M.I.A. Read online

  What they both felt was way beyond what normal people usually felt with a new partner. At least that was what Jane believed, thinking that she couldn’t be the only one out of the two of them that felt like she had betrayed Kyle. Maybe they could once they got home, though, when the real world snapped back into focus and reminded them that no matter how many dream vacations they went on, it wasn’t going to bring Kyle back or make them forget about him.

  Chapter 9

  When they arrived home, they both went back to their jobs and lives. Jane’s boss was glad to have her back, even though he could sense something was still wrong. He didn’t bring it up to her the way he had before, or force her to take more vacation—Jane knew they were too busy for that anyway—so she just did her best to keep her head down and get her work done.

  They were spending a lot of time together, mostly Jane at his place because her own place reminded her of Kyle too much. Both of them hoped that people would mind their own business about it and wouldn’t talk behind their backs. However, Brian had already had to face the gossip at his job when he’d heard a few people in the break room whispering about how Kyle had gone MIA, and that Brian had started “banging” his wife. Brian had to bite his tongue so hard it nearly bled, but somehow, he was able to keep from saying anything to their faces that might get him fired.

  Jane hadn’t had anything that scandalous happen at her work; most people there were so wrapped up in their own little worlds anyway. She wasn’t ashamed of being with Brian. It was just that she didn’t want a bunch of people at her workplace sitting around talking about her like a bunch of busy high school kids.

  Eventually, Jane started staying over at Brian’s place all week, and it was only when he went back to work that she went back to her own place. It was a Saturday, and he’d chosen to go in and help his team with a special project. When she got to her place, she found an envelope taped to the inside of her screen door. After walking inside and closing the door behind her, she tore open the envelope and started sobbing as she stumbled toward the kitchen table. It was like she already knew what it was before she opened it. She wasn’t sure how she knew—she just did, like she had grown some kind of sixth sense or something.

  As she finally tore open the envelope and removed the letter, she saw the Department of Defense seal on the upper left hand corner of the page and immediately started reading:

  To Whom It May Concern:

  We would like to inform you that there has been a sighting of a man who could be Kyle in the United States of America. If you come across anyone who looks to be your former husband, please contact the DOD immediately. Either the man is an imposter, or Kyle could have been turned against the U.S. using advanced interrogation techniques.

  We understand that it may be hard for you to keep the contents of this letter confidential, and know that finding it taped to the inside of your screen door may seem less than secure, but please know that you and your house are under constant surveillance and protection by various agencies. If you have any questions, please contact the number at the bottom of this page.

  Thank You

  Jane couldn’t tell if it was some kind of sick joke or not. Who would go to all the trouble of creating this document and then be audacious enough to tape it to the inside of her screen door? Why not just mail it to her? It just didn’t make any sense. And why would the DOD mail her such a cold-hearted letter? Didn’t they know that she was still grieving?

  Not knowing what else to do, she dialed the number at the bottom of the page with shaking hands. When someone picked up on the other end of the line, Jane held her breath, waiting for them to speak.

  “Is this Jane?” the voice asked.

  “Yes! Who the hell is this?”

  “This is Agent Wyoming with the DOD,” the voice said. “I just saw you walk into your house, and judging from your voice, I did a bad job of wording that letter.”

  Jane sobbed into the phone, not knowing what to say. What was she to say to people like this, who had so little consideration for her feelings? What kind of people sat outside her house all day and watched what she was doing? This seemed like something out of a B-flick, not a well-oiled government operation. The only thing Jane could think to do was call Brian and tell him what was going on.

  “Don’t say anything else,” Brian said. “I’ll be over soon.”

  That was all of his response before he cut the line. When he arrived, he looked badly shaken as well.

  “I received something similar today,” he said, letting out a long sigh.

  “This whole thing just seems so crazy. The way that they contacted us; what they contacted us about—all of it. I’m not one to start speculating wildly about things, but seriously, what the fuck is going on?” Brian asked.

  Jane didn’t have an answer. Still reeling from the news that someone that could be Kyle was seen in the United States, she felt numb, as if she’d decided to be a kid again and go play in the snow without putting any winter clothes on. She looked at how agitated Brian was as he leaned against the kitchen counter. He kept muttering to himself and rubbing the bridge of his nose as if someone had punched him while he was wearing sturdy glasses.

  “What should we do?” Jane asked. “Is there anything we can do?”

  Brian coughed and looked around warily at his surroundings.

  “There really isn’t anything we can do if they are openly watching us. I figure, they told us so that if we found out, we couldn’t go to the media and start a shit storm. If we tried to do that, they could say, ‘We told them! And it was all for their own good!’ That kind of thing,” Brian said. “They have probably bugged the house. I know that sounds super paranoid or whatever, but if you really think about it, there is no way they haven’t. And if they’ve done that, then they’ve tapped our phones too.”

  Jane started crying again. Brian didn’t move to hold her, but instead went back to rubbing the bridge of his nose.

  “This is hard, Jane. I’m going through it just like you are and I know how hard it is,” he said. “We need to stick together, and keep our wits about us from now on. We probably spooked them pretty good when we went down to the island. I’m sure they thought we were either trying to do something stupid like go to the Middle East or—well, I guess I really don’t know.”

