Identity Issues (The Samantha Series)

  Identity Issues

  by

  Claudia Whitsitt

  Please visit Ms. Whitsitt's website: www.ClaudiaWhitsitt.com

  Facebook: www.facebook.com/claudia.whitsitt

  Twitter: twitter.com/claudiawhitsitt

  Copyright ©2012 by Claudia Whitsitt

  Published in the United States by Blue Jay Media Group

  ebook ISBN–13: 978–1–936724–18–5

  All rights reserved. No portion of this book, whether in print or electronic format, may be duplicated or transmitted without written permission of the publisher, except where permitted by law.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Other Books by Claudia Whitsitt

  Blue Jay Media Group

  IDENTITY ISSUES, December 2012

  INTIMACY ISSUES, Spring 2013

  Echelon Press

  THE WRONG GUY, February 2011

  This book is dedicated to my husband, Don, who has been my biggest cheerleader. His countless reads, encouragement and advice have helped me to stay grounded in the madness of this new and sometimes intimidating venture. In appreciation, I agree to laugh at his jokes and cook occasionally. (Like maybe once a week.)

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title

  Other Books By

  Copyright

  Acknowledgements

  Dedication

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  32

  33

  34

  35

  35

  37

  38

  39

  40

  41

  42

  Epilogue

  Preview: Intimacy Issues

  Chapter One

  AS I PULLED on my sweats, I heard the screen door slam. I counted backwards. Ten, nine, eight, seven, six…

  "Mom!" Nick shouted. "Rex took off!"

  "Suit up," I yelled over the stair rail.

  Scrambling feet, shuffling shoes, another crash of the door. All too familiar.

  I flew down the stairs, grabbed my keys from the counter, and dashed out the door. By the time I appeared in the garage, my five kids sat poised in their seats, perched and on the lookout. I fired up the van and sped down the street. Speeding sets a bad example, I know. But trust me. It would take mere seconds for Rex to run a mile and wreak havoc in the woods. More than once he’d done battle with a skunk, and he’d never come out the winner. When Rex lost, so did I. Whoever recommended the tomato juice remedy for dueling dogs and skunks lied, and I didn’t have the energy to invent a working antidote.

  "Why does Rex keep running away?" Lizzie, my youngest, implored.

  "Because he misses Dad," Nick said, disgusted by her lack of insight. "Rex likes Dad best. Everybody knows that!"

  "Eyes out the windows," I ordered.

  I slowed at the corner, rolled down my window, and searched the landscape. We’d learned some time ago that the successful recovery method for Rex involved spotting him, opening the van’s sliding door, and holding out a treat. He would point when he heard the door open, lifting his right front paw, and then his nose. Sniffing out his bone, he’d bound toward the van. We’d wait in silence until he shot into the vehicle. Total silence. It seemed that if Rex heard us call his name, he’d run the other way, unwilling to relinquish his search for his master. So, we sat still until he was secured inside the vehicle.

  "Annie, are you ready?" I glanced in the rear view mirror.

  She nodded, hovering on the edge of her seat with a dog treat in her hand.

  "There!" Will shouted. He pointed over my shoulder to the right.

  Sure enough, a flash of golden fur raced through the pines. I pulled the van to the side of the road. Annie eased open the door. We sat in suspense, holding our collective breaths.

  Two seconds later, Rex flew through the air as if he were chasing a squirrel up a tree. The van shook as he landed inside. Quickly, Will reached over Annie’s shoulder and shut the door. I hit the door locks for safe measure, and we heaved a mutual sigh of relief.

  I’ve learned the hard way that Murphy’s Law rules every time my husband, Jon, travels abroad for business. Some years, it seems as if he spends more time overseas than at home with me and our five kids. It isn’t his fault. It’s his job.

  But whenever he leaves, calamity strikes. Once during a thunderstorm, lightning struck our house, destroying all of our appliances. Another time, Jon’s dad left his mom after forty-five years of marriage. She showed up on my doorstep, certain I could fix it. And every time Jon travels, just like this afternoon, Rex, our eighty pound, clumsy but loveable golden retriever, runs off in search of him.

  My name is Samantha Stitsill, and it has been since Jon and I married eleven years ago. We each started out with two young kids, then in keeping with the whole Brady Bunch image, decided to have one more. I work full-time as a Special Education teacher, raising our blended family in my spare time while Jon runs a company headquartered in another country.

  After all this time playing the episodic single mom to my own personal basketball team, you’d think I’d be used to the impending catastrophe whenever I played head coach. Major crisis or minor, I should have been seasoned enough to handle whatever life threw at me with diplomacy and aplomb. But the books say personality is determined by age two, and unfortunately for me, my mom hesitated a bit too often as a new mother, and I wound up a little high strung.

  Tonight, after finishing my chores and tucking the kids into bed, I kicked up my feet to relax. A glass of wine helped. A little. Mostly though, I lived a life rooted in anxiety, feeling like the other shoe was continually suspended and about to drop, without notice, smack on the middle of my head.

  Hours later, I listened to the garage door rise and smiled to myself as I poured a second glass of wine. Jon stepped inside, and I met his kiss. He looked haggard and worn. I turned up my nose as I snuggled into his chest.

