Page 20 of The Kidnapped

Hollis’s phone dinged, so she glanced down at where she’d placed it between them.

“Your food?”

“No, it’s my dad’s lawyer, actually,” she said, picking it up and reading the message. “He has a public defender. The guy’s messaged me a few times asking me to visit or, at least, speak as a character witness if it goes to trial.”

“He’s got a lot of balls, asking you to do that,” Raleigh suggested.

Hollis swallowed and said, “I don’t know. I might do it. I haven’t decided yet. It’s crazy, but as much as I can’t understand what he did, and I hate that he did it, he’s also my father. Prison is supposed to be about preventing people from committing other crimes, right?”

“While they pay for the ones they already committed.”

“I think he should be in prison – at least, for a little while – but I don’t know that he should be in there forever. He’s not going to kidnap anyone else.”

“Maybe,” Raleigh said.

“You disagree?”

“No, it’s not my place to disagree.”

“But you have an opinion,” Hollis prompted, taking a drink of her coffee.

“I just know that if it were my daughter, I’d want whomever took her to be locked up forever,” Raleigh said, placing her own coffee on the table in front of them. “It’s not the same thing for you, though. This is your father. You’re right: he won’t do it again. I don’t know who took Eden, so I can’t really compare. It’s just how I feel.”

“If it were my daughter, I’d think the same,” Hollis told her. “I’d probably want to kill them myself. No jail.”

Raleigh looked at her, as if surprised by the comment, and said, “I’ve thought about that.”

“Killing them?”

“I’ve never been a violent person. I carry spiders outside when I find them in the kitchen. I don’t want to hurt anyone. But this person… took my child from me. If they were standing in front of me right now, I can’t guarantee I wouldn’t do something. And I honestly don’t even think I’d regret it. That’s awful, isn’t it?”

“I don’t think so,” Hollis replied. “She’s your baby, and someone took her from you.”

Raleigh nodded and asked, “So, do you ever think about kids?”

“Having them?”

“Yeah. Just trying to change the subject here. I could use a break.”

“Well, I haven’t really thought about that seriously, no. I mean, I’d like to start thinking about it – I’m thirty-five, so I’m behind already – I just never thought I could be a single parent. I don’t know how you do it.” She smiled at Raleigh. “And I didn’t have any prospects to share that with, so I just worked and figured it would be better not to have a kid. Besides, I hadn’t had the best childhood, so I wasn’t sure I was even capable of being a mom because of it.”

“I always knew I wanted to be a mom. My ex did, too. She’s older than me and was ready to start a family. I was, too. It seemed like perfect timing when we started to try, but Millie couldn’t get pregnant. We kept trying, and things got worse between us. She didn’t want to adopt. She didn’t want me to have our baby; not our first one, at least. It got really bad, and things ended. Then, I tried to get pregnant, thinking maybe she’d stay once she knew there was a baby. It was naïve and stupid, and it didn’t work.”

“I’m sorry,” Hollis said.

“I was, too. I wanted Eden to have two moms, not just me. Millie was great when Eden went missing, though. It was like I had the old version of my girlfriend back, but she’d already found someone else and gotten married, so she wasn’t mine anymore. She helped as much as she could, but her wife had a child from a previous relationship, and they have a family now, so she couldn’t keep coming over to check on me all the time.”

“Wait… She has a stepchild now, but she didn’t want you to have a baby?”

“I know,” Raleigh said on a sigh. “It didn’t make sense to me, either. She’d been so firm that she had to have a baby herself. She’d wanted the entire experience. I never faulted her for that, and I wanted it for her, too. But when it wasn’t happening, she wouldn’t even entertain any other options. Now, she’s a stepmom, and a good one, too, but I just felt like I never really knew her there for a while. How could she be with me for years, plan and try to have a baby with me, and then marry someone else so quickly and be okay with being a stepparent when she wouldn’t even consider adoption with me? I just had to realize that she was supposed to be with someone else, and the life she has now is the one she always wanted to have.”

“Still. It’s pretty shitty,” Hollis replied.

“Yeah, I thought so, too.” Raleigh laughed lightly. Then, she asked, “Does it bother you?”

“That she left you and–”

“That I’m gay.”

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