Free Learning to Swim by Sara J Henry

of money near a park bench. Next came another note with a new photo, demanding more money. He paid. No Paul. Another demand, another photo. Now he went to the police, who orchestrated a fake payoff and staked out the drop site. No one showed. Three days later another demand, threatening to send Paul home in small pieces. Against police advice, he followed payoff instructions with as much as he could raise. Nothing. One more demand, but by this point he knew it was futile, and turned it over to the police. And then it all stopped. No more ransom demands, no more mysterious packets. Nothing—as if nothing had ever happened, as if wife and child had never existed.
    He told neighbors that Madeleine and Paul had gone to Florida for the winter; the police had kept the story quiet. If any journalists had learned of the kidnapping, they had cooperated. Finally he sold the house and moved to Ottawa. One letter was forwarded from Montreal from someone claiming to have Paul, but with no contact info. He kept a Québec private investigator looking, with a standing offer of a reward. Nothing.
    He recited it dispassionately, as if telling someone else’s story, and then looked at me.
    “You think you know where Paul is,” he said, without expression.
    “Do you have a picture of him?” I asked.
    Barely shifting his weight off the desk, he pulled out his wallet, opening it to a snapshot of a dark-haired boy perched on a rail of aboat, laughing into the camera. He was younger and plumper than Paul, with a carefree look I’d never seen on Paul’s face.
    But it was him, without a doubt.
    This was when I had to decide. I had a natural antipathy to anyone as attractive, polished, and wealthy as this man, and he’d given me a first-hand example of his frightening rage. But what swayed me was the very flatness of his tone as he told the story, as if his anguish was so intense he had to keep it tightly bottled up. I could not imagine him harming his child.
    I took a deep breath, and made a decision that would change lives, for better or for worse. “Yes,” I said. “He’s with a friend of mine in upstate New York. I found him two days ago.”
    It seemed that the world should shift at this point, but Dumond didn’t blink. “How?” he asked.
    The question caught me off guard. I wasn’t ready to trot out the ferry story: it was too involved, too unlikely, too traumatic. I didn’t know how to answer. He repeated it: “How did you find him?”
    “He was on the ferry coming into Port Kent,” I said carefully, and that part was true. “He was alone, and told me he had been kidnapped.”
    His eyes narrowed. “Why do you think it is my son?”
    This wasn’t going at all as I had expected. I hadn’t considered his doubting me. “He says his name is Paul Dumond. And that his parents are Philippe and Madeleine Dumond, from Montreal. He says he was taken before Christmas.”
    A long silence. Then he asked, “Where has he been?”
    “I don’t know. The ferry was coming from Burlington, Vermont, but they could have driven from anywhere.”
    “And his mother?” The question was casual.
    My throat tightened. I hadn’t considered that I would have to tell this man that his son had heard his mother being shot. I wished I could lie and say I didn’t know, but I’m a terrible liar. And he needed to know. “Paul says … Paul says she was shot soon after they were taken.”
    Dumond raised an eyebrow, but gave no other reaction. “He saw this?”
    “No,” I whispered, “but he says he heard it.”
    He stood suddenly. He had made his decision. I could be a lunatic or a criminal; I could be playing a horrible hoax, but he had reached a decision: he would go see the boy—now. We would go to New York, in his car. I would leave my car here, in the garage under the building. He had no intention of letting me out of his sight.
    “Don’t you want to call the police?”
    “Later. First I need to see the boy.”
    Spending three hours in a