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THE MORNING RUSH-HOUR traffic already had me edgier than a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs, so when my cell phone rang I let out a pathetic little, “Eeep.” I poked the Bluetooth to answer only because it was Chelsea.
“Eric put his house up for sale!” she exclaimed as the hill ahead of me lit up like a string of red Christmas lights.
“Oh?”
“Yes. Just when I finally got a date for the recording studio.”
“What recording studio?”
Behind me Jack bumped his heels against the seat. Ta-thump. Ta-thump.
“I didn’t tell you?”
“No.” That was probably what Chelsea had wanted to share the day she returned Maisie’s paperbacks. At the time, I wouldn’t have absorbed the information, let alone cared.
Remembering, Chelsea uttered a thoughtful, “Umm. You’re right. I didn’t. Anyway, the school grapevine came up with a parent who owns a small recording studio. She agreed to make a demo for Eric cheap, except now Eric’s leaving.”
“Probably not today,” I reasoned, “and I’m on my way to the airport. Mind if I call you later?” A break in the crawl had gotten me up to thirty miles an hour.
“Wait a minute. Where are you going?”
I poked the Bluetooth off and hit the gas. For an hour let her think I was leading an exciting life.
***
MY DAY HAD begun at dawn with Fideaux’s needs. It then took me across the Dannehower Bridge to the Cotaldi’s rented row home, where I was met by a distraught Susan and gray-faced George. Jack cheered and ran to embrace my legs, whereupon I burst into tears.
The very air pulsed with so much emotional tension that initially we adults exchanged nothing but empathetic eye contact. We dealt with the specifics in short sentences over the lumps in our throats: Where I was to meet Claire, how to identify her, a few details about Jack’s potty training success.
Then George scooped up his grandson with a, “Time to go, Champ.”
I wiped my nose and hoisted Jack’s duffle to my shoulder. Then Susan blinked and gave each of us a last mournful look. When she bent down for the umbrella stroller, her rigid body seemed to break along with her heart.
I had misjudged her, and the proof on her face would remain a vivid memory for many years.
Jack sensed her pain, too. Trying to reach her, he twisted so hard he nearly broke George’s grasp and fell onto the street.
At the car, Susan cupped her hand behind the child’s head, rubbed his tears with her thumbs, kissed him...and ran back into the house.
Jack’s, “Mama, mama, mama,” rang in our ears, as George buckled his grandson into the car seat.
“Dada” was conspicuously absent, of course. Flight risk that he was, Mike currently resided in a Minnesota cell awaiting his fate, which, according to my research, might be anything from time served to two years in prison, and/or a fine up to $4,000, not counting legal expenses and transportation costs. Had he used a weapon, abused Jack, or demanded payment for the boy’s return, the penalties would have doubled.
At first the sentencing parameters struck me as lenient, especially in contrast to other kidnappings; but then I considered how fraught with complications each case surely was. Mike Swenson/Cotaldi would never be my choice for Father of the Year, and I cannot condone his actions, yet I do sympathize with his feelings toward his son. Fortunately I’m not a Minnesota judge.
Understandably, Philadelphia has a large and active airport.
Crowds of people inch through cattle chutes to drop off luggage then hustle for distant escalators to join lengthy security lines upstairs. I couldn’t go far without a boarding pass, so it had been arranged for Claire to meet us near the left-hand escalator on the ground floor of the pier used by her airline.
Instead, she rushed toward us with a three-hundred watt smile and open arms the second we entered through the wide revolving door. The temptation to hug the breath out of Jack must have been overwhelming, but she slowed herself to a stop a few steps away. Wise, since her son’s chubby hands had already fisted with fright.
She greeted me with a breathless hello and polite handshake, all while her eyes devoured the sight of her child.
“I never thought...” was all she could manage. Tears glistening, she stooped down to stroller height and touched the boy’s hand.
“Hello, Jack,” she said at last, using the name that had been agreed upon. “I’m Claire, Mommy Claire. I’m going to give you jelly bread, and red crayons, and all the love you can stand.”
“How long do we have?” I inquired out of necessity.
“Half an hour,” she answered without glancing up. “It isn’t enough, but we can try.”
We found a row of empty seats near the window. Angling the stroller so Jack could watch us, I occupied him with a soft cereal bar. Face filled with curiosity, he stared at Claire as if she were magnetized.
“He’s smart,” I began, something mothers love to hear. “He likes macaroni and cheese, but hates peas...”
Several minutes into our race against the clock I realized I was handing her precious tidbits she would, and should, discover for herself, so I simply spread my hands and stopped talking.
Claire blinked with surprise, but then she got it.
“Yes,” she concurred with a fond glance at her son. “We’ll be fine.”
The silence that fell offered my only chance to ask what I hadn’t dared ask the Minneapolis police. Yet the question stuck in my throat.
“What?” Jack’s mother encouraged with a lift of her chin.
“Too personal,” I deflected. “Never mind.”
“After what you’ve done for me?” She huffed out a laugh. “I think you’ve earned the right to ask me just about anything.”
Confident that she was indeed sincere, I confessed that I couldn’t imagine how Mike had eluded the authorities for more than a year. “What with Amber Alerts and all the technology the police have now, how do you suppose he did it?”
Claire’s cheeks flushed, and her eyes shut for a moment.
“Mike’s smart,” she finally began. “Sound familiar? He is also devious, unforgiving, and almost inhumanly patient, especially when it comes to revenge. Our divorce wasn’t unique, but it was very, very unpleasant.” She waved her head remembering. “I won’t bore you with how nasty we were to each other. We just were.” She gazed up at the airport’s high ceiling.
“After that whole horrible mess was finished, Mike seemed to settle down. God forgive me, I was lulled into believing it was okay for him to have Jack on his assigned weekends.”
She exhaled an enormous sigh. Fixed her injured eyes on me.
“About four months later my appendix burst. My sister couldn’t get to Minneapolis fast enough, so Mike took Jack. Literally. I didn’t even know they were gone until I got released from the hospital three days later.”
“He didn’t visit you?”
She waved her head. “He was supposed to be watching Jack, right? We spoke briefly on the phone soon after my anesthetic wore off, but by then we weren’t really talking. It didn’t surprise me that he didn’t call again.”
“But more than a year...?”
“Like I said. Mike’s smart,” she repeated, “and vindictive, and patient. I think he’d been planning to kidnap Jack for months.”
“The new identity.”
“Yep. He even abandoned his car on another street.”
The announcement of a flight startled us both. Realizing it was time to go, Claire rose and gathered Jack’s things. I followed as far as I could, pushing the stroller and murmuring soothing phrases to the distressed child.
Parting was rough. Claire stiffened as if consumed by worry, and Jack’s eyes widened with alarm. His past was being severed from him as surely as if we’d cut off a limb, and by the look on his face he sensed it.
He began to cry.
Watching until they were out of sight, I comforted myself with the fresh knowledge that Claire was no witch. She was an ordinary woman with brown hair and hazel eyes, a couple of extra pounds, and a preference for comfortable clothes. She possessed common sense, compassion, and a prodigious love for her child. What else could I ask of Jack’s mother?
Never mind that my insides felt as if they’d been used for a punching bag, I had carried out George’s request.
After I dragged myself across the road back to short-term parking and climbed into my car, I called my daughter.
I inquired whether Eric was home, which meant Chelsea had to push a curtain aside to check for his car.
The answer was, “Yes.”