08-The Color of Joy

by Julianne MacLean

  There it was—my unstoppable optimism. My belief in something better just around the bend. If only she could see life that way, too, but sadly she was crippled by regret. She limped along through life because she couldn’t let go of the past.

  Sylvie backed away to lean against the counter and regarded me with a look of cool derision. “I’ll think about it, Jenn, but don’t clear out the guest room just yet. I can’t make any promises.”

  “Great,” I said with forced enthusiasm, finding it difficult to meet her resentful stare. I glanced around for my purse. “Take some time to think about it. I should probably go.”

  She said nothing as I walked out, and I wondered how Jake was going to feel about all this.

  Not good, I suspected.

  Chapter Fourteen

  I was in bed with the lights out when Jake returned home after midnight. Hearing the key in the door, I tossed the covers aside and padded in my bare feet to the kitchen where I found him standing in front of the open refrigerator.

  “There’s some leftover spaghetti from yesterday,” I said, striding forward to help him find it at the back of the fridge. “There it is.” I moved the milk and juice around to get my hands on it. “Here you go.”

  As I held it out to him, I realized he was staring at me intently. Deep stress lines creased his forehead.

  Jake and I had always been immensely close; we never fought. Our marriage was solid as a rock, but suddenly I was frightened for the future. A shiver moved through me.

  He closed the refrigerator door. Without a word, he took the plastic container out of my hands, set it on the counter and faced me.

  “I’m sorry,” he softly said. “I’ve been a jerk.”

  Feeling completely dumbfounded, I shook my head. “No, you haven’t.”

  “Yes, I have. When you told me you were pregnant, I reacted like…” He stopped and took a moment to compose his thoughts. “I was an ass. What’s weird about it is that I always wanted to have kids and be a dad. That’s the life I imagined, with a woman just like you. Then everything went wrong with Chelsea. The whole idea became…I don’t know. Tainted.”

  I still didn’t know what to say. I wasn’t sure where he was going with this.

  He took my hand, raised it to his lips and kissed it tenderly. “I love you more than anything in the world, Jenn, and I’m happy about this. Really, I mean it. I want to have this baby with you. I want us to be a family.”

  A cry of relief broke from my lips and I pulled his hands to my mouth to kiss them, over and over. He wrapped his arms around my waist and held me against his strong body. All the doubts and fears of the past few days flew away as I breathed in the familiar scent of him. My husband, whom I loved with all my heart and soul.

  “I’m so sorry,” he said again, burying his face in my neck and laying kisses there. “I promise I’ll be a good dad. I just wish I didn’t have to leave you. I don’t want to miss this, and I don’t want you to be alone.”

  Drawing back slightly, I looked up at his face in the glare of the kitchen lights and laid my open palm on his cheek. “You won’t miss it,” I said. “I’ll post pictures online every day. I was thinking about it, and we can do video chats. We’ll be in contact with each other constantly.”

  He touched his forehead to mine. “It won’t be the same if I can’t touch you and hold the baby when he comes. Or she, if it’s a girl.”

  I smiled as a warm, loving glow spread through my body. “The time will fly by and she’ll barely be three months old when you come home. Think how incredible that will be. Everything will be great and…” I stopped for a moment, wondering if I should tell him about Sylvie now or wait until I was certain she was actually coming.

  “What is it?” Jake’s brows pulled together with a look of suspicion. It was impossible to hide anything from him.

  Backing away, I moved to heat up the spaghetti. “I got a call from Sylvie tonight,” I explained as I peeled the lid off the container. “John just broke up with her.”

  “Uh, oh…” Jake replied ominously. “Was she all right?”

  I shrugged. “Jury’s still out on that one.”

  “How long did it take you to talk her off the ledge?” he asked.

