Ransom

As she walked into the room, the four men guarding her stood up. Ted was leaning against the wall and talking to them, and he smiled at Fernanda as she walked in. She smiled in response, remembering the comfort he had offered the night before. Even in the midst of the agony she was living through, there was something peaceful and reassuring about him.

One of the men handed her a cup of coffee, and offered her a box of doughnuts, and she took one and ate half of it, before she threw it away. It was the first thing she had eaten in two days. She was living on coffee and tea, and on the edge of her nerves. They all knew there was no news. No one asked. They made small talk in the kitchen, and after a while, she went upstairs and lay on her bed. She saw the negotiator walk past her open door to Ashley's room. She never took her clothes off anymore, except to shower. It was like living in an armed encampment, and everywhere around her were men with guns. She was used to it by now. She didn't care about the guns. Only her son. He was all she cared about, all she lived for, all she wanted, all she knew. She lay on her bed, awake all night, from the sugar and the coffee, waiting for news of Sam. And all she could do was pray that he was alive.

Chapter 16

When Fernanda woke up the next morning, the sun was just coming up over the city in a golden haze. She didn't realize it until she went downstairs and saw the paper one of the men had left on the table, it was the Fourth of July. It wasn't a Sunday, but all she knew as she sat and looked at the sunrise was that she wanted to go to church, and knew she couldn't. She couldn't leave the house in case they called. She said something to Ted about it, as they sat in the kitchen a little while later, and he thought about it for a minute and asked her if she'd like to see a priest. It even sounded strange to her. She liked taking the children to church on Sundays, but they had objected to going since Allan died. And she had been so disheartened that she hadn't gone much lately herself. But she knew she wanted to see a priest now. She wanted someone to talk to and to pray with her, and she felt as though she'd forgotten how.

“Is that weird?” she asked Ted, looking embarrassed, and he shook his head. He hadn't left her in days. He just stayed at the house with her. He had brought clothes with him. She knew some of the men were hot bunking in Will's bedroom. They took turns sleeping one at a time, while the others kept watch over the house, the phones, and her. As many as four or five men used the bed in shifts in any twenty-four-hour period.

“Nothing's weird if it gets you through this. Do you want me to see if I can get someone to come out, or is there someone you want me to call?”

“It doesn't matter,” she said, looking shy. It was strange, but after the past few days together, she felt as though they were friends. She could say anything to him. In a situation like this one, there was no pride, no shame, no artifice, there was only honesty and pain.

“I'll make a few calls” was all he said. Two hours later, there was a young man at the door. He seemed to know Ted, and walked in quietly. They spoke for a few minutes, and then he followed Ted upstairs. She was lying on her bed and he knocked on the open door. She sat up and stared at Ted, wondering who the other man was. He was wearing sandals, a sweatshirt, and jeans. She had been lying there, willing the kidnappers to call, when he walked in.

“Hi,” Ted said, standing in her doorway, feeling awkward, as she lay on her bed. “This is a friend of mine, his name is Dick Wallis, he's a priest.” She got off her bed then and stood up, walked over to them, and thanked him for coming. He looked more like a football player than a priest. He looked young, somewhere in his mid-thirties, but as she spoke to him, she saw that his eyes were kind. And as she invited him into her bedroom, Ted went quietly back downstairs.

Fernanda led the young priest to a small sitting room off her bedroom and invited him to sit down. She wasn't sure what to say to him, and asked him if he knew what happened. He said he did. He told her then that he had played pro football for two years after college, and then decided to become a priest. He told Fernanda as she listened raptly to him that he was now thirty-nine, and had been in the priesthood for fifteen years. He said that he had met Ted years before when he was briefly a police chaplain, and one of Ted's close friends got killed. It had put a lot of things in question for him about the meaning of life, and how senseless it all was.

“We all ask ourselves those things at times. You must be asking yourself those same questions right now. Do you believe in God?” he asked her then, and took her by surprise.

“I think so. I always have.” And then she looked at him strangely. “In the last few months, I haven't been so sure. My husband died six months ago. I think he committed suicide.”