  Jane stopped herself from crying and sat straight up in her chair. She needed to be strong for both their sakes, and for Kyle. She didn’t know what was going on with Kyle; it sounded like no one did. But she knew that if he was still alive, she had a duty to him to be strong. And if what the Department of Defense people were telling them was true, even if Kyle was alive, he was most likely a very changed person, and probably not for the better.

  “What did they tell you about Kyle?” Jane asked, as she stood up suddenly from the table.

  “They gave me some song and dance about how he might have been captured and turned against the U.S. or something,” he said.

  Jane started to pace the kitchen. Brian crossed his arms and stared at the floor. They were both in a bad spot when it came to how this was affecting them. Maybe that was the real purpose of the DOD leaving them letters —to shake them up, see what they knew.

  “Do you think we should go to the press?” Jane asked as her pacing brought her back around to face Brian. “Do you think that would help at all? I know it isn’t what they want us to do, but it isn’t like they could really do anything if we did.”

  Brian didn’t look up at her as she spoke, but his facial expression changed enough that she knew that the wheels in his head were turning. She hadn’t really thought that he would be on board with the idea, but figured there was no point in not throwing it out there.

  “I don’t know,” Brian said softly. “As much as I’d like to think that they would play nice with us if we tried to do something like that, there really isn’t any way to know for sure until we try to contact the media.”

  “What do you think would happen?” Jane asked, pacing
over to where Brian stood. She stopped in front of him for a moment before letting her entire body sag, leaning up against the counter beside him.

  Jane had never seen Brian this shaken up before. He wasn’t crying like she had been, but he certainly wasn’t his normal self at all. The luster was gone, washed out by the stress of learning that Kyle might still be alive and perhaps even helping ISIS. The whole thing was just more than surreal.

  “I don’t know,” Brian said. “They could have us arrested for disobeying a lawful order from a peace officer pretty easily, and then when we get to court over it. We could find ourselves hit with a gag order. There are a lot of things they could do, and none of them are good. And although both of us would like to think that in the end justice, or something like it, would prevail.”

  Jane started pacing again, but this time Brian stopped her.

  “I’m going to head home and sleep on this. I’m not saying that there will magically be answers when I wake up, but I would like to think that there won’t be as much confusion. I think you should do the same.”

  “Brian,” Jane said. “I know it’s a little selfish for me to ask this of you, but I’d really like you to stay here. I don’t feel like being alone tonight, especially not with what has been going on.”

  Brian nodded, but something about the way he set his jaw told Jane that he wasn’t agreeing to stay the night.

  “I know this is hard,” he said. “Believe me, I know. But I need some alone time. I’m sorry if that’s hard to understand, and I know that I owe you more than just slinking off to my place to hole up for the night. But I really need to figure some of this out for myself as well. If Kyle is still alive, we can’t keep doing what we’re doing.”

  Jane ducked her head so that Brian couldn’t see the big tears that began to well up in her eyes. She held her head down and stepped aside to let him pass. He turned in the doorway and before he walked through it, he looked back at Jane with a sad frown. It was as though he was trying to find the right words. When they didn’t come, he turned and walked away in silence.

  That night, Jane had a hard time sleeping, so she drank a bottle of wine. She didn’t like how it made her feel—drinking alone at her house, but she got over that when the boozy buzz kicked in. She knew she had to get some sleep, so she started drinking earlier rather than later. By about nine, she was pretty tipsy and well on her way to what she was sure would be a pretty fitful sleep. She hoped it wasn’t too bad, though, because her work was demanding and she didn’t want to be the one that slowed everyone down.

  Her boss hadn’t said anything else about what was going on to her, and she got the feeling he’d instructed everyone else not to mention it as well. That was all well and good until she was breaking down crying in the ladies room, and everyone pretended not to hear her sobs. Maybe they were just being polite, but at the same time wouldn’t it have been better to acknowledge her suffering in some way? Wouldn’t that have been the more humane thing to do?

  It wasn’t like they would have to do anything more than put an arm around her shoulder to help calm her down, and they had to have known that. Jane was starting to wonder if her downer attitude was going to get her fired.

  Chapter 10

  The next morning, Jane woke from a dreamless sleep that had been bleak and seemed to sap her of energy rather than recharge her. She was starting to wonder how much longer she could go on like this. If she continued to rely on alcohol, she would create a dependency that she didn’t want to have to deal with. She was smart enough to know that she needed to be careful not to let the drinking take control of her.

  On the way to work, Jane called up a doctor that one of her friends had seen when she was going through a divorce. She spoke with him briefly, explaining how she just wanted to be a normal person again and didn’t want to feel like the weight of the world was dragging her down by the neck.

  “Jane, let me tell you,” the doctor said. “There is absolutely no reason to be going through this like you are. Come in today and we’ll talk a little bit more.”

  Jane felt hopeful walking into work. Maybe there really was some kind of solution. Maybe she could get help that would allow her to function like a normal adult instead of suffering from a combination of grief, loss, heartache, and growing pains. As she walked into the office, it was with more pep in her step than she’d had in months.

