When the camera lights went out, the
night seemed even darker to Clisty than it had been before the spotlight shone
on the little house on North Gramercy. The stand-off between the suspected bank
robber and the police was over. Firearms were quickly stored in the SWAT van
and protective vests removed and stashed. Faith Sterling had walked out of the
house on her own, finally free from a past she had endured for eighteen years. But,
was it possible she had escaped her nightmares that easily?
Becca sighed deeply and blew the fresh air out slowly.
“Wow! What a story,” she said as she started to help Clint, the camera man load
the equipment. “Not so sure I’m ready for another one of those, though. I think
my heart stopped beating twenty minutes ago.”
Clisty still held the WFT-TV microphone in her slender
fingers when she grabbed Faith in her arms and sobbed. “You’re home! Where have
you been?” She pulled back at arm’s length to look at her lost friend. Clisty
gasped loudly, the shock was more than she could silence. She felt chilled from
the penetrating night wind. What she saw when she searched Faith’s face for the
friend she use to know, frightened her.
Faith’s beautiful eyes were lost in sunken, dark gray
pools of fear and emptiness. With trembling hands, she tried to brush matted hair
from her forehead, leaving streaks of smeared perspiration behind. She looked
at Clisty with a flat, glassy stare and then stiffened as she stuffed her hands
in the pockets of her long, faded cotton skirt. A rumpled, heavy knit sweater hung
open around her wrinkled peasant blouse. Her clothes smelled like musty socks.
“Oh Faith,” her mother cried as she approached her with
open arms. “Thank God! Thank God!” Her words dissolved in the tears that
streamed down her face. She too clung to the daughter she had not seen since
she was nine years old. “How can it be? Only God could have brought you home.”
Pooky stood behind the three women, outside the
circle of love. She patted the small of her
new grandma’s back. “What’s wrong with Mama?” she whispered as she tried to get
close to her. But, her mother said nothing. Faith seemed frozen except for her
hands. “Why are your hands shaking, Mama?”
Faith’s glistening eyes darted to her daughter. Her
tears seemed to refuse to stop flowing and she fixed her expression on some
distant memory. “Shaking?” she asked, seemingly unaware of her surroundings,
lost in the fear and trauma of hours of staring into the end of a revolver.
“She’s a little overwhelmed right now, Honey,” Roma
explained as she turned and bent down to her granddaughter’s level. She touched
the soft cocoa smudged cheek of the grandchild she didn’t know existed.
“Did Miss Sinclair say you’re Mama’s mama?” Pooky
asked with a puzzled expression that began to grow stern. “Mama said to find
you. Where have you been?”
“Yes, Sweetheart,” her grandmother said as she
finally started to shed eighteen-year-old tears. “I’m your grandma and,” she clasped
the tips of her husband’s fingers, “and this is your grandpa. We have been right
here, waiting for you. We didn’t know where you were.”
“Grandpa?” Pooky asked, quickly jerking back a step
as her eyes grew large and fearful. A dog’s distant bark caused her to startle.
“It’s all right, Pooky,” Clisty soothed. “I have
known your mama’s daddy all my life and he’s a good man. He has waited a long
time to be a grandpa. I’ll bet he’s rehearsed it over and over.”
Pooky eyed the man who would be Grandpa. “Like, when
I played Red Riding Hood at school?”
“Just like that,” Clisty patted her head. “Where did
you go to school?” Like any broadcast journalist, she began to collect the
details she would need to pursue the full story of Faith’s abduction. But, the
news story was only part of it. She had to know where her friend had been. She
had imagined every possible location in the years since she was gone. Except
for a twist of fate that freed her from the grip of the man who captured Faith,
she too would have vanished those long years ago.
Pooky folded her arms and closed herself off to the
people around her. “I don’t go to school any more. I only went there a couple
of weeks. Daddy said I could go, but then Grandpa said, no.” Her voice faded as
she turned her chin up, defiantly, at Ralph. “I never got to be in the play
after all.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Clisty said as she tried to
think fast. “Can you remember the name of the school or anything you saw?”
