Chapter Twelve - Serena's Thoughts are in Control

Chapter Twelve

Serena bookmarks her novel and glances at the clock. It’s ten past eleven and Doug hasn’t returned from his night out with the guys yet. She grabs her cell phone then reconsiders. In all fairness, he hasn’t seen John and Ray in over six months and the time spent with college friends will be a breath of fresh air, especially given her polluted disposition lately. She closes the phone, pushes it under her pillow, and flicks off the light.

It has just begun to rain outside and, like most New England storms that border on the extreme, it doesn’t simply rain. It pours. The sound of the rain, a steady drum, has remained the same for centuries. It is one thing that does not change. And it always seems to carry a story with it.

Beneath layers of sleeping bags on the family room floor, Myra sleeps through the storm. Sleeping over her cousin’s house has always been an adventure, but never like this. The blankets smell of stale smoke and she wants to be home. Thunder crackles and booms as though a giant stands at the sky splitting trees over his knees, hurling them down to earth. Every so often, lightning flashes and the room illuminates, casting an eerie glow upon pictures, the mantel, and a coffee table full of soda cans.

She reads the clock each time it is exposed. Ten past two, quarter to three, four-fifteen. The floor beneath her vibrates. Frames jitter atop end tables. They will not make it to morning, it seems. She is wide awake but Myra snores beside her. The hardwood floor of the hallway creaks with the onset of footsteps. It is her uncle. She snaps her eyes shut and feigns sleep.

She pulls the covers over herself and rubs her cold bare feet together while the rain beats down over the roof and rushes through the gutters. It seems that she is alone in her neighborhood, sheltered by the rain, and yet she is not. Across the globe, children are outside playing under the sunlight at this very moment. While rain beats down on her colonial style roof; a tribe of rainforest natives may be sitting beneath a thatched one, listening to the very same sound. While a child in Australia skims a flat rock across a pond, one in Africa uses it to dig for bugs.

So...how does God decide who will suffer on this earth, she wonders.
Our geography influences how we live, who we shall love, and what we choose to believe in, and yet we have no more control over where we're born than does a young boy being handed a gun to protect his family in the Middle East.

Crime happens everywhere. Depending upon our beliefs, beliefs which stem from our geography, crime takes on new meaning. In a New York airport, a criminal will be fined for stolen luggage; in another country, killed. Is it fair? Is life fair?

A group of teens were struck by lightning just last year, out alone on the soccer field. Their parents were probably at home peering through the window, about to call the parents of their son’s friends. My husband will take a ride and pick them up. The storm came on so quickly!

Instead, they were too late and will live the rest of their lives rooted, strangled by, something they could not control. She thinks of the dying kids and heaven if it’s really there and how those who believe still suffer, even when they seem to do everything right. How is it possible that she and Doug have been granted another chance!

Her eyes well up and she presses them shut, forcing out tears. She prays into folded hands. Thank you for saving my son. I would have died with that incident if things had been different. If Josh hadn’t been rescued, I wouldn’t have survived. I would have taken a chance on heaven to be with him again.

She rubs her wet face on her pillow. Her eyes are heavy and begin to flutter, the sensation to melt into sleep caving in on her. She needs to sleep, badly. Yet each night she fights it, as though something terrible might happen while she sleeps. Something she cannot control.

It is both disturbing and ironic to understand with visceral clarity that she is refusing the very thing she needs the most. But she cannot stifle the impulse to win the power struggle and stay awake.

She jostles herself out of bed and visits Joshua’s room.

His clothes are scattered across the floor in heaps that resemble clumps of seaweed washed ashore after a storm. From the edges of his opened drawers, socks and shirts dribble over the sides. His room, this scene, is a complete shipwreck.

Josh lies on his back with one arm flung to the side as though hailing a cab. His mouth droops open slightly while he breathes in and out, his chest rising and falling like the wings of a flying seabird.

She reflects on how many times she has snapped at Josh over this untidy room, using the indelible teacher phrase: the mess is unacceptable. Each time, he had nodded to her, disappointed in himself while stuffing balls of clothing back into the drawers.

She wishes now—like a frog snapping back his tongue to catch a fly—that she could take the criticism back and swallow it. Imagine!—a zap of horror enters her mind as she realizes that his room could not only be neat, but also empty, had things turned out differently. If Roth had fully executed his plan, this room would be childless.

She closes her eyes, makes a silent vow to find out exactly what that plan was.

She leans over him, stretches his comforter over his shoulders,and whispers, “I’m sorry that I snapped. I’ll be better now.”

To her presence, he rouses. “Mom?”

“Hi honey. It’s cold out, I was just covering you. Go back to sleep, now.”

He turns in the opposite direction, bringing the covers with him, and falling back to sleep. She walks out, leaving the door open a crack.

She meanders downstairs to make a cup of tea. The rumbling of the rain intensifies as an angry wind thrashes against the roof. Gazing out her bay window, she watches the rain gate the air like a silver fence. A stray cat struts across the lawn then disappears into a patch of woods.

Is a cat noctural?—she recalls Josh’s small voice years ago, when he’d ask that question in reference to a favorite story on wildlife. Yes. Outdoor cats are very independent, she’d say. They can survive on their own without their parents. Without their parents. The thought follows her like the ghost of a past she cannot shake.

How had she trusted Roth with her child?

In all fairness, she tells herself,Doug went out with Roth, so it wasn’t so much her trust in the man as it was Doug’s. Why hadn’t he simply taken their child in with him to tend to his wrist? Why had he left him outside with a stranger? Yet still, given all that Doug did wrong, the ending was just right. She pours the steaming water atop the peppermint tea bag at the mug’s bottom.

What are the chances of an abducted child being rescued after a car accident? Slim to none, that’s for sure. But what if the accident hadn’t happened? What would Roth have done to him? He had been watching him at the chairlift for the last two ski seasons, according to Detective Hearns. So what was his plan?

Soaking in these questions, she carries her mug back upstairs and sets it down on the nightstand. A streak of light from the outdoor lamppost pokes into the room like a sword. She flicks on the lamp and sips her tea until overcome by exhaustion.

To the sound of the rain, her mind quiets and she is finally able to drift off to sleep.

* * *
To the creaking sound of the door, she snaps up, breathless. He is rolling toward her in a wheelchair, his face distorted from the stroke. His lips form a smile on one side of his face and a feeble hand brandishes a business card. The chair’s motion is rickety, making his body bobble. She shuffles back against the headboard, shrieks no!—then realizes…

It is Doug, back from his night out.

“Hey…you alright, honey?” He sits down beside her, gives her a gentle hug.

“Oh…hi. Sorry about that…I don’t know what I was thinking, I was having a bad dream and I think the door startled me. Whew.” She rubs her eyes and relaxes to the smell of coffee on Doug’s breath. “Anyways, how was your night out with the guys? Coffee?”

“It was good, really good…yeah, I had a coffee with dessert.”

The response is too quick.

He enters the bathroom, turns on the faucet, and prepares his toothbrush.
She watches him brush vigorously, questions cramming her mind while he swishes, spits and wipes his mouth dry.

“So did you end up going to Scolletti’s?”

“Yeah,” he answers, stretching his tee shirt over his head before climbing out of his jeans and into bed. “I am wiped. Church tomorrow?”

The minty scent of toothpaste lingers between them; that and the more fishy smell of a white lie.

“Think I’ll pass on church tomorrow,” she says, feeling as though the rain, along with her questions, may never end.