“Bless us, O Lord, and these, Thy gifts, which we are about to receive from Thy bounty through Christ our Lord, amen,” the sweet old man said. “Now pass the gravy!”
She didn’t just see that, did she? The setting looked like a lost cover of The Saturday Evening Post, only it was real. The only time she ever had a home-cooked meal like this was on Thanksgiving at her dad’s house.
The last thing Emily had expected when she was called on special assignment this afternoon was that she’d be eating dinner with some crazy, enormous, happy family. She couldn’t wait to call her daughter and tell her all about them.
She shook her head as she caught Mike’s eye at the head of the table.
“And a cat, too?” she said.
“Ah, he’s just another loafer,” Mike said. “Like the priest.”
Chapter 18
AFTER WE ATE, all the kids lined up to say good night to Emily.
“It was indeed a pleasure to meet you,” Trent said, still hamming it up. “And good night, Father. Do sleep well.”
“Oh,” I said, tickling him hard enough to make him squeal. “Do sleep well yourself, Sir Hamlet.”
When we were finally alone, I poured Emily the last of the wine and gave her the short version of my life story. I told her about Maeve, my wife. How we’d adopted our kids, one by one, until we turned around one day and saw that we had ten. I even told her how my wife had passed away. How Mary Catherine and Seamus and I struggled to keep the wheels from falling off.
“But enough about me,” I said, getting that off my chest. “Fair’s fair. It’s time for you to give me the vitals on Emily Parker.”
“There’s not much. I have one daughter. Olivia,” she said, taking a picture out of her bag.
“A cutie,” I said, leaning in close to Emily to see the picture. Like her mother, I almost said. It was amazing how comfortable this was starting to feel.
“How old is she?” I said instead.
“Four.”
“The only age we don’t have in this house,” I said. “What are the odds?”
Mary Catherine came in with two plates and caught us laughing.
“Mary, that isn’t what I think it is, is it? Apple pie?” Emily said.
Mary Catherine dropped the plates loudly on the table.
“I left the stove on,” she said, quickly turning around. “Will that be all tonight, Mr. Bennett?”
“Sure… that’s fine, Mary,” I said, a little confused.
When the kitchen door closed, I lifted the picture of Olivia off the table.
“So, where’s Olivia’s dad?” I said. I put the picture down. Wow, did I just say that out loud? Real subtle there, Mike. “I’m sorry. You don’t have to answer that.”
“No, it’s okay. Olivia’s dad is in, um, California. We’ve been divorced two years now. We met in the air force. John was a little rough around the edges, but he was loving and funny and a brilliant natural mechanic. I always thought of him as the impulsive yin to my everything-in-its-place yang.
“In the beginning, everything was fine. John ran the service department of the Bethesda Mercedes dealership as I got promoted up through the ranks of the Bureau. It was hectic, of course, juggling two jobs and then Olivia, but we were a team, a real family. Then, two days after Olivia’s second birthday, John announced he needed to redefine himself.
“First came the tats and the piercings, and then finally, without my knowledge, the purchase of a body shop in California with most of our joint savings.”
“Ouch,” I said.
“Yeah, ouch is the word. JonJon’s Rods does custom hot rods for all the stars now, GTOs, Shelby Cobras. California ’s actually been really good for him.”
“And really, really shitty for you and your daughter,” I said.
Emily finished her wine and placed the glass carefully on the tablecloth in front of her.
“I should get going before you have to roll me out of here, Mike. I can’t tell you what a nice time I had. Your kids are even more incredible than that meal was. You’re a lucky man.”
“I’ll get you a taxi,” I said, standing.
The dining room table was cleared by the time I got back upstairs. I found Mary Catherine in the kitchen, banging dishes into the machine.
“Mary Catherine, you didn’t happen to see my slice of pie, did you?”
“Oh, sorry. I tossed it,” she said without turning around. “I thought you were done.”
