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Drawn Into Darkness(3)

By:Nancy Springer


Which was why, yes, he, the wage earner, was still pissed at her. Because of the additional financial burden, yes, but more because he thought it was time to move on. Just because he said so. The dickhead thought it was all about him—

No, Amy told herself. Chad was a good man. Certainly neither he nor she would ever have chosen this trouble that threatened to tear them apart.

Back when it had first happened, her husband had been with her two hundred percent, both of them intent on getting Justin back. Poor Chad, God, he had seen it happen, had seen their son pedaling his bike down the peaceful road to spend Saturday afternoon with a friend; Chad had been out front, mowing the lawn. According to what he’d told her, he remembered waving at the white van as it passed, but without paying much attention; in Alabama everybody waves at everybody. Reaching the edge of the yard, Chad had turned the mower just in time to see, toward the end of the road, the van deliberately bump into Justin’s bike, knocking him to the ground. Chad had yelled, of course, quite futilely, “Hey!” as a quick, slim person—probably a man, but could it possibly have been a woman?—someone in a gray hoodie, sprang out of the van and grabbed Justin. Chad did not see the boy kick or resist. Justin had seemed limp, maybe unconscious, as the stranger threw him into the van, slammed the door, ran back to the driver’s seat, and drove away fast. Still yelling “Hey! HEY!” in disbelief, Chad had jumped off the mower and “like a lunatic,” as he said afterward, he had run after the van as it sped away, turned onto Wiregrass Widow Road, then disappeared from sight between the slash pine trees. Gone.

With Justin in it.

Their son, gone.

Chad and Amy’s firstborn, abducted in broad daylight.

Almost two years ago now.

Amy remembered she had been folding laundry in the kitchen with Kayla, then an eight-year-old, when she heard the drone of the lawn mower stop for some reason. She did not yet know that the mower had turned itself off because Chad had ejected himself from the seat. But she remembered the exact item of clothing—Justin’s NASCAR T-shirt, the red, white, and blue cotton tee—she laid down when Chad burst into the house, shouting incoherently, to phone 911.

During the panicky blur afterward, Amy had found strength she had never previously known she possessed, crying with Chad and Kayla and Kyle, trying to comfort all of them, trying to support Chad through long hours with the cops—local, then state, then all over again with the FBI. She had stood by as Chad identified the bicycle still lying at the side of the road with a dent and some white paint on its rear mudguard. Side by side, she and Chad had cried for the TV cameras, pleading with the abductor for Justin’s return. She had spent as many sleepless nights as he did, had searched endless pine forests along with swarms of volunteers, had placed uncounted numbers of MISSING, ENDANGERED posters on telephone posts and light poles and in storefront windows, had answered too many phone calls, had comforted her husband in her arms at least as much as he had ever comforted her.

When it became financially necessary for Chad to return to work at Dixieland Trucking, the torch had mostly passed to Amy. She had quit her job as a dietitian at Delaine Assisted Living to search for Justin. She had spent her days on the phone, prodding the police, getting billboards put up, and sometimes going on talk radio or to a TV interview or a fund-raiser or a conference about missing children. Mostly for that first year she had sat with her computer, searching the Internet for yet more sites on which she could post pictures and descriptions of her missing son.

Yet, despite all this practice, how could she possibly describe Justin, really? He had more than his share of the mercurial, puckish quality of most children, which meant that, almost day by day, he had changed. His passions when she knew him had been NASCAR racing and Taylor Swift, but were they still? Did he still turn to hide tears in his eyes when he saw a road-killed dog or cat? Did he still get that impish smile when he had a secret agenda? Was he still an adorable little squirt who looked and sounded prepubescent, or had he shot up, was his voice changing, was—if he was alive, was he okay, was he still Justin?

Would she know him if she saw him now, almost two years later?

It didn’t matter. She would search for him twenty years if that was what it took. For the rest of her life if she had to.

But Chad was beginning to feel differently.

He had endured the first anniversary of the abduction hand in hand with her, through the sad ceremony, the painful emotions, the candlelight vigil. But no more than a week later he had turned over in bed and said the words of a practical-minded man, the words of a realist, the words Amy was not sure she could ever forgive him for saying.