by Lisa Gardner
Alex smiled. It creased the corners of his deep blue eyes. He was a good-looking guy, she thought, not for the first time. Salt-and-pepper hair, distinguished features. And hers. All hers. Who knew one workaholic detective could get so lucky?
She pried Jack away from her legs with a promise of future grilled cheese. That bought her enough time to shower, then throw on her favorite dark blue Ann Taylor pantsuit, which was her outfit of choice for press conferences.
In the kitchen, she poured two glasses of orange juice, then set to work slicing up a brick of cheddar. Her shoulder twinged again, and she couldn’t completely suppress the wince.
“You overdid it,” Alex said, coming up behind her.
“Just need a little ice.”
“Or some rest, or a good night’s sleep, or a little less stress.”
“Blah, blah, blah.”
“Phil’s worried about you. Said you were on scene most of the night. That’s hardly restricted duty.”
“Phil’s secretly a woman. And worries about me more than my own mother.”
“Crime happens,” Alex said. He was already opening the freezer door, bringing out her favorite ice pack, perfectly molded to the shape of her shoulder. “And it will continue to happen, whether you’re working or not.”
“Especially if Flora Dane has her way,” D.D. muttered.
“Who?”
“Guy we found—” She glanced around the kitchen, searched for signs of Jack, who was probably in the family room, stacking Legos. Seeing that they were alone, D.D. continued: “Guy we found dead started his evening abducting Flora Dane. Who turns out to be no stranger to kidnappings. She turned the tables on him. Burned him to death with supplies she found in his trash.”
“No kidding?”
“I don’t like it. Fourth time she’s put herself in a dangerous situation since her return five years ago. What happens next? She takes on the entire Russian mob?”
“Better her than me,” Alex observed. “You think she’s a vigilante?”
“Don’t you? Seeking out predators, time and time again?”
“So says the woman on restricted duty who’s about to go back to work.”
“I’m a workaholic.” D.D. fired up the first grilled cheese sandwich. “What’s her excuse?”
Alex rolled his eyes. “Sit, ice your shoulder. I can flip a sandwich.”
She sat. She iced her shoulder. She relaxed. At least as much as a woman like her could. Then in came Jack for a fresh round of sticky little-boy hugs and a fresh pat-down for hoarded Candy Land character cards.
Normal life. Real life. Her life.
Then, much as her husband predicted and respected, she headed back to work.
Chapter 11
THE FIRST THING THAT HITS ME as I walk up the three flights of stairs to my tiny one-bedroom unit is the scent of freshly baked muffins. My mother. Under stress, she bakes. Cookies, brownies, breads, homemade granola, scones. I’m told during my abduction the entire community, not to mention the victim specialists, put on fifteen pounds.
She has a key to my unit. Three actually, as I’m partial to that many locks. Having opened my front door, however, she has left it unlocked behind her. Now, all I have to do is push it open. I know she doesn’t do these things to consciously spite me, and yet already I can feel my shoulders tense. I’m not looking forward to the conversation to come. Most likely, she isn’t either. Hence, muffins.
She’s in the kitchen, bent over the oven, checking her project when I walk in. The police haven’t given me back my real clothes after the night’s misadventure. Did they even find them? I have no idea. If they did, the items would be kept as evidence. In the meantime, the district detective rustled up oversize gray sweatpants and a navy-blue Boston Police hoodie, most likely extra clothes stashed in the back of some officer’s vehicle. Both items are huge. I have to hold up the elastic waistband of the sweatpants as I walk. My feet remain bare, meaning I don’t make much noise as I pad across the hardwood.
I chose this unit for several reasons. One, being on the third story, it’s harder for an intruder to access. Two, the old brownstones are famous for their high ceilings, bull’s-eye molding, and bay windows. My unit is small but flooded with light from the old windows, and charming with its battered oak floors and beautiful wooden trim. Is there water damage on the ceiling? Sure. Peeling linoleum in the kitchen, not one of the owner’s better renovation ideas? Yep. A shower that only yields hot water after three or four strategic whacks? Well, a girl like me can hardly afford the best.
