The information about Roger made the hairs on the back of Owen’s neck stand up. He hated hearing that. “Where do they live?”
“I have no idea where Roger is but his mother is in Minneapolis. I’ve met her exactly once, for maybe ten minutes. We all grew up there but didn’t know each other until college.”
“You have to be diligent, Hannah. It sounds terrible.”
“I know. But it’s not just me—Kate and Sharon are also on high alert. We’ll keep Noah safe. Whatever that takes.”
“Your friend was smart to put him in your hands.”
She laughed. “I hope I’m up to your praise. What about your childhood, Owen? Was it tainted by trouble like ours?”
“My childhood,” he said with a sigh. “My childhood was perfect. Ideal. My parents were happy people who not only loved each other, they liked each other. They were courteous to each other, helpful and funny and kind. We laughed. My younger sister and I had those days we were horrid and it didn’t throw them at all. I remember having a tantrum and trying to destroy my room and I overheard my mother say to my father, ‘He’s going to have so much to clean up—try not to laugh.’ Even in the worst crises of my young life, they were calm and encouraging. I’m sure if not for them, I’d be destitute and miserable now. I mean, what kind of parents encourage their son’s love for photography when he’s quitting college to pursue it?”
“They must be so proud of you,” she said.
“My mother is. She brags. I hope she’s not giving out my address. She always has someone who needs to talk to me about professional photography and publishing. But...I lost my father about ten years ago. I really miss him. He passed too young. He was sixty. He’d never had any retirement. My mom is now seventy, living on her own, driving herself everywhere, is in fantastic health, active in the community. After my father died, she moved to Denver to be close to my sister.” He thought for a minute. “I better visit her pretty soon.”
“Do you stay in touch?”
“Oh, sure. We call and text and FaceTime. She hates that, but I want to see her when we talk, as if it will tell me something about how she’s getting along. My sister sees her every week. Sometimes more often.”
They talked until it was pitch-dark.
“You should get some sleep,” Owen said. “Noah’s going to be recharged by morning.”
“I know,” she said with a laugh. “I’m thinking of trying to find horses. He so loves animals. He’d be so thrilled to have a ride.”
“I’ll help you find horses,” Owen said.
“My God, I think you are my prince! Don’t get any ideas, Owen,” she teased. “I’m not planning any more weddings! It’s just me and Noah now.”
* * *
Owen puttered around the barn for a little while before going to bed. He would have company tomorrow, of that he had no doubt. He tidied up, not that it needed much. He put things that had run astray in neat piles or in their proper places. He put his few dishes and cups in the dishwasher, clothes he had dropped or draped in the laundry basket. He gave the bathroom a quick wipe. It didn’t take him long. He was by nature tidy. But he could get a little distracted sometimes...
He was honest with Hannah when he said he’d had a perfect childhood. But he hadn’t mentioned the painful fact that his son hadn’t.
He didn’t ever talk about it. Sometimes people managed to find out, he supposed because of his ex-wife’s notoriety. She still worked under the name Abrams, though she’d remarried and had two more children. But he didn’t like telling people because the tragedy of it was so overpowering that the look of shock and pity in their eyes was just plain unbearable.
His seven-year-old boy, Brayden, was playing in the front yard one minute, gone the next. Owen had been putting out trash and straightening up in the garage while Brayden was riding his skateboard up and down the driveway, up and down the sidewalk—he had a three-house distance limit. Owen was organizing because the mess on the workbench and shelves, tools and photography equipment, was all his. It moved around as he slept, he told Sheila.
It couldn’t have been more than five minutes. He had not heard a car. He came out of the garage and there was the skateboard and no Brayden.
He’d heard other parents who’d experienced such travesty talk about how everything was a blur, a haze. Not so for Owen. He remembered every detail. Since Owen had been working in the garage and Brayden had not passed by to enter the house, he went in search and found the skateboard a couple of doors down. He called out to Brayden and there no response. Then he knocked on a few doors. Only one family had kids Brayden’s age and they weren’t home, but none of the other neighbors had seen him. He checked, yelling into the house, but his wife said he hadn’t come in. Sheila was making dinner so he raced up and down the street, calling Brayden’s name. It only took a short block and half for him to know—this was not going to be okay.
