The Kidnapper's Wife

38. After

                   

After Bridget rushes out of the bar, I sit in my seat for a minute just reflecting on everything she said. Most of it I had already learned from her agent, but something about hearing her relate the story herself, her expression slowly becoming more and more caged in and uncomfortable as she went along, transferred the situation from a story someone told me to something that really happened to someone-to Bridget.

As I sit subconsciously listening to the next performer, I wonder how the police missed this. Or did they? I think about the implications of Bridget's story. The violence. The careful and thought out seduction Connor carried out on Bridget.

Did the police know about all this? I thought about the reasons they might not tell anyone. I know them all too well, from my experience with prosecuting cases just like this one. I might only do paperwork and background tasks now, but at one point I was a ruthless, or so I like to think, prosecutor, taking on cases just like Connor's.

The police may have kept the details under wraps to ensure that Connor could prove he was the abductor, by knowing details about the abduction the public did not. But that would more likely apply to details concerning the current situation with Anna, not with Bridget. The details of Bridget's case were not a secret. However, that could very well be a reason they did not disclose them, Bridget was a minor at the time of her ordeal, and they may not have wanted to draw attention to that situation, at least not until the trial. Of course they wouldn't have disclosed details of Connor's past to the public until a trial regardless, but that may have been why they kept it even from myself and Anna's family.

They could have done it for another reason: protection. Protection for Anna's family. I'd seen it countless times. The police not wanting to include the more grisly details of the offenders past in fear of scaring the family, and having them give up. When family's hear that the perpetrator has done something before, and it didn't turn out positively, they get upset. They shut down. They are no longer of help to the investigation. They hold out hope, of course, but it's a different kind of hope. A hope not for their radiant family member to come home, but for a damaged version. Possibly so damaged that only the body remains.

If anything, I have finally found the answer I've been looking for: there were certainly signs of what was to come with Anna in Connor's past. Connor had learned from his mistakes with Bridget, and escalated everything where it came to Anna. The poor girl had never stood a chance.

But at the same time, that's only part of my question. The thing I really want to find out is whether these signs were there in my own interactions with Connor. I hadn't known about Bridget, and how could I have? I had never bothered to question anything Connor told me before the abduction. But was the reason I had never stopped to question anything with Connor because I was willfully blinding myself to the signs, or because the signs just weren't there. Had Connor learned enough between Bridget and Anna that he no longer gave off any warnings of what he was planning? I still didn't know.

I think about some of the things Connor has done. I picture the school, where Connor took Anna. The red BMW, in which I had ridden shotgun time and time again, only to have Anna take over that passenger seat. The gas station in Deep Creek, broadcast on TV over and over again, an endless loop of Anna walking toward the cashier. I think about the outfit Anna had been wearing, the one I've seen her wear over to our house before. The one her parent's said was her favorite. Because she had still been trying to impress Connor, at that point. And then I think about the blood. So much blood. Anna's blood. And my own blood. Both caused by Connor, although in very different ways.

As the girl on stage breaks into a rendition of, "Body Like a Back Road" by Sam Hunt, I am suddenly jolted out of my thoughts on Connor's increasingly frightening past, and pulled into an altogether different memory of my soon to be ex husband.

I close my eyes for a second and just let it wash over me. Pouring rain. Hunter rain boots. Connor in a laughably nerdy poncho and me in my trusty black raincoat. Slipping down the hill of the arena's lawn. Jumping up and down in the mud to every song. Connor sweeping me off my feet – literally – for a picture. One too many Strawber-rita causing me to find every between-song speech Sam Hunt gave hysterically funny. Getting lost on the way back to the car and ending up by a pond in some woods. Making out by the pond. Two girls walking into the clearing while Connor's hands were under my raincoat, and running out of that clearing like two immature fourteen year old's. The delicious feeling of the heat finally permeating my soaked yoga pants and slowly warming me to the bone. The even more delectable feeling of my head finally hitting the pillow that night.

It's times like these, when memories hit me less like a pound of bricks and more like a rush of cotton candy as a child at a baseball game that I feel something different than my usual hostility towards Connor. I feel sadness. Because no matter what despicable crimes my husband has committed in my current reality, in another world we were just Connor and Jade. Just two young adults trying not to grow up too fast, loving each other with everything we had. In another world we were different people. In another world, we were happy.

After the song ends, I stand up, ready to leave the bar, and in fact, Nashville itself. I've enjoyed my time here, but now that I've heard Bridget's story, all I picture when I stare at the stages of the various bars are visions of a young Connor, standing next to a young faceless blonde child, singing. All I see when a car passes me on the street is the car that took Bridget to the park with Connor on the evening that would change her life. The only thing I can remember when I look at the strangers on the street is how they all stood by and, quite literally, watched it play out on stage in front of them.

But I can't leave Nashville tonight. It's a long drive, and I won't start it until morning. For tonight, I just want to go back to my room and forget about Connor and Anna. Forget about the memories. The happy ones, like the concert. And the bad ones, like the blood.