Yesterday I got the opportunity to talk to the mother of one of the missing people. Even a year after the last time she saw her daughter, she gets emotional just saying her name. It was hard to watch her struggle with herself to talk without dissolving into tears. I comforted her, telling her it was alright to cry, but part of me felt fake offering the comfort. I'm the one who still buries my face in my pillow to cry over my parents. And it has been much longer than a year.
There was something about the conversation that struck me. Though she fully accepted her daughter was gone, abducted by someone, and very likely killed, she couldn't wrap her mind around the way it happened. Her blood was found strewn across the alley behind where she worked, but her mother said she would never have gone back there alone in the dark. It just didn't make any sense. Her daughter hated the dark and didn't even like to walk through her own home by herself without turning on all the lights. She just couldn't imagine her going out into the alley to bring out the trash without someone being there with her.
I'm still tumbling that around in my head as I walk along beside Jake, listening to him tell me stories about his childhood here in Feathered Nest. His mother, father, brother, and sister ensured he rarely had a dull moment. And when he did need something new to spark his imagination, or he was on overload and wanted a break, his grandmother's house was within walking distance, set on sprawling grounds filled with hiding spots and secret rooms and forts he crafted with his siblings. It sounds idyllic, and a pang goes through me at the thought of my own hectic, never truly settled childhood.
“Alright. So, now you know the story of what happens to a peanut butter and marshmallow sandwich when it's put into the microwave for five minutes,” he says.
“Important life lessons learned,” I smile.
“Yes. So, now it's your turn. Tell me something about yourself. I know you're an only child.”
“Yep. Just me. My mother was a ballerina in Russia when she was young but came to the United States after an injury ended her career.”
“That's terrible,” Jake says sympathetically.
I shake my head and take a sip of the steaming hot apple cider I've been carrying mostly to keep my hands warm as we walk along one of the smaller streets in town.
“Not really. She enjoyed dancing, but it wasn't really her passion. She didn't live or die by it by any means. When it was over, it was simply over, and that was it. She was ready to move on to the next part of her life, and that meant my father.”
“And you,” he says.
“And me,” I confirm with a smile.
“What about your father?”
“He was not a ballerina in Russia.” Jake gives an exasperated laugh, and I giggle. “He worked for the government.”
I don't go into any details. I learned early on in my life not to offer more than was asked of me, and most of the time, not even that much. Especially, when it came to my father.
“Worked? Past tense?”
I nod. “Both are gone.”
Despite everything else I'm fabricating as I tell him, that answer seems to burn on my tongue. I can't tell him everything. I can't tell him my mother was murdered when I was young and my father, a top CIA agent, disappeared. I have to protect myself, my identity, and my motivations, but not telling Jake almost feels like a betrayal.
“I'm so sorry to hear that,” he tells me. “Mine are, too.”
I nod, and a few seconds of silence fall between us as we commiserate in the pain and emptiness of being without our parents.
“I’m sorry,” I say.
He looks directly into my eyes with an intensity that makes something inside me ache, but I don’t know why.
“Emma, there’s something I need to tell you.”
“Alright,” I say, gingerly.
Jake looks away, then back to me.
“It isn’t just my parents who are gone. I wasn’t always alone here. I was married.”
“You were?”
He nods. “It was a long time ago. We were both young, but it didn’t matter to us. We wanted to be together, and there wasn’t anything that was going to stop us. Fortunately, no one tried. We only got three months together before she died.”
A lump forms in my throat at the sound of pain in his voice.
“What happened to her?” I ask.
“She was hit by a drunk driver,” he sighs. “The only thing that got me through it was knowing it happened instantly. She had no idea.” He lets out a long breath, and his eyes meet mine again. “Does it bother you?”
I shake my head. “Of course not.”
Jake leans forward, touching his forehead against mine. I’ve only known him for a few days, but I’m slipping deep into him, and I’m afraid of what might happen when this is all over.
Finally, I break the silence by turning to him.
“Favorite family vacation,” I ask.
“Hmmm,” he muses, leaning his head back slightly as he thinks. “That's a tough one. We did a lot. My mother was the family adventure type. I'm going to have to say Disney Animal Kingdom. I was seven years old, and I remember seeing the elephants and thinking about how incredibly big they were. That seems so silly now, but when I was that age, I didn't really think about an animal being that big in real life. When I got to see them fairly up close, it was just mind-blowing.”
We walk a little farther, and Jake looks like he's about to say something when shouts ring out through the cold air. I look at him, and his eyes widen.
“That's coming from the park,” he says. “Come on.”
We toss our cups into a nearby trashcan and run as fast as we can through the snow. He leads me toward a small park several streets away from the main shopping area of the town. As we approach, we see a crowd starting to form.
“Get off me!” I hear someone shouting. “Get your hands off me!”
“What did you do to her?” another man demands. “Where is she?”
A few voices from the crowd shout at the two men, split over which side they are supporting. Jake and I rush into the fray, and he forces people out of the way to reveal a man dragging another by what looks like a rope around his neck. The man thrashing on the ground has his hands shoved between the rope and his neck, desperately trying to keep it from choking him.
“What's going on here?” Jake asks.
The man with the other end of the rope drags the man on the ground a few more feet toward a low-hanging branch of a nearby tree, and my heart jumps into my throat as I realize his intentions.
“He took my daughter,” he says.
“I didn't do anything with his daughter,” the other begs. ”Please.”
Jake grabs onto the rope and looks the first man directly in the eye. “Let go. You need to put down the rope.”
“She's gone,” the man says, his voice cracking. “My little girl is gone, and he's the last one I saw her with.”
“That doesn't mean he did anything to her,” Jake says.
“There's blood in his car. I saw it.”
“I went hunting. Like I told you. I put my knife down, and some blood got on my seat,” the other man insists.
“You don't just put down a hunting knife without realizing it has blood on it. He had to have done something to her. And since he won't tell me where she is, I'm going to make sure he's gone, too.”