  I slid him a knowing look as I placed the spaghetti container inside the microwave, set it for two minutes and pressed start. “It was touch and go for the first twenty minutes on the phone. She wouldn’t stop crying, so I went over there. Surprisingly, once I got there, she seemed to have pulled herself together. I talked to her again about going back to school or getting a new job and for the first time ever, she actually seemed keen on the idea.”

  “Really? That’s a switch.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  Jake sat down at the table. “Do you think she’ll actually do something like that?”

  “Well…” I reached into the cupboard for a plate and set it on the counter. “I sort of made her an offer.”

  Jake looked at me with trepidation. “What kind of offer?”

  “I suggested that if she wanted to quit her job at the bar and take a course to get a diploma in something, she could move in with me while you were gone. To save money.”

  His eyebrows lifted. “You invited her to live here? For nine months?”

  The beeper went off and I opened the microwave. “I know, I know. I’m still not sure if it was the brightest move, but I really want to help her, Jake. I just want her to be happy, and even though things are fine now, I’ll probably need some help later on when I’m as big as a barn and I can’t rake the lawn or carry the garbage out. And I’d like to have someone here for when I go into labor and need to get to the hospital.”

  Jake thought about that for a minute or two. “Would you make her your birthing partner?” he asked. “I thought you might ask your mom.”

  I filled a glass with water at the sink. “I hadn’t even thought about that. I’m still working through issues like getting Sylvie out of her lease or helping her figure out what kind of program would be good for her. And who knows? She might not even want to come. You know how she is. She doesn’t handle change well.”

  I served the hot spaghetti onto the plate, sprinkled some parmesan cheese on top and carried it to the table with the water.

  Jake picked up his fork to dig in. I sat down across from him.

  “What did she say when you told her you were pregnant?” he asked knowingly, lifting a brow.

  I let out a sigh. “She congratulated me of course, but I could tell she was shaken up. She wasn’t expecting that.”

  We both knew that deep down, Sylvie had never gotten over the heartbreak of her first love and the abortion she later came to regret. Jake was no stranger to her emotional ups and downs. He’d been there at my parents’ house when she went upstairs to the attic in the middle of a family dinner. The next thing we knew, she was lugging a box of her childhood toys outside to set fire to it—because clearly, in her mind, she was never going to be blessed with children of her own.

  “Do you think she’ll be able to handle seeing you go through a pregnancy?” he asked.

  “She doesn’t have much choice. Whether she lives with me or not, it’s happening. But I honestly believe it’ll be easier on her if she can get her act together. She just needs to feel hopeful about something. Feel good about herself and the future, instead of focusing on the past.”

  “What she needs is therapy,” Jake added coolly as he twirled the spaghetti noodles around his fork.

  Maybe I was a fool—and too optimistic for my own good—but I genuinely believed that if my sister moved in with me, I’d be able to help her.

  Interestingly, it didn’t turn out that way. Not even close.

  Riley

  Chapter Fifteen

  November 13

  “Good news.” Detective Miller walked into the kitchen where I was standing at the counter, drinking coffee. “Lieutenant Holmes was able to glean a few more details from your daughter. It’s not much, but
it’s something.”

  Holmes was a female detective who, no doubt, had a gentler touch than I did. She was still in the living room with Trudy—playing Barbies—while a team of investigators were making their way through the house dusting for prints. Others were outside talking to neighbors.

  I set my coffee cup down on the counter. “What did she say?”

  He consulted his notepad. “She described the woman as tall, slender with brown hair in a single ponytail. She also described a tattoo on the inside of her forearm, which tells us she may not have been wearing a coat.”

  “A tattoo?” That didn’t sit well in my mind. I’d known too many guys in prison with tattoos. “Was she able to describe it?”

  Miller hesitated. “She’s only four so her descriptions aren’t exactly articulate. From what we can gather, it’s possibly a word, about seven to ten letters long, but she wasn’t able to tell us what it said.”

  “She can’t read yet,” I explained, “but she knows her alphabet. We have a wooden alphabet puzzle. If Lieutenant Holmes wants to give it a try, Trudy might be able to identify some of the letters she saw.”

