I took a deep breath, then began:
My victim advocate, Samuel, says the key to this survivor business isn’t to tell yourself the world is safe. Or to try to convince yourself you have nothing to fear. The world is plenty dangerous and we all should be a little scared. The antidote to anxiety is strength. To remind yourself that you did survive the first time. You made the right decisions, you took the right actions—even if that really meant taking no action at all. You survived. And no one, not even dead and yet still somehow present Jacob Ness, can take that away from me.
If only I could truly believe.
Returning home after my abduction, I didn’t wake up in the middle of the night remembering that I was tough, or dreaming about the second, third, or hundredth time I convinced Jacob not to kill me. I suffered terrible nightmares involving coffin-sized boxes, giant alligators, and Jacob’s hands closing around my throat.
I had to turn on every light in my childhood bedroom. I had to study the pattern on my bedspread. I had to work on deep breaths in, slow breaths out.
I enrolled in the first self-defense class following a particularly bad night. A night when every time I closed my eyes, I spun away from the safety of my mother’s house and ended up trapped in Jacob’s big rig all over again. If the antidote to terror is strength, then I had to find some muscle, because I couldn’t take many more nights like that one.
I wouldn’t say I was a natural at hand-to-hand combat. I was underweight, sleep deprived, a bundle of strung-out nerves. But the instructor gave me focus. “Hit the dummy!” That simple, that complicated.
First time stepping up to the plate, I really wanted to beat the shit out of that oversized Ken doll. Knock the smug smile right off his mannequin face.
The more I tried, however, the more I failed, which simply made me want to try harder. If I could get my hand properly fisted, if I could get that fist to connect with dummy Ken’s head, then maybe I wouldn’t be so scared anymore. Maybe I would finally sleep at night.
It took me four classes. While I started eating more of my mom’s carefully prepared meals and took to running up and down the stairs in the house because I still couldn’t go outside or jog along rural roads—and not just because of my own terror but because of my mother’s fears.
Then: the moment I finally managed to slug Ken. Solid connection. Felt it radiate all the way up my arm from knuckles to wrist to shoulder.
I cried.
I hit some practice dummy and I broke down. I bawled and wept all over the blue exercise mat. Sniffling, wiping my eyes, smearing snot across the back of my hand. The instructor didn’t say anything. Just stood Ken back up and ordered me to go again.
I found something in those classes. A small but savage beast just waiting to be let out of its cage.
Truth is, I survived Jacob, but I never fought him. On the beach when he abducted me? I don’t even remember that night. Maybe I was that drunk. Maybe he ambushed me that cleanly. I don’t know.
My first memory is waking up alone in a coffin-sized box, where I made like horror-movie bait and screamed and screamed. Nothing happened. No one magically showed up, set me free.
I beat my hands against the locked lid. I bloodied my heels against the wooden floor. Nothing. I don’t even know how long Jacob let me stew in there. Long enough without food and water that by the time he finally appeared, I didn’t launch myself at him like a rabid animal. I didn’t go for his eyes or his throat or his balls. I wept in gratitude. I held up my bleeding fingers to him in total, complete supplication.
These are the things you can’t get out of your head later. These are the comments that still kill me to read on social media now. Why didn’t I struggle harder? Why didn’t I work my hands free from the bindings when he left me tied up in motel rooms? Why didn’t I bolt from his big rig the first time he pulled into a truck stop? Why didn’t I do something, anything more?
Why didn’t I fight?
I don’t have those answers. I never will.
Samuel says this is the biggest burden all survivors bear. The coulda, woulda, shouldas. In his opinion, it misses the point. I did escape from Jacob Ness. I did survive. To second-guess my actions now is just plain stupid.
And yet night after night after night . . .
I took the first self-defense class hoping to ease my night terrors. Then I took the firearms class because beating a life-sized Ken doll wasn’t enough. Watching videos on how to pick locks and escape from various wrist restraints, well, what else is a girl going to do when she still can’t close her eyes at night?
I’m not saying I have all the answers yet, but I’ve learned to make it through. To find my way to some new kind of normal, where I’m not the person I used to be but I’m not the victim Jacob tried to train me to be.
Maybe this will help you. Maybe not. If there’s one thing I’ve learned these past few years, it’s that there’s not one right way to deal with trauma. Each of you will have to find your tricks, just like I did. And some days will be so impossible, you’ll wonder how you can go on.
On those days, I hope you’ll remember this post. I hope you’ll reach out to us here. You are not alone. The world is filled with survivors.
And we are all just trying to find the light.
I stopped typing. Reread the words. Wondered what the others would think, especially Sarah, when they read this part. I positioned my hands on the keyboard again. Gave up.
I rose from the sofa and padded toward the kitchen for more coffee. It was now after ten. Late morning, my mother would call it. She was generally up by four. Me, too, but not for the same reasons.
I poured more coffee into the mug. Added cream and sugar. I moved on from feeble promises to call my mother and considered reaching out to Stacey Summers instead. She was the college student I’d rescued last year. We kept in touch. I’d told her I’d be there for her after that awful night, and I didn’t lie. I’d assumed, at the time, that would mean me counseling her, but instead, watching her progress . . .
Stacey had leapt forward after her trauma. She’d turned toward her parents, not away. She’d reached for her faith instead of my bible of self-defense. She’d listened to everything I had to say, then done it all one better.
She should be writing a memoir, not me. She wasn’t just a survivor. As the saying went, she was a thriver.
Me, on the other hand, I remained a work in progress, a kidnapping survivor who lived in a one-bedroom apartment where the walls were covered in accounts of other missing persons cases. Again, Stacey had her faith in God; I had my determination never to be weak again. As I liked to tell the group, whatever worked for you.
I left the kitchen, turned on the news.
The first thing I saw was the red stripe streaming across the bottom of the screen.
Amber Alert.
Missing female teen.
I steeled myself as I always did when taking in such news. A new case, a fresh outrage. I wasn’t a shell-shocked, fresh-out-of-the-hospital kidnapping victim anymore. After the events of last year, surely I’d earned the right to call myself a professional.
But then I saw the name of the missing girl.
Roxanna Baez.
I nearly dropped my mug of coffee.
Sarah, I thought.
And I knew, beyond a doubt, that it had all started again.
Chapter 5
DO WE KNOW WHO PLACED the initial nine-one-one call?” D.D. asked Phil after Hector Alvalos had departed.
“The infamous Mrs. Sanchez, who also notified Hector of the shooting. Two uniformed officers already touched base. She said she was standing in her kitchen, making breakfast, when she heard what sounded like gunshots. She was just talking herself out of it when she heard a bunch more. She picked up the phone and called.”
“Where does she live?”