Besides, I like my unit’s flaws. It’s scarred. Like me. We belong together, not to mention the elderly couple who are my landlords know my story and charge me only a fraction of the going rate for rent. Having turned down the requisite book deal and movie rights, reduced rent is as close to a postabduction perk as I’m going to get. And given that I’ve never returned to college and still have no idea what I’m going to do with the rest of my life, money is an issue. For the past few months, I’ve been working down the street at a pizza parlor popular with college students and local families. My hourly wage is miserly, the tips only slightly better. But the work is mindless, and I appreciate that.
Is this the life I thought I’d be living at twenty-seven? No. But then, when I first left my mother’s farm for college in the big city, what did I know? I enrolled to study French, for God’s sake, mostly because I liked the idea of going to Paris. Maybe I would’ve become a teacher. Or returned to Maine and set up a small farm of my own, involving goats. I’d sell goat milk, goat cheese, maybe even goat-milk lotions and goat-milk soaps. All with labels in French. I was happy enough, naive enough back then, to have those kinds of dreams.
But everyone’s dreams change, not just the dreams of girls who wind up kidnapped for four hundred and seventy-two days.
At least I’m not dealing with kids. Because that happens too. Held captive long enough, pregnancy, babies, can ensue. Jacob, however, was adamant on that subject. Once a month, he forced me to swallow some god-awful homemade brew he swore would prevent pregnancy. It tasted like turpentine and led to immediate, excruciating stomach cramps. The sexual assault nurse who performed my initial exam had been curious about the potion. Though, in her professional opinion, it was my extreme emaciation and total lack of body fat that probably truly did the job. Frankly, I didn’t even have a period through most of my captivity; I was that thin.
Now, I watch my mother straighten in front of the stove, muffin tin clutched in an oven-mitten hand. She turns, spots me, and immediately stills. Her gaze takes in the oversize sweats that obviously aren’t mine, then the garbage smeared across my cheek, my hair.
She doesn’t speak. I watch her chest fill, a conscious inhale. Then the slow exhale as no doubt she counts to ten. Wondering yet again how to survive a daughter like me.
At her throat is a necklace with a single silver charm. A dainty but perfectly rendered fox.
She bought that after I went missing. When the FBI prepped her for the first press conference by dismissing her usual attire of wide-legged yoga pants and flowing handwoven wraps such as the kind favored by Afghan tribal elders. No more bohemian, organic potato farmer from Maine. Her goal was to look like Mom, with a capital M. An instantly recognizable and relatable maternal figure who would appeal to my captor’s kinder sentiments, assuming he had any.
They stuck her in jeans and a button-up white shirt. Probably the plainest outfit she’d ever worn in her life, not to mention the real shoes versus her usual Birkenstocks.
I didn’t see that first press conference. Or the second. I think I caught the third, when things were truly heating up. Even then, spying her, my mom, on the TV, standing in front of the microphone, flanked by suited FBI agents, wearing a light blue button-up shirt, more jeans . . .
My mom, but not my mom. A surreal moment in a life that had already taken a comp
letely, horrifically surreal turn. I would’ve shut the TV off, wasted my rare privilege, rather than see this mom-but-not-my-mom. Except then I spotted the fox charm. Nestled in the hollow of her throat.
I never heard her words that day. But I knelt on the floor of that cheap hotel room and placed my finger against the charm around her neck, my finger so large, her form so diminutive on the small TV, that the tip of my index finger obliterated most of her head.
I might have cried. I don’t really remember. I’d already been gone months by that point. I don’t know if I had any tears left.
But I tried to touch her, this mom-but-not-my-mom. And for one moment, I was a child again, running wild on the farm, throwing golf balls for the fox kits and laughing as they batted them across the tall grass.
