My mother spent her days with the victim advocates, as well as with fellow parents of missing kids. They offered support, mentorship, as she sought to come up to speed quickly on law enforcement, criminal behavior, media management. She got to learn how to craft messages for strategic press conferences, while also making the rounds on the morning news shows and nightly cable stations. She got to handwrite replies to hundreds, then thousands of letters from total strangers wishing for my safe return. And she got to endure other notes, Facebook posts, stating an obviously immoral teenage girl like me got exactly what I deserved.
In theory, there are some financial resources available to victims of crime. The specialists diligently produced paperwork enabling my mother to possibly collect a couple of thousand here, or apply for a grant there. My mother will tell you she had neither the time nor mental focus. No, having your child abducted is a fairly impoverishing ordeal. My sin of heading out for a night of spring break drinking becoming my entire family’s punishment.
In our case, the community rallied. Neighbors showed up and worked the farm in their free time. They got seeds started, crops planted, and then, as the ordeal continued to drag on, dealt with the fall harvest. The church held bake sales. Local businesses sent over checks. Local restaurants and delis provided food.
My mother will never leave her farm. Probably wouldn’t have anyway. But the land, her place, her community, it’s her solace, her anchor. It was there when she needed it most, and without it, I don’t know what she would’ve done.
She has her place in the world.
It’s my brother and I who remain adrift.
Darwin left. A year after my return, when I couldn’t magically smile on command. When the pancakes I once loved were now a smell I couldn’t stomach, he’d had enough. The family protector melted down, had a little episode involving driving way too fast with no headlights, and my mother realized all the love and attention I didn’t want should be turned on him instead.
After many heartfelt discussions, she sent him to Europe. Got him a passport, a rail ticket, a backpack, and sent him off with a kiss and a hug. Go forth, young man, and find yourself, and all that.
Darwin doesn’t send postcards. He knows better. But from time to time, we get a call. He’s in London now. Likes it a lot. Is thinking of enrolling in the London School of Economics. Certainly, he’s bright enough, while having some pretty interesting topics to write about for his college entrance essay.
I think, more than anything else in the world, I would like my brother to have a happy ending. I wish he’d fall in love, land a great job, build a life. Then my mistake doesn’t have to be his punishment anymore.
Which is funny, because I think he would say exactly the same about me.
I’ve showered long enough. Soaped. Shampooed. Conditioned. Done everything except feel clean.
The smell of burning human flesh.
Not pork. Maybe more like roast beef.
I saved a life, I remind myself as I whack the ancient faucet to off. Another girl is safe because of me. Another animal is off the streets.
The sun is out. My apartment smells like blueberry muffins. This is one of those moments when I should stop, give thanks for the day.
I think of Jacob. I don’t want to. I just can’t help myself.
I remember Jacob Ness, the man who took me, broke me down, and then rebuilt me for four hundred and seventy-two days.
And in the back of my mind, he’s laughing at me.
*
MY MOTHER HAS CLEANED THE KITCHEN. If I hadn’t emerged dressed and freshly showered when I did, I’m pretty sure she would’ve taken down and washed the French-printed valances she bought and installed last year. My mother is a farmer mostly because she needs to keep busy. She’s one of those people who require a long list of chores, or her life lacks all meaning.
She’s dressed like herself today. Black wide-legged yoga pants with a funky print on the bottom hem, and a loose-fitting sea-foam-green, 100 percent organic cotton wrapped shirt. Over that, she’s thrown on a man’s unbuttoned gray flannel shirt. In Maine she’d blend right in. In Boston, not quite so much.
About six months after I returned home, she boxed up all the clothes the victim specialists had helped her buy for the press conferences. Together, we took the items to the thrift shop that operates out of the congregational church’s basement. The ladies were pleased to receive such high-quality, hardly worn clothing items.
We called it Liberation. An ongoing campaign to get our lives back. My mother gave away clothes that were never really her. I painted my childhood bedroom butter yellow and resolved to be more appreciative of everyday beauty.
Let’s just say my mother is doing better with the campaign than me.
When I reappear, she has heaped the muffins on a plate in the middle of the rolling butcher block piece that serves both as my kitchen-prep island and sole dining table. She has also poured two glasses of orange juice and cut up fresh fruit. Given my refrigerator held mostly bottles of water and cartons of stale takeout, she went to the corner store while I was showering.
Which, of course, compels me to turn around and check the front door locks. I snap the bolts home. When I return to her, I know my expression is disapproving, but I can’t help myself.
“Muffin?” she says cheerfully, gesturing to the plate.
I take one. Suddenly, I’m famished. I eat two muffins, then devour half the bowl of fruit. My mother doesn’t say anything, but picks at her own food. She probably ate hours ago. Waiting for me. Worrying about me.
Now, she’s working on playing it cool.
“Samuel says you killed a man,” she says at last, waiting game obviously up.
I pick up my plate, carry it to the tiny sink. “Self-defense. I won’t face any charges.”
“You think that’s what scares me?”
She’s standing right beside me, and despite her best attempts at deep-breathing exercises, I can tell she’s agitated.
It hurts me. It does. I don’t know how to be her little girl anymore. I don’t know how to turn back the clock and undo what was done. I can’t feel what I can’t feel. I can’t be what I can’t be.
But it pains me, this look on her face, this worry in her eyes. It kills me to know that the person I am now hurts the mother who’s never done anything but love me.
“I didn’t plan on what happened,” I hear myself say. “But I was prepared. And I handled the situation. This guy, he’s hurt other girls, Mom. But not anymore. He’s done.”
“I don’t care about other girls,” she says. “I care about you.”
She hugs me then, hard and fierce. The way I know she’s always hugged me. And I force myself to stand there. To not flinch, to not go rigid. To remind myself these arms are my mother’s arms. Her hair smells like my memories of my mother’s hair. This is the woman who tucked me in at night, and read me stories, and offered me warm milk when I couldn’t sleep, and made me cinnamon toast when I was sick. A million tiny moments.
But it’s all detached now. This is what I can’t tell her, can never completely explain. The memories don’t feel like mine. All of this, all of what was, feels like something that happened to someone else, home movies from somebody else’s life.
Jacob Ness wanted a completely compliant companion. So he broke me down, physically, emotionally, spiritually. Then, when I was nothing, just a raw, helpless mound of human clay, he remolded me into being exactly who he wanted me to be. He became my world, my center, my guiding star.
And then . . . That last day. Those final few moments.
The story I told once and will never repeat.
He’s gone now.
And I am lost. Forever untethered. Until my mother’s hug feels like the comfort of a stranger.
My own brother ran away from the person I’ve become. But my mom is more stubborn.
“You can come back home,” she says now, an old argument. Fosters dependency. She knows it, and hastily adds, “Just for a visit. A few days. We could make a girls’ weekend out of it.”
“I’m fine.”
“Going out alone to a bar on a Friday night?”
“I can take care of myself. Isn’t that the point?”
She draws back. She can’t talk to me when I’m in this mood, and she knows it. Again, the worry on her face, which I feel as a fist in my chest.
“Flora.”
“I know you don’t like my choices,” I hear myself say, “but they’re my choices to make.”
A winning argument in my mother’s world, and she knows it. I watch her inhale deeply. Exhale slowly.