by Kim Hornsby
If this was the restaurant where Annie found Wyatt in the dream, the kid might still call. Trouble was that the hipica would start in two hours and he didn’t want to take any chances by not being at the accident site. His plan had always been to stake out the area and wait there for hours. God damn it. He could be close, but he had to get to the other side of town.
***
Tina waited for Jamey to call. Annie was gone. Shut up in her studio, Tina guessed. Kai woke only an hour after he fell asleep which was too soon. He seemed happy enough when she took him out to the couch. He wanted to nurse again so Tina fed him and then after a good burp that sounded more like a belch, they played peek-a-boo. Hearing the studio door close, Tina picked him up to walk around the side of the house, see what Annie was doing. With his chubby warmth in her arms, they searched for monkeys in the trees above them, but it was too early. Not sunset.
Annie came around the corner with a broom in her hands. “Help yourself to anything to eat or drink, Tina. I’m just working in my studio.”
“We’re fine. Thanks. I might grab a snack.” She didn’t want Annie to feel she had to entertain Tina and Kai, even if they were her daughter-in-law and grandson. The woman did not want to talk. Had she wanted conversation, she’d have shared the afternoon with Tina. As it was, she was obviously avoiding them. By now, Tina’s tummy was growling loud enough to compete with the howler monkeys in another few hours.
“There’s fresh banana bread in the fridge.” Annie paused, as if contemplating whether to say more, then turned and went down the path to her studio. When Tina heard the studio door close, she went to the kitchen to find food. With a baby in her arms, she was only able to grab a slice of the bread and a chunk of cheese. She wouldn’t set Kai on the floor. Not after seeing how fast that Banana Spider could go. There was nothing but beer, sprite, and water to drink that wouldn’t necessitate two arms to pour, so she grabbed a bottle of water and stuck it in her cargo pants pocket and walked into the living room.
According to Jamey, the hipica started around six. Tina was hoping they’d have Wyatt safe by eight pm. What would they do if Wyatt never showed up at the site? Would Jamey stand there all night, waiting? He’d call, at least, to let her know what was going on. The wait was torturous but she imagined Jamey was in a worse state in Granada if he hadn’t seen Wyatt yet. If her husband was able to prevent the accident today and grab Wyatt, what would happen to Kevin and Rose? Jamey wouldn’t let them get away with this. He was a straight up guy, former police officer who believed in justice and incarceration for people who didn’t follow the rules. It wouldn’t be unlike Jamey to get Wyatt on the plane home and then take off after the other two. And he’d catch them, but then what? They were in a foreign country. Jamey couldn’t slap handcuffs on Kevin and Rose to take them back to America.
And what did Carrie want? Jamey had kept Carrie and Chris informed with phone calls every day, sometimes twice a day. They’d be frantic with this waiting. Tina could only imagine the tension at Carrie and Chris’s house today, even without knowing that Wyatt was at risk of losing his life under a giant horse.
Chapter 17
Jamey’s headache was screaming against his skull. He’d gladly take some meds to cut the pain, but didn’t want to go back to the hotel or stop at a store. The sun was dropping in the sky and the hipica would begin soon. After hours of scanning the crowds, his eyes were almost crossed. Now he was planted at the accident site, waiting. Watching. He’d tried to report in to Tina, just now, but he couldn’t get a line out. Then he’d phoned Diego who was at his office charging his phone.
“The cell service isn’t good now with so many people in town using their phones,” Diego warned. “As soon as I get my phone charged, I’ll come to you. I’ll be there before the parade starts.”
Diego was a good guy. Thoughts that this was his mother’s new husband, maybe the person she left them for, decades ago, crept into Jamey’s head, but he ignored them. He didn’t even want to consider how Pops had been crushed when his wife left him. Jamey would only deal with that when Wyatt was safe.
With time before the parade began, he took a moment to buy food from a street vendor. It smelled good, and even though he wasn’t sure what he was buying, he handed over the money. He was handed something wrapped in a banana leaf—pork, he guessed, and some boiled vegetable in a sauce that was actually very tasty. He bought seconds and a bottle of water.