Now, she sets down the muffin tin on top of the stove. Her hands are shaking slightly.
“Are you hungry?” she asks, her voice almost normal. Her farm is three and a half hours north of Boston. Assuming Samuel called her the minute after I contacted him, she got into her truck immediately and has been driving since the crack of dawn.
“I should shower,” I hear myself say.
“Of course. Take your time.”
There doesn’t seem to be anything else to say. I pad away, still holding the waistband of the sweats. Four whacks of the old plumbing later, the water turns steaming hot. I shed the baggy sweats. I step into the hard spray. And I let the water scald me.
For a moment, I can almost smell it again. Freshly roasted human skin. Like a pork barbecue.
Then the moment passes, and I close my eyes. The void fills me, and I welcome its emptiness.
To always be alone in a crowded room.
The only time I ever feel safe anymore.
* * *
AFTER MY ABDUCTION, when I returned to the land of the living, one of Samuel’s first tasks was to develop my postcaptivity support plan. Basically, he conducted an assessment of my coping skills, while also working with the victim specialists who’d assisted my family to understand the level of support network already in place.
While Samuel is an expert in post-traumatic stress, he informed me that he’s not a fan of the term. In his opinion, it’s often applied too readily and as a one-size-fits-all model. He’s worked with dozens and dozens of survivors over the years, and while all of us experienced trauma, only a few genuinely qualify as suffering from PTSD. In fact, he warned my mother explicitly about making such an assumption, or even such excuses on my behalf.
Survivors make it because they learn to adapt. Adaptation is coping. Coping is strength.
My mother, my brother, myself should not expect me to be weak now, nor actively foster dependency. Instead, we should all focus on reinforcing my natural resilience, which got me through the ordeal in the first place.
As for myself, the biggest mistake survivors can make, according to Samuel, is second-guessing their actions now that they’re safe. So, no wondering why I went to the bar in the first place that night. Or why I didn’t struggle harder. Or escape the first time Jacob left the cab of his truck unlocked. No matter that Jacob had pulled over his rig in the middle of nowhere and he was standing right there, taking a leak in a drainage ditch.
The past is the past. It doesn’t matter what mistakes I might or might not have made. What matters is that I survived.
Samuel was right about the pitfalls of second-guessing. I don’t suffer nightmares about Jacob as much as I suffer terrible anxiety over the might-have-beens, should-have-dones. My first enrollment in a self-defense course was an attempt to help mediate those nerves, make me feel more comfortable. Ironically enough, my mother supported that step, even took that first class with me. Samuel had approved as well. Reinforcing a feeling of personal strength, excellent.
It was right about the fourth or fifth class, and my growing interest in marksmanship, that my mother became concerned. I was living back home those days, and I overheard her discussing it with Samuel during one of his check-ins trying to assess how either of us, both of us, were doing.
Samuel is not a therapist, and certainly not my therapist. He had, however, recommended counseling for me, or therapeutic support, as he liked to call it. I’d resisted all attempts, though. Private sessions would by definition involve telling my story, and I was sticking to my guns: I’d told my story once, as promised. Never again.
Ironically enough, it was my mother who took Samuel’s advice. I moved on to tactical driving classes, while she started meeting with the local pastor once a week.
Another one of those realizations that all survivors have to make: My abduction hadn’t just victimized me but my entire family too. My mother, who, after the third postcard, pretty much gave up on the farm and turned her attention full-time to reaching out to a depraved kidnapper in the desperate hope of seeing her daughter again. My brother, who dropped out of college, first to answer endless police questions and later because, in his own words, how could he possibly concentrate knowing I was out there, somewhere, needing him?
Major crimes are like cancer. They take over, demanding an entire family’s full resources. My brother became a social media expert, building a Facebook page, running Twitter feeds. And, frankly, trying to manage the press who camped out in the yard for weeks at a time, especially after Jacob mailed out a new postcard, offering fresh bait.