  After work, at her new doctor’s office, she spoke briefly with Dr. Wong. It wasn’t the conversation that she’d expected.

  “What I’m suggesting is this,” Dr. Wong said. “I prescribe you some meds—nothing crazy, just something temporary to help you out mentally—and we see how it goes. Now, you can’t just take the pills and expect everything to be all right. Remember that you need to meditate and exercise, and it would also probably do you well to keep a journal. Maybe even see a therapist if that seems worthwhile to you.”

  Jane thanked him and left with a prescription in hand. The doctor had been very friendly, and her insurance would cover everything. When she got home she looked at the pill bottles, checking their names and amounts. Some of them she’d heard of before, and although she didn’t really know that much about drugs, she knew that they were heavy hitters.

  That evening she took a couple of the less serious downers with a glass of wine. The bottles had a bunch of symbols on them that practically screamed that they shouldn’t be mixing drugs and booze, but Jane didn’t care. It was her grief to deal with, and if she wanted to have a God damn cocktail with her medicine, then she would. But then, after about forty-five minutes, Jane couldn’t even remember if she had taken the pills. She went to the bottles, and opened them back up. There were too many of the little things for her to count and figure out if she’d taken a dose. She tried to think back, but her memory was as slippery as black ice, and she wasn’t getting any traction with her thoughts. Jane took another dose and sat on the couch with the television on, not really watching it.

  She wasn’t sure if she felt better as much as she didn’t feel anything. Jane liked this new feeling of unfeeling—she liked the way the medicines seemed to suspend her mind in a mason jar filled with soothing balms and salves. She felt nothing, and it felt great. She hoped that the drugs wouldn’t wear off anytime soon, and they didn’t. She spent the rest of the night sitting in the same place on her couch and absolutely loving every second of it.

  When it was time to go to bed, Jane got off the couch already in a dream state. She headed to her bed and sat on it for a long time. She’d forgotten to take the pill that would ensure there would be no dreams, and she slipped under the sheets without a clear understanding of what it would be like to dream while on the “chill pills”.

  Jane dreamt that she was standing on the tip of a great peak that overlooked a long mountain range that stretched out away from her both to the north and south. The view was so beautiful, and it was as if the mountains, clad in trees and snow, were breathing onto the nearby villages. It reminded her a great deal of the Rocky Mountains in Colorado, and how the beauty of that range was accessible but at the same time extremely remote.

  Jane looked around her for some way to get off the peak, but found none. She didn’t want to be stuck up where she was forever, so close to God that she felt naked and judged. She wanted to slide down the side of the mountain to one of the villages and see how the people lived. Maybe somewhere in the shadows of some distant crag there would be a healer of sorts that would be able to lay hands on her mind somehow, and straighten it all out. This was what Jane really wanted, so she started to climb down the mountain, hand hold by hand hold, toe hold by toe hold. When she looked up the edge of the peak where she’d been standing it was so far above her it appeared to be miles away. The same scene greeted her when she looked down, except instead of the peak being so high above her it was the foot of the hills below. What was she to do?

  Jane held on to the side of the mountain for as long as she could. She realized she was dreaming when her arms didn’t
tire and burn, and then tried to wake herself up, but it wouldn’t work. The wind started blow, and Jane had to hold on to the mountainside with the tips of her fingers. Soon it became too windy for her to clutch to the broken rock face anymore, so she let go.

  She fell, tumbling end over end. When she saw the ground rushing to meet her, she woke up in a cold sweat. She sat upright in her bed trying not to cry. Her whole body was shaking with fright, and she desperately wished she didn’t feel so strangely about calling Brian, but after he had left the other day he had done little to speak with her save for sending a few texts that were short and to the point. It seemed he didn’t want to be bothered for a few days while he tried to pull himself together.

  Jane sat in bed shaking and crying. When she looked at the clock she saw that it was only two in the morning. She needed to get back to sleep so she could wake up ready for work the next day. She slipped from between the sheets and poured herself another small glass of wine in the kitchen. Placing one of the chill pills in a spoon, she crushed it up with the blunt end of a Sharpie, and then poured the dust into the wine.

  Jane threw her head back and downed the wine in one gulp, hoping that by morning all of this would be something she wouldn’t easily remember. That was the point, wasn’t it? To allow her to forget some of the tortures the tragedy of Kyle’s loss was bringing into her life.

  When Jane’s head hit the pillow, she was out like a light, and this time there were no strange dreams to trouble her sleep.

  Chapter 11

  The following weeks were a blur of work and home life for Jane. She started taking the chill pills as soon as she went to work, to help keep her anxiety down, and all the people she worked with really seemed to appreciate her newfound attitude. Sure, sometimes Jane could be a little spacey, but no one seemed to mind that at all. The old Jane was back! Or at least that was what she heard people telling each other when they thought she couldn’t hear them. It made her sad to realize how much she’d allowed her negative circumstances to change her, and also sad to know that she’d been letting the people at her work down this whole time by not seeking help.