by Glenn Meade
His expression looked vacant, so childlike. Like the little boy I’d lost eight years ago but more slow-witted. He was hardly speaking, just a few grunts and nods here and there. What was wrong with him? There had to be something seriously wrong.
I turned back and saw blood still seeping from Jack’s wound. I pushed past the couch, into the kitchen. Sean came in behind me as I ransacked drawers and cupboards. Sean started to do the same. He looked more alert now, traumatized with worry. He yanked open a cupboard, hauled out a camouflage rucksack, and unzipped it. The rucksack flopped apart, revealing several MOLLE bags inside.
I realized the rucksack was a bug-out bag, the kind disaster preppers used if they needed to get out of town in a hurry, complete with emergency food packs and survival tools like a big sheathed knife and a machete. I saw that one of the MOLLE bags had a Red Cross logo patch stuck on it with Velcro.
Before Sean could hand it to me, I grabbed it and unzipped it. It contained an assortment of pill bottles, bandages, and a tourniquet, a surgical implement kit containing scissors, clamps, a scalpel, surgical wipes, and a flashlight. I found what I was looking for, sealed in a black and white pack: an Israeli army traumatic wound kit.
I grabbed the entire first-aid bag and rushed back into the living room. Tearing open the wound kit with my teeth and fingers, I knelt beside Jack. He was losing blood fast. Sean followed me, whimpering as he knelt beside me. His eyes looked moist and worried.
Inside the wound kit was a fine granular powder. I’d read about this stuff growing up on an Army base. The powder contained a clotting agent that stopped blood flow. I lifted Jack’s shirt, exposing the crimson wound, and poured on the powder. In less than thirty seconds, the bleeding stopped.
It was only a temporary fix, but at least Jack wasn’t still bleeding to death. I still had the bleeding exit wound to deal with. I felt his pulse. Still weak. Sweat sparkled on his brow.
I took out bandages, alcohol wipes, and hydrogen peroxide from the first-aid kit. I used the peroxide to sterilize around the wound, then grabbed the flashlight. “Hold this, Sean.”
He just stared at me, wide-eyed.
“Sean, will you do as I say?”
Confusion strained his face. Some instinct made me put a hand gently to his cheek. This time, he didn’t draw away. I felt the soft skin I loved to wash and kiss when he was small, but the texture was manly now. Questions rolled around inside his head, lots of them, I could tell. Who was I? What was I doing here? I could see that he was trying to figure it all out, but none of it made sense to him.
Did I see a spark of recognition when he looked into my face, or was I fooling myself? I’m your mother! I wanted to scream.
Reluctantly, I let my hand fall away. Tears filled my eyes. It all seemed so absurd. Eight years had gone by in the blink of an eye. Eight years, and I had lost my baby, replaced by some child-adult whom I didn’t know but whom I knew I still loved.
I wiped my eyes, forced myself to focus. There was work to be done. “Hold this, Sean, please.”
I thrust the flashlight at him. He held it, and I showed him that I wanted him to keep his arm high and the pool of light focused on Jack’s bloody waist and the bleeding exit wound.
I slipped on a pair of latex surgical gloves from the kit. “Keep the flashlight right there, like that. Try not to let it move, OK?”
I looked into Sean’s eyes. He stared back, then nodded.
I wiped perspiration from my brow and went to work.
* * *
My military father was the kind of man who believed a woman needed to know how to look after herself.
He didn’t believe in dependent girlies, only independent ones, and he planned accordingly. I spent three years in the Girl Scouts. On the weekends, when I wanted to play with dolls or with my friends, he’d make me do tae kwon do or take me on hunting or survival trips. And he made me learn first aid. He used to say his first-aid knowledge saved a life or two on the battlefield. He wanted me to know stuff like that and planned accordingly.
It forced me to learn how take care of myself in an emergency, things like how to shoot game and gut and field-dress a rabbit or deer. I always hated that part, the blood and gore and gristle, but later I was secretly grateful for the knowledge.