The police were called. There were hours of questioning while they assured Owen and Sheila that other officers were looking everywhere: playgrounds, schoolyards, strip malls, empty lots. They gave the police a picture; there was an Amber Alert. Days passed, days of not sleeping, days of crying, trying to comfort his wife, hearing about small leads that went nowhere. At first, Owen and Sheila were treated like suspects. The FBI was called. There was no ransom call. Owen’s parents offered a hundred-thousand-dollar reward for information that led to the discovery of their grandson—money Owen couldn’t imagine them actually having.
They all lived in constant fear and pain—Owen and Sheila, their parents, their siblings, the neighborhood, the school. The city. Owen and Sheila made public pleas for information, for help. Volunteers manned phone banks and knocked on doors and walked through nearby fields.
Days and then weeks and then months passed. All the while the police and FBI had certain ideas of suspects but no trace of Brayden could be found. Owen and Sheila couldn’t hold it together. He withdrew into himself, single-minded about finding his son but just not up to any public scrutiny. Sheila, on the other hand, became a PR genius overnight and turned to all the help agencies and organizations that advocated for lost and missing and abducted children. She became vocal about trafficking and abuse and was making speeches and televised public service announcements. She was interviewed on all the major talk shows.
Even before Brayden’s remains were found Owen knew they weren’t going to be able to keep the marriage together. And then they discovered that Brayden had been buried in the desert outside LA in a place that could have been seen from the road, had anyone been connecting the dots. He’d been dead eighteen months. His kidnapper was one of the police’s prime suspects and was identified and convicted through DNA testing. That brought a whole nightmare of images that threatened to rip Owen’s guts out.
Sheila took to the public to stir up the outrage and to work to protect innocent children from this kind of trafficking and to make the requirements of convicted pedophiles even stricter, she’d brand their foreheads if she could. She left her law practice and became a full-time advocate. She began getting offers from everywhere, from lobbying groups to commercial television. She made the rounds of talk shows again and spoke to larger and larger audiences.
Owen couldn’t do it. He needed to be alone. He needed to grieve. He didn’t have any problem with Sheila going that route, making her grief not only public but useful. But he couldn’t. He went to his sister’s house in Denver. He walked through the Rockies and other ranges for a year, his camera in his backpack. He talked to Sheila every few days, cried with her, comforted her and took her comfort.
And then one day she said, “You’re not coming back to LA, are you?”
And he had said, “No. I’m sorry, I can’t.”
“I understand,” she said. “As long as you don’t blame me.”
“Blame you? God, if it’s anyone’s fault, it’s mine! I was watching him!”
“Here’s what we know,” she said so calmly, so sanely. “The monster who took him knew that all the conditions were perfect—no cars, no pedestrians, no one looking out of windows, a tall hedge, a van. He needed ten seconds or less. And since no one on God’s green earth can promise never to look away for ten seconds, I’m going to do everything in my power to make it harder for the predators. To keep at least a few children from going through this.”
“And a few parents,” he said. He admired her so much. “Please tell me you can forgive me that I can’t go on this crusade with you.”
“Owen, I love you and I’m going to do this with or without you, but understand something—I never thought I had this in me. But I do. And it matters. It can do good things.”
“It matters,” he repeated. “It will do good things. Thank you. I’m proud of you.”
There was one more casualty before life could move forward. Owen’s father, Ben Abrams, died of a heart attack. Brayden had not been gone two years, his remains barely found, and Ben’s heart had been in tatters. From the time Ben’s firstborn grandchild, Brayden, went missing, the victim of a violent crime, Ben had been suffering. His tears had been harder on Owen than his own. Ben had been the sweetest man to ever live; never a temper, rarely a frown. He had been married to his wife for almost forty years and in that time there had been so much love and laughter. Until a monster with no conscience had interrupted their lives.
Owen held his mother tight and said, “Please don’t leave me. I need you. You have to be strong. You have to live. I think one more loss will kill me.”
“We will live, Owen. We will live the way Ben and Brayden would want us to live. We will sleep peacefully knowing that they’re together, waiting for us to join them. And they’ll be happy to wait a long time.”
So it was that twelve years after losing his son, the joy of his life, the great rains and floods of Taiwan kept him home from his trip where he met a pretty and funny woman and her little boy, the boy in leg braces who needed a man and his dog because they were also suffering a terrible loss. It would not be a life-changing event for him—his life was not changeable. But he had a couple of weeks to make their lives a little better.