by Alona Jarden
I waited a long time after Andrew left the cabin before I came out of my room. Just as I’d pretended to be offended, I knew he could have pretended to go out.
Only after I was sure he wasn’t coming back did I climb up and reach for the shoe box. In doing so, I’d suddenly realized that I could no longer trust a word that came out of his mouth. I also assumed that, once he discovered what I had done in his absence, he wouldn’t rush to leave me there alone again either.
We’d lost faith in each other and sadness filled my heart.
My hands trembled with fear as I sat down on the sofa and laid the hidden treasure on my knees.
I placed each of my palms on the lid and froze.
I wanted Andrew to be there with me, and wanted to open the box all alone.
I felt that it was important that he was there to reveal the last part of the puzzle of my own life and I was afraid that, without him, I wouldn’t know how to assemble the pieces in the right order.
I remembered the instructions that put me into a state of relaxation and performed them on my own. I took a deep breath, slowly exhaled the air out from my lungs, and repeated the action several times until I felt I was ready to remove the lid and discover things at my own pace.
The first things waiting for me were the pictures he had already shown me the night before. The same pictures I had left scattered on the floor when I’d left him furiously to bury my face in my pillow and fall asleep in tears.
I studied each of them again and was amazed at how, with every additional glance, more and more memories came up to the surface and overwhelmed me. I must admit that, on the one hand, I liked the freedom Andrew's absence provided me, but on the other, I also lost the ability to ask questions and find out what the meaning of everything that came to my mind was.
I don’t know how long I forced myself to look at those pictures again. I knew it was a way to escape, but I didn’t care. I was running away from my gained independence, I was preparing myself for new revelations and I had no one there to stop me except me.
"Come on, Kate," I said aloud, remembering how my father used to laugh at me when I did that at home. At once, I remembered him. My father.
I didn’t know what I would discover about him at the end of my journey, but I knew what I already knew about him. I knew he was a sensitive, warm and loving father to me for as long as I could remember. I knew he’d abandoned everything else in his life and had invested himself entirely in the fulfillment of my dreams.
I repeated time and again in my head the assurance that, whatever I found, my father would never hurt me. Suddenly, I wondered if that had always been true, and I hated Andrew for making me look at him differently.
A closed plastic bag with photographs and documents caught my eye. The caption hinted that it had once belonged to the Costa Rican Police Department. It was obvious that it was a part of the puzzle I hadn’t yet seen.
With a deep breath, I reached into it and pulled out its contents. I was astonished to discover that the sights, which until that moment had only returned to haunt me in my sleep, were once again before my eyes. But my body's response wasn’t what I had expected it to be.
I thought my heart would pound like crazy, and the tears would leak uncontrollably. I thought my breathing would turn rapid and feared it would make my head spin. But none of that happened.
I flipped one page after another, calmly regarding the puddles of blood my father claimed were the result of a horror film I wasn’t supposed to see, and I strongly agreed with him. These were horrifying scenes I shouldn’t have seen. No one should see their mother and father lying in their own blood on the kitchen floor but, looking at the pictures, I suddenly remembered that I actually had.
Within seconds, the sensations came back to me so vividly and clearly but, instead of running away from them, I wanted to feel the fracture that had opened up inside me that day more accurately.
The last page waiting for me in the pile of papers that had been in that plastic bag was a detailed crime scene report, explaining the events as they had happened. I read about Andrew and his testimony to the police, about the findings from what they described as 'the murder scene', and learned how they had no directions for further questioning as to who was responsible for the situation or where I had disappeared to.
"Damn you, Andrew. You walked straight into a police trap and still I have no idea who is the man who raised me."
I rummaged through the shoebox and could swear I heard Andrew's voice echo in my head, asking me to wait for him and demanding that I learned to postpone gratification.
I knew that if he had shown me the police evidence himself, he would have insisted that we stop and let the new information sink in before we continued to dig into the truth. I could even see his reasoning behind that request, but I couldn’t do that.
I spread the horrible pictures on the living room carpet and forced myself to look at them for more minutes than I could count.
I went on and plunged myself deeper and deeper into relaxation mode, but I was no longer afraid, because I didn’t feel I was there alone.
Andrew's voice remained in my head, telling me to take it slow, to delve into my breathing, to listen to the air coming in and out of my body and so on. Even in his absence, he was accompanying me with patience, until I dared to send myself back to that day, which I hadn’t even known existed in real life until five days before.
"I am sitting on the floor and I'm drawing." I felt the need to say out loud what I saw happening around me behind my closed eyes. "You're also there." I smiled at no one sitting opposite me. "Even then you were just a little pervert, sitting in a corner and staring at me with a googly look in your eyes."
I tried to see the sketch I was working on, but without any success, as my gaze was sent to the door of my closed room. Loud shouts were sounding from the lower floor…
"Tell him the truth!" I heard a voice I couldn’t recognize.
