Page 19 of The Kidnapped

And, God, it felt good.

“I’m pretty sure I’ll be eating chips for dinner tonight,” Hollis said. “I might do nachos or something to make things interesting.”

“You’re eating chips for dinner?” she asked.

“I’m not a great cook,” Hollis explained. “My mom doesn’t have the energy to cook, so I try to make her something when I can, but then I just grab whatever I can find and eat it in the living room after she goes to bed.”

“Let’s go to the coffee place on Fifth, then,” Raleigh suggested, thinking as she spoke. “There’s a Mexican place next door, with a deli on the other side. The Mexican place has handmade tortillas, and the deli has the best chicken noodle soup I’ve ever had. You can put in a take-out order at each, if you want. She can eat the soup, and you can get whatever you want. I bet their nachos are slightly better.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Hollis replied. “Want to come to my desk or wait here? I haven’t decorated it or anything; it’s just a computer. But we could leave from there.”

“Sure,” Raleigh agreed.

She followed Hollis through the cubicles on the other side of the floor and waited for her to shut her computer down and grab her stuff. Then, she saw Kenna, Ripley, and Aaliyah in Kenna’s office. Ripley was on the small sofa, and Kenna was sitting next to her. Aaliyah was standing in front of them, and it looked like she might be pleading her case for those chips. Raleigh smiled but still felt that pain in her heart at the same time.

“Are you ready?” Hollis asked.

Raleigh nodded.

CHAPTER 8

“So, all in all, I think I’ve lived in at least fourteen cities,” Hollis shared. “Not all of the places we’ve stayed in were in actual cities, though. Sometimes, we were in cabins. We went camping for weeks at a time, too. I’m not sure if we had a place and we were just taking a trip, or if he’d packed all our stuff and we went to a campsite because there was someone getting too close. It’s weird now. And I was so used to packing and leaving that I’d stopped asking questions. We never had much, so it wasn’t like he had furniture in the back of the truck when we went camping. We usually ended up renting places that were furnished. I guess it made it easier when he wanted to run.”

“He basically brainwashed his own daughter,” Raleigh replied and took a sip of her coffee before putting it back down. “That’s insensitive. I’m sorry. I–”

“No, it’s okay,” Hollis interrupted. “You’re not wrong. The more I think about it, that’s exactly what he did. I don’t think I’ve slept a night through since I started figuring out what happened to me.”

“Finding Kenna’s book; you were in the right place at the right time, I guess.”

“I guess so. But it wasn’t just her book,” Hollis said. “It’s hard to explain, but I’ve had this memory of my mom in my head for as long as I can remember. Well, a few of them, technically.” She leaned over on the sofa they were sharing in the café. “I was so young. My mom was younger, too, obviously, and she looked healthy, like she does in the old pictures. She looked happy. Occasionally, I could hear this woman’s voice, but I didn’t know who she was. I mean, I think I knew. I think, deep down, I always knew that was my mom, but my dad told me she died. At first, she was just dead. But I remembered her, so I felt the pain of losing a mother I’d spent my life with. Then, he started to tell me that she’d died a long time ago, like when I was a baby, and I didn’t understand him. I’m sure I questioned him, but I don’t remember that part. It was like the memories of her started to change. Have you ever seen a movie about time travel? They go back in the past and change something, and then, in the future, things kind of fade away.”

“Like Back to the Future?”

“Yeah. He’s playing the guitar on stage in the past, and because his parents aren’t falling in love, it means he won’t exist, so his hand starts to fade away.”

“It’s one of my favorite movies,” Raleigh told her and smiled. “Well, I liked the second one the best.”

“Me too,” Hollis replied, laughing. “And I normally hate sequels. I loved how they depicted the future, though. I wanted a hoverboard so bad.”

“Me too,” Raleigh shared. “You know, when they started coming out with them, I actually thought about getting one and trying it out. Then, a bunch of them caught on fire, and I was glad I didn’t.”

“I couldn’t have afforded one even if they hadn’t been catching on fire. Those things were expensive, and I like food.”

Raleigh laughed again and said, “So, hoverboards aside, what were you trying to say?”

“Oh. Just that it’s like that with my memories sometimes. I would see her handing me a balloon, and then she’d fade away, and it was just the balloon. Sometimes, I’d see my dad in her place. I never knew what he was doing back then, but with all these sleepless nights recently, I’ve been playing back things that he told me. Now that I have my mom back, I’ve been trying to ask her what’s true and what’s not. I don’t want to bombard her with everything, and I also don’t want our relationship to be all about the past, so I’m learning little by little.”

“What about your dad?”

“He’s in jail,” she replied. “And he’s called a couple of times. I haven’t accepted the charges to take the call.”

“You don’t want to talk to him?”

“Of course, I do. I want to ask him a million questions. But when I tried right after he got arrested, he just gave me excuses. They were going through a bad divorce. He only got supervised visits. He wanted me full-time, so he took me. He makes it seem like him kidnapping me and taking me to another country was my mom’s fault. He’d been a drunk, I guess, and couldn’t hold down a job.”

“Was he… Did he…”

“No; that’s what’s weird. When my mom told me about his drinking, I didn’t believe her at first. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him have alcohol. Maybe a beer. But even then, I don’t know if I’m just remembering something wrong again. He never held on to a job for too long, but I don’t know if that was because he couldn’t keep it or because we needed to go. I’ve been going through all the leads my mom said they got about me over the years. The FBI gave me what they had, too, and it’s like I can plot my life by them. We moved when someone reported seeing someone who looked like me here. We moved again when there were rumors of me there. He must have kept a close eye on the investigation and moved us whenever he worried someone was getting too close.”

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