The Kidnapped Bride, Barry Rachin [android based ebook reader TXT] 📗

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"No, it's not Mrs. Snyder's fault." Paige insisted, blotting her eyes with a napkin. "There was some ugliness at work earlier today and I'm still feeling a bit shaky."

"Anything you want to talk about?"

"No, it's over and done with." She pushed her mother away at arm's length. "What's the weather forecast?"

Mrs. Bryant eyed her uncertainly. "Chilly… below freezing by dawn but warming up midday."

Paige retreated back upstairs. She took a bath and steeped in the warm sudsy water for a half hour before finally washing her hair. Choosing a pair of flannel pajamas, she got ready for bed. Closing the bedroom door, she reached for the cell phone. "Hello, Norman? Your mother's a royal pain in the ass, but that's not why I called." Perched in a lotus position on the top of her queen-size bed, Paige took a deep breath and blew all the air out in one sinewy thread. "That escape weekend you were telling me about… is it too late to reserve a room?"

"Probably not." His tone was relaxed, nonplussed. "I'll call and see what they got." He hung up the phone. Ten minutes later, Paige's phone twittered. "I reserved two adjoining rooms on the first floor with baseboard heat. The place is rustic… no frills but very clean."

"Okay." Paige could feel her mood brightening.

"I can pick you up at the bank after work if you like."

The girl flinched. "I'm calling in sick tomorrow. Drop by my house instead."

"Be ready by five and bring a warm sweater. Evenings can get downright frigid." The line went dead.

Paige studied her hands that, in truth, had been trembling quite violently only a few hours earlier. The supple fingers lay placidly in her lap. The worst was over, thank God!

*****

During the trip north, Norman avoided downtown Boston, swinging west of the urban center. The detour added another half hour to their final destination but proved a wash by avoiding the late afternoon, home-bound traffic. Reaching the New Hampshire state line in just over an hour, they cruised through Kittery with its bargain outlets a scant twenty minutes later. Close on to seven-thirty they reached downtown Old Orchard Beach. The boardwalk and theme park that normally bustled with thousands of bikini-clad tourists was boarded up tight, not a single shop or burger joint open for business. "Where do we eat?" Paige's stomach began gurgling restively several miles back.

"There’s a seafood restaurant within walking distance of the motel." Norman took a hard right onto East Grandview and skirted the ocean. The temperature had dropped another ten degrees since leaving Boston. Shortly they passed into Scarborough. The motel was three blocks down. "I'll check in and we can grab dinner."

Paige followed Norman into the motel lobby where a lithe blonde assigned their keys and took the deposit. Norman headed back in the direction of the car. "Shouldn't we at least view the rooms?"

"The rooms are clean and tidy and small and dowdy and a bit old-fashioned. Let's eat!"

*****

At the restaurant, Paige ordered lobster, while Norman settled on the seafood medley with baked scrod, scallops, shrimp in a béarnaise sauce. "Maddie Etheridge got married last year."

"Really?" Maddie, a WASP’y blonde with translucent skin, drove a fully-loaded BMW convertible to school her senior year, courtesy of her father, a stock broker with a firm on State Street in Boston. A pampered twit, Maddie looked down her nose at anyone who didn't shop the exclusive boutiques at the Chestnut Hill Mall.

"The wedding was at the Park Plaza overlooking the Charles," Norman reported dispassionately. "Forty thousand bucks… that's what they spent on the wedding ceremony and all the trappings."

She tried to picture Maddie traipsing down the aisle in the swanky Georgian Ballroom of the Park Plaza, to the dulcet tones of a classical string ensemble. The waitress returned with a basket of warmed bread rolls and their salads. "Thirteen months and three days.”

Paige spread butter on her roll and teased the onions to the side of her salad with the tines of her fork. "And what does that represent?"

"How long the debacle-of-a-marriage lasted. Maddie and Mr. Right are presently in divorce court undoing what they did at the pricey Park Plaza." Norman speared a cherry tomato with his fork. "A hundred dollars a day - that's what it ultimately cost them." He wasn't being judgmental or vindictive. On the contrary Norman’s tone was laced with regret that Maddie's life had veered so badly off course, fallen to pieces. After the meal arrived, he leaned across the table and thumped Paige on the forearm. "I read an article on bride kidnapping."

"Okay." A trip 'north', Maddie Etheridge's train-wreck-of-a-marriage, bride kidnapping - the problem was that Paige never quite knew what Norman was going to throw at her. But then, in a perverse sort of way, that was half the fun.

"In the Asian republics such as Chechnya and Kyrgyzstan, the family of a young girl sets a bride's price and expect payment from prospective suitors."

"The opposite of a dowry," Paige noted.

“If a man is poor and can't afford a wife, he may simply grab one off the street and take her home to his family, where they hold her prisoner until the fellow can meet with the parents to try to negotiate an acceptable arrangement." He stared at what was left of his baked potato. "Apparently the practice is widespread throughout patriarchal, Moslem societies where women have little say in the matter. Half of all Kyrgyz marriages include bride kidnapping. Two thirds are non-consensual."

