by Glenn Meade
“It’s just, I’d really like to lie down.” The wall clock in the kitchen told me I had eight minutes. Please, just go! I wanted to scream. Just go, and leave me alone to take Jack’s call.
But Tanner didn’t seem inclined to go anywhere just yet. He jerked his chin toward a photograph hanging on the wall. My father in his colonel’s uniform, taken in Iraq, standing in front of a Humvee with a bunch of his men. “What about your dad?”
“I’ll . . . contact him.”
He took a closer look at some other photographs. “You sure you don’t want me to do that for you?”
“No. No . . . I’ll do it.” The wall clock said five more minutes.
Tanner pointed at one of the photos. “That’s a lot of ribbons and medals your old man’s wearing.”
“Yes. Is there anything else, Agent Tanner?”
“Yeah. If Dexter’s hypothesis is right, then Jack may still be alive. This is all over the news. He’s bound to see it. And as the story pans out, they’re going to have shots of you up there on the screen, with him and the kids, just wait and see.”
“What are you saying?”
Tanner shrugged. “Who knows, maybe it’ll play on his mind. Maybe he’ll get the urge to contact you.”
“What?”
“The news is out there now, in the public domain. I’ve known it to happen with missing person cases that once a story gets a lot of air time, the missing person gets in touch. It may be a possibility in this case. So if there are any calls or any kind of contact from Jack, you let me know at once. You got that?”
More alarm bells should have gone off with statements like those, but I already felt so dazed, I barely took them in. “What reason would he have to contact me?”
Tanner gave a tight smile. “I’ve no idea, Ms. Kelly. I’m just thinking out loud. Telling you my experience in missing persons cases I’ve worked. There could be all kinds of reasons. Regret, grief, curiosity. Who knows?”
I still desperately wanted to tell Tanner, He just has called me. If only because my mind was raging with the news and I was so deeply perplexed. What would happen after the call? Would I see my children? Had they even survived? What would happen if Jack didn’t call back? My anxiety level was through the roof.
Tanner laid his cup down on the kitchen table.
The next time I looked at the clock, I had four minutes. My heart beat even faster, my blood pressure boiling. “I-I’m really stressed, Mr. Tanner. Please, I need to lie down.”
“Sure. I need to head back to the site. See if they got that aluminum case open yet or found anything else.”
He wrote another number on the back of his card. “If you need me for any reason, you can get me on my cell. I’ll give you my other number, too.”
I walked him to the front door.
“You’re sure there’s nothing you didn’t tell the first time around, Ms. Kelly?”
“I’m sure. I don’t understand any of this.”
For some reason, Tanner didn’t look like he believed me. “So you’ve really got no idea why he might have vanished? Something in his past? Secrets and lies he kept?”
“Not a single one.”
I meant it. But I could tell by Tanner’s face that he was unconvinced. He still wasn’t in any hurry, either.
I put a hand to my forehead. “Look, I’m sorry. I need to close my eyes and rest. It’s been difficult. . . .”
“Sure. Take care.”
I let him out the front door. I watched him walk down the pathway, climb into his car, and drive off. I stared at my watch. I had one minute.
I felt it hard to breathe, my adrenaline soaring in anticipation. I began to doubt that I’d even received the call. Was I going crazy? Was it all in my mind? Was I so distressed that I’d imagined it?
Thirty seconds later, my cell phone rang.
19
* * *
It rang again.
The number was unlisted.
I answered on the second ring.
“Kath?”
The voice I heard sounded distant, otherworldly. Or was that just my imagination, part of the trauma of hearing Jack’s voice again? For a moment, I didn’t reply. My own voice was gone. I was in deep shock, my reply strangled in my throat.
“Kath, are you there?”
Oh, my God. Jack. Back from the dead. That voice I knew so well. It was him. It was really him. I had not imagined it. Eight years. Eight years, one month, three days.
“Yes.”
“Are you alone?”
“Yes.”
“Are you sure?”
“I promise. Is . . . is it really you, Jack?”
“You know it’s me. And if you’re lying about being alone, I’ll find out.”
“Jack, I’m not lying. I’m telling you the truth. Why would I lie?”
“I want you to listen.”
“Amy and Sean. Where are they? Where?” I sounded frantic, like a crazy woman. I heard the wild panic in my own voice, like someone on the verge of a breakdown.
He didn’t answer.
“Jack, please . . . don’t do this to me. I need to know. I need the truth.”
“For now, just listen to me. Listen carefully. This is really important.”
I knew I seemed deranged. I felt deranged. But my senses were still sharp enough to sense something in Jack’s voice, something rare.
I sensed fear. Raw fear. What was he afraid of? Or was my imagination haywire?
“For God’s sake, Jack, I need to see my children. Don’t you get it? I have to see them.” My pleading was so pitiful, my voice a cry.
“We’ve got thirty-three seconds left.”
“What?”
“That’s how much longer it could take to trace my call. Then I’m going to switch off.”
“Jack, no one’s tracing the call. I told no one.”
