Heart Scars by Jeanette Lukowski

Author:Jeanette Lukowski
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: North Star Press of St. Cloud
Published: 2015-02-12T05:00:00+00:00

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After we left the hospital on Saturday, April 25, 2009, Allison and I took a walk together in the Chicago suburb where my sister lived. She wanted to buy some hair color and change her appearance before we returned home. I thought that was a pretty selfish thing to do, and wanted to yell at her for her self-centeredness, but I was also afraid that she would run away again if I did. It seemed foolish to be heading to the store at ten at night for hair color, but I wanted to keep Allison happy—and next to me. Besides, this would be our first chance to really talk about what she had done without other people listening to our conversation. I wanted to know why she had run away.

During the walk, I discovered Allison had been keeping a lot of secrets from me. The worst secret was about an older boy in town who had been stalking her and physically abusing her for months. Rather than tell me about it, she had tried fixing it on her own. She had become phone friends with Nick, thinking he was a seventeen-year-old boy, and had confided in him instead. I was sad for both Allison and me. I know what it feels like to keep secrets from your mom. But I was angry at Allison too—how dare she not trust me to fix everything for her! Swallowing my anger for her benefit, though, I managed to persuade her to speak with the police about what had taken place. I don’t know if she was agreeable because I had proven my love to her by working so hard to find her and wanted to reciprocate by doing something that I asked, or if she finally understood the danger she had narrowly missed. All I cared about at the moment was that we would be going home, together, within the next eight hours.

I called Officer Richards later that night to tell him about her plan to cooperate. He expressed surprise and gratitude, and told me to call him when our flight landed.

The next morning, I called Officer Richards from the terminal, as requested. I left a message on his answering machine that Allison and I could be reached at home. I also restated that Allison was willing to talk with him about her trip. I was so proud of her for agreeing. Allison and I were home for almost an hour and a half before the phone rang. I saw from the caller ID that it was Officer Richards, so I answered the phone.

“Hi,” he began. “I’m sorry I wasn’t here when you called—I took some time off this morning because my son was getting confirmed, and I had to go.”

I was completely stunned. First of all, he was apologizing to me for not being there when I called. I don’t have a history of guys apologizing to me at all, for anything. Second, he shared the information of being a dad himself, giving me hope that he understood how hard the past day and a half had been for me.

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