Why You Were Taken

by JT Lawrence

  My shrink says that we can probably start weaning me off the anti-depressants. I’m not in a hurry. I never want to go back to that dark place again.

  Oh! I almost forgot. The strangest thing happened yesterday. I was grocery shopping with the little ones—NOT the easiest thing in the world—but they were on their best behaviour and sitting nicely together in the trolley while I passed them things (not eggs, from experience). A woman who was walking past us looked intently at me and I smiled back. I thought, we must look funny. Like I had gone shopping and taken two toddlers off the shelf and put them in my trolley. Imagine it was that easy: you just go to a shop and choose which adorable monsters you want. ‘Hmm, yes, I’ll take this one and this one.’ They would need barcodes! And what would the return policy be?

  But then later I realised that she had smiled at me because she had recognised me—she was the nurse at that family planning clinic that was so kind to me and held my hand! I wonder what she must have thought, seeing us together. I wonder how it made her feel.

  Epilogue: Six Months Later

  A Different Kind of Family

  Westville, KZN, 2022

  Kate sits in her hired car, parked a little way away from the river, under the glittering dappled shade of willow trees. She takes off her safety belt, adjusts her tender back in the chair. Her left arm is slightly paler and thinner than her right, still recovering from being in the exoskeletal cast she had to wear for months.

  She breathes in the muddy green smell of the river (Wilted Waterlily): a smooth, undulating smell. Balmy Verdant. Rolling Hills.

  Keke urged her—citing her ‘condition’—to take the isiPhapha speed train from Joburg to Durban, but she wanted to drive, to take her time, to think. To appreciate the journey.

  Keke has just won another journalism award for her coverage of the Genesis Project. She always tells people she doesn’t deserve them, that Alba deserves all the credit, but they just call her ‘humble’ and love her all the more. She’s getting job offers from all over the world: most notably, Sweden, where they have offered her an eight-figure retainer for a year’s contract. She and Marko are considering it, but only when she is fully recovered. In the meantime she gets weekly Tupperware takeaways from Marko’s mother, who insists that good Indian food, specifically dosa, can cure any affliction. Keke is sure she’ll hate the cold, and Kate knows it will be difficult for Keke to leave her post of Godmother to Baby Marmalade. She doesn’t want to give up her partial custody of Betty/Barbara the Beagle, either.

  God, Kate has missed driving, the freedom of the open road to the thrumming soundtrack of your choice. Stopping for a hydrogen refuel—not as pungent a memory as petrol—and greasy toasted cheese in a wax paper envelope. Flimsy paper serviette. Vanilla whipped Soy-Ice in a hard chocolate coating that you get to crack open with your teeth. Noticing, inside the store, that all the Fontus fridges are gone. Kirsten imagines them yawning in recycle tips, stripped of any valuable metal, or re-purposed as beds or dining-room tables in townships. Most likely, though, they have just been bleached and re-branded with S/LAKE decals: Bilchen’s “100% pure” bottled water, Hydra’s supposedly incorrupt replacement.

  Alba’s secret underground identity has been blown wide open since they disclosed the information they had on Walden and his company. They are instant heroes, and the logo of the green rabbit silhouette has gone viral. True to hypothetical bunny breeding, they have multiplied overnight. Virtual stickers, 3D wallpaper, hoverboard art, graffiti stencils, and playful holograms: Alba is everywhere.

  They receive offers of funding from various (apparently non-evil) corporates. Keke has heard rumours of a splinter group forming, with new ‘unknowns’: a secret faction that can still do the same job without worrying that their mugs are splashed on every news tickertape (and Talking Tee) in the country.

  Kate winds her window down further, allowing more of the clear air into the car. After tossing out the air-freshener at the car rental agency (Retching Pink) she had driven the first hour with all the windows down to try to flush out the fragrance. Artificial roses: the too-sweet scent painted thick vertical lines in her vision. Her sense of smell seems to be in overdrive lately, and the shapes more vivid than ever.