For trauma wounds, I knew the basics. Stem the blood, try to remove any penetrating objects like blades, bullets, shrapnel, or glass, then treat the wound with antiseptic and sew up if need be. Administer some pain relief if it’s on hand.
I found a morphine shot in the kit but decided to leave it for now, until I knew Jack’s pain level or if he was coming around again. My latex-gloved fingers carefully probed inside the grisly exit-wound tissue. It sure looked and felt as if the bullet had gone right through. I could only hope it hadn’t pierced an organ. A doctor would have to decide, if I found one and if Jack survived.
Minutes later, I’d dressed the wound as best I could. I checked his pulse—it was good—and his breathing was steady. The floor was littered with blood-soaked cotton pads, and I felt exhausted. Sean kept staring down at his father. It was killing me. I desperately wanted to ask Sean so many questions about the past and what had happened to him since I last saw him—but now was not the time.
When he saw me finish sewing up Jack, he looked relieved. “Will my daddy be OK?”
It was the first time he’d actually spoken to me. His voice sounded deeper—somewhere between youth and manhood—but I could still hear the sweet and gentle childish tone that I remembered.
“Will he?” Sean repeated, eyes wet again.
I didn’t really know if Jack would make it—he looked too pale and weak—but his vital signs were strong. Looking into Sean’s anxious face, I knew I couldn’t worry him. “Yes, Sean. Your dad will be fine. Now, help me clean up.”
We put the bloodied cotton pads into a couple of plastic Walmart shopping bags and threw them in the trash. Then Sean brought a container of Listerine wipes from the kitchen and we cleaned the mess off the floor. Jack was still unconscious. The blood loss, fatigue, and alcohol wouldn’t have helped. But his breathing was even. I felt his pulse again. A steady sixty-five.
I searched his pockets but found no cell phone. Had he left it on the boat or dropped it on the walk up here in the dark? I got an old blanket off the back of the couch and draped it over Jack, up to his neck. The emergency was over for now, but I needed to find a doctor.
The more I looked around the room, the more unsettled I became. This wasn’t much of a home. It wasn’t what I expected of a man who might have disappeared with a serious amount of money and valuables.
It was almost a hovel. It lacked a woman’s touch—I saw just one vase with a few nearly withered wildflowers that I figured Amy might have put there. How had my children lived here, and in what circumstances? More important, why had they lived like this? And another question burned inside me, the most important one of all: Where was my beloved Amy?
“Sean . . .”
His eyes met mine. They looked so big and innocent, so childlike, that I felt overwhelmed with a powerful urge to wrap my arms around him and hug the life out of him. It was an agony not to. But I was afraid I’d scare him or he’d shun me. I knew he still couldn’t figure out who I was. I fought the urge.
Instead, my fingers found his face. I touched his cheek, as if he would find comfort in it. He balked a little but stood still, avoiding my eyes. It broke my heart. I hated this. My son didn’t seem like my son but a total stranger.
But right then, my focus was on finding Amy and figuring out why Jack had vanished with the children in the first place.
I looked back at Jack and felt his pulse once more. It was still good, his breathing not distressed. I knew he was stable. I needed a couple of minutes to compose myself, to figure out what I was going to do next, how I was going to find medical help.
In those couple
of minutes, I could multitask, and see what I could find out. I turned to Sean.
“I want you to show me around the house.”
77
* * *
Sean led me up a creaking stairwell.
The landing was as shabby as the rest of the house. A threadbare ruby carpet led off to several rooms. At the far end of the hallway, a door was open to reveal a tired avocado-colored bathroom suite that looked decades out of date.
The door on my left was half open. I pushed it and stepped into a barely furnished room that overlooked the front of the farm. More secondhand furniture. A double bed with a wooden headboard, its pine varnish worn in places. A nightstand, dresser, and mirror, all in grainy, weathered oak. A box of shotgun cartridges lay on top of the nightstand, along with a handful of coins. Jack’s bedroom, no doubt.
