Eighty-Sixed: Chapter 51 - Connection

PART IV - SEEKING BEFORE

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PART IV - Seeking Before

Finally, the phone connected.

“Hello?”

“Oh, thank God,” Grace said.  Hearing a voice long distance over the telephone — any voice —  brought unexpected levels of relief.  “Who is this?”

“Who is this?” The female voice answered back.

“Grace Fogleman.  Olivia’s mother?”

“Olivia?” the voice on the other end said questioningly.  

“Olivia LaGrange.”

“That’s my last name.”

“Charlotte?”

“Yes?” the voice said.  She sounded confused and cloudy.  “That’s me.  I’m sorry.  Who is this again?”

“Grace Fogleman.  I can’t believe the phone lines finally opened up.  We’ve been trying to get the phones working for the past week.”

“There’s someone named Olivia Fogleman in my address book.”

Suddenly unsure how to ask the impossible question to which they all desperately needed an answer, Grace took a deep breath.  She’d mostly only known  Charlotte from over the distance of hundreds of miles. Still, the two women held the unmistakably unique common bond of being loving grandmothers to the same precious children.  How should she ask if Charlotte’s son has risen from the dead?

“Is everyone there?” Grace asked.

“What?”

“Your family.”

“Of course,” Charlotte answered.

“I mean,” Grace said, then paused.  “Is David there?”

“Oh, he’s sleeping,” Charlotte said matter-of-factly.  “And I really don’t want to wake him.  It’s been terrible here.”

Grace clutched the phone with both hands and fell into a fit of sobs.  

“He’s there?” Grace cried.  “David’s really there?”

On the other end, Charlotte placed her hand over the phone and spoke with someone else there.  Grace pressed the phone against her ear again and heard a man’s muted voice in the background respond.  

“Hold on,” Charlotte said as she returned to the line, followed by the shuffling sound of the phone passing hands. 

“Hello?” a deep voice suddenly said over the phone line from North Carolina.

Grace choked on more tears.

“David?” she cried

“No, this is Jeremy.  Is this Grace?”

“Oh, Jeremy!” Grace said.  They’d just spent time together no more than two weeks prior at David’s funeral, yet after the endless phone call attempts, it felt like she hadn’t heard Jeremy’s voice in years.  “Is it true, then?  David’s there?”

“Yes,” Jeremy said.  “And my parents, too.  We’ve been mostly in the dark and still trying to piece things together, really.”

“But he’s there?  He’s back?”

“Yeah,” Jeremy said, sounding like he was on the emotional edge of crying.  “He’s alive.”

“Oh, thank God,” Grace said. 

“He’s in rough shape, though,” Jeremy said. “Really, I don’t…I’m not even sure how to explain all that’s happened.”

Grace felt her stomach slump.  She felt suddenly lightheaded.

“Okay,” she said.

“We were kidnapped, I guess.”

“Kidnapped?  What—”

“When we…I don’t know, woke up or whatever, me and David were out on a boat.  We got back to the lake house, and our folks were there, but suddenly, another boat showed up with a bunch of kids, teens, I guess.  One of them held a knife to  Mom and Dad while they tied us all up.  Tossed me and my folks in the trunk of our car, but they ran out of room, so they locked David in a closet in the house and left him behind.”

“What on earth for?”

“They wanted money, I guess.  They were probably crooks before all this happened, and no one was thinking straight.  They drove us to a bank but it was closed shut.  Dad couldn’t remember his ATM code no matter how badly they beat him and Mom.  They’d gone all crazy, I think.  Certifiably, I mean.  They cut one of their friends, a girl, to make us think they needed help, but I think she turned out to be as bad as the rest of them.”

“Are you alright?”

“We will be,” Jeremy said.  “Just beat up. We brought them back to the main house, hoping they’d let us go if we could find something of value.  But once we did, they took the car, and we couldn’t find a way back to the lake house to look for David.  But then suddenly, last night, a couple dropped him off in terrible shape.  He’d been locked in that closet all that time.  Practically starved him.  His wrists are torn to shreds from being tied up.  I think he would have, well, I guess, died again if they hadn’t found him.”

“Oh dear Lord,” was all Grace could say.

“Honestly?” Jeremy said.  “I think we’re in shock. Mom’s confused about everything, and Dad’s not saying much, either.  He and Mom have bruises everywhere, but I don’t think anything is broken.  I can’t hardly see out of my left eye, but it’s better today than yesterday.”

“They’re not going to come back, are they?” Grace asked.  “The ones who did all this?”

“I doubt it,” Jeremy said.  “They pretty much just left, but David said one of them at least did right by not letting him die up there at the lake house.  I don’t know all that happened other than David getting dropped off on the side of the road somewhere, I guess, and this other couple picked him up and managed to get him home.  I really don’t know.  But they brought him back here just a few hours ago.”

“Olivia’s heading your way,” Grace said.  “That’s the plan, at least.  Left yesterday in Mickey’s truck.”

“I was about to ask,” Jeremy said.  

“We all showed up here.  She’s a teenager again.  I suppose you are, too?”

“Looks that way.”

“Olivia was about to go crazy, I think, trying to find out if David was alive.”

“That he is,” Jeremy said, and now it was his turn to be overrun with emotions as he choked back a broken sob.  “About every other minute, it hits me like a bucket of bricks, as if what happened on that river didn’t happen.  Or maybe, I guess, it did happen, but it got erased from time or something.”

“Like the kids,” Grace said.

“So it’s true?” Jeremy asked.  “Mark and Rosie?”

“I don’t want to believe it,” Grace said.  “They can’t be gone.”

“Can you contact Olivia somehow? Tell her to stay put? Or maybe head back to your place? I know when David’s awake and moving, he won’t like the idea of his wife making that journey by herself.”

“Neither did we,” Grace said.  

“We can start heading your way first thing in the morning.”

“I would feel a lot better if Olivia came back,” Grace said, “especially with all these black hole things popping up everywhere.”

“What are you talking about?” Jeremy asked.  Between their captivity and sudden release, the LaGrange family had not kept up with the latest news.

“Is that Olivia?” Grace faintly heard another voice ask from the other line.

In their parent’s house in North Carolina, Jeremy spun from where he stood next to the small hallway table that held the telephone.  There, David leaned against the corner at the end of the hallway leading back to the bedrooms.  He looked pale and frail, with bony arms and gaunt cheeks. Still weak, he looked more revived after a few hours of sleep.

“You’re awake,” Jeremy said.

“Is that Olivia?” David asked again. 

“It’s Grace,” Jeremy told him.  “Your mother-in-law.”

David held out his open hand.  His wrists, covered in gauze dark red and soaked through, were well past due for a change.  As Jeremy handed him the phone, David strained to simply lift the receiver to his ear.  His arms screamed painfully with every simple motion.

“Grace?” David asked.  His mother-in-law wordlessly wept on the other end of the phone at the sound of his voice.  “Grace, is Olivia there?”

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