist to telling a little white lie. But on the important stuff, Shana valued full disclosure. If she wan
ted to leave him, she would have come out and said so. His gut told him there was more to her disappearance than met the eye. For example, no matter how intense Shana and the girls’ arguments, they would always make up before bed. Shana was a communicator, through and through. It was unlike her to go into shutdown mode, to make them worry.
In fact, except for yesterday’s mishap at brunch, Shana had been much calmer around Rachel, due to their daughter’s pregnancy. The irony was that worry and stress over her mother’s disappearance had caused Rachel’s water to break. She could deliver anytime now. Shana must be there to witness the birth. If only he was man enough to go in like Clint Eastwood and shoot the kidnapper. If only he knew the kidnapper’s identity. Reality was a bitch.
David reluctantly pushed the bed covers off his body, secured his cane, and headed for the shower. First on today’s agenda would be to visit his daughter at the hospital. He prayed both Rachel and the baby were all right.
Chapter 17
Alan
February 1983
At the rabbi’s encouragement, Alan and his wife sat together across from Dr. Ziva Gardner. Deborah’s psychiatrist was gently probing about the passing of their three babies.
“Talking about the deaths has enabled me to feel more connected to the babies.”
“It sounds like you’re saying that naming all three of your children before burying them gave you peace,” said Dr. Gardner.
“When people pass away, their souls continue on in the afterlife,” explained Deborah. “We want Metushalach and Mahalallel, our stillborn babies, as well as Justin, to be resurrected and reunited with us when the Messiah comes.”
Alan noticed the slight blush on his wife’s cheeks. It was obvious she, too, was getting something from this encounter with the therapist.