Cutler 01 - Dawn

could do for my mother's memory was continue with my music. Philip brought Louise.
    I had no idea what we would do now. The school gave Daddy a week off with pay. Daddy went over his accounts and said with a little tightening here and there we could afford to give Mrs. Jackson something to watch Fern while Jimmy and I were at school, just so we could finish off the year, but Jimmy, more than ever, didn't want to return to Emerson Peabody. We didn't have many more days to go to complete the semester. I begged Jimmy to reconsider and at least finish up, and I think he might have relented and done it, too, if we hadn't woke up one morning a few days later to a loud knocking on our door. There was something in the way the knocking echoed through our apartment that sent chills up and down my spine and made my heart pound.
    It was a knocking that would change our lives forever and forever, a knocking at the door that I would hear in a thousand dreams to come, a knocking that would always wake me, no matter how deeply I slept or how comfortable I was.
    I was just getting up and had put my robe on to go out to the kitchen and make breakfast. Little Fern was stirring in her crib. Although she was too young to understand the nature of the tragedy that had befallen us, she sensed some of it in our voices, in the way we moved about, and in the expression in our faces. She didn't cry as much or want to play as much, and whenever she looked for Momma and didn't find her, she would turn toward me and look at me with sad, inquisitive eyes. It made my heart sick, but I tried not to cry. She had seen enough tears.
    The knocking at the door frightened her, and she pulled herself up in her crib and began to cry. I hoisted her up and into my arms.
    "There, there, Fern," I cooed softly. "It's all right." I could hear Momma saying the same words to her time and time again. I squeezed Fern tightly to me and started out, just as Daddy came to his doorway. Jimmy sat up in the pull-out. We all looked at one another and then at the door.
    "Who can that be this early?" Daddy muttered and ran his hand through his messed hair. He scrubbed his face with his dry palms to wake himself a bit more and then started across the living room to the doorway. I stood back beside Jimmy and waited. Fern stopped crying and turned toward the door, too.
    Daddy opened the door, and we saw three men—two policemen and a man I recognized as the security guard at the hospital.
    "Ormand Longchamp?" the taller of the two policemen said.
    "Yeah?"
    "We have a warrant for your arrest."
    Daddy didn't ask what for. He stepped back and sighed as if something he had always expected had finally taken place. He lowered his head.
    "I recognized him the first time I seen him at the hospital," the security guard said. "And when I heard the reward still stood—"
    "Recognized who? Daddy, what is this?" I cried, my voice filled with panic.
    "We're arresting this man on the charge of kidnapping," the taller policeman said.
    "Kidnapping?" I looked to Jimmy.
    "That's stupid," Jimmy said.
    "Kidnapping? My daddy didn't kidnap anyone!" I cried. I turned back to Daddy. He still hadn't responded in his own defense. His silence frightened me. "Who could he have kidnapped?" I asked.
    The security guard spoke up first. He was proud of his achievement.
    "Why, he kidnapped you, honey," he said.

 
    8
DADDY . . . A KIDNAPPER?
     
    Chilled with fear, I sat alone in a small room without windows in the police station. I couldn't stop shivering. Once in a while my teeth chattered. I embraced myself and gazed around the room. The walls were a faded beige, and there were ugly scuff marks along the bottom of the door. It looked like someone had been kicking at it, trying to get out. The room's light came from a single bulb in a silver-gray fixture dangling at the end of a chain from the center of the ceiling. The bulb threw a pale white glow over the short, rectangular light metal table and chairs.
    The police had brought all of us here in two cars: a car for Daddy and a car for Jimmy, Fern, and me; but once we arrived, they separated all of us. Jimmy and I were sure this was all a terrible mistake, and soon they would realize it and return us to our home, but this was the first time I had ever been inside a police station, and I was more afraid than I'd ever been before.
    Finally the door opened and a short, plump policewoman entered. She wore a uniform jacket with a dark blue skirt, a white blouse,