My mother spent her days with the victim advocates, as well as with fellow parents of missing kids. They offered support, mentorship, as she sought to come up to speed quickly on law enforcement, criminal behavior, media management. She got to learn how to craft messages for strategic press conferences, while also making the rounds on the morning news shows and nightly cable stations. She got to handwrite replies to hundreds, then thousands of letters from total strangers wishing for my safe return. And she got to endure other notes, Facebook posts, stating an obviously immoral teenage girl like me got exactly what I deserved.
In theory, there are some financial resources available to victims of crime. The specialists diligently produced paperwork enabling my mother to possibly collect a couple of thousand here, or apply for a grant there. My mother will tell you she had neither the time nor mental focus. No, having your child abducted is a fairly impoverishing ordeal. My sin of heading out for a night of spring break drinking becoming my entire family’s punishment.
In our case, the community rallied. Neighbors showed up and worked the farm in their free time. They got seeds started, crops planted, and then, as the ordeal continued to drag on, dealt with the fall harvest. The church held bake sales. Local businesses sent over checks. Local restaurants and delis provided food.
My mother will never leave her farm. Probably wouldn’t have anyway. But the land, her place, her community, it’s her solace, her anchor. It was there when she needed it most, and without it, I don’t know what she would’ve done.
She has her place in the world.
It’s my brother and I who remain adrift.
Darwin left. A year after my return, when I couldn’t magically smile on command. When the pancakes I once loved were now a smell I couldn’t stomach, he’d had enough. The family protector melted down, had a little episode involving driving way too fast with no headlights, and my mother realized all the love and attention I didn’t want should be turned on him instead.
After many heartfelt discussions, she sent him to Europe. Got him a passport, a rail ticket, a backpack, and sent him off with a kiss and a hug. Go forth, young man, and find yourself, and all that.
Darwin doesn’t send postcards. He knows better. But from time to time, we get a call. He’s in London now. Likes it a lot. Is thinking of enrolling in the London School of Economics. Certainly, he’s bright enough, while having some pretty interesting topics to write about for his college entrance essay.
I think, more than anything else in the world, I would like my brother to have a happy
ending. I wish he’d fall in love, land a great job, build a life. Then my mistake doesn’t have to be his punishment anymore.
Which is funny, because I think he would say exactly the same about me.
I’ve showered long enough. Soaped. Shampooed. Conditioned. Done everything except feel clean.
The smell of burning human flesh.
Not pork. Maybe more like roast beef.
I saved a life, I remind myself as I whack the ancient faucet to off. Another girl is safe because of me. Another animal is off the streets.
The sun is out. My apartment smells like blueberry muffins. This is one of those moments when I should stop, give thanks for the day.
I think of Jacob. I don’t want to. I just can’t help myself.
I remember Jacob Ness, the man who took me, broke me down, and then rebuilt me for four hundred and seventy-two days.
And in the back of my mind, he’s laughing at me.
* * *
MY MOTHER HAS CLEANED THE KITCHEN. If I hadn’t emerged dressed and freshly showered when I did, I’m pretty sure she would’ve taken down and washed the French-printed valances she bought and installed last year. My mother is a farmer mostly because she needs to keep busy. She’s one of those people who require a long list of chores, or her life lacks all meaning.
She’s dressed like herself today. Black wide-legged yoga pants with a funky print on the bottom hem, and a loose-fitting sea-foam-green, 100 percent organic cotton wrapped shirt. Over that, she’s thrown on a man’s unbuttoned gray flannel shirt. In Maine she’d blend right in. In Boston, not quite so much.
About six months after I returned home, she boxed up all the clothes the victim specialists had helped her buy for the press conferences. Together, we took the items to the thrift shop that operates out of the congregational church’s basement. The ladies were pleased to receive such high-quality, hardly worn clothing items.