Chapter 13: Coping

A day had come and gone, and still no sign of Lucky. Luke sat in the back yard of his
house, watching Lulu play. She ran around chasing Foster, who was more than willing
to be chased. Luke thought of Lucky at that age and felt the tears well up.
He quickly composed himself. Laura was in the kitchen making dinner, and he had to be
strong for her. It had been a long day.

Luke had taken Elizabeth to the police station to give her statement, and gave his
own. She was having a hard time, but was dealing with it better than he had expected.
‘She’s a strong lady’ Luke thought with a slight smile. ‘She’ll be fine’.
He had a long talk with Mac about what the police were doing. The blood analysis had
come back. The blood found behind the bench was definitely Lucky’s. There were
fingerprints on the wallet: Lucky’s and Luke’s. The wallet had apparently fallen out
of Lucky’s pocket, not taken out. Unless the bastard had been wearing gloves.
They had searched the entire park and found nothing. This morning they went back to
it with no success. They spread out from there, covering parts of the forest, the
docks, and surrounding areas. Nothing. Tomorrow, they were going to drag the lake.
Mac said it was standard procedure, but it made Luke mad that they could even
contemplate that Lucky was dead. He couldn’t be. They were also going to search
trough Tom’s apartment.
The APB’s had been useless. No one had seen Tom or Lucky. The entire state of New
York had been put on alert, but so far nothing had been turned up. The police hadn’t
found a car registered to Tom, so they didn’t know if he had fled or was just lying
low.

Luke heard the back door open and turned to see Laura walking towards him.
“Dinner’s ready” she said.
Neither one wanted to eat, but they knew they had to keep the routine going for Lulu’
s sake.
“Lulu,” Luke said “dinner”.
The little girl stopped chasing Foster and ran over to Luke, who scooped her up and
hugged her tightly.
“I love you sweetcakes” he said.
“I love you too, daddy” she said back.

Laura quickly turned to go back into the kitchen before Lulu could see her tears. She
didn’t want to frighten her. Lulu had already picked up on the fact that something
was wrong. She felt the tension and fear. She had asked them several times about
Lucky, but they always made up an excuse. Luke and Laura had discussed the police
findings a little bit. They both held tightly to the hope that their eldest child was
still alive.

********

“Elizabeth, darling, dinner’s ready” Audrey said softly as she walked into Elizabeth’
s room. After she had come back from the police station, she had pulled a chair over
to the window and had sat there all afternoon. She refused to say anything, and
Audrey was beginning to worry.
“Elizabeth?” Audrey said again.
“I’m not hungry, Gram” she finally responded.
“Darling, you haven’t eaten all day. You have to eat something”.
Elizabeth refused to say more.
Defeated, Audrey left.

Audrey came back into the room a bit later with a bowl of soup and some bread. She
left it on the dresser for Elizabeth to eat when she wanted. She was really worried.
She didn’t know how to help her.

‘A whole day’ Elizabeth thought. ‘Lucky’s been with that bastard an entire day’. She
leaned forward until her forehead was touching the cool glass of the window. ‘Is
Lucky hurt? What has Tom done to him? Is he dead?’ She shook her head to push away
those thoughts. Lucky was fine. He had to be. He was tough, and could take care of
himself. She knew what Tom was capable of, though. ‘If he could so savagely rape me,
someone he didn’t know at all, what would he do to Lucky? Someone he hated? Someone
he blamed for sending him to jail?’
She felt tears on her cheeks and decided to let them run freely.
‘Please hang on, Lucky’ she though. ‘Please come back to me’.

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