“The name? No.” She twisted back and forth and
wrinkled up her nose.
Becca watched her and coached, “You’re a good
observer. When you’re as old as I am, you’ll need glasses to see what’s around
you. I’ve noticed you see everything. Did you see anything that would remind
you of the school?”
“There was a sign out front with a big dog on it,”
the child’s eyes shone with pride. “I remembered some. That was good, wasn’t
it?”
“Yes, it was. I wouldn’t have noticed that, I’m
sure,” Becca encouraged her.
“That was very good.” Clisty put her arm around
Pooky’s shoulder.
“You smell good,” she blurted out as she nuzzled a little
longer in Clisty’s arm.
“Thank you. I’ll share a little bit of my perfume with
you and your mama in a few days.” Things were going too fast for Clisty’s tired
mind. She wondered how a young girl could possible keep up. “Your mother is
going to go to the hospital in the ambulance now. I’m going back to the studio
for the last newscast of the day.” She looked up at Faith’s parents and smiled.
“You can ride with your grandparents.”
“No!” Pooky announced and pulled out of Clisty’s
embrace. “I want to go with Mama.”
The first responder reached out and took Pooky’s
hand. “That’s okay. You can ride in the ambulance with your mother. Your
grandparents can follow us in their car. You’ll see Grandma and Grandpa when we
get to the hospital.” He guided Faith onto the gurney.
“I’ll stop by after the newscast and make sure
everyone is all right,” Clisty whispered as she leaned down to hug the young girl.
“Okay?”
“Okay.” Pooky’s eyes darted from her mother to all
the new faces around her.
“It’s okay, Honey,” Faith’s words escaped from her
mouth like they were riding on the last breaths she would take. She turned to
her old friend and motioned for her to come closer.
Clisty leaned down toward her. “I love you, Faith,” she
said and rubbed the back of her hand against her cheek.
“I … I ...,” Faith stammered, as her chin quivered
and her voice choked.
“I know, Honey,” Clisty tried to help.
“I have to ... ah ... ah ...,” she rattled in aimless
monotone, “... tell you.” She closed her eyes hard and slowly warned. “He’s
coming, you know. He’s coming ....”
“Who, Faith ... who’s coming?”
“I’m sorry, Clisty,” the EMT worker urged. “She needs
to be evaluated.”
“Evaluated?” Faith mumbled. Her voice was thin and
weak. “Like a test? I ... don’t like tests.”
“You rest,” the attendant said as he patted her
shoulder. “We gotta go,” he warned Clisty again. Faith lay back on the gurney
and seemed to disappear on the mat, like she had eighteen years ago, a ghost
among the living.
“I know,” Clisty watched with shock. “I can see.”
Bending near her friend’s ear she whispered, “I’ll go to the studio and finish
the broadcast. This breaking news tape will roll again on the eleven o’clock
news. Then, I’ll stop by the hospital and check on you.”
“That will be terribly late,” Becca reminded her,
then shrugged. “Maybe sleep is over-rated.”
“I’ll stop by,” Clisty repeated. “It can’t possibly
be too late for me. I promise I won’t awaken you.”
• • • • •
Clisty slid into her chair behind the news desk at
WFT and quickly clipped on her lapel microphone, racing the clock. It was
ten-fifty-five. Her hands trembled. She took a deep breath and held it in her
lungs for a few seconds. She didn’t have stage-fright. She had been running on
one-hundred percent adrenaline since the six o’clock news exposed the grainy
ATM video of her friend. Faith had been lost so long ago she remained the
pigtailed girl in summer cotton shorts and stripped t-shirt in Clisty’s mind. When
she closed her eyes, she could still hear the faint laughter of two
nine-year-olds on a sunny afternoon adventure.
“Two minutes, team,” Becca called from behind the
camera.
The junior anchor exhaled slowly, blowing the air silently
through her lips. She had to keep her wits about her. She had to tell the story
without telling it all, to keep details about Faith’s rescue for police use
only, without the public’s awareness of the lack of transparency.