  “That would be helpful. Can you get it?”

  I went into Trudy’s room to find the puzzle on her bookshelf, returned to the kitchen and handed it to Detective Miller, who called Holmes into the kitchen.

  While Holmes resumed “playing” with Trudy, I went to check on Danny, who was in his room with his portable Nintendo device. “You okay, buddy?” I asked.

  He set the device down and sat up on the bed. “Are the police going to find her?”

  I moved fully into the room and sat on the edge of the bed. “They’re doing everything they can. All we can do is stay positive.”

  “What do you mean?”

  I squeezed his shoulder. “Think good thoughts. Say prayers. And we need to take care of each other.”

  “I already said a prayer,” Danny replied, reaching for a sheet of paper on the bed beside him. “I even wrote it down, like a letter.” He handed it to me. The words were simple, written in light blue marker.

  Dear God,

  Please take care of my baby sister and help us find her soon. I promise to be good.

  Danny James

  “This is wonderful,” I said. “I’ll do the same thing.”

  I handed the paper back to him but his eyes remained downcast. He was quiet for a long moment until at last his eyes lifted. “Why didn’t you tell me when you picked me up at school? Why did you lie?”

  My stomach dropped and I swallowed uncomfortably. “I’m sorry, Danny… I didn’t mean to lie. I just didn’t want to scare you and I was waiting for the right time to tell you and Trudy. I thought maybe we’d find your sister first and then everything would be okay, but you’re right. I should have told you.”

  He sat forward and hugged me. “I’m scared, Dad. What if they take me and Trudy, too?”

  I held him tight. “They won’t. I promise. Everything’s going to be okay. I won’t let anything happen to you.”

  But after what happened to my newborn daughter, could I live up to that promise to my son?

  *

  Holmes was still working with Trudy when I realized I hadn’t called my family in Boston since very early that morning. The last time I’d spoken to my mother, I was still waiting for Lois to wake up and I hadn’t even learned that our baby was gone.

  Since then, I’d been ignoring my mother’s calls. Maybe I hoped we’d find our daughter before I’d have to deliver the news. Or maybe I was just ashamed that I hadn’t prevented this from happening. Thoughts of what my father would say about it grated through my nerves like sharp steel teeth—because he and I were on shaky ground to begin with. I dreaded the assumptions he would make. He might suspect I sold my daughter for drug money, or that an enemy from my prison days was out for revenge…

  For all I knew, he could turn out to be right.

  Knowing I had to face this hurdle eventually, I called my mother’s home phone number.

  “Hello?” she answered. “Oh, Riley, thank goodness. We’ve been so worried. How’s Lois? How’s the baby?”

  I sat down at the kitchen table and lay my head in a hand. “I don’t know how to tell you this, Mom. You better sit down.”

  I waited until she replied. “All right. I’m sitting. You’re on speaker phone now. Holly’s here, too.”

  Holly was my younger sister. She was in her final year of med school and had recently married one of my childhood friends—Josh Wallace, a Boston police officer.

  I proceeded to explain what had happened that morning before Lois woke up and described everything that was being done to find our daughter.

  “I can’t believe this,” my mother quietly sobbed. “Dear Lord. How could that happen?”

  “I don’t know. The hospital’s in a ruckus. I suspect it’ll be on the local news tonight.”

  “Have you called a lawyer?” my mother asked. “Because this is above and beyond unacceptable. Someone clearly wasn’t doing their job.”

  “Suing the hospital isn’t exactly at the top of my priority list right now,” I replied. “I just want to find our daughter.”

  “Of course, of course.” She sniffed and said nothing for a few seconds. “I have to come out there, Riley. I can’t just sit here and do nothing. I’ll stay in a hotel if you don’t have room at your house.”

  “I’ll come too,” Holly added.

  “You have school,” I reminded her. “And we’re doing everything we can here. The police are on top of it.”

