Chapter 18: Home is Where the Heart Is

Connecting flight from Munich, Germany to New York City

December 31st –2:20 AM


We made it out and on our way back. There was a single flight out of Munich when we got there from Naples, heading straight into the snow storm over New York City. It was surreal to have to think about that again, when we'd spent the last week in the sun. But that's where we were going, to Manhattan.

We had planned to meet my mother and father and the kids at the airport since their flight from Chicago got in a whole hour before ours. Contact was kept, we were twenty thousand feet in the air over the Atlantic Ocean, and it was all I could do to keep from taking advantage of every moment she laid beside me asleep, head on my shoulder, content in her dreams where I hadn't done anything wrong. Where I hadn't made a huge mistake.

"Excuse me, sir?"

I blinked to recharge and turned my face up in the dark cabin of the plane at the attendant, pushing a cart. She smiled and leaned down close in a whisper.

"Can I get you or your wife anything?"

I looked at Roxanne's resting head and stroked her hair before replying, "No. We're fine, thanks." Then she rolled it down the aisle further away from us.

Funny how that kind of a statement, "We're fine," can mean so very much in the context of refreshments and airline food, but when it comes to the truth, the one I still hadn't been able to face and fully convince her of in the chaos of trying to get back, it seemed so out of place to say.

I knew we weren't fine. Roxanne probably still thought I cheated since I hadn't told her otherwise yet. When I had tried, I was interrupted by an even more frightening reality. A reality that someone, or rather some woman, had tried to snatch up my kids from their beds less than 24 hours before.

That was real.

She nudged a little to get more comfortable, pulling slightly on my shirt and nuzzling her face against my shoulder. I played with her long hair where it spilled out from under her woolen snow cap. I wanted so badly to kiss her, to tell her that I was sorry for what went wrong, that I never meant for any girl to come in and ruin us, and that absolutely nothing happened. I wanted her to understand that I had no intention of ever doing to her, what I once had done to me.

But it was the last thing in question now. The only thing that mattered was getting to the kids, and getting them safe again. And safe, by my own measure and scheme, was where we hadn't been in far too long. Where someone had apparently led a major news distributor to believe that she had already died. It was safe despite it.

A place called Tashmore and a house, called Hayden.


JFK Airport – New York City

4:15 AM


The plane landed and I was shaking in my seat, waiting to get up and run through the gate to find them. Mort tried to talk to me, tried to ask me questions about how I was feeling and if I wanted him to carry my bag, but I wasn't focused on him whatsoever. To tell the truth, I was doing my best to just ignore him for the time being. Not that I wasn't grateful for him finding this early a flight back to the States, or everything he'd done to get the kids and his parents to New York that same morning to meet us, but I wasn't in the mood to have to talk to him.

Not yet.

The flight attendant announced they were unloading and before anyone could manage to unbuckle and get out of their seats, I already had mine flung back and was crawling across Mort's legs to get into the aisle. He tried to hold me back from moving, but I resisted and kept going.

"Roxanne!"

I didn't grab my bags because I just as well assumed he'd get them. I didn't wait for the old ladies trying to get out of their seats, or the shouting foreigners or even the first class flyers that I knew had the right of way because they spent more than us.

I could only think of one thing to do. Run.

The flight attendant put her hands up as I made it to the door, "Ma'am, please don't run!"

Psh. Right lady.

I darted passed her, thanked the pilots with a tired grin, and hurried through the freezing gateway tunnel, trying to get to the double doors and the sound of rushing travelers. Mort was somewhere close behind me, stumbling with our things and calling after me. But I didn't slow down and I didn't turn back.

"Roxy, wait."

No, Roxy. Go. Keep going.

And I did, all the way into the center of the international side of the terminal. There was havoc, even at five in the morning, with French women jabbering on their cell phones, Australian surfers with their rarely used snow gear on, and a bunch of other accents and cultures I couldn't understand for the life of me. My focus was on getting to Terminal B, the domestic side, which I saw on the overhead screen, was where the flights from Chicago were coming in.

Half a dozen people fell or were jolted victims in my rampant leaping over luggage on the tiled floor, between young children, through rows of payphones and laptop stands. Every little girl or boy I passed were them, my babies, and every older couple were Jane and Todd.

Even as I continued to run, my scarf blowing behind me with my hair, my hat half covering my eyes and the laces of my sneakers making every step I made a health risk, I could faintly hear Mort shouting my name.

You'll have to catch up. I'm not turning back, I thought as I landed in the opening between terminals, lost amid bodies of people hunting for food and last minute souvenirs. I could see the sign for Gate 60H in the distance and I wasn't slowing. I shoved through carefully and made it to the other side without a scratch to my name. And then when I looked up to search out the faces I needed to see, I heard the most universal exclamation in any airport, in any public place in the world.

"Mommy!"

It could have been any mother, anywhere, at any gate, and I even noticed a handful of women glancing around when I did. But no one sounded like my little girl and that was her. My eyes preyed as my ears heard the calls of 'Mommy and 'Roxanne' alike, from two different directions. When the crowd separated before me though, I could see the prancing of two pairs of tiny legs coming at me, and I knew which name I had to answer to first.

"Mommy!"

"Max! Maddie!"

I fell to the floor in the middle of the terminal, surrounded by moving bodies of weary travelers, and I held my arms out until they tumbled into them a second later. All of a sudden they felt so big to me, as though they'd grown a foot more since I'd seen them six days before.

"My babies…" I whispered in their ears as my tears hit the tops of their heads. They laughed when I squeezed and covered them with as many kisses as I could manage to find cheek space for, "…I missed you so much. Are you alright?"

