What+I+Should+Have+Done

All For a Blue Sweater Amy and I did everything together. We went trick or treating and to the movies together. We went to church and birthday parties together. I even sent her pictures of every item I contemplated getting in a store for her approval. Of course, we shared our birthday too. When we slept when we were little, our pinkies were intertwined with each other, it was a sure sign of friendship. The year I turned nine, Amy and I had a fight. We didn’t speak to each other and soon became ill. No one can explain why, but when we made up we were soon healthy again, without sign of illness. Everyone says love heals, but my mom said that as always, we did everything together. When Amy and I were twelve, we went to the mall alone for the very first time. Amy was so excited! She ran ahead but I stopped to get a gorgeous blue sweater, perfect size and major designer. But soon, she was out of my sight. I ran from corner to corner of the mall until I gave up and called her phone on speed dial one. “Kaylee?” Cried Amy in a hush but urgent whisper. “Ames, where are you?” I asked, puzzled by the urgence. “Kay, I am scared, I’m by Cinnabon but someone’s following me” She said, this time softer. “Ames, what’s going on? Get by a security officer.”I told her frantically looking for an escalator. “I tried, but no one’s around. Kay, help me” she said under her breath just as the line cut off. I ran down the escalator with such force that I am sure that I broke it. Cinnabon was up ahead and I could see my sister talking to a man, who was leaning closer and closer, with his hand in his pocket. Then I noticed the item that had a 90 degree angle in his pocket, obviously heavy. A gun? No it’s just a man helping Amy. It has to be. There is so much distance between us. I can hear Amy’s cries for me in my mind, but just as I begin to run towards her, I hear it. A loud clack and cries arose from all the customers in the area as Amy fell to the ground. A stun gun? I had no time to think as he carried Jaycee away. I ran with all my might. As soon as I reached him, it clicked again. All was black, but I knew it was over because Amy’s mental cries grew further and further away until they were as soft as the whisper of her final phone call. During the summer following Amy’s abduction detectives and police officers worked nonstop trying to find my sister. They found a lead, when a woman saw Amy about a month into the summer, but by the time police got to the scene, Amy and her abductor were long gone. The police officers said it might have been someone else, but I knew it was her, it had to be. Our 4 year old brother began calling me Amy a few days after her abduction; social workers say I’m sharing both identities to him. People frequently stopped me in the mall and contact security officers, because hey think that I’m Amy. We all heard from Amy once afterward, she called from a payphone in Atlanta. The police tracked it down and found out who had used it in the past 24 hours, it turns out the man who abducted Jaycee had been to the gas station across from the payphone and when he went in to pay, Amy made a run for it. He came out to find her using the phone and the line went dead but we recorded it like the police told us to. My mother played it over and over again for the following month. “Mom?” “Amy? Is that you??” “Yes mom, I am in Atlanta, 5702 20th avenue” “Honey, I need more information than that. Who are you with? Are you still near him? Or is it a her? Honey get far away from them whatever you do….” “Mom! I will, I just needed to call you, look, I gotta go. Come pick me up. Crap he’s coming” “Wait, Amelia Jane, don’t get off this phone...” The line clicked and no sound was transmitted from then until the end of the tape, for Amy was long gone. The police officers went searching for Mr. Emmanuel Darwich but he was, once again, long gone by the time they got there. They didn’t find her. Even though it happened in plain day. Even though there were hundreds of spectators, they never found her. Sometimes when I close my eyes, I can hear what she’s thinking. I can hear her cries of homesickness. But other times the only thing I see is the image of her collapsing onto the mall’s stone floor and her desperate cries in my mind. I could have saved her, but I didn’t, all for a blue sweater. The year I turned twenty-six, I was married to the love of my life, and we began our life together in Portland, Oregon. I told many that I moved there for the climate, but it was a place where memories of my sister are still strong. Between being born there to spending every free vacation along the coast, it was a part of my childhood in which I was truly happy. I came to accept the circumstances after 3 years of Macee being gone. Me and my husband grew in our careers. He was a lawyer. And I went to Yale to become a journalist, then decided on business management when I began a program to help find the missing children of the U.S. When the program was well underway, I went back to Yale to finish my journalism education and began writing for a Parents Magazine. I, of course, was the writer who did articles on the safety of children in the U.S. and the preventions of these issues that are possible to work into everyday life. My whole life changed with my experience of losing a sister. My career, my choice in guys, my choice in friends. And I still can’t eat a Cinnabon. When I turned twenty-eight my first daughter was born, who we proceeded to name Amelia Macee, after the one and only. When Amelia was 2, her baby brother joined her, Christopher Luke. And the year Amelia turned 5, Hayleigh Marie was born prematurely. Her lungs weren’t fully developed and she stayed in the ICU for the first seven months of her life. With all the excitement of 3 children and dogs Marley and Lulu, I was a proud stay at home mother until the youngest, Hayleigh, was twelve, then I went fulltime to care for my company, Far-from-home children, that I had began so many years before. The year I turned fifty, I got a call from someone of whom I had given up home. Amy proceeded to inform me of her life after the kidnapping. Being hidden in Maine for 6 years and escaping with no money. She had started a career and when she had enough money for college, she had gone for it. When she was done with college, she got married but never had children. Her husband died two months before and his last words told her that she can start over as late in life as she wanted. It took her two months to come to terms with the forgiveness factor of the whole deal, but called today to be reunited with family. I met with Amy for lunch the next week and we became quick friends. But when I offered Amy a room in my home, she refused. She told me that when she was around eighty she might accept but now, she had in-laws to grieve with and a home to stay in, and other family to care for. I still will never forgive that man for stealing my sister and my childhood, but in the end, we turned out just fine. And maybe I’ll wear that blue sweater for the first time this afternoon. -Nicole M. Wothe