better, but it looked like it was coming from somewhere in the Canary Islands. They asked for five million dollars in forty-eight hours, and when we said we couldn’t get it, the price kept going up. We weren’t supposed to contact law enforcement, but we’ve been working with private kidnapping experts, and they said—oh honey, I’ve just been so worried. They haven’t sent us any pictures of you since the first few days after you were taken. I thought—I thought—”
Her words turned into sobs, and I stood there, flabbergasted.
It wasn’t that I’d forgotten I’d been kidnapped. That would be a fucking hard thing to forget. But somehow, I hadn’t really thought about what it would have been like from my family’s point of view. Maybe because, until yesterday, my family had just been a vague hypothetical.
Now they were real, and my mother—my mother—was crying into the phone because she’d been worried I was dead.
“Mom, I’m fine. Please believe me,” I said, desperate to console her with no idea how to do it. “I swear, I am. Everything about the kidnapping is still pretty fuzzy, but I know I was on a boat for a while, and I got away somehow, and I think I hit my head, because when I woke up, I was in Maine, and I had amnesia, and Holden let me stay with him while I got my memory back.”
I decided to leave out the parts about my other injuries. I didn’t want to upset her more.
“I didn’t remember my own name until yesterday, which is why I haven’t been in touch. But I swear, I’m totally fine and have just been, well, here.”
Just here. Definitely not having sex with the guy you think kidnapped me. Definitely not falling inconveniently in love with him or anything.
“Have you still been getting ransom demands this whole time?” I asked, hurrying past the issue of how I’d been spending my time. “Because they haven’t had me for weeks.”
“The demands stopped a few days ago,” my mom said. She sounded close to tears. “I couldn’t help thinking the worst.”
“I ran into some of the guys who kidnapped me, a few days ago,” I said, thinking out loud. “Like, literally ran into them, by accident. Maybe they were willing to demand money while they thought they might trick you into paying without having to produce me. But once they knew I was alive, and out of their grasp, they knew they couldn’t get away with that anymore?”
It made as much sense as anything else. I still felt like there was something important I couldn’t remember about the kidnapping. But I didn’t want to make things more confused.
“I promise I’m fine, though,” I reiterated. “Really. I’ve been eating, and my memory’s been coming back in little bits and pieces, and I’ve honestly just been, like, reading and helping Holden organize his house.”
I felt a little guilty, knowing my mom had been going out of her mind with worry in the meantime. But I couldn’t help smiling at Holden from across the room. He flashed a tight smile back at me.
“Oh sweetie, I’m just so glad you’re all right,” my mom said. “We’ve all been so worried. Even your Uncle Eddie. As soon as he found out you’d been kidnapped, he flew in to meet us, wouldn’t leave your father’s side until we knew more. We were sure you’d been taken to Europe, but he volunteered to talk to his contacts in the States. Some of Letty’s old coworkers put us in touch with the experts who’ve been helping us, and Leah’s been a rock, keeping us all from losing it.”
“Are they there?” I asked, a sudden lump in my throat. Hearing their names in my mom’s voice made them one thousand percent more real, and I ached to talk to them.
“Eddie’s not, but your sisters are. You want me to put them on the phone?”
“Please.”
After my mom told me she loved me approximately twenty million more times, Leah came on the line.
“Hey, Scooter. How are you doing? You okay?”
Before I could answer, Letty’s voice joined in. “Way to get yourself kidnapped, dumbass.”
I burst into laughter, and started crying at the same time, for some reason.
“What, you weren’t absolutely sure you were Mom’s favorite, so you had to go and arrange this, just to cement your status?” Letty continued.
“Ayelet, that’s not fair,” my mom said in the background. “I love you all equally.”