A tight pause. “Just listen. You’ll see Sean, you’ll see Amy—”
“When, Jack? When?” I felt tears scald my face. “When? Oh, God, I . . . I’m still in shock.”
“Twenty-three seconds left, Kath. You need to listen to me right now, or I’ll end the call.”
I fell silent at the threat.
“Two p.m. tomorrow. I’ll call you. Two on the nail. We’ll talk then, and you’ll know everything.”
That was twenty-two hours away. “What . . . what if you don’t call?”
“I’ll call. When I do, you answer. If you need proof it’s me, I’ve left proof.”
“Where?”
“The Fifth Lock. Bottom of the black trash can by the park bench, you’ll find a brown paper bag. I left it there an hour ago. Until then, the same rules apply. Tell no one, and be alone.”
“Jack—but Amy and Sean . . .”
“Do exactly as I say, and you’ll see them.”
“Jack, why? Why did you do it? Why? Why did you cut my heart out? Why?”
My words sounded like an echo in my own head, the last “why” ringing in my ears.
I heard the faint click.
And the line went dead.
20
* * *
I stood in the kitchen, feeling strangely numb.
Numb but alive. I felt the weight of eight years of grief and anguish lift from me like the heaviness of a massive stone. My heart was thudding against my breastbone. I couldn’t speak, even if I wanted to.
Eight years.
After eight years of believing my husband was dead, he called. No explanation, no reasons, no answer about why he was a dead man walking again. Nothing about what happened to my son and daughter.
Was it really Jack? But he mentioned the Fifth Lock, a stretch of waterway three miles away, with public moorings, where we used to take Jack’s bass boat out when we were engaged, heading out to the islan
ds or an isolated bank to picnic and smooch. It was our place, a special place, for private times alone.
I felt frantic.
I hurried outside to the barn. The Polaris Ranger that my dad used to drive around the farm was parked there. The Fifth Lock was less than ten minutes away. The key was in the Ranger’s ignition. I climbed in and turned it on, the little engine sputtering, and I reversed out of the barn.
My heart thudding, my breath shallow, I drove onto the bumpy track that led down to the lake.
* * *
It was the longest ten minutes of my life.
I followed the rutted track until I came to a lakeside walkway. Some benches, a wooden pergola. A black metal garbage bin on a metal stake.
I drove up to the bin, braked, and frantically jumped out.
This part of the lakeside was remote. No one about.
I reached the trash can. It had a black plastic liner. The thought that Jack had actually been here an hour ago freaked me out. I looked inside the bin. A few Coke cans, blackened banana peel, some junk-food packaging. A brown paper bag at the bottom.
I reached in, plucked it out.
The bag was bulky, but it felt light. Something hard at the bottom, metallic maybe.
My rib cage felt tight with anxiety.
I opened the bag and looked inside.
A jumble of blue and purple cloth.
My chest felt even tighter.
I tossed the contents out onto the damp grass and sat down beside them.
I recognized a blue sweater. It was Sean’s.
A purple hoodie. Amy’s.
I’d packed them in their go-away bags before they vanished.
I wanted to cry.
I gathered up the clothes, pulled them to my face, as if I could smell them, touch my children, by touching these clothes.
They smelled faintly of lavender, as if freshly washed. A set of keys fell out of the garments.
Two keys on a metal key ring, with a big silver-toned J on it.
I recognized Jack’s old keys to our home’s front and back doors.
I felt light-headed. My throat spasmed, and I almost choked. I couldn’t breathe. The same haunting questions echoed inside my head. Why? Why? Why? Why? Why?
And my children. Where are my children? What’s happened to them?
My cell phone rang, loud and sharp. It was an old friend of mine from college, Lois Snow, calling to chat as she sometimes did. I had neither the strength nor the inclination to answer it. It was as if I were anesthetized.
It was all too much. And then I felt it, a wave of fear and shock that roared in on me like a violent, crashing wave. As I tried to stand straight, I lurched toward the Ranger.
All I remembered after that was that my head started to swim, my legs collapsed from under me as if made of rubber, and everything turned to darkest black.
21
* * *
I don’t know for how long I was out cold, but the dizziness was still there when I became conscious again.
It lasted a few minutes, until the fog finally cleared. I sat there on the grass until I felt I could get up. My head still felt light as I picked up the clothes and the keys and the bag. I placed them on the Ranger’s passenger seat, and then I drove back to my home as fast as my muzzy head would allow.
I didn’t recall a single second of the drive. At the barn, I parked the Ranger and moved into the front room. I sat on the couch, staring at the clothes. I smelled them again, inhaling the lavender scent.
I felt elated. I felt lethargic. My mind was too frazzled to think about anything else, but in moments of panic mundane ideas sometimes strike you. One struck me now. It was Wednesday. My day for getting things ready to visit Kyle on Thursday morning. I had to get his clean clothes together, other stuff. It’s crazy the things you think of when you’re in shock.
I tried to compose myself, but I felt as if I was falling apart. I tried to tell myself I was OK. But I wasn’t.
I was far from OK.