  "I know," he said. "I smell like dead fish. I’ll go wash off the airplane and meet you in the bedroom. Ten minutes."

  I nodded.

  "Kids still awake?" he asked.

  "It’s midnight, Jon."

  "Right," he said before turning and climbing the stairs.

  I met him upstairs and we got… reacquainted.

  ∞ ∞ ∞

  Two weeks later, when the letter arrived in the mail, my twenty-four/seven life won out, and it wound up in the ‘think about this later’ pile. I couldn’t help but notice the outside of the envelope, the mish-mash of upper and lower case hand-drawn letters reminding me of those scary late night movies I’d watched as a kid where a serial killer had cut and pasted letters from a magazine. While these letters weren’t actually clipped and glued, the script bore an eerie similarity.

  Later, when I had a chance to examine it more thoroughly, I noticed the letter didn’t carry a return address, but it did d
isplay a Botswana postmark. Where the hell is Botswana? In Africa, I knew, but I didn’t know anyone there, and I doubted Jon did, either. Still, anything addressed to Jon went into the pile. Curious as I might be, I didn’t open his mail.

  But the letter perplexed me at odd moments, and I wondered what new wrench would come into our lives as a result. Since Jon worked in Japan again that week, I picked it up now and then, turning it over, holding it up to the light to try and steal a peek inside. No perfumed scent, no pretty colors. After all, Jon had flown off to a different country once more and nothing bad had happened. Yet.

  I told him about the letter when he called.

  "Why the hell would anyone send me something from Botswana?" he asked.

  "I don’t know." I used my best loving–wife voice. "You’re the world traveler, not me."

  Saturday morning, with Jon back home, we remembered the letter. Jon attended to his looming stack of mail while I caught up on household chores.

  He marched into the bathroom as I scrubbed out the tub. "Look at this thing," he said.

  "What thing?" I couldn’t see over my shoulder.

  "This letter from Botswana."

  I did a double–take. Jon looked freaked out. He ran a company, for God’s sake. He didn’t get freaked out.

  He held it away from his body as if holding the rat poison we kept under lock and key in the garage, then examined it one more time before shoving it under my nose.

  Jon was right. It could only be described as bizarre. The strange writing from the envelope carried over into the body of the letter. And the words were nothing less than threatening.

  Short. Sweet. Weird.

  I scratched my head. "What should we do with it?"

  Jon shrugged and his expression changed. "I have no idea. I don’t know anyone in Botswana. Don’t worry about it." He turned on his heel and left me holding the letter.

  That’s my husband. Dealt with. Done. If he ignores a problem, it ceases to exist.

  Whenever the rubber band gets stretched thin at our house, I take over.

  Having kids made me sort of a detective, and I took pride that I thought to save the letter and envelope and personally deliver them to the post office the following Monday morning. I remembered hearing that the postmaster should be alerted if you receive something questionable in the U.S. mail. I remembered the white powder days, too. And while this didn’t constitute a ticking bomb or a package with a missing digit, it could have been.

  The postmaster agreed with me.

  "Yes, ma’am," he said, "you have a strange and unusual letter here. I can see where you’d perceive a threat. But the letter’s from out of the country. No actual crime’s been committed at this point. No direct personal threat."

  I begged to differ, but I kept my mouth shut.

  "We like to wait for the actual crime to occur in the good old U.S. of A.," he continued. "Civil rights, ma’am. I’m sorry, but I doubt any other government agency would be interested, either."

  ∞ ∞ ∞

  As Jon and I cleaned up the dishes that night, I asked, "Do you remember that trip you took to Toronto right after we were married?"

  "You mean the stolen passport trip?"

  "That one."

  "Why? Do you think it has something to do with the letter?" That Jon of mine’s a fast thinker.

  I tapped my finger on my upper lip. "Maybe."

  "I can see where there might be some connection, but I can’t make the dot to dot right now," Jon said.

  "Me, either." The dread chewing at my gut told me there had to be something more to this. I could feel it.

  ‘If your life has value,’ the letter had said.

  Chapter Two

  PRE–JON, I’D written off the entire male species. After a horrid marriage and an even nastier divorce, I’d determined that men were just a series of problems: ego, sex, money. All of it the ‘been there, done that’ misery. So a little over a decade ago, when walking with my head down, intent on pulling my toddler load in the Red Flyer wagon, I literally bumped into him. He startled me with his intelligent green eyes. His suit coat slung over his shoulder made it easy to see the outline of broad shoulders under his starched white shirt. The easy smile he shared won me over, that and his polished confidence as he grabbed the wagon handle, strolled a couple of blocks with me, and then casually mentioned a company picnic, kids invited. I guess I’m easy, or maybe just a pushover for a good–looking guy who smells like spice.

