After he was gone, I was fine for a while. At least I thought I was. I rented a small apartment and continued to go to work, living my life as if I hadn’t just lost my son and him. And I kept going through life like nothing had happened for a couple of weeks until one day, I just couldn’t. I couldn’t get out of bed. I couldn’t get dressed. I couldn’t do anything. I stayed in bed and when my cell rang with work asking where I was, I just stared at it without picking up. I don’t know how long I stayed that way, until I woke one morning and knew I needed help. I wasn’t depressed. I just needed help, needed someone to care enough about me to tell me what to do, even if I was paying them to do that.
I thought with longing of my stays at the hospital when he’d forced me to go, and how relieved I was when I actually got there. I needed someone to tell me what to do again. I needed my days to be regimented. I couldn’t be left to myself, drifting through life without an anchor and no one to care if I floated away or didn’t show up for work.
I dragged myself out of bed and found the card for the facility and I called. For once, I did something right for myself. I was in and out of there for the next year or so. And in between, when I was home, I watched you.
I did some research and it shocked me how surprisingly easy it is to travel with a child within the United States. You don’t have to provide any form of ID. You just buy the child a ticket in any name and they let him through. No questions asked. No photos to compare to, like they do with adults and their IDs. If I wasn’t using it for my own gain, I’d be terrified at how easy it is to take a child and just travel anywhere with them. I’m surprised more children haven’t disappeared, given the ease with which you can take a child to another state with no ID whatsoever.
Maybe one day, we’ll even come back here to Kauai, when he can look back on this time and say, “Remember when you came to get me? Thank you, Mommy. I was waiting for you. I always knew you’d come find me, your real son.”
Oh. My. God. Annie looked up in shock as she clicked on another entry. Reading about how Serena had planned on taking Finn and leaving with him . . . Annie’s heart pounded at the thought. What would she and Brody have done if Serena had carried out her plan? It was obvious she had some kind of mental disorder. Annie made a note to look it up later. But right now, there was more to the file that Serena had left for her. Despite the dread filling her body, she kept reading, unable to look away.
I’ve changed my mind. After watching you for weeks, I realized, just like in New York after what happened, you never let him out of your sight. And now there’s your father and sister. And neighbors. My son is never left alone, not even at home. So I need to change tactics.
I think the best way to do this is to just tell you that he is my son. My father always taught me honesty is the best policy and I think he may be right in this case. If I steal my son, people will be looking for me. But if I ask you for my son back, perhaps you’d just give him to me. Watching you all these years, I know you’re a kindhearted person. You will understand the pain I’ve been in, losing everything. I need to befriend you, make you like me, and then I’m sure you’ll understand and want to make things right.
Annie looked up, gazing out the window. Serena had planned this. She’d befriended Annie with a motive. All so Annie would just hand Finn over when she asked. A spark of anger and sorrow lit within her, that she’d been so easily duped.
She looked down and kept reading.
I’m happy. For the first time in a long time, I didn’t wake up burdened, feeling as if the world was pressing down on me, trying to choke me and drown me. I didn’t feel as if my limbs were so heavy that it was all I could do to swing my legs out of the bed. For the first time in a long time, my body felt light, like I could drift away. If I’d known finally having a plan to get my little boy back would free me like this, I would have done it earlier.
It’s like I’m watching a video of another me, someone who looks like me but that I don’t feel is me. And this other me does things that I would never do in real life. This other me forgets things, like putting the car seat with my son in it on the driveway while I unloaded the groceries, and only realizing hours later that he wasn’t in the house with me. This other me would go into the kitchen to warm up his formula, and then hours later, find myself at the grocery store, wondering how I got there and why my infant son wasn’t with me. And this other me watches as I replay a familiar reel in my head from long ago, when I was ten.
It was a week after the judge had given my father full custody of me. My mother had picked me up, along with the social worker that had to be there for all our visits. She took us to her favorite national park and we hiked to our favorite hidden spot, at the side of a lake. Before I realized my mother hated me, I had adored her. I would have done anything for her, including go to this isolated spot, away from everyone, that used to scare me because we were in the middle of nowhere. It’s funny that my mother liked it here, because she couldn’t swim. But she said being out in nature calmed her, especially when the rest of the world was so chaotic.
That day, I could smell the alcohol on her breath. I knew she was drunk. The social worker that was supposed to monitor us had fallen behind, out of shape and out of breath. So it was only the two of us standing on a ledge next to the water. She started walking out onto the rocks in the water, humming a song under her breath and goading me to balance with her on the slippery rocks.
Despite my fear of her, a part of me still loved her, craved her attention. I wanted her to want me, to feel sad that she would no longer be a part of my everyday life. So I walked out with her, hoping this was going to be a bonding moment. But she turned to me and said, “I’m so glad to be rid of you. You’ve been nothing but a burden since you came into this world. Now my life can finally begin.” She gave me this self-satisfied smile, and my grief overflowed. The mother that I loved and feared really didn’t want me. A fury took over my ten-year-old self and I was consumed by the hatred I could feel coming out of her for me.
My love for her turned into pure anger and betrayal in that moment. When she turned away from me, as if I was nothing more than a speck of dirt in that park, I couldn’t take it anymore. I rushed at her, wanting to inflict as much pain on her as she had on me. But I slipped on the rocks and I crashed into her with so much force that she went flying into the water. I sprawled there on the rocks not moving, watching the spot where she’d gone in. She hadn’t even tried to save herself. She’d just sunk like a stone, probably because she’d been so drunk and the fall had taken her by surprise. When she didn’t come back up, I stood and carefully picked my way back to shore. I waited there until the social worker finally caught up to me, puffing as she came into view.
When she asked where my mother was, I burst into tears and threw myself at her, sobbing that she’d left me again. That my mother had told me she hated me and was so glad to be rid of me, and then ran off, leaving me by myself. The social worker was a motherly type, plump and kind, just like what I always thought a real mother should be like. And she gathered me into her arms and shushed me, told me I would be okay, that my father loves me and I wasn’t to pay any mind to what my mother said. That she did love me, deep down, but she has issues she needed to work on before she could be my mother again.