Gathering Shadows

by Nancy Mehl

  My father looked as if he wanted to argue, but suddenly the fight seemed to go out of him. “Whatever. I don’t care anymore.”

  “Why don’t we go inside?” Reuben said, holding open the front door.

  My father walked slowly up the porch stairs and followed Reuben into Esther’s living room. She came out of the kitchen and looked surprised to see someone else with us.

  I quickly introduced her to my father and then asked if we could have some time alone.

  “Of course, dear,” she said. “I was on my way up to see how Zac’s feeling today. You take your time. I’ll stay upstairs until you’re finished.” She offered us a sweet smile. “Can I get anyone something to drink or eat?”

  “Thanks, Esther. If we need anything, we’ll get it,” Reuben said.

  She nodded. “Coffee’s still on. Just took some turnovers out of the oven. You all help yourself.”

  I noticed my father staring at her, taking in her simple clothing. As far as I knew, he’d never known any Amish or Mennonite people.

  “Thank you, Mrs. Lapp,” he said. “I’m sorry to put you out.”

  “No trouble at all. Wynter is such a blessing to me. And please, call me Esther.”

  “Thank you, Esther.”

  My dad’s charm was still intact, but he’d toned it down. I was grateful. His phony persona would have been especially embarrassing in front of the elderly Mennonite woman.

  We waited until Esther disappeared up the stairs. Then I sat down on the couch with Reuben. Dad sat in the rocking chair next to us. He looked as if he’d aged ten years in the last twenty-four hours. I’d had so much hope that I’d finally found Ryan. If Dad was here to tell me they’d discovered his body, it would crush me. I was grateful Reuben was by my side.

  “What’s wrong with Zac?” Dad asked.

  I explained that he was ill and it was probably food poisoning.

  “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  “I don’t think you’re here to talk about Zac.”

  “You’re right.” He took a deep breath. “This . . . this is very difficult for me to say.”

  “Does it have something to do with Ryan?” My voice shook, but I didn’t care.

  He shrugged. “I don’t know. That’s the problem. All these years, I’ve been certain that what happened to your brother had nothing to do with what I did. But now . . .” He stared at me with tears in his eyes. “Where is this boy who looks so much like my son?”

  “We’re not sure. Reuben and I were on our way to find him when you got here. His family suddenly left town.”

  Dad ran his hand through his hair. “You . . . you can’t let them get away. It’s possible this young man could be your brother.”

  “But you always said he was dead.”

  “And I was convinced of that. Until last night.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  My father stood up and paced back and forth in front of me. Reuben and I waited in silence until he sat down again.

  “I had no plans to ever tell you this, and I certainly never wanted your mother to know. But the picture of that boy—”

  “Dad, you’re scaring me. What’s going on?”

  He stared down at the floor for several seconds, and then took a deep breath. When he finally looked up, I was shocked by his expression. My father was afraid. Reuben reached over and took my hand, as if he knew something awful was coming. I felt it too.

  “As you know, the night you were born, your mother and I couldn’t make it to the hospital in St. Louis because of a major winter storm. We only got as far as a small rural hospital about two miles from our house.”

  “I don’t understand. What does this have to do with Ryan?”

  “Please, Emily. Don’t interrupt me. This is hard enough.” His eyes darted toward the front door, and for a moment, I wondered if he planned to suddenly run out like he had at the restaurant.

  “When we got to the hospital, there were only a few people there. Just one nurse in obstetrics. The storm had closed roads all around, and no one could make it through.” He took another deep breath and blew it out slowly. “We were worried at first, but the nurse assured us that she could deliver our baby without any problem. There was another expectant mother there. She and her boyfriend had made it to the hospital minutes before the storm hit.”

  I turned to stare at Reuben. Had my father lost his mind? Why were we talking about something that happened years before Ryan was even born?