As he stood eating his food, Jamey looked up at the volcano looming in the distance and wondered what Tina was doing. He hoped, for her sake, Annie was good company and Kai’s ear was doing better. He couldn’t wait for this ordeal to be over for Wyatt’s sake, and so he could get back to normal life with his wife and son.
From the moment he’d laid eyes on Kai, maybe even before his son’s debut in that Maui Memorial Hospital delivery room, Jamey loved his child with a fierceness he didn’t know he’d had. Or didn’t remember he’d had. Kai was his third child, but his daughters were approaching their teen years, and he’d had time to forget the intensity of what he’d felt when they were born. He did recall protectiveness consumed him for the first years. Almost to the point of obsession. Carrie had felt it too, but he had to think that a father was built with this ingrained need to keep the monsters from the door. The mother was the nurturer. Or was supposed to be. For some reason Annie had lost that. Strange thing was, he clearly remembered sitting on her lap, being read to, burying his face in her neck, and being hugged back. He’d clung to those memories when she left. And for years after her departure, Jamey believed that she’d loved him and his siblings. He’d gone into her closet that first week and took a soft sweater that smelled like her perfume. He’d slept with it until Gavin took it away and said James better get used to life without a mother. The idea that his mother had planned a departure and walked away from him was almost too much for Jamey to admit in those days, instead preferring to think that she was taken from him. Or that she died and couldn’t come back to her children. And here she was, his beloved mother, who had gone off to marry another man and be a painter in the cloud forest of Mombacho Volcano while her children continued to ask themselves why their mother didn’t love them enough to stay. God damned selfish woman.
When this was over, he was getting as far away from Nicaragua as possible. He’d have to tell his siblings he found her. They had a right to know. Then he’d try to forget her.
Just then, the crowd noise intensified and Jamey realized the hipica was about to begin. It was over two hours late, something Diego said was common, but now he could see horses down the street, coming his way. He stood firm, knowing the next hour was crucial.
***
By the time Tina finished walking down the driveway and back with Kai, her arms were tired. She set him in the corner of the couch and alternated between playing with her baby and staring at her phone, willing it to ring. The sun was low in the sky and down the mountain, the hipica would be underway. Diego said it went on for hours. When Kai’s mood turned sour and his little face scrunched up in a wail, she changed his wet diaper and took him outside again.
Monkeys were arriving in the trees above the house. So far, only a few, but they helped to distract him. Surely it wasn’t time to eat again. She’d brought a few jars of baby food, but he’d gobbled them up earlier. The antibiotics were making him hungry. All she had now was breast milk. And mashed bananas. When the monkeys lost their attraction, Kai resumed crying. At least he wasn’t tugging on his ear anymore. He arched his back and screamed. She felt his diaper but it was still dry so she sat in a patio chair and positioned him for nursing. He latched on fiercely and Tina stroked his little head as he hummed.
By the time the monkeys were settled in the trees and the calling began, Kai was fast asleep on Tina’s second breast and making some noises himself. The howling was almost deafening, and when Tina watched a big plop of monkey poop fall next to her chair, she took her baby in to the guest room. She closed the doors and windows un
til the howling stopped, just to make sure he fell off into a deep sleep. Jamey often said Kai slept like the dead, an expression she wasn’t fond of as a new mother.
Once she had Kai snuggled into the bed, she pulled the guest room door closed, and sat on the couch, making a mental note to check on him in another ten minutes. He was off schedule, but obviously tired, probably still affected by the antibiotics. She kept her phone close in case Jamey called. The sound of a truck starting up outside had Tina wondering if Annie was going somewhere. She wandered around the side of the house just in time to see Annie’s Chevy truck disappear down the driveway. The dogs stood watching until there was no sign of the vehicle, then turned and wandered back to the house, obviously used to being left. Had Annie gone somewhere? Tina walked to the studio, knocked on the door and when no one answered, she went inside. “Annie?” The small cottage was empty of people, but there on the easel was a shockingly beautiful portrait of Jamey’s face. Still wet.
