Or maybe I was afraid, just afraid to take a direct and final action. Maybe it was common cowardice.
When I told him we were leaving he never once objected: there was no tension around our departure. And I only decided to evade him later, when he started stalking us instead of asking for a visit. It was only in the White Mountains that I knew his motives were strong and impersonal, as, with Ned, any motives must be. It was then that unease crept into me.
But there’s no proof I didn’t spirit her away against his will, only a few emails after the fact that wouldn’t bind anyone legally.
WHEN I DECIDED to make the trip I hadn’t told Don the details of our domestic situation. He only knew I wanted to keep a low profile at the motel—that much was obvious. So I finally took him into my confidence about Ned, I told him the story. I included Ned not wanting a child, his proven disinterest, until his Alaskan PR campaign, in a family reunion; I left out, needless to say, our visitation by the possibly divine.
To my relief Don didn’t see me as a kidnapper. Rather he was alarmed for us, he tried to convince me to skip the dangers of a Thanksgiving in my parents’ house and spend the day with him and the other guests. He promised to cook a prize turkey, with something vegetarian for Lena; he would bake pies, pumpkin, fake mincemeat, and pecan.
But I felt bad for keeping her from her grandparents so long, and from my brother Solomon, Solly for short, and others in her family she’d spent too little time with—only a rare Christmas, a few weeks’ summer vacation she’d been too young to remember well. Alaska is far from Rhode Island. On Ned’s side she’d never known relatives; even if he hadn’t been estranged from his parents, he wouldn’t have taken her to meet them since he never took her anywhere.
We had to go, I said. I was betting Ned wouldn’t dare approach me in my family’s presence—my family with whom he’d always played the part of a thoughtful, upright man, my family without whose financial gifts to us he never could have started his first business, from which all else had sprung.
I was more afraid, I told Don, that he would corner us afterward, because it was when we were away from my family that he could coerce me effectively. An in-person encounter between Ned and me is my main anxiety. The prospect fills me with the fatalistic certainty that I wouldn’t be able to pull away from him right off, not with Lena’s eyes on us. Somehow I’m certain of this despite its weakness, its irrationality, despite the fact that I know it would be wrong, dead wrong for me and for her too.
If Ned gets to us physically I fear he’ll outmaneuver me. From the day I left him and felt the welcome release of distance the prospect of his presence has terrified me. Always since then, whenever I think of seeing him again, I’m a deer in the headlights.
If he was watching my parents’ house for the holidays, some men in suits and leather shoes might follow us when we left.
“If you have to go, have someone in your family drive back with you,” suggested Don.
“But he could still follow us, and then he’d know we were here,” I said. “From then on. And we’d just have to move out. I don’t want to go yet, and Lena doesn’t either.”
Don nodded.
“If you want, I can meet you somewhere in my car. We can do a switch—you go into a store, you go through the back, we leave in my car. Whoever was driving your car could bring it back here once he’d given up and stopped following them.”
I was startled that he’d go to such lengths to help us.
“There are different ways to do it,” he said. “But the key is, you have to be careful. Don’t think of complex dodges as ridiculous. It’s worth it.”
He said he’d known a woman who was abused and had helped sneak her in and out of shelters. But always, sooner or later, she would lose patience and decide to make a generous gesture, she would throw caution to the winds and be caught and beaten again.
SOMETIMES I CONSIDER wishfully whether, when she’s grown up, it might be possible to tell Lena about the voice and stop being alone with it. I keep this record for that reason also: not to feel so alone.