Free Addicted Like Me by Karen Franklin Page B

from the purses and wallets of family members. My brother-in-law pulled me aside and told me about the thefts. I couldn’t imagine who would do something like that, because despite all the proof otherwise, as a mother I still refused to imagine that I had raised bad kids. “Please,” I thought to myself, “don’t let it be my children,” but of course it had been. My brother-in-law had set a trap by putting a wallet on the dining room table and setting up a video camera, and it was Ryan who was caught on tape. Thanksgiving morning my brother-in-law confronted him, but Ryan denied it, and then on the day we left for the airport, my brother-in-law came running out of the house and grabbed Ryan again. What now?
    â€œWhere is it?!” my brother-in-law screamed. “Where’s the gun!” I was stunned when I heard the word “gun.” I thought this was still about the wallet, but it was not. Things had gone almost as far as the possibility of the dead person in my basement. My brother-in-law informed me that someone had taken a loaded pistol out of a hidden place in the house. At this point my sister grabbed Ryan’s suitcase and began to go through it. “Nothing here,” she called. She yanked Lauren’s suitcase out and started going through it as well. Sure enough, there was the gun. Ryan had secretly hidden it. Lauren’s eyes got wide when she saw it, and her mouth dropped in shock.
    Lauren firmly stated that she had nothing to do with the gun. My brother-in-law was screaming at Ryan by this time, which
caused him to run off crying into the woods behind their home. We were already late for the airport as Ryan tore off into the forest. We all yelled for him, but he would not answer, and the woods behind my sister’s home were thick, so it was unlikely he could hear our calls. My sister took charge. “You have to get on that plane because you have to go to work tomorrow.” She told me that she and my brother-in-law would find Ryan. I followed her advice, boarded the plane, and was overwhelmed with feelings by the time I reached Bob at the other end.
    I had gotten on a plane without my fourteen-year-old son, who was lost in the woods in Florida and had just stolen a gun. I called my sister a couple of times in flight but there had been no sign of Ryan. Lauren and I were both upset and talked about our fears during the flight, which created a bond between us that felt real. What if they didn’t find him? we wondered. What if he got so lost in those dense woods that he couldn’t find a way out? What were we going to say to Bob? We were both in the same shoes, feeling traumatized, affected by the addiction of someone that we loved. When Bob saw this on my face and noticed I was missing one child, he sat me down. He had been waiting with flowers in hand when Lauren and I landed. This is when I told him everything. If we needed to, he said, we could catch a flight back and find Ryan.
    We called my sister again before making a choice. When I reached her, she informed me Ryan had been found. He was huddled in a corner on her back porch. She had found him sleeping, curled up with the dog. She was going to let him sleep it off and get him a flight out to Arizona the next day. I can imagine he was
frightened to death in those woods, and even more scared when he came out to learn that his mother and sister had got on a plane and left him, thousands of miles away. I believed this was for the best, and that it was a powerful, natural consequence for Ryan. Once I got over being worried, I also felt justified. I was forced into the choice to a degree, and I had been angry, but it was necessary. My son had stolen money and a gun and had dragged the entire family into his mess.
    I called the psychiatrist who had prescribed Ryan’s depression medication, and when Ryan returned to Arizona we went in and talked to her. She recommended that we speak with a substance