From the corner of my eye I could see Jane, smiling with tears in her eyes as she came to kneel down beside me in the middle of the busy terminal, rubbing my back. I turned my wet eyes up as she kissed my cheeks and brushed my hair.

"They're okay, Roxanne. They're alright now."

I cried deeply into Max's messy hair, "Thank you."

Mort showed up another minute or so later, breathing heavily as he tossed the bags down and leaned in to take Madeline from me.

She cried out in his arms, "Daddy!"

I stood up with Max tight in mine, his legs clinging to me for life and then some. I watched Mort with Maddie, I watched how he seemed to come right back down to earth again when she held onto him, cried on his shoulder. I saw our little vacation into temptation drift away in his eyes when he stared back. I wasn't talking to him yet, but at least I felt a sliver of trust drifting in again.


Tashmore Lake, Upstate New York – Hayden House

6:10 AM


It was minutes away from the sunrise when I finally finished getting the car unloaded and the house warmed up. Every fireplace was crackling and the kitchen was generating power from the coffee pot boiling away and the early breakfast my mother was cooking. Roxanne had taken Max and Madeline upstairs to try and get them to sleep, even if their eyes were closing as the day was starting.

We were all a little bit sideways, a little backwards at that point.

I reached the top of the old stairs her grandfather had built so sturdily and crept down the hall to where I heard the faintness of her voice. She had them in the first guest room on the right, and when I poked my head inside, I saw a single lamp light shining on both of them, as they lain together and still wide awake, listening to their mother. They're perfect mother. The mother every kid dreams of having.

I felt tugs at every string in my heart as I silently spied on them.

"Everything's going to be okay now. Daddy and I are here to make sure nothing else bad happens," she stroked through Madeline's long curls and then Max's messy ones.

"Is the lady coming back?"

My heart stopped, hearing Max ask that question. Because I wanted to know too.

"No," Roxanne assured all three of us at once, "She's gone, honey."

"Mommy?"

"Yeah, Bug?"

"She tried to take Ollie."

I snuck a peek through the door again to see Madeline holding her poor, old octopus up in the light. Roxanne stroked her cheeks and Ollie's.

"Ollie's safe now too. He's here to watch you while you sleep."

"Okay."

She tucked them both in as I watched on quietly. She kissed them until they were in a giggling fit, and then asked as always, "Snug?"

Two nods came of it as I started to slowly step back down the hall toward our room, or at least to the room I thought was for the both of us. I heard her say finally, "Snug as two bugs in a rug," and then I was through the door. The early grey light of New Year's Eve came pouring through the curtains and I tore off my snow covered boots and coat to get a hot shower.

By the time I was finished and getting dressed again though, Roxanne still wasn't in the room, sleeping or otherwise. I wondered as I pulled on my sweater and jeans, whether she'd taken another room as her own, even though this truly was her room. I walked down the hall to find her, but she wasn't upstairs. There was music playing softly from the first floor, so I assumed that's where she went after finally getting the kids to sleep, and I followed the sound of burning firewood and dripping coffee.

It wasn't the kitchen I found her in, although I did find my mom, sitting with puffy eyes from crying, the newspaper and oatmeal. I put my arms around her, kissing her head like I remembered her doing to me when I was a kid. She jumped at the touch, obviously still on pins and needles, but I felt her relax when she realized who it was.

"Everything's gonna be okay now, Mom. We'll be safe here."

I saw her smile from under my arm, "I hope so, honey."

With one final kiss on top of her head, I slid into a chair beside her, sighing tiredly before looking up to her voice again.

"That woman, she came out of nowhere. There was nothing--" an immediate pause came and I saw her face hit her hands again, crying. I reached out to take one, holding it softly. "Your father and I had no way of knowing. She was halfway through the house with the kids when--"

Silence prevailed again, with only teardrops and coffee filling the empty space. I tried to imagine what it must have been like, my sixty four year old parents having to chase off a woman from their house in the middle of the night, one trying to kidnap their own grandchildren. And I found that even as hard as I attempted it, as much as I wanted to understand what it could feel like, I couldn't. So I spoke to her to find out instead.

"Did she say anything?"

My mother shook her head, "She just ran out of the house. As if she was never there at all. It was the strangest thing."

"What did she look like? Did you see her?"

Here, she finally glanced up at me, teary-eyed and sighing to say, "She was beautiful. Whoever she was. I saw she had dark hair, lovely features, and apparently," a lasting breath came from her, "a black heart too. How could someone attempt such a thing? A young woman at that?"

"I don't know."

"I can't seem to figure it out myself. Who could ever want to steal your children, for what purpose? Who could mean harm to you now, with that mafia group well taken care of?" She started to softly cry again, patting my hand. "What could one, single woman like that have against either of you at all?"

My mind was scattered then, wandering to a place I had planned to never go back to again. But it was unavoidable.

With a low mumble I replied, "I'm sure I can think of one reason."

My mom looked at me odd, blowing her nose, "What?"

"Huh?" I shot my eyes up, "Nothing."

"You sure?"

"Yeah."

Immediately thereafter I started turning my face around the kitchen, back out toward the living room and main stairwell of the house. I think my mother saw what I was doing, because she smiled a little and pointed to the French doorway that led into the parlor, Roxanne's grandmother's parlor.

"She snuck in there just a few minutes ago, sweetheart. She's looked terribly sad since you all got off that plane. Did something else happen before you came home?"

I gulped, cracked my jaw anxiously and shook my head.

"No. It's nothing."

"Are you sure, Benjamin?"

My eyes widened when she called me that. She hardly ever called me that anymore, unless she was livid with me or by mistake. Her face seemed serious, but not stern. She was half grinning up at me.

Finally I choked out a 'yeah' and turned for the parlor door.