  “Your mother had a terrible time, Emily. It wasn’t the nurse’s fault. She did everything she could. When our baby was born, she was blue and not breathing. The nurse rushed her into another room to try to help her breathe.”

  “What do you mean?” My voice came out in a whisper, but I couldn’t seem to speak any louder. I wasn’t certain anyone could hear me.

  “Our baby died, Emily. But the other baby, also a little girl, was born healthy. The nurse told me the parents didn’t plan to keep her. They were going to put her up for adoption. That’s when we . . . we came up with a plan. At the time it seemed so right. So perfect. We would take the healthy baby, and your mother would never know the truth. She wasn’t emotionally strong, you know. There had been . . . problems. I was afraid of what would happen to her if she knew her baby had died.” He turned to look at me, his face void of emotion. “We were doing well financially. My company was growing. So I talked to the parents, offered them fifty thousand dollars for their child, which they snapped up. I also gave the nurse a large sum of money, although she didn’t ask for it. We took the other baby to your mother’s room and told her she was doing just fine. When the doctor finally arrived, the nurse told him about the baby who died and presented the living baby as ours. The doctor didn’t question it.”

  I would have stood up, but I couldn’t actually feel my legs. “Are you telling me . . . ? Are you saying . . . ?”

  “You’re not our biological child, Emily.” Tears ran down his face. “It never mattered one bit, you know. You’re my daughter. You were mine from the moment I held you in my arms.”

  “I can’t . . . I can’t believe it.”

  “I know this is hard, but you’ve got to let me finish. I need to tell you why this might have something to do with Ryan’s disappearance.” He clasped his hands together as if preparing to pray. “Everything seemed fine. Everyone was happy. Even though my heart was broken by the loss of our little girl, we had you. You were everything any parent could ever want. Eventually, I began to feel as if my baby hadn’t really died, and the feelings of grief lessened. Your mother’s mental health improved, and over the years, I lost any regrets about my decision that night. Our lives went on, and six years later we had Ryan. He was perfectly healthy. We had a happy family.”

  “What about my birth mother and father?” I asked. “Did they ever contact you? Didn’t they want to see me?” I felt such a deep wound in my soul, yet these were people I’d never met. Never known.

  “No, I’m sorry. I did keep track of them though. They were both killed in a motorcycle accident when you were five.”

  I nodded, feeling numb and stupid, as if I couldn’t completely understand what my father was saying. My mind grasped the words, but somewhere inside, they didn’t make sense. I couldn’t seem to process them.

  “When you were ten and Ryan was almost four, I got a call. It was a man who called himself Mac. He told me he knew the nurse who’d helped us. She’d recently died of cancer. But on her deathbed, she admitted to him what happened that night. She felt guilty about hiding the truth, even though she still believed she’d done the right thing. This man began to blackmail me. Threatened to call the authorities and tell them what we did. The results could have been devastating. You could have been taken away from us, and your mother . . . well, I knew she couldn’t stand the strain. It would have destroyed her. So I paid. About a year later, he called again. And I paid again. For the first time, I began to wonder if what we did was wrong. Then I’d look at y
ou—you were so beautiful and so special—and I’d know, down deep inside, that you were always supposed to be ours.”

  “Then you could have adopted me, Dad. Legally. None of this had to happen.”

  “You’re wrong,” he said sadly. “Before you were born, your mother was hospitalized for a while due to severe depression. Thankfully, after you were born, she started getting better. But any attempt at adoption would have revealed the past, and we would have been denied.”

  “So you kept paying this man? For how long?”

  “Until I couldn’t pay him anymore. Until there wasn’t any more money. Basically, I’d given him everything I had. Even though I didn’t want to do it, I finally told him it was over. If he wanted to go the police, he’d just have to do it. But I warned him that they’d probably charge him with blackmail. The problem was, I had no idea who he was or how to find him. The only information I had was that he’d known the nurse who’d delivered you. Not much to go on.” He shook his head. “No matter what the consequences, I simply couldn’t take the strain anymore financially or emotionally. I’d started drinking, just trying to get through the day. Every morning I woke up with the fear that this might be the day I lost you—and your mother.” He rubbed his eyes. “I know there’s a hell, because I lived in it during those years.”

