Family Money(7)

Taylor helped get my daughter buckled. “I told you, baby. Papa and Daddy are going to stay at the orphanage tonight so they can get up really early tomorrow and begin working.”

“Oh, yeah. Does that mean I get to sleep with Nanny tonight?”

“Sure, sweetie,” Carol answered, sliding into the front passenger seat. “I would like that very much.”

“Yay!” Olivia squealed. “And Nicky can sleep with Mommy.”

“That’s right,” Taylor replied.

I glanced over and noticed that my five-year-old was already fast asleep in her car seat. The girls played so hard at the orphanage each day that they barely survived the car trip back to the hotel. Nicole was usually out within the first few minutes of the drive.

I leaned in and gave Olivia a kiss. “Be good for Mommy and Nanny, okay?”

“I will, I promise!” She gave me the biggest smile.

Her smile was a replica of her mom’s and could light up an entire room. I wondered if my daughter’s smile would also be permanently damaged should we not get Joe back soon. I walked around to where Taylor had climbed into the driver’s seat. She had been silent for most of the evening. It was killing me. I craved some sense of normalcy from her. The numb feeling that had begun in me earlier had now spread to every part of my body. I felt desperate to break out of it.

“I’m going to do everything I can,” I said, not even sure what that meant.

“Call me the minute you find out anything. No matter how late. I won’t be sleeping anyway.”

“I will. Taylor—”

“Just get him back, Alex. Please.”





FIVE


I followed Esther around to the back of the kitchen building where the orphanage had guest quarters. She opened the door and led me inside. It was a simple room with a full-size bed, a dresser, a desk in the corner, and a small bathroom with a shower. Everything was nicely decorated with warm colors.

“There are brand-new toiletries in the bathroom,” Esther mentioned. “If you need anything, please let me know.”

“I appreciate it.”

“And, Alex, we are all praying for Joe’s safe return.”

“Thank you, Esther.”

She left me alone. I unzipped a brown backpack I’d had with me that had an extra T-shirt and blue jeans inside. I needed a shower badly. I had perspired hard all evening from both the extreme heat and my nerves. In the bathroom, I took the hottest shower possible to try to see if the beads of water could bring me any comfort. They didn’t. I toweled off, got dressed in the T-shirt and jeans, and lay on the bed. I was emotionally exhausted but unsure how I could possibly sleep tonight with all this swirling through my head. As hard as I tried not to think about it, I kept wondering where Joe was and what he was doing. Did they have him in a dark room somewhere? Had they hurt him? Beat him? Was Joe scared in spite of the unusually calm look on his face earlier? Again, I wondered how he could’ve appeared so steady. I’m sorry. Why had he said that?

I stared up at the ceiling of the bedroom. It was so quiet at the orphanage, which was pretty much in the middle of nowhere. Almost too quiet on a night like tonight. I could hear my own heart beating away in my eardrums. I closed my eyes but then opened them right back up when all I could see behind my eyelids was that black hood being yanked down over Joe’s head. I took several deep breaths, tried to calm down again. But it was difficult. My father-in-law meant so much to me. Joe had been there for me through thick and thin, beginning on my worst day.

It had started to sprinkle, but that hadn’t stopped me from continuing to shoot hoops in the cracked driveway of our modest middle-class home. I had no intention of going inside the house, where the better part of my extended family had all gathered. Aunts, uncles, cousins, my grandma, my older sister, and her husband—they were all in there. I checked my watch, did some quick math. My dad had now officially been dead for eight hours and twenty-two minutes. I kept calculating the time down to the very minute. I’m not sure why. It was just that surreal feeling of having him here one moment and then gone the next. I was only sixteen, and my father was never coming back.

I hadn’t known my dad would die today when I’d woken up this morning. Sure, he’d been sick for the better part of six months. Leukemia sucked. I had watched it take my father’s once-strong body and shrivel it up to near skin and bones. It had taken all his hair. But we’d thought he’d been doing better the past month. He seemed to be getting stronger. So it was a shock when my mom woke me up early, told me something was wrong and that she’d called for an ambulance. I had scrambled to throw on jeans and a T-shirt and hustled up the hallway to my parents’ bedroom. My dad was lying on the bed and breathing heavily. His eyes were closed. I tried to stir him, to let him know I was there, but he didn’t respond. At that point, I didn’t know if he was even still with us, but I told him I loved him and to keep fighting, just in case he could hear me. My mom was in the kitchen, on the phone with her sister. I could hear the fear in her voice as she frantically explained what was happening.

The ambulance arrived a few minutes later, and medics hauled my father away. I only saw him one more time, at the hospital a few hours later, when a doctor told us it was time to say our goodbyes. I could barely register what all was happening while I stood in that hospital room with him lying motionless in that bed. And soon I was engulfed by family and neighbors, who had all rushed to the hospital. I’d barely had a moment to process any of this—not that I really wanted to anyway.