"What about the rest?"

"Sometimes couples love each other, but the parents object to the marriage so they 'elope' under the guise of bride kidnapping."

"Romeo and Juliette," Paige interjected, "with an Asian twist." The utterly absurd notion that Norman Snyder might be planning such a daring feat flitted through her sleepy brain.

He raised a forkful of butternut squash seasoned with honey to his lips. "Yes, a perfectly good analogy."

"And how do these bride kidnappings work out?"

Sipping at his draft beer, he made a wry face. "A hell of a lot better than Maddie Etheridge's matrimonial fiasco."

*****

After supper they returned to the motel. "I'm going for a walk on the beach," Norman announced.

"It's pitch dark," Paige blustered, “with the temperature bottoming out in the low forties." The baseboard heating, which came up immediately when she adjusted the thermostat, was making a ticking sound as forced hot water coursed through the metal fins. The room was warming nicely and she wanted to go to bed.

"I won't be long." He reached for a wool jacket.

Bone-weary, she didn't want to be left alone in the no-frills cabin. "On second thought I'll join you."

A path through a cluster of salt spray roses and rubbery sea grass in back of the motel lobby led down to the beach only a few hundred feet away. Although the sun had gone down hours earlier, a harvest moon hung like a fluorescent bulb in the star-flecked easterly sky. High tide at night - neither the thought nor physical imagery had ever occurred to her before setting foot on the frigid beach. And yet, the churning, wind-swept waves accompanied them, like a soothing prayer on their late night stroll.

Wave after wave crashed down on the blackened sand. Paige felt infinitely happy. Even the chilly sea breeze couldn't dampen her newfound courage and sense of resolve. Certain things needed attending to as soon as she returned home. What had seemed insurmountable - utterly hopeless just a few hours earlier - was suddenly of no great consequence.

Norman walked a mile and a half in the damp sand before reversing direction and heading back. Feathery plumes of frosty air tumbled from his nostril. Several times he stroked his beard and she thought he might say something, but nothing came of it. When they were back at the motel, he said, "We'll breakfast around eight and then plan our day."

The room had warmed to a comfortable seventy degrees. "What do you think your mother would say if she knew I was aiding and abetting her deranged son?"

"Let's not go there," he quipped and retreated back to his own room, chuckling lightly while running a thumb and index finger along the wispy beard where it curled up under his chin.

*****

In the morning they doubled back through Old Orchard, which resembled a ghost town, and Norman veered right at a flashing yellow light. A half mile down, the parking lot at Michelle's Breakfast Nook was full to overflowing. "The savvy local yokels eat here. Breakfast special's the best deal, but you choose whatever you want."

After breakfast, he drove to the Len Libby chocolate factory, a famous tourist attraction a few miles up the road back in Scarborough. In nineteen ninety-seven, the owner of the candy store commissioned an artist to fashion a seventeen-hundred-pound, life-size moose. Sculpted from milk chocolate, the antlered beast was constructed on premises in four weeks. From when they opened the doors at nine a.m. until closing, the store ran a video showing visitors how the animal came to life

Len Libby featured dark chocolate prepared with pure butter and heavy creams. The glass display case held a huge selection of truffles stuffed with real fruit. There were marzipan honey almond, pecan buds, butterscotch squares, peanut brittle and a butter cream concoction laced with brown sugar. The girl behind the counter recommended the toffee molasses chips and Bordeaux dark nougat. Paige bought an assortment of chocolates, taffy and fudge.

Back in the center of town, the boardwalk was all locked up for the season. Norman indicated an elderly woman sprawled on a beach chair. "That's Mrs. Bryant over there with the two Lhasa Apsos. Her husband died a few years back. She has grown children in Bangor but prefers her independence." The lapdogs were running amok in the shallows. Norman waved and Mrs. Bryant returned the greeting.

Paige suddenly felt weary. Regardless how many new adventures Norman had up his sleeve, they would be heading back in less than a day - he to a dead-end, meaningless job and her to…

Paige wasn't terribly sure what she was heading back to, and the short-lived, manic confidence of the previous night had dissipated, gone to seed. "What's the matter?" Norman demanded.

She was standing next to him with her head down crying, the wetness dripping on the powdery sand. "A customer came to the bank looking for a mortgage she could hardly afford, and I turned her down. The woman had lost a good paying job around the beginning of the year and only recently found new work. There were outstanding bills… maxed out credit cards. She was a single parent, head of household and the loan was too risky."

Up ahead a man with a Great Dane was heading in the direction of Mrs. Bryant, and her dogs began barking like twin lunatics. "You did the right thing. Nobody could fault you for that."

"The branch manager overruled my decision, authorizing the questionable mortgage. He didn't care that the woman's finances were stretched to the breaking point." She swiped at her tears. "He set a quota for sub-prime loans that the branch had to meet. The ends justified the means."

"She lost the house?"

Paige shook her head. "I should have resigned before he processed the paperwork… told him he was a money-grubbing shithead. Should have but I didn't. And