Drawn Into Darkness(4)

“Pretty soon,” Chad had said, “there’s going to come a tipping point when we will have to stop.”

In bed, in darkness. Pillow talk. How long had it been now since pillow talk, or since they had even slept together?

Sleepy and not paying much attention, Amy had mumbled, “Stop what?”

“Stop trying to believe Justin might be alive when common sense says he’s dead.”

Common sense and experts: statistically speaking, most children abducted by strangers are killed within the first seventy-two hours after they disappear, and most of those are dead even before the searches start. Amy knew this and she knew Chad knew it.

“Chad, you’ve got to be kidding.” Amy felt wide-awake now. More than just awake. Palpitating. Panicked. “We can’t give up on Justin!”

“How long are we supposed to live a nightmare? How long are we supposed to keep hoping when there’s hardly any hope? And don’t you think you should spend more time with the twins?”

“I keep them involved—”

“Posting their brother’s picture on the Internet? Bullshit. You’re neglecting them to chase an unrealistic dream—”

“Stop it, Chad!” Amy tried to keep her voice low so as not to disturb the children’s sleep. She and Chad never made any kind of noise that might wake up the twins.

Chad said just as quietly, “I can’t stop. This thing is killing us, deep-sixing our marriage. We have to move on.”

“I’m Justin’s mother! I can’t give up on him!”

“You were my wife before you were anybody’s mother.”

Silence. Amy could not reply to that. Or not in any way that Chad could bear to hear. She had known since the moment Justin was born that motherhood came before anything else. It was a mother’s instinct to protect her children, and if that meant protecting them from their own father, so be it. Amy put her children ahead of her husband. If she had to choose between Chad and her babies, Chad would have to go.

But she could not say this to him. And she felt pregnant with the knowledge, felt it kicking inside her, causing her to spend a mostly sleepless night.

A few days later Chad tried again, this time using the mundane argument of money, expenses, numbers on the bank statements. He said they had to cut back on their efforts to find Justin, which had almost buried them financially despite donations from hordes of sympathetic people. He thought Amy should help out by going back to work at Delaine Assisted Living. And they both should pay more attention to the twins. They should make an effort to become an untroubled family again. They should get back to normal. A new normal.

Amy could not help feeling horrified at her husband’s “common sense.” They quarreled. And a day or two later, again. And so on. It had been months now.

Chad wanted her back at work? Amy found herself barely able to do any kind of work at all. There had been a time, before Justin’s disappearance, when Amy had gone to both yoga and Zumba classes after a full day at her job, when she had gotten up extra early some mornings to go jogging with friends, when she had created delicate, gift-worthy jewelry out of wire and beads, when she had started to weave (not crochet or knit) a colorful afghan for the sofa. Now, discouraged by Chad, she no longer spent all her time searching for Justin, yet she could not take up any of her hobbies again. Instead, she found herself wistfully bringing home angel figurines she picked up at yard sales, thrift shops, and dollar stores. Wasting more money, Chad complained, and she did not even try to tell him that placing angels throughout the house was the only way she could bear living in her own home. A lot of the time she moped around, feeling desolate. More so after each quarrel with her husband.

And each fight got worse than the last, until now when Amy had really pissed Chad off, spending their last dime for a television commercial about Justin. “It might make all the difference,” Amy had argued. “Look how many people America’s Most Wanted has located.”

“John Walsh,” Chad had retorted in stinging tones. “Let me remind you, Amy, his missing son is dead, always was dead, and always will be dead.”

“But he never gave up.”

“So now he’s your hero instead of me?”

True enough, Amy thought, sitting uncomfortably on what should have been a comfy sofa, watching the rodeo on TV and feeling the knowledge that she could never give up still kicking like an overdue baby in her belly. Sensing another elephant in the room, Amy almost let herself think she stood to lose more than her son. She almost let herself think that pretty soon, if things went on this way, there was going to come a tipping point—make that a ripping point. The taut fabric of her marriage would soon tear apart.