  “That’s why you changed,” I said, more to myself than to anyone else.

  “Yes, I was so stressed, I couldn’t keep it together. My drinking was supposed to numb the panic I faced every day, but it only made everything worse. In trying to protect my family, I failed you. The hurt I wanted to protect you from came anyway, and I was the instigator of it.” He met my gaze. “I’m sorry, Emily. Truly sorry.”

  At that moment, I couldn’t deal with his apology. Nor could I sort through his story. I was bombarded with emotions, feelings, and thoughts that were too overwhelming to sort through. I struggled to find the one thing that mattered most. “What does this have to do with Ryan?”

  He wiped his face on his sleeve. “After I refused to make any more payments, the phone calls stopped. He went away. Even though I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop, it didn’t. I came to the conclusion that my threat had worked. Bringing my sins to light would also illuminate his. He was afraid and that fear had driven him away. I’d just started to believe my nightmare was over when Ryan was abducted.”

  “Could this man have been behind Ryan’s disappearance? Could this be revenge for refusing to pay him?”

  “That certainly crossed my mind. I’d decided to tell the police everything and let the chips fall where they may when they told me about Harland Burroughs. They were convinced he’d taken Ryan. Their evidence was so compelling, I believed them. In the end, I decided not to say anything about the blackmailer. Your mother was distraught. Her doctor told me she was close to having a complete mental breakdown. Since it seemed the man who blackmailed me had nothing to do with your brother’s kidnapping, I couldn’t add to her emotional instability.”

  “But there were all kinds of discrepancies between the other children Burroughs took and Ryan. What if you were wrong?”

  “Going through that, it was like my mind was frozen. I had some questions, things that didn’t make sense, but the police explained every one of them away. I went along with them because I couldn’t think. Couldn’t process what had happened. I was trying to take care of you and your mother, and that took all my energy.”

  “If you cared so much about us,” I retorted, “why did you leave us? And why did you sell our home out from under us?”

  The tortured look in his eyes almost took my breath away. “I sold the house because we couldn’t afford to keep it, Emily. Our money was gone, and I’d spent so much time away from my company, I lost it.”

  “I thought you sold it and made a lot of money.”

  He shook his head. “I didn’t make a penny. In fact, the company was in debt. I turned it over to my vice-president before we were completely ruined. He was able to turn things around and save it. I didn’t have the energy or the will to do it. Losing Ryan took every spark of ambition out of me. I went into insurance just to keep food on the table. I make enough to get by, but I don’t have the kind of money we used to have.” He ran his hand over his face. I could see the weariness in his expression.

  “And I didn’t leave you, Emily. Your mother is the one who filed for divorce. It wasn’t my idea. I tried to change her mind, but she wouldn’t listen. I finally left because she told me she couldn’t stand to look at me anymore. I reminded her of Ryan. She blamed me for his kidnapping.”

  I was stunned. “I don’t understand. Why would she blame you?”

  A tear snaked down the side of his face. “That morning . . . that awful morning, I yelled at your brother about something so . . . so trivial. I tripped over his bike when I went out to get the paper. I’d told him time and again to put his bike up in the garage at night. But he’d forget and leave it out.” He shook his head. “I was under so much pressure. Stressed out about how I was going to keep us all afloat. I said something terrible to him. I didn’t mean it the way it came out, but the look on his face—”

  “What did you say?”

  “I said my life would be a lot easier if I didn’t have kids.” He covered his face with his hands, as if trying to hide from Reuben and me. When he took them down, I saw the guilt etched sharply into his features. “I know how that sounds. I’d just gotten off the phone with a client, and we’d been talking about the differences in our lives. He didn’t have children. My remark was in reference to him and said out of frustration. But after Ryan walked out the door, I realized how awful it was. Like—”

  “You didn’t want him.”

