“The man stabbed him, Michelle,” Scott said, his voice high and scared. “What do you think he’s going to do when he finds him on the phone?”
He overrode me then, his voice firm, unyielding. “Jake, this is Dad. I need you to do exactly what I say. Hang up the phone and go hide. Now. You hear me? Put the phone down and hide.”
Silence.
My pulse roared in my ears.
Then movement. A dull thump. Breathing, farther away now, like the phone had slipped from his hand.
“Jake!” I cried. “Jake—”
The line went dead.
Something inside me snapped. I slammed my fists into Scott’s chest, sobbing that he’d made him hang up, that he’d abandoned our son when he needed us most. Scott caught my wrists, pulled me into him, and held on until the fight drained out of me. We stood there like that, my hands clutching his shirt, staring at the phone.
Every second stretched into agony. Was Jake hiding? Was he bleeding out on the floor? Had the man come back?
We didn’t know. There was nothing left to do but wait. Scott tightened his hold on me, both of us breathing through the same terror, the same unbearable hope.
And then the phone rang.
They broughtus good news first. Then they brought us the truth.
Our son was alive. He’d been found inside the kidnapper’s house, barely conscious and covered in blood that wasn’t all his.
The FBI called the conditions inside the housegrimand left it at that. Jake’s injuries required no such restraint. They used words likedefensive wounds,shattered kneecap,signs of asphyxiation. They said there were things done to him that no child should have to suffer. They said he hadn’t run when we told him to. Hadn’t hidden or locked himself away. He hadn’t needed to—because the man he’d been running from was already dead.
Killed by our son.
I sat there in a molded plastic chair, Scott’s hand crushing mine, trying to reconcile the boy who used to fall asleep in my arms with the son who’d survived long enough to do what he’d done. What he’d had to do.
His name was Ray Davis, and he got what was coming to him.
We only knew what could be reconstructed after the fact. There had been a violent struggle in the basement. Somehow, Jake gained the advantage, wrenched the knife from Ray, and used it against him. Then dragged himself up the stairs to call us.
When I closed my eyes, I heard Jake’s voice on the phone—smaller than it should’ve been, younger somehow—asking if I remembered him. Like time had erased him while he was gone. That was the quiet horror. Not the blood. Not the wounds. A child wondering if he still existed in the minds of the people who loved him.
Yes, my son had come back to us.
But the cost of surviving might have already rewritten him.
38
SCOTT: WELCOME TO THE BLACK PARADE
Before Jake was taken, I used to start my days in the ocean. Surfing was my meditation. I’d paddle out before sunrise, catch a few waves, rinse off at the beach showers, pull on my postman blues, and clock in like a full-grown adult. Sometimes I brought the boys. Keith, Jake, Kyle, and occasionally even Quinn, if Michelle allowed. They’d trail behind me like ducklings, boards too big, wetsuits half-zipped, all tan limbs and big attitudes. Best part of my day.
After Jake went missing, the ocean might as well have been on another planet. And after he came home…, I didn’t dare. I wasn’t leaving Michelle alone with the weight of keeping our son alive, not even for an hour. Especially not for something as selfish as peace.
But this morning, I went. Just once. Just enough to remember how to breathe on my own. I showed up to work with my hair still damp, sand clinging to my calves, and salt crusted into my eyebrows. I hadn’t even realized how obvious it was until I stepped inside and the normally buzzing workroom came to a halt.
Dana stopped sorting mail and squinted up at me. “Is that… sand?”
I shrugged. “Don’t make a big deal out of it.”
“Oh, it’s a big deal,” she said. “We thought you were done with joy.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I filed an appeal.”