  “I’ll tell Josh about it as soon as we hang up,” Holly said. “I don’t know if there’s anything he can do from here, but he might have some advice for you.”

  “Thanks,” I replied. “And Mom, if you want to come, we could use your help. There was some mention of setting up a call center and getting the community involved to get the word out. Handing out flyers, that sort of thing.”

  “I’ll book a flight right away,” she said. “I should get there tonight.”

  Just then, Detective Miller entered the kitchen and looked at me. He held up his notepad, as if he had some important new information to convey.

  “I gotta go,” I said. “Call me when you know what time you’ll be arriving.” I set my phone down on the table. “What is it?” I asked. “Did you learn something?”

  “Yeah,” he replied. “Something interesting.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  “We tried the puzzle,” Detective Miller said, striding closer. “Your daughter wasn’t completely sure. She seemed a bit hesitant, but she said she thought the woman’s tattoo was letters followed by numbers. She also mentioned there were two dots on top of each other—most likely a colon—and a horizontal line which was probably a dash.”

  “She didn’t pick out any of the letters or numbers?” I asked.

  “She was able to identify an 8 and a 4, and a J at the beginning. She said she thought it was a word with four or maybe five letters.”

  I let out a breath and bowed my head. “That doesn’t tell us much. What could it mean?”

  “We’re looking into it,” Miller replied. “It could be someone’s birthday or anniversary.”

  Lieutenant Holmes entered the kitchen. “I just had a lightbulb moment. What if it’s a bible citation? They’re usually listed by book, chapter and verse, in that order.” She pulled a pen and notepad out of her pocket and wrote down an example. “Like this.” She held it up: John 3:16–17

  I stared at it intently. “So this might suggest that the kidnapper is religious? Go figure.”

  “Call it in,” Detective Miller said. “We’ll have someone search for all the passages with a J, 8 and 4.”

  Lieutenant Holmes dug her phone out of her pocket while I went to the living room to spend some time with Trudy.

  *

  That afternoon, Miller returned to the hospital to question my mother-in-law about the intruder. He then called back to report that Carol, who had remained
at Lois’s bedside all morning, was shocked to learn of it. She explained that she had risen from bed at 7:15 a.m. without hearing a thing. Trudy hadn’t mentioned it to her either. Both Lois and Carol were disturbed by the news and I spent a half hour on the phone with Lois, promising I would keep a close eye on our other two children.

  Still needing to do something proactive while I remained at home with them, I set them up with a movie in the living room while I went online at the kitchen table to do a search on infant kidnappings. After an hour I felt nauseous. There were so many missing children. The cops were searching for a needle in a haystack.

  Shutting down the computer, I checked on the kids, then sat down on the edge of my bed and did nothing but fiddle with the hospital band on my wrist. The numbers on it connected me with my newborn child. It identified me as the father. Lois wore the same bracelet, and our baby wore one on her ankle.

  Was she still wearing it? I wondered miserably, needing to look away.

  The sick churning in my stomach continued. My pulse throbbed in my veins. It wasn’t easy to sit still. My fingers tapped rapidly on my knee. I wanted to get up, run out the door and do something that would make a difference. Or lose myself in a drink…

  Seven years.

  Seven years sober…

  If there was ever a moment I was in danger of taking a drink, this was it. Shutting my eyes, I took a few slow, deep breaths, then re-shifted the focus of my thoughts away from me.

  A few minutes later, I was back at the kitchen table, flipping through the family bible, searching the scriptures for verses with the letter J and numbers 8 and 4 in the headings. I read for a long while, but nothing jumped out at me as a clue about the kidnapper.

  I recalled what Detective Miller had said about the woman not wearing a coat. It was the middle of November. Had she simply taken it off when she entered? Or did she leave a warm car running outside in the driveway? If so, why wouldn’t Carol have heard it?

  In the end, I read recommended verses for those in need of comfort until I nodded off at the table with my head resting on my arms.