On The Run: Part Two

Chapter One - "My Loss Of Disposition"

“Argument?”

She beamed, “Yeah, that one.”

I managed to get all the chocolate off and nodded, “Yes, that’s precisely what it is.”

“Do you always win?”

“So far so good. Yes.”

“What if you lose?”

“Then that means the bad guy wasn’t really bad. Why all the questions? You want to be a lawyer too?”

She shook her head vigorously, “No. I don’t like aug . . . argminst.”

I smiled and sounded it out for her, “Ar - gyoo - ments.”

“Ar - goo - mints,” she said.

“Close enough.”

“I want to be the person who makes the bad guy and the good guy friends again. Is there a person like that?”

“Yes, kind of, actually. A mediator.”

“Okay. I’m going to be a—” she giggled.

I flicked her nose playfully, “My little mediator. So, you don’t want to be like me?”

She laughed, “I’m already like you. Mommy says if you were a girl and you were just a little bit shorter, we’d be twins.”

“Well, you can just be mini-me,” I replied.

“Do I get to wear a suit?”

“If you want. Then you can look just like me and all the other lawyers.”

“But I only want to be like you.”

“I’m a lawyer,” I said.

“You’re my daddy,” she grinned.

It was a little while before I could fully differentiate the two.

You never really realize how fast they’re growing until they’re standing in front of you all dressed for that middle school dance.

It could also have been partly because I got elected Senator and my life became a series of business trips, legal scuffles and ‘ar-gyoo-ments’ about privacy with my thirteen-year-old daughter. What did she need privacy for?

The day she was kidnapped, I thought I was being punished for spending the last weekend in the comfort of the President’s town house, and missing her birthday party.

I thought the world was saying, ‘Want to see what life is like without what really matters?’

1991

 

Roxanne fainted the minute Jerry broke the news. I lost all composure as I called up every person of importance. The Head of the FBI, the Supreme Court judges for warrants, the best investigators at The White House for all undercover activities. A chill ran down my spine every time they asked, “What is it, Jack?” and I responded, “My daughter’s been kidnapped.”

Then, I went along to carry out my own search. I couldn’t wrap my head around the fact that anyone would want to harm a hair on her beautiful head, so I looked in all the places I knew she hung out in, just to make sure this wasn’t some kind of mistake. I so badly needed it to be. As much as I might not have spent all the time in the world with her, I did know her, totally and completely. What she liked, what she hated, what ticked her off, what made her angry, what got her laughing, everything. Because, she was me. Exactly like me. And I had made an effort to talk to her every single day I was out of town, even if it was just for two minutes. Sometimes, it was just to hear her voice – a reminder that if I failed at everything else, I was still the luckiest man in the world.