Next to the bedside lamp were two photos in cheap plastic frames. One I recognized, a photo of Amy and Sean taken in Myrtle Beach. It was a snapshot Jack always carried in his wallet whenever he traveled. I touched the frame’s cold glass, my fingertips gliding over the image, and felt a cold shiver go through me.
I picked up the second snapshot. This one was more recent, just of Jack and Sean, sitting on a muddy ATV four-wheeler. Sean was in front, and Jack had his arms around him, both of them smiling. I wondered who had taken the photograph. Amy? A lady friend?
No photos of us all together as a family, but I didn’t expect that. Why would Jack want to remind Amy and Sean of me?
A man’s fleece and some cotton work shirts were thrown over the back of a chair. I stepped over and peered into one of the two closets. Old clothes, some pairs of muddied work boots at the bottom. I heard a scraping noise back out on the landing, and when I turned back, I saw Sean rocking himself like an impatient child, shifting forward and backward on the balls of his feet.
When he caught my eye, he opened a door to his right and stood there, gently nodding his head, waiting for me to join him. I walked out across the landing toward a tiny bedroom.
A look of pride sparked in Sean’s face as I stepped into what was obviously his room, one decorated with childish simplicity. A desk, a wall shelf with a few stacks of books, and an old CD-playing radio. A duvet cover with a football player in red and vivid-colored posters stuck on the wall behind: Transformers, Spider-Man, and Iron Man.
Some of the books looked kind of immature for Sean’s age, more like those an eight- to ten-year-old might read: Goosebumps, Harry Potter, and The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. And then something caught my eye—an ID on Sean’s dresser. I picked it up. The Tennessee state ID showed Sean, all right, his face solemn, his expression blank, but the name said “Sean Pender.”
The date of birth was off by a month and a year, suggesting that he was older. The ID looked real, but it had to be fake. And it was the permanent kind that did not expire. I knew that IDs that did not expire were only issued to people with a permanent mental or physical disability. My father was issued one once he’d lost his foot.
I noticed a bunch of schoolbooks on the desk, which had two chairs in front of it. Had Jack homeschooled Sean and Amy? It made sense if he wanted to keep their true identity secret. I put the ID back down.
Sean was staring over at me, doing the nervous rocking thing with his feet. I had a gut-wrenching feeling that I didn’t want to put words to yet. I don’t know why I spoke, but it just came out: “I like your room, Sean.”
His reaction was slow at first, but then he beamed, a beautiful, innocent smile. It was so like the Sean I remembered, the child I loved and lost.
A hurricane of emotions ripped through me—love, pain, despair, even anger for all the years when I could not witness the face that smiled back at me. His slowness, even the way he said “Daddy” instead of “Dad,” the permanent ID card—they all affirmed my suspicion that Sean was in some way brain-damaged. Now that I’d admitted it, my emotions intensified and sent me into a spiral of despair. I had a desperate need to grasp my son, to crush him to my chest, cling to him, and never let him go.
It felt weird. All these years, my children were not lost but were near me and not a million miles away. Tears welled in my eyes. I felt overcome, but I knew I needed to keep this conversation unemotional in case I scared Sean. I fought the heartache and wiped my eyes with my sleeve.
“I want you to show me Amy’s room.”
78
* * *
Sean led me down the hall.
My heart jackhammered as he opened a door. It swung inward, and I anxiously followed him inside. I saw something I really didn’t anticipate.
The room was painted in a girly pastel-pink and was so out of character with the rest of the house, like a splash of vivid color on gray walls. A single bed, frilly with lace pillows, was pushed against one wall. A typical girl’s room. And then I saw something familiar, and my body jolted.
On the bed were some dolls and soft toys. Three of them I recognized as Amy’s favorites, which she had brought with her on that fateful flight. A pink teddy bear named Sandy with a pink satin bow. A flesh-colored Peppa Pig character. And a blue, white, and gold cotton blanket, the kind you can buy with a silk-screen print. This one had an image of Snow White.
