James Grippando - A King's ransom

“You’re making this personal. And you’re going to regret it.”

“It already is personal. And my only regret is that it took my father’s kidnapping to open my eyes.”

The chime sounded and the tram doors opened. Even though we were five stops away from the courthouse, Duncan started for the platform. On his way out he glared at me and said, “This was low. Even for you.”

He stepped off, the doors closed, and the tram pulled away from the station.

It had actually felt good to air my true feelings, not just about the kidnapping but about the kind of lawyer Duncan had tried to mold me into. But watching him through the window as he hurried down the steps to street level, my heart sank with the fear that another precious door had just closed on my father. For good.

Matthew had no idea where he was. Without the benefit of pack mules they’d marched deep into the valley. At the first sighting of a real road, the prisoners were blindfolded, first Emilio and then Matthew.

They walked about another hundred meters, the barrel of the rifle poking him in the back, urging him forward. They stopped on command. He heard a car door open, and he was shoved into the back of a van. He heard Emilio bang his head and curse, which strangely comforted Matthew. At least he knew he wasn’t going alone. The door slammed, the engine started. The van pulled away, a very bumpy ride at first, then a little smoother. It felt like the same road that they’d taken from Cartagena when this whole nightmare had started, but with the blindfold he had no way of knowing.

“Emilio?” he whispered.

“ ?Silencio! ” said the driver.

He recognized the voice as Joaquin’s. Matthew retreated into darkness, strangely deprived of more than just his sight by the thick blindfold. Bouncing in the rear of the van had put his entire equilibrium off.

He lay on his side on the metal floor, the tires of the van whining just below his ear. Seated in front were at least two guerrillas. Matthew sensed the presence of others, but he’d heard only two voices. The driver was definitely Joaquin, and he was pretty sure the other guy was Cerdo . He was complaining that his new street clothes were too tight, but Matthew’s mind had already raced beyond the petty gripes. If they were wearing new clothes, they were leaving their guerrilla fatigues behind. Matthew knew what that meant.

They were headed for the city.

He tried not to start the emotional roller coaster, but his spirits soared anyway. A trip to the city could certainly be a sign that his release was in the works. The blackness behind the blindfold was suddenly a happy place. He saw Cathy’s smiling face, his hand on her pregnant belly. He saw Thanksgiving dinner in Coral Gables with Nick and Lindsey at the table. He saw hot showers and razor blades and juicy sirloin steaks.

He didn’t care if silence was the rule. He needed to ask a question.

“ ?Adonde vamos? ” Where are we going?

“ ?Silencio! ” shouted Joaquin.

It was risky to act up, but Matthew was tired of the abuse, tired of knowing nothing. “ ?Adonde vamos? ” he asked once more.

The other guy, Cerdo, said something that made Joaquin laugh. Matthew didn’t understand what he’d said.

“ ?Donde? ” he said.

Neither one answered. Joaquin was still chuckling softly to himself. Finally Matthew heard a whisper from Emilio in English.

“He says we’re headed for the hostage hotel.”

Matthew retreated into dark silence. Somehow it hadn’t struck him as all that funny.

Dinner was at Mom’s house. I worried about her a lot lately, and tonight’s dinner only heightened my concerns. Since the kidnapping we’d made it a practice to eat only in the kitchen, never in the dining room where she and Dad had normally shared dinner. Tonight, however, without explanation, she methodically set three places at the dining table. One for her. One for me. And one for Dad.

I sat across the table from Mom eating my beef Stroganoff in silence, trapped by fear. It might have helped to talk things out, but I didn’t want to risk showing Mom how worried I was. Alex and I were supposed to deliver the ransom in a matter of days, and I still had no idea where the money would come from.

“Dinner was delicious,” I said as I planted a kiss on her forehead.

“My obstetrician says I’m not gaining enough weight. I make the most fattening food in my cookbook, and I’m still the skinniest pregnant woman in his office.”

“That’s because you’ve hardly touched your food. Please, try to eat something.”

Her eyes drifted toward the living room in an empty gaze.

I took my plate to the kitchen, then came back to the table and reached for the clean plate at Dad’s chair.

“No,” she said sharply. “That stays until your father walks through that door.”

I backed off. Whatever helped her to get from one day to the next was healthy in the big picture, I supposed.

“Have you talked to Grandma this week?” I asked.

“I saw her on Monday. She’s slipping more and more each day. I doubt she’ll know her son when he returns.”

“I know about that,” I said, thinking of the way she’d booted me out twice. “It’s good that you visit her. Maybe it will keep some spark alive somewhere inside her.”

“I hate the way she talks about your father. He was such a good son to her, and she somehow has it in her head that he’s good for nothing.”

“Alzheimer’s can make people say horrible things. Things they don’t mean.”

“I know. I went through a little bit of the same thing with your father when he used to drink. Every now and then I used to wonder if the disease was making him say things he didn’t mean. Or if it was unleashing his true feelings. Is that silly?”

“Totally,” I said as I squeezed her hand in mine.

“I shouldn’t even be thinking of that. Every day since your father has been gone, I’ve tried to remember the good times. But tragedy has a way of bringing back the bad times as well. Is it that way for you, too?”

I could see the pain in her eyes. I moved closer, held her in my arms. “Try to think of what’s good,” I said, hoping that she wouldn’t notice the way I hadn’t really answered her question.

I felt like a hypocrite. There I was, telling Mom to think only good thoughts, when for fifteen years I hadn’t been able to purge my own heart.

Ironically, the physical separation caused by the kidnapping had made me realize how stupid I’d been to let things fester all these years. The emotional gap between my father and me wasn’t exactly oceans wide, but it was definitely born of the sea. Dad had always taught me to respect the ocean, but he’d pushed me to conquer all fears of it as well. Perhaps it was somehow connected to the loss of his sister in that boating accident, which I’d known nothing about until Jenna had told me just a couple of weeks before. Whatever the root, it had always seemed somewhat irrational to me. When he drank, it could get downright ugly.

Alone in the family room, I felt my mind drifting, but I didn’t want to go there. I had to follow my own advice and think only of the good times.

I grabbed the remote control and started to channel-surf, lying on the couch. A hundred stations of nothing to watch, as usual. I switched off the set, and my gaze drifted toward my father’s big saltwater aquarium across the room. The angelfish were fighting as always, chasing each other around the submerged plastic shipwreck at the bottom. As a child I used to imagine myself diving around that wreck and pulling up treasure. I could see myself in mask and fins knifing through the depths, the world’s greatest diver who didn’t even use tanks. A diver was what I’d wanted to be-before my worst day ever with my father, our last on the water together. I was twelve years old. Dad and I had joined a group of other fathers and sons on a boating trip to Biscayne Bay, skindiving for lobsters. I tried never to think of that day, and I didn’t want to think about it now. But I was getting lost in that aquarium, lost in my past. .