I took a deep breath. Let the water run down over my face. I held the air in my lungs until they burned. Held it until I couldn’t hold it one second longer. Only then did I let it go. Turned my head, sucked in a gulp of steamy shower air.
Every surface of my skin was stinging from the temperature of the water. I didn’t dial it back. I wanted the sting. I couldn’t seem to scrub away the remnants of what happened, or what was happening, so I stood under a nearly scalding stream and waited for it to scorch away the evidence.
By the time I turned off the spray, my skin was bright red. I was clean.
At least externally.
I stepped out of the shower to dry off. The fibers of our fluffy bathroom rug tickled my feet in a familiar way. Took me back in time. Reminded me of the day Gabe and I had bought it. Several years ago at a bizarre we’d visited while looking for baby furniture. I loved the way it felt. Gabe loved that I loved it. That was enough for both of us.
I squirted a gob of lotion into my palm. Proceeded to smear it onto my skin. I did it more out of habit than any real desire to nourish or protect my skin. I was trying so hard to slip back into normal. Into routine. Maybe I was trying too hard. Or maybe I was simply fighting a losing battle. Maybe normal wasn’t an option for me anymore.
Everything that should’ve felt comfortable, should’ve felt like home felt strange and detached instead. Like I was experiencing the routines of someone I’d read about or seen in a movie. Nothing felt like mine. But I kept at it. Cradled the hope that one of these trite moments would be the domino that caused them all to fall back into place. I just hadn’t found it yet.
I dressed and walked out into an empty bedroom. “Gabe?”
No answer.
I went in search of him. Poked my head into the closet as I passed. Ducked into his office as I walked by. After that, I didn’t wonder where he was. My next stop was Dalton’s room. I knew that’s where I’d find him. And I did.
Gabe was standing over our son’s bed, staring down at it with an inscrutable expression on his face. A thousand different things could’ve been going through his mind. I could only guess at which ones actually were. Worry. Hopelessness. Fear. Guilt. Rage. Thoughts of harm. Bodily harm. Not his, not mine. Someone else’s. The man who had taken our child.
I padded up beside him. Stopped near the foot of the bed. I let my eyes wander along the racecar trundle bed. Stared at the blue comforter with different kinds of balls on it—basketballs and baseballs and soccer balls and footballs. Gabe was already introducing Dalton to sports, and Dalton loved them all. Well, as much as a toddler could. He was definitely advanced for his age, but I think he loved the time spent with his father more than anything else. And I just enjoyed watching them together.
I closed my eyes. Let my mind pull up the most recent memory. We’d taken Dalton to the park to watch the dogs. At three and a half, he was already an animal lover. I took full credit for that. Gabe was the intelligent sports guy. I was the creative animal girl. For that reason alone, I knew our kid would grow up to be well rounded.
I remembered sitting cross-legged on the oversized blanket I’d taken for our picnic lunch. Gabe and Dalton were in the grass, in a wide shaft of sunlight, kicking a soccer ball between them. Dalton would giggle every time he got the ball back to Gabe, and Gabe would cheer and clap. Dalton loved it, but I doubted it was possible he loved it as much as me. Even then, something in me knew that those days were golden. Irreplaceable. Priceless. I thought because of his age. Obviously, I couldn’t have known our lives would take a turn for this kind of “worse.” No one anticipates a kidnapping. No one plans for horrific events. We spend life doing our damnedest to avoid them. To prevent the ugly from entering the pristine bubble of their existence.
But ugliness had found its way into ours.
We were living a nightmare.
“What are we going to do, Gabe?”
My words were only whispers, but in the sanctity of our child’s room, they were as loud and harsh and unwelcomed as gunshots.
“I don’t know. I’ve thought of little else since he…he didn’t come home.”
“He told you not to go to the police, but what about me? I could go. Maybe he wouldn’t even know.”
Gabe swung his hurting blue eyes over to me. “You killed Lauren, Shannon. And they have the murder weapon. You’ll go to prison for the rest of your life.”
I felt my chin tremble. It betrayed the bravado I was trying to project. “But if we could get Dalton back, it would be worth it.”
Gabe turned. Reached out. Cupped the balls of my shoulders. “Maybe, but he said Dalton would be safe as long as we didn’t involve the police. We can’t risk him finding out and doing something to Dalton.”
“But what if I—”
“Yeah, what if? What if you did something, what if we tried something? What if, what if? And what if he found out? What if he knew, somehow, and it got our son killed?”
“But how could he? He isn’t here, and—”
“But what if? I mean, look what he’s already done. How did he manage to grab you? How did he manage to grab Dalton? How did he manage to find out so much about our lives, our habits, that he just waltzed right in and took my wife and child?” His voice was growing louder. Angrier. He was furious. With himself. Just as I knew eventually I would be furious with myself, too. Self-blame would be part of it. I could see that coming already. It wouldn’t be part of the healing process; people didn’t heal from something like this. But it would be part of some kind of process. A painful one.
“But—”
“We can’t risk what we can’t be absolutely certain of. You know that, Shan.”
I sighed.
“I know.” My words sounded as strained as they felt coming out of my narrow throat. “I just…”
“I know. Believe me, I know.”
And I knew he did. He was as helpless as I was. We could probably talk it to death every day for a year and never find a way out of this for our family. But I knew that didn’t mean we wouldn’t try. It was beyond me not to. And I suspected my husband felt the same way.
I let my head drop down between us. Gabe pulled me against his chest. Wrapped his arms around me as far as they would go. That used to make me feel like nothing in the world could hurt me, like his arms were made of magical steel that could protect me from everything as long as they were locked around me. Even after Dalton came along, I’d hold him in my arms and Gabe would wrap his around both of us, giving me that same sense of security. Like our family was invincible as long as we were wrapped in each other.
As it turned out, no one was invincible.
And no one was safe.
“Maybe if I hadn’t left…”
“Don’t do that to yourself.”
“Maybe if I’d quit my job to stay home with Dalton full time…”
Gabe leaned away. Peered down into my face. “You can’t think stuff like that. Women work and have a family all the time. That choice doesn’t mean bad things are going to happen to their loved ones. This was… I don’t even know what this was. This whole thing is the crazy shit no one can expect. No one can anticipate it. Or plan for it. No one even really thinks about. Most people go through their lives, day by day, in their familiar routine, completely oblivious to the atrocities that are going on around them. Hell, I did for years. I never—” His words cut off sharply. I could see him struggling to hold it together. It broke my heart. Crushed the already tiny pieces into dust. “I never thought something like this could happen to us. We…we’re good people. We aren’t criminals. We don’t dabble in anything illegal. We’re kind and generous. I don’t understand how someone could…could…”
I stretched up onto my toes. Pressed my lips to the indentation in his chin. Pulled his head down to my shoulder. I wrapped around him. He wrapped back. It didn’t feel quite the same. I knew it never would. As it turned out, our bubble was made of glass. And one man shattered.
Together, not for the first time and not for the last, we cried. I didn’t know it at the time, but that would become our new normal. Every day for weeks, we would stand over our son’s empty bed and we would wonder. And we would cry. And we would hold each other in our helplessness. And it would never bring our son back.