The Taking Read Online Free PDF Page B

on my own, but I still had to answer questions about where I’d been, or at least about what I could recall . . . which was pretty much less than nothing.
    But none of those things mattered now. I didn’t care that we had an audience or that my dad smelled of whiskey or gin or some noxious combination of the two and that he probably shouldn’t have been driving in the first place. He was here, and that was all that mattered.
    “I’m sorry . . . I’m sorry . . . I’m sorry . . . I’m sorry . . . ,” I mumbled at the same time he did.
    His shirt smelled stale and warm—like him, but not. He was fatter and softer than I remembered, and my arms had to reach farther to find their way around him. The scruff of his chin against my forehead had gone past grizzled and grown softer, like a beard, even though it was patchy and, from what I’d seen of it before he’d grabbed me and clutched me to him, grayer than I thought he should be.
    I felt a hand on the small of my back, a light touch. “We should get going,” my mother said softly. “We can take my car.”
    I glanced up at my dad, feeling like this might be too weird for him, but not sure which of us I was more worried about, him or me. He just shrugged, as if he didn’t care about her or who drove, but his grip on me remained the same. Firm. Secure. Like an anchor.
    We followed her, and I didn’t look back to see if her new family followed us.
    The inside of her car was cramped. Or maybe it was just me, sitting in the passenger seat feeling all awkward with my parents, who were now eyeing each other warily, like they were complete strangers.
    My mom sat beside me, fumbling with the ignition and her seat belt, and then some more with the seat belt, pretty much anything to avoid looking in the backseat, where my dad was straining to lean forward, trying to be as close as he could to me.
    Finally, when we were away from Austin’s house and from the new husband and the house I’d grown up in, away from everything and everyone that should have been comforting and ordinary but made me feel as out of place as I did sitting here trapped between my parents, my mom broke the silence. “Can you remember anything, Kyra? Even the tiniest detail so we can try to figure this out?”
    But it was my dad who answered as he slumped forward, his elbows on the center console and his fingers slipping through his greasy hair. “It was the light. How many times do I have to tell you? It was the goddamn light that took her.”
    They argued the entire drive, and I just sat there, listening mostly, because I didn’t have anything to offer.
    “Do you remember the light?” my dad kept asking.
    I’d already answered his question. Of course I remembered it. How could I not? It was bright, blinding, brilliant.
    There was the light . . . then . . . nothing. Not a single memory.
    “How many times do we have to go over this? How many times?!” My mom’s voice bordered on hysteria as she clutched the wheel, and I knew why. He was repeating himself—maybe he had been for years. Maybe this was the same argument she’d been hearing from him since the night I’d vanished.
    I knew what she was thinking: how could he possibly blame a light for my disappearance? It was . . . well, it was insane to say the least.
    But my dad didn’t see it that way. He was convinced. And not just convinced, but the way he talked about that light—all reverential and crazy eyed—reminded me of those guys who made tinfoil hats or pulled out all their fillings so the government couldn’t read their thoughts through radio frequencies.
    That kind of convinced.
    He didn’t actually say the word aliens , or even abduction . Instead he talked about internet message boards and government cover-ups, and he’d even mentioned crop circles at one point, so it wasn’t exactly like he was being subtle either.
    Aliens. My dad thought I’d been abducted by aliens. Awesome.
    I guess it sort of explained