Taken Read Free Page A

her husband, Stephen, calls it, but it’s more like fear of all the bad things waiting to ruin the lives of good people. Sensible fears, if you read the papers or listen to the news. Toilets falling from airplanes, crushing the innocent. Drive-by shootings. Mysterious diseases. Planes full of madmen crashing into skyscrapers. Fear is the reasonable reaction, is it not?
    “Jesse? Hide-and-seek is over, honey. Olly-olly-entry!”
    Silence in all the five rooms of her home. Silence from the basement, too.
    Where is that boy? Must be in his room, hiding under the bed with all that dangerous dust and mold. Bad for his respiratory system, so they say, and Lyla believes it, as she believes every warning of impending disaster. Inhale too much dust and your child will develop asthma. Eat too much peanut butter, he’ll develop allergies. She tries to warn him about such things, but he’s just a boy and believes he’ll live forever.
    “Jesse? Come out, dear. Supper’s almost ready. Your favorite, hamburger casserole.”
    Her son’s bed is neatly made. Did she do that? Must have, he’d never fit the sheets like that, or smooth the blanket and pillow. Lyla gets down on her hands and knees, lifts the skirt of the bed. There he is, in the far corner!
    No, no, only a shadow. A shadow shaped like a boy.
    Closet! Yes, of course, why didn’t she think of that first? He must be in the closet, watching her through the vents in the door. Naughty boy.
    Lyla opens the closet door, sweeps back the clothes hangers. She has the distinct impression that Jesse was in the closet very recently. She can smell the scent of his skin, his hair. Must have slipped out while she was looking under the bed.
    What Lyla wants to do is lie down in the closet and sleep with the smell of him on her hands, her hair. Dreaming that her son is close by, just out of sight, and that soon all will be well, and Jesse will be safe again. But she can’t sleep, not until she’s found him.
    Lyla searches all five rooms again, and then ventures into the basement. Down the sturdy steps, clutching the handrail. Pulls the string on the bare lightbulb. A basket of laundry perches on the washing machine. More of his clothes, including his grass-stained uniform. The Mystic Pirates. Not for the first time, Lyla carefully takes the soiled uniform from the basket and holds it up, as if looking for clues to her son’s whereabouts. The grass stains, of course, and the usual dirt on the knees, but is that splotch under the letters a bloodstain?
    Anxiety thrums through her body like a jolt of electricity. Heart fluttering, she races up the basement steps with Jesse’s uniform top in her hands. Wanting to show her husband this new evidence that something is wrong, terribly wrong. Something has happened to Jesse, something that made him bleed on his Little League uniform.
    At the top of the stairs Lyla trips and falls to her knees, sliding on the slick linoleum.
    “Steve!” she cries out. “Steve, come look! Blood!”
    But the house is empty. In the oppressive silence, Lyla gets shakily to her feet. Clutching the stained uniform, she heads into the living room.
    “Oh, God,” she whispers. “Bring him home. Make him safe.”
    There on the mantel above the fireplace is a framed photograph that brings her a little peace, in the brief interval before she must begin searching again. In the photograph, Jesse’s Little League uniform is clean. No grass stains, no bloodstains. He’s just made fun of her for ironing the uniform— They’re supposed to be wrinkled, Mom, don’t you get it? —but he’s obviously pleased by all the attention. Look at the grin on his face as he poses with a bat, taking the stance, eyes bright and fearless. Her perfect, flawless son.
    Lyla collapses onto the couch, clutching the framed photograph and the soiled uniform. She will allow herself to weep, but only for a few minutes. She has much work to do, and weeping exhausts her. First she must search the