by Meany, John
“Peter, my mom isn’t like your mother. She wouldn’t drive us crazy with constant nagging . . . Besides; she could help out with the kid.”
“Doing what?”
“Babysitting. That way I wouldn’t have to quit my job at the pharmacy. The last time I checked, pampers, clothing, stuff like that, hasn’t gotten any cheaper.”
He frowned. “Nothing gets cheaper. We’ve already agreed on that.”
“Would you at least think about it?”
“Okay. Though I‘m not making any promises.”
***
After she had become tired of using her fork to push her food around her plate, Ashley stood up and announced, “Guess what I have for dessert?”
“Dessert? Ash, how can you be thinking of dessert when you haven’t even finished the main course?”
“I know. I’m not hungry.” She wasn’t lying. All day, Ashley had been too wound up to think about anything other than being pregnant.
“Then what’d you make so much food for?”
“I didn’t know what else to do with myself.” She opened the fridge and withdrew the chocolate cake, which she had baked earlier.
“Oh no! What’s that?” Peter asked, grinning. “Is that what I think it is?”
“Yes, my love.”
“Wow! You really went all out.”
“It was the least I could do. And this isn’t store bought either. Here’s my proof.” She showed Peter the empty Betty Crocker box. Then, as soon as Ashley had found a spatula, she carried the cake over to the table. On it, written with vanilla frosting, it read, TO MY LOVING HUSBAND, WE’RE GOING TO NEED A CRIB.
“Cut me a big piece,” Peter said, salivating.
“All right. Wait though. Before I do, I want to go get my camera.” She went into the other room, and from her dresser drawer, located the Digital Nikon.
Ashley had dozens of photo albums. She was the type of person that wanted to capture every special moment in life. Although she scarcely remembered her dad (Walter Whittaker used to own a local diner), Ashley was thankful her mother had supplied her with many pictures.
Ashley also had a large portrait of her father, done in impressionistic style, which she had painted. It hung above the sofa in the living room, and showed her father in his customary diner outfit, a white t-shirt, apron and cap. The portrait, set in a nice wood frame, was an exceptional piece of art, particularly when one took into consideration that Ashley had created the painting at such a young age, about six or seven.
She had never had lessons. Like a gifted child who could learn how to play an instrument skillfully, without knowing how to read music, Ashley could bring her dreamlike visions to life in an extraordinary way that no art class could ever teach. Peter hoped that someday her paintings would be on display in respected galleries around the country. Where onlookers could both appreciate and be in awe of his wife’s undeniable genius.
“All right,” Ashley said to Peter when she returned. “Say cheese!”
He did. Above his lip, he had smeared chocolate icing, in the shape of a mustache.
“Yuck!” Ashley teased. “What’d you do that for?”
“Because I want to look like one of the Three Musketeers. From now on, Ash, that’s what you, the baby, and me are going to be. The Three Musketeers. ‘All for one and one for all.’”
Ashley blushed. From the bedroom, she had also fetched one of her albums. Most of the snap shots in it were of she and Peter’s wedding, as well as their honeymoon in the Bahamas.
“What’d you bring that in here for?”
“I wanted to show you this section here.” She indicated the end of the thick volume where the sheets were still blank. “These remaining pages will be reserved for all of our baby pictures. That way we’ll have our wedding recorded, our honeymoon, and everything related to the child’s birth. It’ll make this the perfect photo album. Something we’ll cherish forever.”
Peter rolled his eyes. “Women,” he joked, while indulging in the tasty dessert. “I must have married the most sentimental gal in Jersey.”
“Hey, are you picking on me?”
“Yes gorgeous. But in a good way.”
“Ha ha!”
“Hey, maybe you can also do some paintings of the baby.”
“Yeah,” she said. “I considered that.”
“You have to hun. You’re such a talented artist. I know the paintings would be awesome.”
