Part 5: The Dawn
The storm had finally broken by the time Arthur carried Anna out of the basement. The heavy clouds were beginning to fracture, revealing the first, pale, bruised colors of dawn creeping over the horizon.
The front yard of the estate was no longer isolated. It was flooded with the flashing red and blue lights of half a dozen police cruisers. Sheriff Davies had arrived.
Arthur walked out the front door, supporting Anna’s weight. She was wrapped in Arthur’s heavy canvas jacket, her face buried against his shoulder to shield her eyes from the blinding police lights.
Sheriff Davies, a man who had known Arthur for thirty years, stood by the hood of his cruiser. He looked at the frail, broken woman leaning on Arthur, and then took his hat off, a look of profound shock and respect crossing his face.
“We got him, Arthur,” the Sheriff said quietly, pointing to the back of a cruiser where the man in the white shirt sat, handcuffed, bruised, and looking utterly defeated. “The boys at the bar held him until we got there. We found the financial records in his safe. He’s not just going down for kidnapping; he’s going down for everything.”
Arthur didn't look at the cruiser. He didn't care about the man anymore. The man was a ghost.
“Where is she, Jim?” Arthur asked, his voice rough.
The Sheriff smiled gently and opened the passenger door of his own cruiser.
Ellie sat inside, wrapped in a thick wool blanket, holding a cup of hot cocoa that one of the deputies had bought her. She looked up, her eyes wide.
“Mommy?” Ellie whispered.
Anna let go of Arthur. She stumbled forward, ignoring the pain in her legs, ignoring the crowd of officers. She fell to her knees beside the open car door.
“Ellie,” Anna sobbed, reaching out with shaking hands.
The little girl threw herself into her mother’s arms. The sound of their reunion—the desperate, joyous, fractured weeping of a mother and daughter who had survived the dark—made the hardened police officers look away, wiping their own eyes.
Arthur stood back, leaning against the cold metal of the police car, watching them. The crushing weight that had sat on his chest for eight years was finally gone. He could breathe again.
Anna looked up from Ellie’s shoulder, her face streaked with tears, but glowing with a fierce, beautiful light. She looked at her father.
“Let’s go home, Dad,” she said softly.
May you like
Arthur smiled, a real, genuine smile that reached his tired grey eyes. He walked forward, wrapping his arms around both of them, shielding them from the world.
“Yeah,” Arthur whispered, as the sun finally broke over the horizon, bathing the world in gold. “Let’s go home.”
