Sacrifices of Joy (16 page)

“Akiyoshi Nakamura of Tokyo had flown into BWI on a business trip. His colleagues state that he was excited about forming a new relationship with a nonprofit in Silver Spring, Maryland, which was going to partner with his marketing company in Tokyo. His childhood village in Southern Japan was to receive over fifty classroom computers through the generous deal he had initiated.” The reporter spoke in a hushed voice before another news snippet played.

“This is exactly the type of thing my son would do. He was compassionate and always felt that the world was bigger than him,” a pretty, senior woman named Ayuki said into a camera. “In a bittersweet blessing, the nonprofit has announced that they are doubling their gift to be one hundred computers and the school district is starting a memorial scholarship fund in my son's name.” The woman wiped tears from her eyes, but gave the camera a full smile.

Continuing coverage from the terror attack aired on the television in my clinic's waiting room. Usually, I kept the news off, not wanting to upset some of the more fragile, traumatized clients who frequented my practice; but it was early in the day and I still had about fifteen minutes before my seven-thirty appointment was due. I was the only one there.

“All who knew Bart and Madison Taylor said they were inseparable. He was an entrepreneur and proud self-made multimillionaire whose high-end car collection and luxury villas have been featured in magazines and cable television networks. His wife was the PTA president at their eight-year-old son Aaron's elementary school. Other parents at the school talked about Madison's exquisite baking skills. She was known to make everything—bread, pies, cakes, and brownies—not only from scratch, but also with her own home-ground flour. She reportedly raised her own chickens and two cows on one of their pastoral properties to always have fresh eggs and milk on hand.”

Now that's different for a cosmopolitan couple.
I studied the photo of the brown-haired gentleman with bushy sideburns and his blond bombshell wife who looked like a beauty pageant contestant. The boy Aaron had confident eyes and a playful smirk on his face.

“The family was headed to their vacation home on a remote Bahamian island for a quick weekend getaway. All three perished in the attack.”

The camera focused in on the eight-year-old and I snapped off the television.

“Every TV station has story after story about Jamal Abdul, but what do we really know about the victims?”
The words of the man who'd come to my practice daily echoed in my mind.

“Hey, Sienna!” The front door slammed open and Darci burst in.

“Hi, Darci.”

Today she wore a snug black skirt that stopped a few inches shy of her knees, a low-cut black-and-white zebra print blouse, silver hoop earrings, and silver sandals. Her makeup looked like she had just left a cosmetics counter at Macy's, and she had a fresh manicure. “Don't worry about your trip today. As you requested, you just have your two clients this morning, and a couple booked for Saturday starting at noon. I've updated your calendar, so you can check it online. I've taken care of everything, and can even handle any walk-ins of yours that might come through.

“He's not coming back, Darci.”

“Huh?” She froze just as she was about to toss her purse and workbag on her desk. “Oh, I mean, Sienna, I . . . You . . .” Her hands came back to life and she resumed getting settled before turning her attention to me with a stiff smile. “What are you talking about, Sienna? Who's not coming back?”

“Darci, please. It's obvious. You've been all cheery and smiles and dressed up since that man started coming here every day. Please, Darci, don't give that man another single thought. He's not stable. Maybe even dangerous. Aside from ethical considerations, there are possible safety considerations. You are a wonderful, beautiful young woman and the right one will come along after while. Believe me, I know the struggle, but not him
.” Yeah, the right one will come, but you have to not run him away,
I chided myself even as I tried to encourage and warn her.

Her eyelids, coated in thick black mascara, fluttered, and her cheeks slowly turned a deep scarlet red. “What can I say, Sienna. You've read me like a book. I'm so embarrassed. But don't worry, I wasn't going anywhere with it. It was just nice to get some attention from a man who looked so, well, good.”

“Attention?”

“Yeah.” She blushed again. “I ran into him last night when I was leaving the library with the twins. We chatted for just a few moments and he bought Ella and Elijah candy bars. I told him not to, but he did anyway. We thanked him and then we left. That was it. I promise.” She collapsed into her desk seat with a loud sigh and looked away.