***
About an hour passed when the phone rang. Ashley, who sat on the living room sofa, watching TV, let Peter answer it.
“Hi. What’s up?”
“Who is it?” She could not think of anyone, at this time, who might want to converse with her husband.
“My folks.”
“Oh.”
“Don’t worry. This shouldn’t take long.”
Eventually, when he clicked off, Ashley asked, “Who told your parents I was pregnant?”
“My brother.”
“You’re kidding?”
“No.”
A board-certified orthopedic surgeon, Brad Ferguson Jr. resided in Cape May with his wife Eve, and their young son Jeffery. With nearly a thirteen-year age gap between them, Peter and his sibling weren’t close. They had what Ashley had once regarded as a relationship of indifference.
“When did you speak to Brad?”
“A few minutes ago. I called his office while I was straightening the garage. So before I get into what my mom and dad said, the encouraging news is my brother, despite what a jerk he can be, told me he’s happy for us.”
“Really? That‘s somewhat surprising.”
“Yes. And next weekend, Eve invited us to dinner. They’re serving prime rib.”
“Whoa! I‘ll have to find something nice to wear.”
“Now to the bad news.”
“Bad news?” Ashley cringed and then used the remote control to turn the TV down. “What’s that?”
“My parents think you should get an abortion.”
“What?”
“I’m sorry. They think, at this early stage of our marriage, if we bring a baby into the world, it would be a huge error in judgment.”
That brought tears to Ashley’s eyes. The last thing she wanted to do was breakdown, yet she couldn’t help it. Get an abortion! How could Peter’s folks say something so mean? Why couldn’t they accept that their son wasn’t going to leave her for some rich girl, no matter what? And that it wasn’t about what they wanted, it was about what he wanted? Just because she and Peter were young, didn’t mean what they felt couldn’t be real.
“Ash,” Peter put his arm around her. “Please don’t cry. C’mon! I know it hurts hearing that. It hurts me too. But please-”
“Don’t those stupid people realize they’re talking about a human life?” She indicated her stomach. “This Peter, what is growing inside of me, our baby, is already alive.”
He sighed. “First of all, hun, I understand that. And second of all, they’re still my parents, so I’d appreciate it if you didn’t bad mouth them.”
“That’s just swell. Now you’re defending them, huh? Your parents who refer to me as ’that Ashley.’ Like I’m some kind of loser. Why would you even listen to them? Your mom and dad live in Florida. They‘re barely a part of our lives. Don’t you get it, they‘re using this as an excuse to try to break us up? They never liked me and they never will.”
“Look,” said Peter. “I’m not defending anyone. You heard me, they said they think we should either do that or put the baby up for adoption.”
“Yeah whatever.” Appalled, Ashley pushed his arm away. “Isn’t your rich conceited mother lovely to suggest, as another alternative, we put the child up for adoption? I will admit it’s a step up from having the kid sucked out of my stomach with a vacuum cleaner.”
Was Peter having second thoughts? Was he suddenly not thrilled at the prospect of becoming a daddy? Oh Lord, Ashley hoped
not. If he was having doubts, she didn’t know what she would do.
Peter’s parents had a home in Fort Lauderdale, and were part owners of an exclusive country club. While growing up, when his family had lived in New Jersey, they had a share in another golf course, not far from Wichita.
Nowadays, because he had chosen to be with Ashley, Peter was cut off from his family’s resources. They didn’t like Ashley. Someone from a middleclass background was not what the Ferguson’s had wanted for their son. Rather than become a blue-collar worker, they had wished Peter would have gone to college to become a lawyer or a doctor like his older brother.
“You know. I’ll never leave you, Ash. I don’t care what my parents think. I know I made the right decision.”
“And I’ll never leave you either,” she declared, caressing Peter’s hand. “But why are you telling me that? You suddenly saying ‘you’ll never leave me makes me scared.”
“Because some guys, especially guys my age, once they have a kid, start to feel trapped.”
