Muriel Jensen - His Wife

“Mister!” A high, urgent whisper made him look up into the dark eyes of a boy about eight. He was scrawny and flushed and appeared frightened. With him was a little girl slightly younger, who had the same dark eyes and tumbled dark hair. She, too, looked scared. Their hands and faces were dirty.

“What is it?” Sawyer asked, putting a hand to the boy’s shoulder.

“Can you help us?” the boy asked, his big eyes pleading.

Sawyer noted the boy’s anxious glance around the book rack.

“With what? What’s the matter?”

“We’ve been kidnapped!” the boy said, ducking. “We need you to help us!”

Sawyer stared at him. “What? Kidnapped by whom?”

The little girl nodded and pointed around the rack to a woman pushing a cart through the produce section. The woman wore a white shirt and denim pedal pushers and her dark hair was caught in a ponytail. She stopped to thump a watermelon.

Sawyer stepped back behind the rack and turned to the little girl, whose lip was trembling. “She took us from our mom in Florida!” she said.

“When?” he asked. That was an irrelevant question under the circumstances, he realized, but he was having trouble believing this was happening to him.

“Three days ago,” the boy replied. “We haven’t had much to eat. And she hid us in the back of the car under a blanket all the way from Florida.”

Sawyer peered out again and saw that the woman, though quite pretty, did seem drawn and tired, as though she had been driving for days. Suddenly, she looked up and around her, and the impatience and annoyance on her face were clear. “Eddie!” she called. “Emma!”

Sawyer leaned out of sight again, took the cell phone out of his pocket and dialed 911. A glance around the rack while he waited for a response told him the woman was headed this way. He caught the little girl by the hand and gestured for the boy to follow.

Emergency picked up and Sawyer explained the situation as he hustled the children across the market to the deli. He put the children behind the meat case and planted himself in the narrow opening between it and a case filled with salads while he finished his call. He told the dispatcher where they were, gave her a physical description of the woman, and rattled off his name and cell phone number. She promised officers would be there within minutes.

He turned off his phone and pocketed it, hearing the woman calling the children. She sounded as though she was going up one aisle and down the other. By the time she reached the deli, she was looking pretty desperate. He wasn’t surprised. She was being deprived of potential ransom money or the fulfillment of some sick need to mother children, anyone’s children.

Kidnap was not just an ugly headline to him but a stark reality, an event that had changed his life forever, and he hated to think of another family enduring such a horrible thing. Well, at least this time the children would be returned and the family wouldn’t be left to wonder for their entire lifetimes if the child was alive or dead, if she was suffering or terrified.

“Hey!” the boy asked softly from behind the case. “You’re that guy that does the stunts, aren’t ya?”

Sawyer nodded and put a finger to his lips.

“Have you got kids?” the little girl whispered loudly.

As Sawyer turned to quiet her, he heard the boy answer, “Of course he doesn’t, stupid! He isn’t even married!”

“Mom’s not married and she’s got us!” the girl replied in a “so there!” tone.

“Shh!” Sawyer hushed them as he saw the woman come down the aisle, still calling their names.

He felt belligerent as the woman pointed her cart toward him. To tell her what he thought of her would have been satisfying, but that might make her run before the police arrived. And he wanted her put behind bars before she did this to someone else’s children.

“Excuse me,” the woman said courteously, apologetically. “Have you seen two little children—a boy and a girl, around this height?” She held a hand, palm down, about waist high, then a little higher. “Big dark eyes, lots of hair, look a lot like me?”

He was silently applauding her performance as the worried mother when he noticed that the children did look a lot like her. Her eyes were also large and dark, and though her hair was more auburn than brown, it was thick like theirs. The boy had a dimple in his right cheek and so did she.

A horrible possibility began to form in his mind.

But natural mothers were always stealing their children from court-appointed guardians, he reminded himself. Still, the children would know she was their mother. Or would they?

“I don’t understand it,” she said anxiously. Mild concern was turning to serious fear. “It isn’t like them to—”

Before she could finish that sentence, Sawyer saw two policemen coming down the aisle, and he beckoned to them.

She hesitated, turning to see whom he was signaling. Her eyes widened at the sight of the policemen, then she turned back to him in confused surprise. A small crowd had gathered at the head of the aisle to see what the police were up to.

Sawyer recognized one of the officers as David Draper. He was tall, craggy-faced and middle-aged, a seasoned veteran of the force. He and Sawyer had worked together on community fund-raising.

Draper stopped halfway down the aisle. The younger officer, a stranger to Sawyer, also stopped, clearly wondering what Draper was doing. Draper shook his head then kept coming.

“This your kidnapper?” Draper asked Sawyer, one hand on his leather belt, the other on the butt of his holstered gun. He aimed his chin at the woman.

Sawyer nodded. “She took the kids three days ago from someplace in Florida. They haven’t had anything to eat and she’s kept them under a blanket in the back of her car.”

The woman expelled a gasp of dismay and put both hands to her face.

Aha! Sawyer thought, vindicated by that expression of guilt. Gotcha!

“She’s a hard case, all right,” Draper said. “Goes by the name Sophie Foster. ER nurse at Losthampton Hospital, sings at St. Paul’s Catholic Church—eight-thirty mass—and helps out at the crisis shelter for battered women. But she does have a problem with kids.”

“Stealing them?” Sawyer asked, not sure what to make of Draper’s description.

“No, raising them,” Draper replied. “She appears to have two little frauds on her hands. Can I see the children in question?”

This was not looking good. Sawyer could feel himself physically shrinking. He was about two feet high now. He reached behind the case and pulled out the boy. Inexplicably, the boy was grinning.

“I found him, Mom!” he exclaimed. “This is him! Brave! Willing to help! Not married! He’s perfect!”

The woman dropped her hands with a groan and said to Sawyer in a remarkably even voice, all things considered, “You know what, Mr—?”

“Abbott,” Draper provided before Sawyer could.

She was distracted for a moment. “The Shepherd’s Knoll Abbotts?” she asked Draper.

He nodded. “Second son.”

“Ah.” She nodded, then diverted her attention at Sawyer. He waited for the slow perusal women usually gave him that resulted in a smile of admiration, even when they pretended not to be interested. Of course, he’d just called the police on her, so he wasn’t entirely surprised when she did nothing but look into his eyes, her own very weary. “Tell you what, Mr. Abbott number two. You obviously care for these children, so how about if I just let you have them? Right now. No charge.” She turned to Draper. “That’s not a problem for you, is it? I mean, I’m not selling them—I’m just letting him have them.”

Eddie grinned up at Sawyer. “She’s just kidding. She loves us a lot.”