"You're totally crazy, Christian." My mother's reaction made me wonder if the argument was between her and Uncle Christian, her good old friend I knew very well.
"Tell him, tell him the whole truth now. I'm not going to wait any longer."
"Christian, you're acting crazy."
"I'm not playing anymore. I'm telling you."
"Dude, calm down. You're too passionate. I suggest you leave my house immediately, before either one of us do or say something we’ll regret!" I heard my father demand of him, and the rest of the spoken words exchanged between them remained unclear.
I heard my mother screaming in anger or agony, I couldn't tell the difference. Objects sounded like they were being thrown across the room, a glass shattering was the last sound before silence.
A chilling silence.
"What was that?" I heard Andrew asking me.
"I do not know."
"Katarina!" My heart missed a beat when I heard Uncle Christian's voice calling out to me and his footsteps coming up the stairs.
"Oh no!" Andrew panicked. "Do you think they'll get mad when they find out that I've sneaked into your room again?"
"I hope not. Do you think that's why they shouted? You should hide. Now Andrew!" I managed to see him quickly squeezing behind the door of my room in an effort to hide from the adults before I went out into the hallway, towards Uncle Christian's footsteps as he continued climbing up the stairs.
A terrible shudder ran through my body as I sat on the carpet in the cabin and received a complete answer about the identity of the man who had raised me. My eyes were closed, but I felt like it was the first time in my life I could see things clearly. I could see his smiling face staring at me, as I stood at the top of the stairs. I saw the bloodstains on his clothes, his face and his hands as he reached them out to me. But, for some reason, I didn’t feel I was afraid of him.
"Uncle Christian, are you hurt? Are you bleeding?" I heard my innocent voice asking him.
"No, Katarina. It's not my blood, sweetheart. Something very
bad happened."
"What happened?"
"Come to me and I'll explain." I saw him climb a few more steps, sending his bloody arms toward me, and I let him lift me up in the air. "I'll explain everything later but, first, I need you to close your eyes, my little princess."
"Why do I have to close my eyes?" I scoffed on the rug in the cabin at the lack of understanding I showed as a child for the situation.
"It's because something very bad happened to your parents and I don’t want you to see it, but you have nothing to worry about, Katarina. You know me, don’t you?"
"I do." I smiled as an adult when I felt how I’d smiled at him as a child.
"So you have nothing to worry about. I'll save you." He put his hand over my eyes as he began to make his way down the stairs and out of my house, but I’d known in my heart that something was wrong. Something in me had caused me to wriggle, to fight, to release my eyes away from behind his palm and see what had happened, and so I had.
Suddenly, everything came back to me.
The puddles of blood that were revealed, my mother lying there with her eyes still open, my father sitting on the floor with his back against the kitchen cupboards, and how I’d no longer wanted Uncle Christian to save me.
I remembered clearly thinking he wasn’t the one who could save me.
While sitting safely in the cabin, I saw myself calling out at full throttle to Andrew, and I felt that I was finally experiencing everything I had expected I would when I went back to that day's memory. My heartbeat was racing, tears ran down my cheeks and my rapid breath made my head spin, making it clear that I had discovered enough.
I told myself to take a deep breath. I reminded my consciousness that I was far away from there. I whispered in my head that I was no longer a helpless child, that I was safe and sound, and only then, was I thrown from that memory journey back to the carpet in the living room.
I think I spent hours on end crying after that.
At first, I was sad for my mother and father and, then, as the images and feelings seeped into me, I felt sad for me. For the girl I used to be. For Katarina.
I forced myself to re-examine all the things I’d taken for granted in my life. I thought of the false pretenses for the relationship I shared with the man I called 'father', but still wasn’t able to believe he was responsible for the slaughter I had seen.
I repeated the words he’d said to me and wanted so much to believe that he’d done all that only because he’d found himself in an impossible situation.
I prayed that when Andrew came back to the cabin, he would be able to help me reveal that my father, Uncle Christian, had done as he’d said and had saved me.
I wanted so much to discover that he’d taken me from a bad and dark world and had created another one, wanting nothing but good things for me. But, I knew that the chances of that happening were slim to none.
I thought of the uncanny resemblance I shared with the woman that had carried me in her womb and was filled with longing for her touch. A touch that had never come to my mind before but, at that moment, when I remembered so much, it was so far away, it hurt.
I also thought about myself as Kate.
I thought of how I’d taken myself as a clear and predictable thing, but I hadn’t really known anything about my life.
So many questions had never come to mind, like, who was I? I felt I was no longer Kate, yet I wasn’t Katarina either and, if so, who the hell was I?
Chapter 28
Mr. Briggs
"Mr. Briggs?" Officer's Swenson's voice sounded enthusiastic at dusk, on the other side of the phone.
"Yes?" I was filled with hope. "Please tell me you’ve found her."
"Not yet." I exhaled in frustration. "We haven’t located Kate yet, but we're getting closer, Mr. Briggs."
"How close?"