  It is a superb day: warm, the humidity mitigated by a cool breeze, and the sky brighter than she has ever remembered seeing it. The branches of the weeping willows stroke the ground, whispering, as if to soothe it. She can smell a hundred different shades of green in the motion of leaves.

  A woman pops up in the distance, walking towards the river. She has handsome silver hair, a thick mass of it, twisted up and fixed in place with a clip and a fresh flower. A stained wicker picnic basket in her hand. She is tall and moves in elegant strides: not rushing, nor dawdling, her sense of purpose clear. She doesn’t look around for a good spot; she knows exactly where the good spot is.

  She sets down her basket, lays out the picnic blanket, smoothes it down in a practised movement. Once she has removed her shoes she sits with her legs out in front of her, crossed at the knees, leaning back on her hands with her eyes closed and her face to the sky.

  The woman takes her clip out and lets her hair tumble down like mercury. Kate unthinkingly touches her own short hair, rakes her fingers though the awkward length of re-growth. The woman relaxes like that for a while, then sits up and opens her basket, bringing out a plastic plate and knife, a packet of crackers, cheese triangles. A small yellow juicebox.

  Kate snaps a photo of her with her LocketCam, then retrieves the cooler-box from the back seat that she had packed that morning. She takes out a dripping bottle of iced tea, a packet of Blacksalt crisps, and a CaraCrunch chocolate bar. Watching the woman by the river, she opens the foil packet and starts to eat; then she remembers the bright green apple in her bag (Granny Smith), and eats that too.

  So this is what her real mother looks like. Not just her non-abductor mother, more than just her biological mother, but her real mother. She can feel it. She sees Seth/Sam in her body language, her straight nose. But the hair and the eyes are hers.

  She looks at her reflection in the rear-view mirror, touches the new streak of grey at her temple (Silver Floss).

  ‘We have the same hair, and eyes,’ she whispers to herself.

  She feels a welling up in her chest, an inflating of her ribcage, and breathes deeply to stay calm. Warm tears rush down her face; she is used to the feeling now, even welcomes the release. During the past few months she has made up for a lifetime of not crying.

  The woman looks so peaceful, so at ease with the world: a trait Kate hasn’t been lucky enough to inherit, but she hasn’t always been like this; she has also had her dark days.

  James kept an eye on the Chapmans during the past twenty years, even kept a file, which he had left in his SkyBox for Kate. She found the access code in the “Hansel and Gretel” book he had bought for her a lifetime ago. It had been there all along. The file contained a comprehensive log of the Chapmans’ lives: the different jobs they held, the close friends they had, and the holidays they went on. The grief counsellor they consulted. They never moved house—they still live at 22 Hibiscus Road—as if they thought if they moved, they would lose all hope of the twins finding their way home.

  Anne Chapman still visits the river almost every day, the spot where she used to sit in the shade while the twins splashed around, and then later, their subsequent children: another son and daughter, born five years after Kate and Sam, spaced three years apart. The children, now grown, visit often, and the family looks like any normal, happy, loving family. It would be difficult, seeing them laughing and joking at family dinners, to guess at their sad and fragmented past.

  Kate’s yearning crowds the car. How she would love to meet her mother, grasp her hand, taste her cooking, ask her about the years before the kidnapping, and after. But looking at her, seeing how content she is, how restful her spirit seems, she knows she can’t do it. It would be like smashing a shattered mirror that has taken d
ecades to put together. Its hold is tenuous, gossamer, and she won’t be the one to re-splinter it.

  No fresh heartbreak.

  She has a new life, thinks Kate, like I do now. She thinks of Seth at home in Illovo with Baby Marmalade: how good he is with him, how gentle. Seth who wants to keep his Genesis name, instead of ‘Sam,’ says it doesn’t suit him, and he is right.

  He has a new life too, despite not changing his name. She pictures what she guesses they are doing now, sitting on the couch in front of the homescreen, Baby Marmalade asleep in his arms, Betty/Barbara the Beagle snoring in her usual spot, her snout on Seth’s lap. The wooden floor littered with nappies and wipes and teething rings and toys.