Suddenly, the hot lights flooded Clisty’s face and
the newscast began. She looked down momentarily while the film from the remote
broadcast ran again and was amazed to see she was still wearing what she had on
at 6 pm. It had only been five hours, but a lifetime had caught up to her in
those few hours. Her mussed skirt hid under the desk but the collar of her shirt
that should have stayed beneath her suit jacket, refused to lay flat. She
quickly tried to give it a finger-ironing.
Clisty began on cue. “The stand-off between the
police and the person, who may have held up the bank, lasted for more than
hour. The police have identified the man as Melvin Dean Fargo. As you saw from
the footage that just re-aired from our on-the-scene breaking news report, the
woman who came out of the house ahead of the suspect, probably saved Fargo’s
life,” Clisty reported. “She warned the police that he was surrendering, which
avoided a barrage of bullets if authorities believed the woman was still a
captive.”
Dan Drummond fidgeted in the chair beside her; his
hand was itchy on his pen as he anxiously flipped it up and down. “Yes, Clisty,
and—”
“... and, the police consider her a hero, Dan,” she
smiled into the camera.
Dan began, “She is the woman, who, eighteen years ago—”
“I’m glad you brought that up,” Clisty deliberately
interrupted. “Police are keeping the woman’s identity from the public at this
time.”
Dan paused and shook his head slightly. “In case the
suspect had accomplices?”
“That could be a reason for withholding her name,”
Clisty suggested, then quickly added as Drummond opened his mouth to say more.
“I pledge to bring you the entire background surrounding this event in the days
to come.” Clisty was afraid, if permitted to speak Dan could have given too
much information and would have hijacked the story from her capable hands.
Dan’s jaw dropped. With a skillful recovery he added,
“We will all be waiting to hear the details of these remarkable events.”
“And, in other news,” Clisty began again, “the Park
Service has announced a new member of the lion pride at the Fort Wayne Zoo. A
male cub named, Scruffy, was born at eight-twenty this evening, a fitting
addition to our evening of new beginnings.”
Dan stared into the camera with a forced smile and
set jaw. “Thank you for watching. That’s the News at Eleven.”
• • • • •
“Well,” Dan started cautiously as he jerked the mic
from his shirt, “it sounds like you have scored quite a story for yourself.” He
pulled his tall lanky legs from under the desk and unbuttoned his suit coat
from around his middle-aged belly.
“Dan,” she began slowly to maneuver around the minefield
of news-room protocol. Clisty knew that the senior-anchor has first chance at
significant stories. A junior anchor simply does not grab stories from the top
of the pile and run with them. “I am sorry,” she started again, “but the
backstory of this woman’s life is my story as well.”
“Your story? I thought that was up to—“
“No, I didn’t mean it that way.” She fumbled with
words to express the unique situation she was in. The set cleared, Becca waited
in the back of the studio. “Dan, you don’t understand,” Clisty tried to
explain.
They left Studio-A silently and walked into the outer
hall. Dan collected his hat and coat with a snap and an attitude. “I can easily
see I don’t.” Then he turned, “How is it that this woman’s story is magically
yours?”
“Dan,” Clisty looked around her cautiously, to see if
other ears could hear. “The woman is Faith Sterling. She was my childhood friend-of-the-heart.
A man kidnapped her right out of my grasp, in my own living room, when we were
both nine-years old. Then ... she just vanished. While the police apprehended
the suspected bank robber, they haven’t tracked down and brought to justice the
man who took Faith all those years ago. She is very confused and fragile right
now, and may be in danger from her captor. The police want to keep the circle
small of those who have contact with her. They hope she will remember me and
trust me, since we were inseparable as children. So, I will be getting her
story. I hope you understand.”
“Clisty,” Dan removed the hat he had just put on and
crumpled it in his hand. “I understand now. Her backstory is indeed your story,
too. If there is anything I can do to help, just let me know. I’ll be praying
for both of you.”
“Thanks Dan. You’re the second person who said that to
me tonight.” Her mind followed a tangential path back to the Christmas angel
that sat on her spotless mantle. “I appreciate your prayers.”
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