“You don't think it's odd that he just happened to run into you?”

“No. I mean, I was at the Towson library down the street. It's a public place.” Her eyes zeroed in on her computer screen and she said nothing else.

I don't know what bothered me more: the bad feeling that their encounter was anything but chance, or the sad look of desperation that she was trying so hard to hide in her eyes. I searched for something else to say, but my seven-thirty appointment was walked in the door.

“Oh, I've been waiting to talk to you.” My client shook her head dramatically, sending her waist-length braids in a dizzying spin. “You will not believe what my supervisor did now.”

“Come on back, Ms. Johnson.” I managed to smile, forcing myself to turn my complete focus to her, to her words.

But before I did, and as she settled herself onto my office couch and rambled on about the weather, her upcoming vacation, and other small talk before we got to her work-related problems that were exacerbating her depression, I discreetly pulled up my Facebook account on my phone.

Darci and I were not Facebook friends, honoring a choice I'd made to keep our employer-employee relationship purely professional. Because of that, I did not expect to be able to see her profile.

But I did.

Her profile setting was public.

Anyone who looked her up would have seen that she checked into Baltimore County's Public Library in Towson at approximately seven p.m. last night.

No, I was convinced. There was nothing coincidental about that man walking into the library the moment she walked out.

But why?

“So tell me, Ms. Johnson, how was work today?” I asked, knowing I'd have to come back to my other questions later.

Sorry, we couldn't find any results for this search.

 

I blinked at my computer screen, wondering why I'd expected to see different results. My seven-thirty appointment had left and my eight-thirty was running a few moments late. With no other way of satisfying the continually growing urge to get answers, I'd done a search for Jamal Abdul of Northern Virginia to no avail. The odds were, I knew, that if he'd had a Facebook profile, it would most likely have been taken down; but there was no evidence that one had ever existed. No cached page. No links to screenshots. I searched by his employer name, his hometown, even his wife's name, as all had been flashing nonstop on the television coverage.

As I stared at the blinking curser on the screen, I recalled what Laz had said in response to my question about the photos of Jamal Abdul Laz's team had been able to uncover.
“They were photos posted on different people's pages, organizational Web sites, that sort of thing. It doesn't appear that he had any social media accounts beside his professional networking ones.”

I went to the Web site of the news station where Laz worked and found the video of his story. As I watched the photo montage of Jamal again—him volunteering at senior homes, coaching little league teams, serving at soup kitchens, visiting wounded vets—I realized that he had been a hero of the purest kind. He did good deeds and never posted them himself. Others praised his efforts and he left no digital mark. With the type of job he'd had, biomedical engineering, there was no doubt that he was computer savvy. His willingness to keep his public service private said something.

He was the perfect hero to vilify if one had a twisted sense of good and evil, if one had a twisted mission to provide commentary about belief, about human nature.

Motive.

Somewhere in this confusing muddle of thought there was a motive, I was sure of it, if that man was involved.

Maybe I was wrong. Nothing about this was clear to me. I had no hard, fast facts, no explanation as to how it could have happened.

But everything in me screamed that I was somehow on the right track.

I shivered at the realization that the track had a destination, and not one I was sure of, or sure that I even wanted to go.

Or even how to get there.

I thought about the e-mails I'd gotten from Everybody Anybody. The anonymity, the randomness of the “fascinating facts,” the accuracy about my life that could have easily been pulled from my tweets (my Facebook profile was private) all seemed to line up with what I had gathered about the man who may have been named Bennett.

I pulled up my Twitter account, perused through my short list of followers. How had I missed it? Someone with the twitter handle of “EverybodyAnybody_123” had recently started following me. I pulled up the profile. There was no picture, no tweets, no followers. I was the only one he or she was following.

He or she?
I heard my thoughts.
He.
No question about it. I had no doubt who this was. I started to block him, but then realized this might be my sole line, my only way to contact him as he'd stated he was not coming back anymore.

