George Hartmann Box Set

by Kelly Utt

  Local authorities don’t share much about what they know. When I press them, and I do press them, they explain how they have to stay tight-lipped until their process is over so as not to compromise the investigation. On one hand, I completely understand. It’s no different than me having to stay mum about classified military and national security information. There are countless risks that come into play when information gets into the wrong hands.

  The Air Force sent me to a prisoner-of-war camp out in Washington State called Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape (SERE) training, and during my time there I learned more than I ever wanted to know about the critical need to protect sensitive information. I was required to complete the training because my job entailed a risk of capture and exploitation. The reality is, leaks endanger lives. I probably understand the potential implications better than most. But now that we’re talking about a situation related to the safety of my own family, I find myself burning with anger over the lack of information being provided to us. I want and need much more than I’m getting. I’m going to have to continue to research and seek answers on my own. How am I supposed to sleep at night when there may be relevant details available which would help me know what to watch out for? As it is, I only sleep when either Liam or Roddy is awake and has his eyes on Ali and the boys. We can’t go on like this for long. We’re all exhausted.

  The intruder’s body is taken to the Tompkins County morgue and an autopsy is performed. I don’t know if they’ve positively identified him. That means I don’t know the name of the man who entered my home and took my young son out of his bed. For some reason, it feels like I should. I ruminate on the various findings that might come back when the medical examiner finally releases a report. Was he under the influence of drugs or alcohol? Maybe he wouldn’t have been so bold otherwise. Did he have something inherently wrong with his mental faculties? Was he intellectually disabled? Did he have a psychological disorder like antisocial personality disorder? Those patients have a total disregard for other people, and it’s scary as hell. I guess I’d actually feel better about the guy having something like that as opposed to learning someone hired him to kidnap Ethan as a play for ransom money. Maybe those are my money issues talking. The uncertainty is making me a little crazy.

  On top of everything else, the fact that a man died on our property is unsettling. Even though I feel hate and anger and disgust towards the guy, I find myself wondering about his family. Surely someone loved him. Even if not now, someone must have loved him at one point, right? Even the most horrible people are still loved by someone at some point. A mother? A grandmother? I wonder if there’s someone out there searching for him. They could be watching a front door somewhere, hoping he’ll walk through it any minute. Damn, what if he had kids of his own who now have to grow up without a father in their lives? The guy’s own bad choices led to his death, but I feel the weight of the fact that Roddy and I played a part in it. Every choice we make has such a ripple effect.

  No one says much about the getaway driver, which really unnerves me. The police don’t seem to have any leads. Roddy and I were so focused on what was happening in the driveway that neither of us paid much attention to the van. It was too far away for surveillance cameras to record. I know it was a white industrial van, probably a domestic model. It seemed to run really loud, but my adrenaline-fueled senses might have perceived any engine as loud at that point. I have an impression of the van as being older and run down, but I’m not sure that’s entirely accurate. We didn’t get a plate number. There may not have even been a plate on the vehicle. I suspect the driver kept going all the way out of the city when he fled the scene. He never exited the vehicle while at our house, so it will be tough to identify and find him. He must be the smarter of the two. And he must not have been very loyal or dedicated to the guy in the yard. If he had been, he would have tried to assist. That makes me think maybe they were hired by someone. I don’t know. I absolutely hate having the getaway driver roaming free out there. I’m afraid he’ll come back. Of course, I don’t want him to hurt anyone else either. I have to say, it gives me a measure of comfort to know that he must have seen the news reports to learn that his partner didn’t make it out alive. He also must have seen the scuffle happening in our driveway in order that he decided to flee the scene, which means he should understand that his partner died at our hands. That gives me more comfort than I should probably admit, truth be told. I’d like to be more evolved and to wish these fellow human beings no harm. But I’m not. Not yet, anyway. I want both men to pay for what they did to us. For what they tried to do to us. I’m not religious, really, but if there is a hell, I hope our intruder is burning in it. Am I a bad person for saying so?

  Ladygirl gives us quite a scare. That night, I thought for sure we’d lost her. She was unconscious when one of the responding police officers transported her to the local twenty-four-hour emergency animal hospital in the back of a patrol car. Ethan and Leo were more worried about Lady than anything else. Her absence was a palpable loss we couldn’t ignore. To everyone’s surprise, Lady pulled through emergency surgery and has been recovering at the animal hospital ever since. The vet tells me they don’t usually let visitors in this soon to see an animal who has been in such critical condition, but they decide to make an exception for us given the extraordinary circumstances and the fact that Lady is so dedicated to the family. When we get to her, we sob like a bunch of babies while we pet her limbs gently. She’s still weak, but I’ve never seen an animal look more proud. She’s a true hero and she knows it. Not only did she successfully thwart a kidnapping and rescue her boy, she survived to protect her family for many more years to come. What a dog. We’re incredibly grateful to her and grateful she’s ours. We can’t wait to bring her home when she’s healed a little more. Lady is the one bright spot in this whole nightmarish ordeal. Her survival and steady presence give us much-needed comfort. She is a beacon of love and hope. We need love and hope now more than ever.