I remembered buying it for Amy for her third birthday. I picked it up, felt the soft cotton brush against my face, and inhaled deeply.
Every child has a scent—I was sure I recognized Amy’s. A voice inside my head reasoned that if she kept these precious belongings, surely she would have remembered me. How had she coped with recalling our life together? And with the aching loss of a mother’s love?
Had she been injured like Sean? I prayed desperately that she hadn’t. Sean must have noticed my wet eyes, because he looked worried. “Will . . . will Daddy be all right?”
I gently let my hand fall, still clutching the blanket. “Sean, do you know now who I am? Please, try and think.”
His forehead creased as if with the physical effort of thinking.
I spotted another photo by Amy’s bed, a copy of the same one in Sean’s and Jack’s rooms, of the three of them together in Myrtle Beach. I wanted to search the house for more photographs. But I figured the last thing someone did when trying to hide their identity was to take too many pictures of themselves. Knowing Jack, he’d been careful about that.
Besides, Jack told me something once. Every digital snapshot taken generated an electronic code, which the federal authorities had access to. It was how they sometimes caught criminals and terrorists, by tracing the code back to the photographer.
Sean saw me notice the photo, and he picked it up. He stroked the picture with his fingers and smiled. “Amy . . . You like Amy, too?”
“Yes, I like Amy, too. I love her. I love you, too, Sean.”
He smiled again, but my words really didn’t seem to be sinking in.
“Did your dad ever talk to you about your mom?”
His face looked perplexed now, as if the effort of thinking was painful, the question too much to process.
“Don’t you know me, Sean?”
He shook his head. I remembered when Amy was barely four months old, and I had to leave her with Jack when I traveled to Georgia for a weekend. The moment I returned and picked her up from her cot, Amy’s eyes sparked, and she recognized me and nuzzled into me. I recalled the magic of that moment. I experienced similar moments with Sean when he saw me after an absence. But now there was no recognition, no magic.
Nothing.
My heart was breaking. I turned back to Amy’s belongings. The question screamed inside me.
“Where’s Amy, Sean? Where’s your sister? Please tell me.”
He didn’t speak.
“Sean, please, I need to know. Where’s Amy?”
His hand pointed to the window. I stepped over to the curtain and peered into the darkness. Sean joined me and pointed again, directing me towar
d the distant lights of a house.
“Amy’s over there?”
“Yes.”
“With neighbors? Who are they? Do you know their names?”
“Dr. Kevin.”
“He’s really a doctor?”
Sean nodded firmly. “Yes, it’s Dr. Kevin.”
I felt a surge of relief. I just hoped he was a medical doctor. Even a vet would do—anyone with medical experience. I focused on the distant lights. I guessed I was looking toward the nearest neighboring farm. Jack had probably left Amy there while he went to meet me. It made sense. The last thing he needed was a young girl tagging along. The property didn’t seem that far away.
I had to see my daughter. I couldn’t wait. I remembered the four-wheeler ATV in the barn. “I need you to take me, right now.”
“Where?”
“To get the doctor for your daddy. And to see Amy.”
79
* * *
I followed Sean down the stairs.
“What about Daddy?”
I could smell the scent of wood smoke in his hair as I followed him. It needed a wash. I guessed his personal hygiene could do with some attention.
Sean stopped in the hall at the bottom, and his face looked perplexed. “Is Daddy hurt real bad?”
I stared in at Jack on the living-room couch. He was snoring, his head still to one side, his lips slightly parted.
I felt those conflicting emotions rage through me again. Part of me felt no pity for him, only a burning hatred for the eight years of hell he put me through. I kept telling myself that I wanted him to pay for abducting our children.
Another part of me felt stirrings of love and concern.
And that conflict troubled me.
I led Sean into the grimy kitchen. There was an old couch in a corner with burgundy cushions, the arms badly scuffed, and one of the seat cushions was missing. I had Sean sit down and tried to take a minute to pull myself together. The kitchen clock read 1:30 a.m.