She wiped her hands on a dish towel and opened the back door, heading to her room on our prewar’s top floor.
“Good night, now,” she said, slamming the door behind her.
Chrissy came into the kitchen then in her pajamas as I was wrapping my mind around what had just occurred.
“Daddy, Shawna says that Emily Parker is your new girlfriend. Is that true?” Chrissy said.
Oh, I thought, staring at the just-slammed door. Okay. Now I got it.
Like I said, men are dumb.
Chapter 19
CHELSEA SKINNER COULDN’T stop trembling. At first it was strictly because of fear, but after three hours of lying bound on a bone-numbingly cold stone floor, she felt like she was actually freezing to death.
The only other time she could remember being as cold was when she went skiing in Colorado for the first time, when she was six. Seeing her breath in the backyard of the house that her dad had just built, she’d made her mom crack up as she pretended to smoke an imaginary cigarette.
Chelsea began to cry through her chattering teeth. That was her problem right there, wasn’t it? Always wanting to be older, always having to push it. Why couldn’t she just be satisfied? It was as if there were a hole inside her, and no matter what she tried to fill it with-clothes, food, friends, drugs, boys-there was always just a little itty-bitty space left that kept her from feeling like a whole person. She practically deserved this. It was bound to happen. It was-
Stop! she commanded herself. You stop that right now!
She’d been abducted, and she was getting down on herself? Blaming herself? That had to stop yesterday. This wasn’t therapy. This wasn’t a confidence-building activity at Big Country, the wilderness rehab camp that her parents had sent her to last summer to “get her rear in gear,” as her dad had so cornily put it.
This was real.
Fact: Someone had knocked her out in front of her house as she was coming back from a night of dancing.
Fact: Someone had removed her jeans and T-shirt, and she was now in her bra and underwear.
Fact: Her hands and feet were bound with giant plastic twist-tie strips, and she was being held against her will in what felt like a crypt.
All the facts were bizarre, horrible when you got right down to it, but very, very real. She suddenly remembered something that Lance, her Big Country eco- psychologist, had kept stressing. You make your own reality.
At the time, she’d thought it was the stupidest thing she’d ever heard, but now, as she considered it, maybe this was what he meant. When you were in a very bad situation, you could either feel sorry for yourself or you could-
Chelsea stilled herself as the lights went on. The door to the dilapidated room she was locked in creaked open. The saliva in her mouth evaporated.
At the threshold stood a man wearing a suit and a ski mask.
This isn’t happening, she thought as the man stepped in and knelt down beside her.
“Hey, Chels,” the man said in a polished voice. Then he head-butted her in the face and the world dimmed.
She gained consciousness to a zipping sound. The man in the ski mask was tightening the last of the straps of the appliance hand truck that she was now lashed to. He rolled her out of the room and bumped her up some steps and whirled her dizzily around a long, tiled corridor.
The room they entered had a low ceiling and a long stainless-steel counter that ran the length of one wall. She came to a clanking stop.
“I didn’t-,” Chelsea said, shaking now. “I d-d-didn’t do anything.”
“Exactly,” her abductor said from behind her. “Maybe you should have. Have you considered that? Have you considered what you have failed to do?”
As she watched, the man went over to the sink. He lifted an orange five-gallon Home Depot bucket from underneath it and opened the tap.
“Now, I want you to take a little test,” he said as he filled the bucket. “The subject is water. Did you know that one-point-one billion people worldwide lack access to fresh drinking water? That’s a lot of folks, wouldn’t you say? Now, my question is this: How much clean water does it take to wash your Abercrombie and Fitch T-shirt and Dolce and Gabbana jeans?”
I am having a nightmare, Chelsea thought, staring at the man as he turned off the tap and stepped back, holding the heavy bucket easily in his left hand.
I am Alice, and I have dropped down the rabbit hole and eaten the wrong slice of cake.
Chelsea finally lowered her eyes.
