Total pages in book: 115
Estimated words: 107766 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 539(@200wpm)___ 431(@250wpm)___ 359(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 107766 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 539(@200wpm)___ 431(@250wpm)___ 359(@300wpm)
Just as always, though, she had trouble meshing the face of the man in the photo with the man under the ski mask who’d raped, terrorized, and starved her. She couldn’t stop picturing him in her mind as that faceless monster who’d first attacked her in her bed in the middle of the night. Her counselor had printed out the picture in the file for her after Josie had asked. Josie had wanted to picture him as he was, not as he’d chosen to appear to her. Faceless. She’d sought to humanize him so her panic abated. He wasn’t some supernatural devil she had to fear. He was just a man. And he was dead. Gone forever.
Plus, if—no, when—she found her boy, she had to know he might look like his father. His heart and soul would be his own, but his face might be that of her tormenter. She had to make peace with that. She could never cause her child to think she saw evil in him because of the features he could not change.
She’d visited schools a few times, sat in her car as she’d watched the kids in the grade he’d be in head out to recess. Once she’d spotted a little boy with black hair like Marshall’s about the same age her child would be. He’d been sitting alone, head bowed. No friends. Her heart had lurched, stomach clenching as she stared at the lonely little boy. Are you mine? she’d wondered. But then another little boy had sat next to him. They’d looked so much alike, Josie had known it had to be a twin or a brother. Her heart had sunk, and she’d driven away.
Josie stared at Marshall’s picture for another minute, annoyed with herself. Because try as she might, she couldn’t merge the two—the man in the photo and the man in the ski mask. Her mind simply wouldn’t allow it, was branded with Marshall not as he was but the way he’d appeared to her during the most horrific months of her life. She had to keep working on that. Apparently eight years hadn’t been enough.
It will happen when you find him, she thought. And in a way she hoped she would see at least a glimmer of his father in the way her son looked. It would serve to humanize Marshall Landish further. It would serve as a daily reminder of the light that had come from the darkness. Her baby boy. The reason she’d kept fighting, day after day, in her hellish dungeon. Her hope. She closed her eyes, picturing his face as she remembered it, the small cherubic features, the way he’d looked at her with so much trust. Pain blossomed in her chest, rising so suddenly, she couldn’t breathe. It hurt. Still. But she let it, almost relished the pain. In some ways, he was the pain, twisted in the longing she carried inside her. It was all she had of him, and she couldn’t let it go without also allowing him to drift away.
After a moment, she closed the folder and chose another. It held the lists of hospitals she’d called over the years, both in Cincinnati and the surrounding cities. She’d researched what she could about Marshall Landish’s background and found he had some family in Texas, and so she’d called the hospitals and agencies there as well. He’d been in the Army in South Carolina for a time, so there was a list from there too. It was a long shot, but there was no avenue she wasn’t willing to travel to find him.
At one point, years before, she’d saved enough money to hire a private investigator, but his leads had all run dry, the same as the CPD’s had.
She’d visited adoption agencies in town, a few social workers who worked within the social services system, the people Marshall worked with, the few friends he had. She’d known the police were doing the same, but it couldn’t hurt, she’d told herself. And she hadn’t stopped after coming up blank. She’d revisited the names on her lists again and again over the years, praying they’d heard something, or a small memory had come back. Anything. All long shots, impossible, maybe, but she’d refused to give up. She’d promised him, and she would not break that promise. She was his mother.
But those calls…she’d let them go this last year, one at a time. The first one was the easiest—Detective Cedric Murphy—because she trusted that if anything came up, he’d get in touch with her. The others were harder. Ceasing her yearly check-ins had been difficult, but like she’d told Detective Copeland, it was time. At this point, they were only succeeding in hurting her—the inevitable negative response, the pity she heard in the voice of the contact when once again, they told her they had nothing to give her. Plus, she reasoned, perhaps those calls were keeping her focused on dead ends. Perhaps she needed to let those go so she could brainstorm other avenues she hadn’t considered before. Those calls made her feel like she was still doing something, and she’d needed that. But in reality, maybe stopping them would fuel her to turn elsewhere, somewhere new. Somewhere that would lead to a small break.