  “Yes. I planned to apologize when he got back. But he . . .”

  He didn’t need to finish the sentence. Ryan never came home.

  “But Ryan wasn’t taken because of something you said, D-Dad.” Suddenly, the word Dad felt foreign in my mouth. Like a word I didn’t understand and didn’t have the right to use.

  “I know that, but your mother blamed me. She believed Ryan was gone because he thought we didn’t want him.”

  “That’s crazy.”

  “It might not be true, Emily, but it felt true. It still feels true. Those words echo in my mind every day. They’ve never left me. They probably never will.”

  “Surely she realizes now that it wasn’t your fault.”

  “I think she does. But we don’t talk anymore. I have no idea if she still blames me.”

  The daughter inside me wanted to reassure him. Comfort him. But another part of me—the confused and hurt part—couldn’t do it. Couldn’t reach out. I looked sideways at Reuben, who had remained silent throughout my dad’s revelation. I could see the compassion in his eyes, but he didn’t say anything.

  I swung my attention back to my dad. “Why are you telling me this now?”

  “After talking to you yesterday, I began to wonder if Ryan might actually be alive. Maybe this boy really is Ryan.”

  “What changed your mind? The picture I showed you?”

  “The picture and . . . this. It was sent over a week ago, but I was out of town. I just opened it last night.”

  He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out an envelope. He handed it to me, and I took out the folded piece of yellow, lined, notepad paper inside. I unfolded it. In rather awkward handwriting were the words: Your son is alive and your daughter is in terrible danger. There’s no time to lose.

  Chapter

  Fifteen

  I left my father downstairs with Reuben. Although I needed time to deal with the truth about my birth, finding Ryan had to come first for now.

  I knocked on Zac’s door. It was opened by Esther.

  “Everything okay, honey?” she asked.

  I nodded. “Fine. I wonder if I could have a moment with Zac?”

  “Of course. I think he’s tired of my company anyway. Old women’s stories aren’t very interesting.”
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  “I’m sure that’s not true,” I said, trying to paste a smile on my face. “I’ll be downstairs in a few minutes.”

  After Esther closed the door behind her, I went over and stood next to Zac’s bed. He was sitting up, Clyde curled next to him. I was pleased to see that Zac’s color was much improved.

  “I have to ask you a couple of questions,” I said, keeping my voice low.

  “You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” he said. “I thought I was the sick one.”

  “I can’t get into everything now, but this has been quite a day, and it’s barely begun. You picked a really bad time to get sick.”

  “Sorry. Next time I’ll try to pick a more convenient time to almost die.”

  “I’m glad you’re okay, Zac. Now shut up and listen.”

  His eyes widened, but he didn’t say anything.

  “First of all, did you hear from your friend last night?”

  He shook his head. “Wow. I forgot all about that. I seem to remember hearing my phone ring, but I was too sick to answer it.” He gazed around the room. Then he pointed at the dresser. “There it is. Hand it to me.”

  I grabbed the phone and took it back to the bed. “Before you check your messages, tell me something. The fudge I gave you last night. Do you remember it now? You didn’t earlier.”

  At first Zac look confused. Then awareness changed his expression. “Oh yeah. The fudge. I do remember. I ate a couple of pieces, but it wasn’t very good. I threw the rest of it away.”

  “I looked in your trash. The box wasn’t there.”

  “I emptied my trash can before I went to bed. It was overflowing, so I took it downstairs. Tossed everything in the big metal trash bin on the side of the house.”

  “Okay. I’ll have to look out there.”

  “Why in the world . . .” Realization dawned. “You think the fudge made me sick?”

  “I have no idea, but when I asked Esther about it, she said she didn’t put that box in my room. There was a note too that said, ‘Welcome.’ I threw that away. Wish I’d kept it now.”