That and this e-mail address. And the phone number. Dialing the number would be too risky, too blatant a first step of reconnecting.

I pulled up my e-mail account, scrolled down to the last e-mail from Everybody Anybody and hit reply.

 

One Fascinating Fact About You, I typed quickly, not wanting to lose my nerve or momentum, praying that I was sending the right message.

I looked at the smiley face, wondered if it was a good idea. I erased the last sentence, then retyped it. I deleted the entire e-mail, then typed it back up again. I stared at the screen.

“Jesus, please guide me. Please.” I shut my eyes, opened them again, kept staring at the screen.

“Hi, Sienna. I'm so sorry I'm late!” My eight-thirty appointment stood in the doorway of my office, out of breath. “My bus was late. Darci said I could come straight back. Hope that was okay?”

“Hi, Mr. Brown, you're fine. Come in.” I smiled.

As he sat down, I pressed send and exhaled.

Because Mr. Brown had been late and I had a flight to catch, we did a thirty-minute half session, addressing his grief over losing his mother and a favorite aunt within two weeks of each other. The moment our session was over, I pulled out my phone. One e-mail sat waiting in my inbox, a notification showed. I pressed it open immediately.

What else can I do?
The question haunted me. The urgency increased. But really, what else could I do? What authority would listen to me, and for what reason? My only other option, I figured, was to try to convince Laz to help me, but what could I possibly tell him to get him to feel the same urgency I felt? Plus, my plane left in a few hours. Because I'd booked my flight late, I had to fly out of Dulles Airport in Northern Virginia, an hour and a half away. Maybe the ride would help clear my mind, give me new perspective, ideas, a new starting point.

I packed my things and headed out of the office. “See you Saturday, Darci.”

“Enjoy your trip.” She smiled, though I did not miss the sadness in her eyes.

Here I was trying to save the whole world, and I didn't even know how to make Darci feel better.

Heroism.

Had RiChard's aim been to be a hero? A random thought. And a hero to whom? Obviously, not to his family, as he'd not only abandoned me and Roman, but also Mbali and her four children by him.

 

 

As I made the trek to Dulles, my mental attention attuned back to the purpose of my return trip to San Diego. Now that I had a wedding to plan, it was time to nail the coffin in the marriage that I'd never had with RiChard. I imagined seeing Kisu for the first time in near twenty years. Oh, the questions I had for him! What had he been up to in the time that he'd faked his death to help RiChard with his cause? Why had he sent me the lion's head ring, other than as a message to let me know RiChard was still around? Did he think I knew about RiChard's plans, that I was involved somehow? I'd never considered that; what if Kisu was angry at me for some unknown reason? Perhaps he'd be enraged at seeing me.

It was too late to have second thoughts. For better or worse, this was a trip I had to make. I needed his answers. To complete a divorce by publication, this was my proof that I'd done all I could to find RiChard's whereabouts. But then again, since RiChard had married Mbali, did that automatically nullify our union? I wished I had done more legal research.
I'm unprepared for whatever is about to happen tonight.
I swallowed hard.

Traffic from Baltimore, through DC, and to Northern Virginia was unusually light. As I thought about spending an extra forty-five minutes twiddling my thumbs waiting in the airport, my cell phone chirped. A Facebook notification. Laz had just checked in to a restaurant ten minutes from Dulles.
Hmmmm.
I'd told him nothing about my trip to San Diego, and he'd expect me to be at work back home. A smile crept on my face as I thought about surprising my fiancé.

“Fiancé,” I said out loud.

The word still felt foreign to my tongue; my emotions were still a hazy cloud of uncertainty.

Yes, I needed to see him, just so I could get used to the idea that I'd be seeing him on a regular basis for the rest of my life. Even if he was there on business, I'd just nod at him from the bar area, I imagined, or send a text from a nearby booth.

Twenty minutes. That's really all I had, but I'd already talked myself into it.

I think I needed a morale boost as I prepared to make my final trip chasing down RiChard.