“Oh my God! You feel trapped?”
“No! That’s not what I’m getting at. What I’m trying to say, is I don’t view what we have as a starter-kit marriage. I also want you to know Ashley; you’ll always be my number one girl. And I promise I’m going to work even harder than I already do, to give this child whatever he or she is going to need.”
***
However, just one month later, those optimistic plans for the future would be altered forever.
In August, Peter’s window washer company had been cleaning a building in Atlantic City near the Trump Plaza, when one of the fiercest thunderstorms of the summer had rolled into southern New Jersey.
Peter was not wearing his safety harness. He had just taken it off. Therefore, when the gust of wind, estimated to be upwards of seventy-five miles per hour, had hit that part of the tall structure, there was nothing to prevent him from falling.
When Ashley had learned of her husband‘s tragic death, she was shaken to the core, and had cried hysterically for days.
Emotionally, those tears had yet to dry.
PART THREE
THE FIELD
CHAPTER 3
October 17, 2003
Crown Jewel Supermarket
Wichita, N.J.
9:49 P.M.
“So you’re not gonna tell us who the baby‘s daddy is?” the guy with the beard asked, still kneeling down beside Ashley, flicking the Bic lighter near her face. “Is that how it’s gonna be Christina?”
Although terrified, there was no way Ashley intended to answer this lunatic’s question. The memory of Peter was too painful. His closed-casket funeral had left her numb. In addition, Peter’s parents had seemed to blame Ashley for what had happened, as if she, and not the wind, had flung their youngest son to his death.
Since her husband’s passing, Ashley had been deeply lonely. For the first two weeks, she scarcely got out of bed and would lay there clutching Peter’s pillow, wishing it were he. She refused to wash the sheets and blankets because she had wanted to preserve his scent.
With her husband no longer in her world, life for Ashley didn’t seem to have meaning. Then she would remember their unborn baby, and that would give her the motivation to carry on. Knowing that their child would keep Peter’s spirit alive. Except now even that seemed in jeopardy. What did Ashley do to deserve such a troubling fate?
“Ahh, she’s too scared to talk,” the other perpetrator remarked. “Who cares who the baby’s father is? When I wake up in the morning, dude, my back’s gonna be killing me. Why‘d you force me to carry her so far?”
“Your back?” the leader said, snickering. “How could carrying this skinny thing hurt the back of someone like you, Stump, who squats four hundred pounds at Gold’s Gym? Britney here can’t be much more than a buck twenty. If I wasn’t afraid of slipping on the mud, I would have carried her myself.”
“Whatever. If you say so.” The thug pacing near the crime scene was much shorter and more muscular than the leader, who had a thin, basketball player physique. “Dawg, come here for a minute.”
“What for?”
“It’s conference time.”
“What do you mean by that?”
A moment ago, a tractor-trailer with the logo Farmland Dairies on the side, had rumbled up behind the shopping center, and then had painstakingly backed up to the Crown Jewel supermarket.
“We need to discuss something . . . In private!”
As the man with the lighter got up to see what his friend wanted, Ashley glanced toward the strip mall and observed the tractor-trailer’s headlights switch off. Two store employees came out onto the loading dock. Ashley watched them extract, from the diesel rig, milk crates and cardboard boxes.
“Craig, don’t push me.”
To Ashley’s amazement, the rapists started to argue.
“Don‘t push you,” the man in charge taunted, “Why Bucky, what are you gonna do about it?”
“The name is Buck. Not Bucky. And while we‘re on the subject, I think it’s about time I let you know that I‘m not fond of the nickname Stumpy either.”
So, Ashley thought, the leader is Craig, and the other guy is Buck. In the event she survived, she could give those names to the authorities.
“What’s the matter? Is whittle Bucky afraid to spoon? Did prison make you timid?”
“Bro, you’d better back off!”
While they bickered, Ashley tried to stand up. Ouch! No way. That wasn’t going to work. Her knee and ankle were in agony.