* * *
Like a sleepwalker, I climbed the stairs to my bedroom, undressed, and showered. After I toweled myself dry, I put on fresh jeans and a T-shirt and went to lie on my bed.
I felt numb, confused.
I couldn’t help but stare at the two photographs on the nightstand. Every night before I slept and every morning when I woke, they were there. I reached across and picked up the silver-toned frame.
As I focused on the faces of Jack and Sean and Amy, the same questions raged. Could they really be alive? The haunting question was like an ache.
I recalled the raw fear in Jack’s voice.
Or was I picking it up wrong, my senses frazzled by everything that was happening? Was it just anxiety on Jack’s part?
I couldn’t be sure, but it sounded like fear. I looked out through the window.
The cottage was fifty yards away. I saw the white door, the paint flaking in places. Three pieces of old two-by-four were still nailed into the door’s wood and frame. Another three were nailed into the back door. The curtains were closed, as I had left them. The last time I went in there was five years ago, after Chad and I split. It almost killed me. Everything was just as it had been the day I boarded up the property, and the surge of grief that hit me almost smothered me the moment I stepped inside the hall.
Inexplicably, I still wanted to go in there. I had a weird feeling in my gut. It was as if the rooms still held some as-yet-undiscovered secret, some clue I had not discovered. I was afraid. Afraid of another tidal wave of emotions. But the urge still niggled and persisted.
I would try to psych myself up to do it.
But not yet.
Not just yet.
I shifted my gaze toward Loudon Lake and the graceful weeping willow that I planted twenty years ago, its branches dripping over the water. Memories came in a torrent. Times we enjoyed together—distant days, but I remembered them like yesterday. Picnics. Birthdays. Special times on the lake when the children were small. Lazy Sundays, holiday weekends.
I recalled Buddy, a black border collie with white paws that we had for two years until he got run over by a truck. Amy and Sean were inconsolable. Jack buried the dog under the willow tree I was looking at now.
Amy wanted the dog buried there. “Because I’ll always be sad that Buddy died, and weeping willows are like sad trees, aren’t they, Mommy?”
No more dogs after that. It was too painful. A hamster and a goldfish fit the bill.
I recalled other moments: Jack’s thirtieth birthday when I bought him a David Gray CD and we made love in the dark that night as the Stairs played softly in the background. I felt so complete that night, so totally complete—so loved and part of a loving, healing family. I felt like crying.
I ached to feel them near me again, to smell them, to touch them. But if I was honest, my mind couldn’t really handle Jack’s seeming treachery. I had such mixed feelings that I was sure I hated him. After hearing Tanner’s news, I’d felt a fearful sense of joy, but now a ferocious, vehement anger was seeping in. How could Jack have done this to me? How could he have kept the children we both cherished and loved from me? And why? I wanted to scream the questions aloud.
My headache started again. I had a desperate urge to talk to my father. I fumbled for my cell and called him. He answered on the second ring.
“Kath? Are you home yet? Are you OK, honey?”
“Yes. Where are you, Dad?”
“Two hundred miles from Michigan. I was just about to call you. I stopped at a Comfort Inn for the night and just saw the news. I saw the wreckage. I-I’m dumbfounded.”
I heard the distress in his voice, the Parkinson’s tremble. “Did you take your meds?”
“No. I’ll take them now. This is more important.”
“Dad, there’s stuff we need to talk about.”
“Did . . . did they find Jack and the children?”
“Not yet. They’re not sure. They’re still examining the site.”
I heard what sounded like a cry, an exclamation of grief. “Not sure? I don’t get it.”
“I’ll explain once I have more information, Dad.”
“I’m coming home. I’ll get back on the road first thing in the morning. Tonight, if you want me to.”
“No, Dad, your place is with Ruby right now. She needs you. At least see her first.”
“You need me.”
“I’m doing OK, really.”
I was desperate to tell him about Jack’s call. It ate inside me like a cancer. But I dared not. Knowing my father, he’d jump into his car and drive straight back, right through the night. I didn’t want him to do that. I didn’t want him to get tired and total his car.
But I wished he wasn’t so far away. He was the rock I always leaned on when things got rough. I felt I needed to lean on his broad shoulders now and be comforted by him. Sometimes nothing can replace the sense of solid security a father can impart. “Don’t do it, you hear me, Dad?”
“Can’t you tell me anything at all, honey?”
“There’s nothing more to tell. They may have more news tomorrow.”
He must have heard the tired upset in my voice, because he didn’t pursue it. “Are you coping OK?”
“Strangely, yes. But I promise I’ll call you if I need you.”
“Kath, I don’t know . . .”
“I promise. Please believe me. Get a good night’s sleep, see Ruby, and then we’ll talk tomorrow.”
He sighed.
“Please, Dad.”
There was a long pause. It was getting late. I felt tired. He must have heard the fatigue in my voice.
Finally, he gave in. “Hang in there, baby. And remember, I’m just a phone call away, no matter what the time. Just pick up that phone if you need me.”
“I will.”
22
* * *
The past