  Ethan has been pretty quiet ever since the break-in. We’ve tried to be supportive and to encourage him to talk, but mostly we’re giving him his space. I don’t think there’s any right or wrong response to what he’s been through. It’s understandable he’d need some time to collect himself and heal. We’re all sitting around the den in the basement when Ethan tells Marjorie he has something to say. We’ve felt safer down low, so we’ve been hanging out in the basement a lot. Ethan is building with some plastic toy blocks while sort of leaning on his grandma’s knee when he looks up at her, ready to begin.

  “Grandma Marjorie?” he says.

  “Yes, my dear, what is it?” she replies, placing a bookmark in the collection of short stories by Tom Hanks she’s reading in order to give Ethan her full attention. She’s a huge Hanks fan. She always says if she hadn’t met Roddy and Tom hadn’t met his wife Rita, the two of them would have been perfect for each other. I kind of doubt those timelines would have matched up in reality, but we like to joke about it.

  The rest of us are listening to Ethan, too, but we don’t look up because we don’t want to make him feel uncomfortable. Liam is seated on the floor near the door doing some work on his laptop. Roddy is holding Leo in a recliner while the little guy dozes off to sleep. Ali and I are on the longest part of the sectional browsing social media on our smartphones, but really just sort of staring absentmindedly at our screens.

  “I think I used to be a different person,” Ethan blurts out. I lower my eyebrows and cock my head to one side, but quick glances from both Ali and Marjorie tell me I had better hold it in and not react. Roddy smiles without making a sound, and I take it he knows exactly what kind of trouble I could be in if I don’t heed the warning glances coming from these women.

  “Okay,” Marjorie replies nonchalantly. “What makes you think so?”

  “I remember things,” Ethan says simply.

  “What kind of things?” she asks.

  “I remember living in Greece a long time ago. Dadd
y was a soldier and he and Mommy had me as their baby.” Marjorie nods and leaves him room to go on. “Me and Mommy lived in a little house in the country and Daddy came to visit us sometimes. He wore a shiny uniform with a big hat and he had a sword. Papa Roddy was there and he made medicine and took care of us.”

  “That’s very interesting, Ethan,” Marjorie says slowly. “Did you just remember this?”

  “No, I’ve remembered a long time. The man who tried to take me from this house took me from our house then. Daddy and Mommy and Papa Roddy couldn’t stop him. It was scary.”

  “That does sound scary,” Marjorie responds, careful not to sound concerned. She shifts the conversation a little while working to gauge how upsetting this is for Ethan. “Was I there?”

  “I don’t know. I think so, that you were, but I don’t remember everything. You didn’t live with us,” he answers. Then after a pause, “Leo was there. He was a grown-up soldier with Daddy and Daddy taught him everything about soldiering. He had a shiny uniform and a sword, too.”

  “Wow, that sounds really interesting,” Marjorie says while gently stroking Ethan’s hair. “What did you look like?”

  “I was a boy. Bigger than now. I had black hair like Daddy’s. I remembering walking to see the ocean near our house. It was bright blue. We lived up high and the water was down at the bottom. Sometimes Mommy said we could only look at the water and not swim. But sometimes we walked all the way down to the water and could swim and catch fish to cook and eat. I remember swimming with Daddy one time. Daddy and Mommy loved each other.”

  “How do you know you were in Greece?” Marjorie asks.

  “I just know,” Ethan says as he shrugs his shoulders. “It’s in my thinking.”

  “Okay, I see,” she replies gently. “And how do you know it was Mommy and Daddy and Leo and Papa Roddy? Did they look the same as they do now?”

  “No. They had different bodies. But I know. They’re the same in the eyes.”

  “What else happened?” Marjorie asks, hoping to circle back to the topic of the intruder taking him once before.

  “I had to die,” Ethan says, matter-of-factly.

  “Was that scary?”

  “Being taken was scary. The dying part wasn’t,” Ethan responds, and with that, he seems to be done with the conversation. He stands up, then walks out of the room with a confidence and ease we haven’t seen since before the break-in. He’s probably going to turn on the TV and watch his PBS kids shows. It’s that time of the afternoon. Once Ethan is all the way out of sight, Marjorie raises her eyebrows, opens her eyes really wide, and smiles at us broadly. Roddy chuckles a little, careful not to disturb Leo’s rest.