Tina stared at the painting of her husband. This is what Annie had been doing all day. Painting a portrait from memory of her youngest son. The way he looked now, as a forty-year-old man. The expression she’d caught on canvas was a determined one, his mouth set in a grim line, but his eyes were soft and kind, as always. Probably the exact way he looked at Annie. Tina took a deep breath and hoped that this discovery between mother and son didn’t end badly for either. The room smelled of paint. The two dogs drank from a bowl sitting in the corner on a matt that said “Good Dog”. The rendition of Jamey’s face was lovely. It really was, and Tina imagined that Annie wanted to get the visage on paper before he left and she forgot what her grown son looked like. Annie obviously cared or wouldn’t have spent the day in the studio painting. Tina pulled the door closed behind her and walked along the lighted stone path, back to the house, distracted by thoughts of a mother and her son.
It got dark quickly here. The monkeys were all but finished their nightly noise and Tina marveled at what a good sleeper Kai was. He’d been trained well on Maui with the noisy birds next door and the downshifting sugar cane trucks on the highway behind the house.
She listened at the guest room door but heard nothing. Still asleep. In the kitchen Tina grabbed another water bottle from the fridge, and then made herself a plate of food with potato salad, pickles and chicken salad that Annie had offered earlier. Standing at the refrigerator, eating, and reading the notices for poetry readings and art exhibits, Tina wondered about Diego and Annie’s life on the mountain. It certainly was a remote place to hide if privacy was what you wanted. After she finished eating, she checked to make sure her phone had a charge and put it back in her pocket. Then, she remembered that the guest room doors and windows were shut. The room might be warm.
As she approached the door, a feeling of dread hit her like a wet towel across her face. Something was wrong. She entered the dark room and crept over to the bed. Leaning over the pillow barricade, she looked down to see Kai’s sleeping area empty. Feeling around she found only pillows. She frantically flicked on the light.
Kai was gone.
Her heart flew to her mouth. The floor was clear, the room empty of anyone besides her. The attached bathroom was empty but then she noticed the low window was wide open. A whimper escaped her mouth. She looked out the bathroom window to see a wooden chair with a caned back perched just underneath. It would be easy for someone to step in through the window and land on the bathroom floor. And back out again.
“Who’s there?” she shouted. She flew out the bathroom window and rounded the house, adrenaline pumping through her body. “Bring back my baby!” she yelled. Then she remembered the truck leaving. “Annie!” It had to be Annie. That woman was sick in the head. First she left a family of four children, then she stole a baby. Had she driven off with Kai? Tina ran the length of the house. “Annie, bring back my baby!” she said running. What the hell was Annie’s cell phone number? Calling Diego’s number proved fruitless. The lines were busy.
With nothing else to do, Tina stood at the top of the driveway and screamed, “Bring him back, Annie or I’ll kill your dogs and set your house on fire!”
Chapter 18
The hipica had begun. Horses dressed in elaborate finery and ribbons pranced along the route, stopping to high step at every corner. Music blared and fireworks shot off every minute.
Jamey intently watched the horses advance, on high alert for the speckled giant that would fall in front of the juice bar. But his attention was also focused on the crowd. Namely, looking for Kevin and a small child holding his hand.
Groups of horses advanced until finally Jamey located the grey-speckled horse down the line. From what he could see, the beast with the long mane and tail did not have a bloodied hoof. Yet. That happened closer to the juice bar. Jamey scanned the crowd again, looking for Kevin’s black cap. He had to be here, somewhere. Or coming this way. Unless the future had been changed.
There were plenty of kids lining the parade route but none were Wyatt. Then his gaze locked on the old lady who’d go down with Wyatt. A young man was helping her to walk to the curb to view the horses.