  A different kind of family, James said.

  An unusual family, but a family nonetheless: waiting for her to return home, and anticipating its new addition.

  She thinks of her Black Hole, which is still there but has been sewn up to the size of her skin-warm silver locket. It’s the smallest she can ever remember it being, but it yawns when she thinks of James.

  She watches her mother pack up, shake the blanket, fold it and put it away, then start walking back in the direction from which she came. Kate reaches for the door handle then stops herself.

  No. No. But when that feels too harsh, she allows herself a concession, thinks: At least: not today. Maybe tomorrow, but not today.

  After a few steps, her mother turns, looks directly at the car in the distance. Kate can’t see her expression. A moment goes by; she turns back and continues her walk home.

  Kate takes a few breaths with her head back and her eyes closed then snicks her safety belt in and starts the car, swinging it into reverse. Her back is aching again, her ankles puffy. She adjusts her position, rubs her swollen belly.

  ‘Time to get you back home, little one.’

  Born seven months apart, her babies will be almost like twins. A different kind of twin.

  She pops the car into drive, and puts her foot down.

  What’s Next?

  Are you ready for the action-packed sequel?

  Would you sacrifice your son to save your daughter?

  How We Found You

  Book 2 in the When Tomorrow Calls Series

  There’s something different about Kate’s four-year-old son. He wasn’t created the old fashioned way. Now a violent cult wants him dead and Kate will do anything to protect him – until they take her daughter.

  Start reading ‘How We Found You’ now.

  Book 3 in the When Tomorrow Calls Series

  In tomorrow's world where the edges blur between addictive virtual reality and real life, would you hurt your daughter if it was the only way to set her free?

  Order ‘What Have We Done’ here.

  Grab ‘The Stepford Florist’ for FREE

  Jasmine is arrested for performing a bootleg vampire facelift in her modded-out steampunk caravan.

  She’s thrilled, because it worked out exactly as she planned.

  Grab this short story set in the futuristic

  When Tomorrow Calls world now.

  Also by JT Lawrence

  FICTION

  WHEN TOMORROW CALLS

  • SERIES •

  1. Why You Were Taken (2015)

  2. How We Found You (May 2017)

  3. What Have We Done (October 2017)

  The Stepford Widow: A Short Story (Oct 2017)

  The Memory of Water (2011)

  Sticky Fingers (2016)

  Grey Magic (2016)

  NON-FICTION

  The Underachieving Ovary (2016)

  About the Author

  JT Lawrence is an Amazon bestselling author,

  playwright & bookdealer. She lives in Parkhurst, Johannesburg, in a house with a red front door.

  Follow me on Amazon

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  www.jt-lawrence.com

  janita@pulpbooks.co.za

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  Warning: You may be sent pictures of guinea pigs wearing glasses (and the occasional freebie).

  Acknowledgments

  Thank you to my committed and talented team

  of beta readers: Jess David Lipworth; Mack Lundy;

  Kim Smith; Brenda Helfrich; Robyn Ambler,

  and Michael Lawrence.

  Nerine Dorman, thank you for your mad editing skillz, and Keith and Gill Thiele for your proofreading.

  Nolakhe Gozongo for sacrificing time with

  your family so that you can help me with my work and look after my kids while I write.

  What would I do without you? Thank you.

  Deep gratitude, as ever, to my loyal readers.

  A special thanks to my supporters on Patreon:

  Elize van Heerden and Christine Bernard.

  I’m so fortunate to have you all on my team.

  Why You Were Taken is a work of fiction.

  Names, characters, places and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  2017 ebook edition

  ISBN-13: 978-0-620-74654-0

  2nd Edition

  Copyright © 2017 JT LAWRENCE

  JT Lawrence has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this work. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, mechanical or electronic without written permission from the author.

  All rights reserved.

  Published in South Africa by Fire Finch Press, an imprint of Pulp Books.

  www.jt-lawrence.com

  ISBN: 978-0-620-74654-0

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