"We located the yellow vehicle that was seen in the kidnapping video and we believe we have identified the man with the baseball cap."
"You know who took her? I demand that you tell me who it is!"
"I apologize, but I can’t do that."
"Is he there? Is he at the station?"
"With insufficient evidence we had to let him go, but two of our patrols are following him in the hopes that he will lead them to where Kate is being held."
"And is he leading your guys to her?"
"Unfortunately, he doesn’t seem to be a fool."
"Officer Swenson, I promise I won’t do anything reckless if you reveal his identity. I just want to know who he is," I asked as I put my shoes on so that I could leave the house quickly.
"I can’t tell you that, Mr. Briggs."
"I swear I won’t try to contact him," I lied.
"That's a shame, since I'm actually calling to tell you that you're welcome to do just that."
"You are?"
"As I said before, following him hasn’t born fruit, so I instructed two of my officers to bring him to us. I'm calling you now, because I promised to keep you in the loop. When you get to the station, you can see him."
"Please, I'm begging you. Just tell me his name." I started to build a plan in which I would beat them to him, kick every one of his teeth in, until he told me what he had done with my beloved daughter.
"You know I can’t do that, Mr. Briggs, but as I said, you're more than welcome to come here. I have a strong feeling that, this time, you're not going to leave disappointed."
It felt like the drive there took forever.
I greatly appreciated her efforts to atone for my arrest by updating me on their progress. I also knew the limits of the police abilities and I was afraid that because of those restrictions, they wouldn’t be able to find her as quickly as I would, if I knew who her kidnapper was.
All traffic lights insisted on turning red when I got to them, leaving me too much time to reflect on what I would have to tell Kate when she came back to me.
It was clear that I could no longer lie to her. I’d run out of options and it was time to reveal the truth to her, but I wasn’t sure I could do that without frightening her or making her wonder about things I had never meant to reveal.
I looked to my right and left, at the city we had lived in for almost twenty years. I knew every turn and street and wondered if Kate's extraordinary mind would be the end of my freedom, as she would surly connect the dots, thus painting a reality different from the one I had created for her.
My thoughts wandered to the beginning of our journey, as we left Costa Rica for the United States, when a great smile of longing had been spread across my face.
"Where are we going?" she murmured more than said as I mixed her grape juice with a powerful anti-allergy drug, to make her blurry.
"We're going home, my pretty girl. That's it. Our vacation is over and it's time to get back to our life."
"Were we on vacation?"
"Sure, silly. Don’t you remember?"
"I remember you saying something bad happened."
"I don’t think I said such a thing. What do you think happened?" I pretended not to know exactly what she meant.
"You were there, Uncle Christian. You shouted and Mom answered. I heard Dad ask you to leave and then there were some loud noises and things broke."
"Well that's strange? Why don’t I remember that?"
"You told me something bad had happened."
"I did?"
"You did. Your hands were bloody. Your clothes also. And Mom and Dad..."
"My hands were bloody, you say? It sounds like you had a really bad dream!"
"It wasn’t a dream, Uncle Christian. I saw Mom and Dad and they were on the floor in the kitchen with lots of blood around them. I know you saw it too. You also had lots of blood on your hands and on your clothes."
"I don’t have anything on me, sweetheart. Look!" I waved my palms that, just a few hours before, had been painted red, at her. "Are you sure it wasn’t a dream?"
"I don’t think I dreamed it."
"Yes, yes, honey. You
dreamed all of it. Go back to sleep. Everything is fine, my beautiful baby girl. From now on, everything will be just fine," I promised and from there on, I had done everything in my power to stand by my words.
During that trip, I began to implement a different reality in her. I told her that I had adopted her from an orphanage when she was just a baby, that her family name would be Briggs and that I had chosen to shorten her name, Katarina, to Kate, the name I had originally agreed upon with her mother. Finally, I told her that she had never met her parents.
The border policeman at the crossing had been more interested in the roll of bills attached to the forged documents I had placed in his hand than in my child, who was asleep in the backseat. Thus, the greatest task of my life began.
At first, I would sit a few times a day with my little daughter, repeating to her time and again the story of her adoption. For the first few days, she insisted on correcting me. She kept saying she did have parents, that she remembered them very well and that something bad had happened to them. But, as time passed, cracks began to appear in the reality she remembered and I made sure to reinforce the new images for her.
First, her version changed to me being the one who had saved her. About a month later she acted like she already knew she had been adopted from an orphanage and it was not long after that, that she believed wholeheartedly that the horrors she remembered were etched in her head from the television screen. Only then did I feel I could expose her to the rest of the world.
As long as I wasn’t completely sure that she would continue to stick to the reality I had created for her, even during a playdate with others, she stayed at home with me. I led her with false things she could remember on her own, like patiently explaining why it was too early to enroll her in school. I gave her everything I wanted to give over the years. Everything that was taken away from me. I gave her warmth, love and endless support. And we were happy together.