After that botched attempt at regaining her footing, Ashley, thought about her boss, Lucy Hooper. Any minute now, Lucy would be getting off. It had to be close to ten o’clock. Lucy always stayed at the pharmacy late to finish her paperwork and to lock up. Was it possible that she would notice Ashley’s Mustang still in the parking lot, and think it was unusual?
No.
That’s right. Today Lucy had parked her SUV in front of Blockbuster. She had gone into the video store before work to rent a Bruce Willis movie to watch with her live-in boyfriend Dean. That meant she would leave out the other exit, and not drive past Ashley’s car.
On the well-lighted loading dock, the grocery store employees continued to heave boxes and crates from the tractor-trailer. To Ashley, from this distance, they appeared small, the way a rock band looks on stage when viewed from the bleachers.
Now the leader uttered, “Where’s her pocketbook?” Apparently, they had resolved their differences.
“Next to my foot.”
“Besides the forty bucks, what else did my new girlfriend have in it?”
“Nothing. Not even a cell phone.”
“There were no other valuables, no credit cards?”
“Nope. Aside from what I just mentioned, all she had in her bag was make up, hairspray. Typical female junk. Nothing we could use.”
“It figures.”
Don’t let them tie me up and carry me into the woods, Ashley thought. She feared that if they did, she might not be found for days.
“All right Stump, start duct taping her. Do you see that section of trees over there?”
“Yeah. You’re pointing to that path, right?”
“Correct. That’s where we’ll take her. I figure we’ll carry Christina, oh, say, about fifty feet in. Leave her in the bushes. That ought to give us a sufficient amount of time to get out of here without being detected . . . Make sure you get that tape on tight.”
“I’m trying. Come on, lady!” Buck snapped, unable to get a hold of Ashley’s wrists. She screamed, squirmed, kicked, and clawed at Buck’s face. Where she found the courage to do this Ashley will never know. However, right away, she realized her mistake. The retaliation came in the form of a back fist to the jaw, which caused blood to ooze from her lips and gums. “Shut up! If you do that again I‘ll break your hands.”
“What’d she do?”
“Tried to gauge my eyeballs out. Co
me here Craig, and hold her down. I can’t tape her with her flopping around like this.”
The leader did not react. He stood watching the dairy workers unloading the truck. Now it seemed as if they might have heard Ashley scream. They had stopped what they were doing and were staring in this direction.
“Uh oh,” Craig uttered, “this isn’t good.”
“Huh?”
“Those dairy workers unpacking the milk truck. Look! They’re staring this way. They might have heard her. I know they can’t see us in the dark. But still, them looking this way is giving me a bad feeling.”
As Buck became alert to the situation, the supermarket personnel suddenly jumped down from the cement loading dock. One of them had a flashlight.
“You’re right. They definitely must have heard her. We’ll have to leave the girl here. C’mon Craig! Run! Those dudes will probably have the cops here any minute now.”
“Okay. I‘m coming.”
“Now man. Hurry! Stop screwing around.”
With frost floating out of his nose and mouth, the leader gazed down at Ashley one final time and declared, “Well, it’s been eventful, darling. You’ve been a wonderful host. We’ll have to do this again sometime.” Then he too fled for the pine forest.
That’s when Ashley saw the supermarket employees veer in the opposite direction.
“No!” she yelped, having to contend with the roar of the eighteen-wheeler. “You’re going the wrong way. Whoever you are, I’m over . . . here!” The only way Ashley could get back to her car would be to crawl, which because of her pregnancy; she did not want to risk doing, fearing a miscarriage.
CHAPTER 4
Crown Jewel dairy manager Troy Young had just finished unloading milk, eggs, and butter from the delivery truck, when he heard the scream.
“Hey,” he said to his co-worker Adam Campbell. “Did you hear that?”
“No. I didn’t hear anything,”