  “I realize I’m the only adult in the room who isn’t a parent, so stop me if I’m out of line,” Liam says, “but what the hell was that about?”

  “Don’t ask me,” I respond. “That was unexpected. I guess he’s traumatized and coming up with stories to try and make sense of what happened to him. I have no idea though, really.”

  “Georgie, you don’t know,” Ali says. “It sounds crazy, for sure, but who are we to say what’s real and what isn’t just because we can’t see and touch it.”

  “Oh, it definitely sounds crazy,” Liam adds.

  “Well, kids this age often have imaginary friends,” Ali adds. “Ethan hasn’t mentioned an imaginary friend before. I know it’s common though. He’s at an age where imaginations are very active. It’s an important part of forming his own identity. Imagination helps kids figure out who they are in the context of the wider world. Maybe this is part of that developmental process.”

  Roddy doesn’t say anything. We look at him to see if he is going to, but he just smiles and motions towards Marjorie. Apparently, he thinks she has the answers we need. She’s certainly the most alternative and open-minded individual in our group. She probably does have some insight.

  “Well,” Marjorie begins, “I know a thing or two about past life memories. I’ve remembered a few different past lives of my own.”

  “Really?” Liam says. “I don’t want to be disrespectful. I try to stay open to new understandings. But really, Marjorie? You’re not shitting us right now?”

  “I’m dead serious,” she says. “No pun intended.”

  “Wow,” Liam returns. “Okay, then.”

  “Tell us more, Marjorie. We want to know,” I say. I haven’t told anyone about the dream of Dad the night of the break-in. It’s been on my mind though. I’ve never experienced anything like it. I can’t shake the feeling I really communicated with him. How to square that up with the fact that he’s been dead more than twenty years, I have no idea.

  “Ali’s right about kids and their imaginations at this age,” Marjorie explains. “But that doesn’t mean we should discount what Ethan shared with us. I firmly believe we’ve all lived before and will live again. These bodies are just vehicles which take us from birth to death. When we die, it’s like we step out of the vehicle, having completed the journey. I was always aware of and open to the idea of reincarnation, but in my twenties, I had my first past life memory and knew without a doubt it was real.”

  “What did you remember, Mom?” Ali asks.

  “I was a young girl in what would be considered the Wild West. My family was traveling in a covered wagon, and I died of starvation.”

  “You sure you weren’t just thinking of John Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath?” Liam asks with a tone of healthy skepticism. “Or maybe the old Oregon Trail computer game? That was around when you were in your twenties, right? I’m being serious. There are countless similar stories you might have heard. The power of suggestion is what’s real.”

  “You’re right, Liam,” Marjorie replies. “The power of suggestion is absolutely real. But in my past life memories, there was a know-it-in-your-bones sense of having actually been there. There were sounds and smells and subtleties to anchor me. I’ll never forget the feeling of remembering being out West and looking down at my feet on the dusty ground. I was wearing shoes with little straps which were far too fancy to be in the dirt, but they were all I had. I remember thinking how bizarre that it was me, but in another time and place. And that here were my feet on the ground out West. I’ve never even been to the Wild West part of the country in this lifetime. The feeling in the memory was that I was still very much myself, just in a different time and place. It’s the same way I’d still be myself in California if I flew there next week. I’d be in a different time and place, as myself. Does that make sense?”

  “Kind of, yeah,” Ali says. “It’s interesting.”

  “Once I landed in the memory, it was like a rush of information swept over me,” Marjorie continues. “But it wasn’t given or sent to me from an outside source. It was more like it was always in me and was somehow unlocked. I knew I had two sisters. Both older. My parents loved each other deeply, even though there was tremendous struggle as part of our daily existence. I was the most delicate since I was the youngest and the weakest, so I was the first to deteriorate when food and water really became scarce. By the end, it had been weeks of very little to eat or drink. We went a couple of days with nothing at all, and my body stopped being hungry and thirsty. I remember my mother holding me and rocking me and fretting over me. She knew I was dying and there wasn’t anything she could do about it. It was terribly sad. I loved her and didn’t want to leave her.”

  “Were you afraid?” Ali asks.

  “Not really afraid, no. What stands out is the beauty that was my life there. I was so very connected to my family members. We were tight-knit. I was seen and appreciated and wanted. I remember watching sunsets with my dad while we cleaned our pots and pans after dinner. I remember my mom lovingly mending the lace trim on my dress with a needle and thread when it got torn. I remember playing and laughing with my sisters. It was a good and happy life.”