see the message. It's from an unlisted number and it makes my hands turn to ice.
You have ’til Tuesday to get me the 10 grand.
28
Isabele
“So, did you find the answer?” Mom asks. “My knowledge is completely limited to what I saw on that show The Tudors on HBO. Have you ever watched that? It was one of my favorite shows back in the day.”
I hear her saying these words, but nothing really processes. I stare at the text message hoping that I can make it go away.
Unfortunately, I can't.
There are five days until Tuesday, as if that means anything. I have no way to come up with $10,000 and I have no idea what's going to happen if we don't.
No, that's not completely true. I have some idea. They might take her again.
They might hurt her.
Maybe they'll just kill her. They have played enough games with us and they may be tired of it.
“Isabelle?”
I look up from my phone and give her a blank stare.
“What?” I ask.
“Did you hear what I said?”
“Uh-huh,” I mumble.
“What's the answer?”
“I couldn't find it,” I lie.
Mom gets herself a second serving of pasta, sits down in the chair next to me, and turns on the YouTube video of Qi.
The host gives the right answer and the committee ends up all making jokes. The only one who gets it right is the one who went to a posh territory school where everyone had to wear uniforms.
“Okay, I don't feel so bad now,” Mom says.
I swallow and stare at the grain in the table.
“What's wrong with you?” Mom asks.
I want to lie again and just pretend that this isn't happening, but it's all that I can think about.
The best thing to do is to tell her the truth. Maybe then… Who knows… Maybe she will even have a suggestion.
“I got this,” I say, pointing my phone in her direction. “Just now.”
Mom reads the text and nods her head.
“We knew this was coming.”
I shrug, I guess she's right. Still, I don't know what to do.
“How much money do you have?” Mom asks.
“I can probably get my credit limit extended or open a new card with a new credit line worth maybe $2,000 or $3,000. That's it. I'm tapped out.”
“Good, that's something.”
“It's not enough.”
“Let's be positive.”
Anger starts to course through my veins.
“I'm tired of being positive,” I say, standing up from the table. “It's not enough and who knows if it will ever be enough.”
“What are you talking about?”
“How do we know that they will stop at this? How do we know that if we pay them the last of this, then that will be enough?”
“That's the debt that I owe and once you pay it, it's over. They are men of their word.”
“Oh, yeah? They’re honorable? Trustworthy, taxpaying?”
“No,” Mom says. “They are none of those things, but they will keep their word on this.”
“Whatever,” I say, throwing my hand in her face like a petulant teenager.
I don't have the mental strength to deal with any of this anymore. I'm spent.
Exhausted.
Of course, I don't tell her any of this.
I go to my room, close the door, and bury my head in the pillows. I want Tyler to be here more than anything else in the world.
I want him to hold me and I want him to make all of this better.
A part of me wants Tyler the way that other people want their mom when things get tough.
My mom was never that person. She was never someone I turned to and I don't plan on her becoming that person now, even after everything that she said.
The truth is that there is so much that we have not talked about yet.
It has been almost a week and yet she didn't really tell me anything about the kidnapping and what she went through. I didn’t tell her anything about Tyler. We know some of the broad strokes, but none of the details.
I thought maybe that I would tell her about Tyler, but after a little bit, I decided against it. I knew that I couldn’t trust her when I was a kid and now I have even less of a reason to trust her.
Still, I wish that she had reached out to me and told me what she had gone through, but she didn't.
She kept to herself.
She kept it bottled up. Slowly, what was originally a stream separating us became a river, then a gulf, and now an ocean.
I cry into the pillow for a long time that evening. I cry