The horses were getting closer, the speckled horse only thirty feet away. His hoof was still unblemished, but when Jamey looked away to check if Wyatt and Kevin had arrived, and then looked back, the hoof was bloody. Where was Kevin? By now they should be moving in to watch. Kevin would soon turn away to buy a beer. The beer cart was where he’d seen it, behind him by the juice bar, but there was no sign of the two in the crowd. At this point in the dream, Jamey was sure they were already at the curb.
His phone rang. He was going to ignore it but it could be one of the boys with a phone, having spotted them somewhere else along the route. A quick glance at the phone told him it was Tina. She wouldn’t call unless it was important. “I can’t talk.”
“Kai's gone. He’s missing,” she shouted. “I think Annie might have him. I put Kai down for a nap, and when I checked on him, he was gone. I watched Annie drive off earlier.” Her voice came out like ragged sobs.
Jamey’s heart jumped in his chest. “Did you check the property? Her studio?”
“Yes, yes. Her truck drove off and she’s not here. Or Kai. You need to find her. Or get up here.” Tina’s cries filled the phone line.
The horse was ten feet away. The old woman beside him was smiling and clapping. Still no sign of Wyatt, or Kevin. Soon the horse would fall. “I’ll be right there. Annie won’t hurt him. If she even has him.” He didn’t know why she’d take the baby. “Can monkeys pick up sixteen pounds?” Maybe it was possible.
There were only seconds remaining before the horse went down. “Hang on.” He stuck the phone in his pocket, still connected, and ran over to the horse. When the firework went off on the other side of the street and the black horse lurched sideways, he had a hold of the bridle. The rider jumped off his horse, yelling at Jamey.
“Your horse is bleeding,” Jamey said in Spanish to the man. “Blood!” Jamey yelled, pulling the horse farther to the center of the road, away from the old woman, before he let go. The horse now stood still with his leg bent, blood dripping to the pavement.
Two drunk men rushed in ripe for a fight, their fists up, yelling at Jamey to leave the horse alone. Jamey backed up and took off through the crowd, hoping no one was following him. A block later, he brought the phone to his ear. “Stay on the line” he said, then fumbled, and the phone fell to the road and fell apart. Shit. Couldn’t stop. He had to keep going. Get up the mountain to Tina.
He dodged people, zigzagging through the crowd, thoughts firing in his brain as he ran. Why would Annie take the baby? Did she think Tina had gone somewhere? Where the hell would she take him?
If something sinister was going on, Jamey needed to put everything he had into finding Kai. The horse hadn’t fallen on Wyatt and for now, the abducted boy was safe.
***
“Jamey?!” Her husband hadn’t responded. Tina hung up and looked around Diego and Annie’s proper
ty, searching for anything that might lead to finding Kai. Whoever took her baby would know it was wrong to kidnap a child so calling out to bring him back was probably fruitless.
Jamey had suggested a monkey might have Kai, and as unlikely as that seemed, she had to look. She turned on all the lights, including the ones for the outside patio and raced out to scan the trees. These monkeys weren’t big enough to carry a large baby, were they? The thought was ridiculous, but still concerning. If they had him in the tree and dropped him… She called into the trees. “Kai?” knowing no one would answer.
She’d seen a wicker basket full of headlamps in the kitchen. Annie had said that the power went out regularly on Mombacho. Tina rushed into the kitchen, put on a headlamp, grabbed the rest and ran out to the trees. Nothing except monkeys stared back at her. Kai would be crying if the monkeys had him, wouldn’t he? Unless he couldn’t cry. She shone the flashlights around the jungle floor under the trees, looking for a body, praying she would find nothing unusual.
Someone put a chair at the window to make it easier to get in without being detected. Not monkeys. And, if Annie didn’t take him, like Jamey said, then who? Then she remembered two things. The housekeeper the other day had held Kai lovingly. Was it possible she came to get him? And, the second thing was, where the heck were the dogs? She hadn’t heard or seen them in twenty minutes. She ran up the path to the studio and found both Cisco and Chile sleeping on the couch. Shit! She’d left the watch dogs shut inside while someone roamed the property. Maybe Rose took him. She wanted a baby but was in town. In the premonition only Wyatt and Kevin attended the hipica.
