Impossible Odds

shared with Erik by the FBI in confidence. It made him wonder if he should go ask the dog if he had any details he might want to share.
    In public, it was dangerously inflammatory for Erik to hold aspecific clan responsible for capturing a female aid worker who was only doing politically neutral work. It carried the prospect of inserting ancient tribal rivalries and disputes into this situation and rendering it into something complex beyond sorting.
    The flow of information to the public remained difficult to control, and not all of it was bad. Erik was contacted by people of Christian, Muslim, and Hindu backgrounds. Nonbelievers expressed their concern, while everyone else spoke of praying for Jessica and for her safety. Some mentioned actively forming prayer groups on her behalf as well. Given Erik’s fear that Jessica would fall into the hands of Al-Shabaab, it was a beautiful and compelling indication of the difference between people who live their faith and murderers who hide behind it.
    By the fourth day, he began to feel his anger getting to him. Every ring of the phone could have been news about Jess, leading to a spike of disappointment when the caller ID indicated something else.
    In spite of the news blackout, calls came from people offering to “help,” but they clearly just wanted to inject themselves into the case. In truth there was no way anyone could offer genuine help until Erik found out whether they would get the chance to negotiate her return.
    It sometimes helped him to write out his thoughts, so from the beginning he began writing to Jessica each day. It was a process he decided to keep up from then on, in a combination of journaling and love letters. It felt better to have some feeling of communication with her, at least a private place to put the torrent of emotions.
    Jess, for some reason it feels good to cry and write to you. I imagine that you can see what I write and that you are doing the same thing, maybe not on paper but in your head. I just love you so much. You have to come back to me so I can show you all the wonderful things in life that we stupidly put on hold  . . .
    His imagination was his worst enemy during those early daysand nights, as it is for anyone who waits in fear and concern for word of a disappeared loved one. He tried not to picture the terrible things he already knew about the fates of some of the region’s captives, as if merely thinking the thoughts might somehow give them power to manifest for Jessica. He had never been a superstitious person, but the possibility of somehow causing a negative outcome with nothing more than the wrong thoughts suddenly felt real to him.
    He wondered if that was a form of guilt for letting her take the trip. The weight of anything he might do or fail to do to gain her freedom suddenly loomed in every direction. There was no escaping the images of all the terrible possibilities that lay ahead for Jessica and everyone who existed along the chain of love for her. And as terrible as Erik knew it was for all of them, he was especially concerned for John Buchanan after the fairly recent loss of his wife. She had been the love of his life from the time they were childhood sweethearts. How could he possibly endure the loss of his daughter Jessica now?
    Erik looked around to see how others handled this terrible stress. In dealing with John it was clear that the depth of his spiritual faith held him up like a better set of bones. John Buchanan reeled from the blow, but right away his internal gyroscope ramped up and began to spin. It appeared to Erik that the man was stabilized by the internal workings of his faith.
    Seeing this quality in Jessica’s father made John Buchanan precious to Erik in a way he hadn’t felt or thought about until then. He realized he was now an intimate witness to the active spiritual life of this family. He felt convinced that anyone with an open heart would be touched to see John remain rational, strong, and purposeful, in spite of the terrible potential loss confronting him.
    It made no difference that Erik had grown up so differently from Jessica and her family; those differences affected only the language used to interpret living. He saw that this man had raisedthe girl with whom Erik had cast his lot in this life. John Buchanan had helped mold the essence of Jessica’s personality into something so fine Erik could no longer picture living without it. He was surprised to find that he was not only