  Now that we’ve been married for eleven plus years and the honeymoon’s worn off, I’ve decided that Jon’s an interesting guy. He’s a man with systems. Routines he’s developed over the years keep him in order. He’s methodical. If he skips a step in a customary routine, he rewinds until he’s back on track. For instance, each and every morning that Jon’s in town, he removes the cream container from the top shelf of the fridge. If the cream is not on the top shelf, he assumes we’re out. The cream goes into the travel mug first, precisely two fingers worth, and the mug sits next to the coffee maker, in the exact same spot, to the right of the machine at the front edge of the counter. Upon creaming his mug, the coffee is poured in. This way, the exact amount of cream goes into each serving. Jon does one thing at a time and does not, I repeat, does not multi–task. I mention this for a reason.

  Jon doesn’t dwell on problems. He’s organized, focused, productive. His methodology keeps our complicated life simple. At least, that is his goal.

  I knew Jon well enough to understand that he blew off the threatening letter incident to keep me from worrying too much. I also knew that he had no intention of putting any of these troubling pieces together. Jon is the master of denial. Even after his stolen passport in Toronto, he didn’t mention it until after his new one arrived in the mail.

  I swear Jon has shoe boxes for uncomfortable issues. They’re all closed up and stacked on some shelf way in the back of his brain under lock and key. There might even be a barred gate in front of particular issues. From Jon’s viewpoint, two pairs of shoes, one brown and one black, are all you need. One pair on your feet and one pair on the closet floor. Jon has a place for everything, and everything of Jon’s has a place.

  And inevitably, he’d be leaving town again soon, the crises mine to deal with.

  Two weeks after the letter arrived, the phone rang. Jon’s business had taken him overseas again. The LCD read 2:00 a.m. and panic set in that someone had died, or, probably worse, the ringing phone would awaken my sleeping children. As I fumbled for the receiver in the dark, I prayed something horrific hadn’t happened.

  A voice, understandable, but with a heavy British accent, asked for Jon. Unavailable, I answered. Did this guy not know it was the middle of the night? And I was home alone with the kids?

  Anyway, the jack–ass insisted Jon must be there and he must speak with him. The urgency in his voice aggravated the heck out of me. First of all, I didn’t get that much sleep as it was and my alarm would be going off in a couple of hours. Second, I couldn’t produce Jon no matter how hard I tried. My impulse control flew out the window. I told him that Jon worked in Japan this week. How dumb is that? He didn’t appreciate my response, demanding that I locate Jon and have him return his call at once.

  The nerve of this guy. "Who are you?"

  "I am Alexander Bredel. I come from Botswana."

  Now he had my attention. "My husband doesn’t know anyone in Botswana," I replied.

  "Yes, I am afraid that he does." Mr. Bredel’s proper English sounded mechanical. "He must call me straight away. It is of the greatest importance. You must reach him. Have him telephone me at this number." Like I had a pen and paper right there.

  "Look, my husband has never been to Botswana. He doesn’t know anyone there. It’s impossible for me to reach him." I scrambled out of bed and blind–searched the nightstand drawer for a writing implement. "I’m willing to take your number and have him call you when he arrives back in town."

  "It is urgent that I speak with hi
m. I cannot wait." He rattled off his phone number.

  "I’ll have him call you when I hear from him. I can’t help you any more than that. Goodbye, Mr. Bredel." I hung up without waiting for a response.

  Wide awake and worried, I tried to piece together events.

  Jon’s stolen passport, a disturbing letter from Botswana, and now this call. From Botswana. Mr. Bredel’s tone had sounded threatening. I wondered if the letter had come from him. Would such a seemingly educated man have the atrocious penmanship contained in the letter? I wondered why he thought my Jon was the man he was looking for. Full of questions, I pitched my legs over the side of the bed and forced myself up. No more sleep tonight.

  Jon called that evening. When I told him about the phone call, he blew it off. I felt my blood pressure spike.

  "I don’t know anyone in Botswana, so there’s nothing to worry about. They’ve got the wrong guy."

  Nice. Jon’s in Japan, I’m home alone with the kids, and he’s not going to worry about it.

  "There’s no reason for me to call him back," Jon reiterated. "I don’t know any Bredel, or anyone in Botswana. Let it go."

  Easier said than done.

  I love my husband, but give me a break. Let it go? Forget it? Not a chance. He could go on with his life, visiting plants and attending essential meetings. Meanwhile, I had to deal with some nut job calling me in the middle of the night.

  Then again, things at home remained quiet for a few weeks. Maybe Jon was right.

  But the next time Jon was abroad, Mr. Bredel called again. Polite this time, he remained unfazed by the wake–up call he’d made three hours too early. I simply told him, "Jon’s not here."

  Again, he left his phone number.

  Mr. Bredel and I became accustomed to this communication. He called often, I took messages, and Jon never returned his calls. Our little routine.

  On the surface, our lives were peaceful. Other than the normal family chaos that five kids created, Jon and I had made a point of living out in the country, away from the hustle and bustle. We’d found an old Victorian fixer–upper. After gutting the entire house, we’d rewired, re–plumbed, repaired, and repainted. We now lived among hundred year old pin oak, cherry, and tulip trees. I sat on my front porch, a wrap around, and relaxed after a harried day. Hidden by broad thick leaves, I spied on the neighbors walking their dogs or watched the kids play ball. Other than the fact that I double checked the dead bolts every night when Jon traveled, utopia began and finished my days.