Epilogue: Donnie
Dug and I looked around the office. It was perfect. We lived in a big loft above the office with four bedrooms. Mom had done well. She had taken the money and opened a PI office: Lost and Found Investigations. She now would be helping people with their problems. She had an artificial hand now and it looked super cool. She could do almost anything now. Some days, it was like she had never lost her hand, other days I would sometimes hear her crying in the bathroom. I knew she put on a good face for Dug and I but she still had a darkness in her that no one but her and her captor would understand. It was heartbreaking to know that that was a part of her I would never be able to reach. As her body mended, she tried to mend the relationship between her parents. It was going well. Issues that been really huge before she was taken, weren’t such a big deal now.
One day, I went into her room, when she wasn’t around and read the letter Ness had left her. I now knew what she knew. When Dug and I went to the store or somewhere, I never let him out of my sight. The idea of that monstrosity of a family trying to use his gift for bad things made me physically ill. I knew we weren’t blood related but I dared anyone to say it. I love that man like a brother. He was a beacon of hope for me. If I felt really lost, he would know and he would sit beside me and say: It’s okay, Donnie. Your mom will be okay. She has hope.
I would always take his hand and tell him thank you. I would always worry about my mother. She was the only one I had. I was a junior now in high school and I knew I would eventually have to make a choice about what I wanted to do after I got out of school. I had been talking to Detective Hope about maybe going to the police academy. He suggested I go to school first and study criminal justice. He was a good man. I had noticed that he was looking at my mother different too. He didn’t look at her like she was a victim. He looked at her like a man who was smitten. It made me happy. I don’t think that Mom realizes that he has fallen for her. Mom can be kind of dense sometimes.
It amazes me how something as horrible as what happened to my mother, had put all of us in each other’s path. I know now that we were all meant to meet each other. It was serendipity. It only took the depravity of a man who thought that he had the right to own someone that wasn’t his. My mother was not a woman to be owned by any man. When it came down to it my mother saved herself. She didn’t wait on me, the police or a knight in shining armor. She depended on her wits and inner strength. She was the hero of her story.