That’s when Ned came in, something fleshy and hairy swinging between the clamps of his long wrench. “Got it!” he announced, then his eyes dropped straight to my legs. “You surfed.”
“How is my surfing a bigger deal than that corpse you’re carrying?”
“Not bigger, but equal billing,” Carlos said. “We just figured, you know, that Hotmail had gone permanently offline.”
I smiled. I’d missed this. The easy joking. The normalcy. My coworkers had come in clutch during the lowest point in my life—pooling vacation days to keep me home as long as they could, setting up fundraisers and an online page for donations. It bought us some time. But it didn’t buy us forever.
So, a few weeks back, I’d clocked in again. I sorted mail, walked my route, smiled at people who didn’t know what to say, and pretended everything was fine. Even my closest friends here, like Carlos, Ned, and Dana, had kept their distance, maybe waiting for a sign that I was back online. Apparently, that sign was the sand on my legs.
“Eyes up, people,” I said, spreading my arms. “This is a government facility. Besides, the real star here is that ball of flesh dangling between… Ned’s wrench.”
The room cracked open with laughter.
I leaned in for a closer look. “Please tell me that’s not what I think it is.”
“I have no idea what you think it is, McKallister, but it’s a mouse,” Ned said. “Pulled it out of my engine.”
“Oh, that’s actually exactly what I thought it was,” I said, giving him and Mickey a wide berth. “Why are you giving it a parade?”
“I’m not. I’m documenting my victory. You’re not going to help me dispose of it?”
“Nope.” I laughed. “Absolutely not. That’s between you and whatever god you pray to.”
Getting back into a routine was a relief. I’d rather work my fingers to the bone than sit still with what we’d been through. What we were still going through. You don’t tramp through hell and come out unscathed. We all carried scars, but Jake… yeah. He’d come home in pieces.
The knee was the obvious one. It had been shattered with a blunt object Jake refused to name. Surgeons rebuilt it with metal and screws, but the pain never left him alone. It lived right under his skin as a constant reminder, and he moved like every step was a flashback to his basement prison.
But it wasn’t just the physical damage we were dealing with. It was how the abuse had trained him to expect pain before kindness. He flinched when someone lifted a hand too fast, and even a simple question—You want water?—could knock him flat. The nightmares rattled our walls and dragged the whole house awake with them, yet none of that was the worst part. Those weren’t the things that kept me up at night. What did was knowing Jake wanted the pain to stop more than he wanted to live.
Our house went into lockdown, and precautions became routine. One by one, ordinary things disappeared until the place felt stripped down to the bones. The knives went first, then the medication, then the belts, cords, and sheets. We removed the locks from the bathroom doors and left our own doors open at night, listening for anything that felt wrong.
We tried to talk to him. God, did we try! We started gently,then spoke more directly, and finally became desperately careful, weighing every word as if it might be the one that tipped him over—or pulled him back. But Jake didn’t threaten or rage or ask to be saved. He just shut down when the pain spiked and when the memories closed in too fast, like letting go took less effort than staying. Once you saw that in your child, you stopped living normally. You adjusted, you adapted, and you learned how to live on watch.
“Everything good?” Carlos asked as we walked toward our trucks.
“Great,” I said automatically, but it came out too fast. Too cheerful.
He raised an eyebrow.
I nodded while shaking my head. “Great.”
Carlos shrugged. “Okay, then. As long as it’s great.”
I turnedinto our driveway and slammed on the brakes to avoid running over a reporter. Not a metaphor; an actual person, standing where my trash cans usually did. Jake’s kidnapping, his escape, and the brutal way it ended had turned him into one of the biggest news stories in the world. And no matter how fiercely Michelle and I tried to shield him, Jake had a price on his head now. One photo meant a paycheck, and that alone was worth the risk of getting run over in my driveway.
In the weeks after the kidnapping, cameras parked on our lawn, vans idled at the curb, and reporters rotated in shifts on the off chance Jake might step outside. They wanted footage. Statements. Tears. They wanted the miracle boy and the monster story that came with him. But they’d have to wait in line, because Jake wasn’t talking. Not to us, not to the psychologist,and certainly not to the sensationalists camped out on our front lawn.
“Scott,” one of them called out while my tires were still rolling. “Can you give us an update on Jake? How long do you plan to keep him out of school?”
I killed the engine and sat there for a second, my hands still on the wheel, reminding myself that I was a grown man and vehicular manslaughter would really complicate my week. I opened the car door and stepped out.
“You need to stay on the sidewalk,” I said. “This is private property.”
They nodded. All of them. Like that meant something.
Every step I took, they stepped with me, lifting their cameras. There were only five of them today. A light crowd. We were approaching three months since Jake had returned from the hospital, and the numbers had thinned considerably, but they never hit zero.
“Aren’t you worried Jake will fall behind academically?”
