The Fugitives Part

Two squad cars grumbled in front of a trembling house, waiting to ferry two fugitives to their own separate hells. The house strained to shelter a forgotten grandmother and an orphaned dog from the cold tragedy happening outside, but the walls might as well have been made of straw. A host of SWAT personnel kept their weapons ready, surrounding the property. Two detectives watched two fugitives, who saw only each other, and everyone knew that their goodbye must endure.

They didn’t uncuff the mother. She and her daughter would have died a little even if they had been allowed to embrace the goodbye, but the handcuffs made it a piteous, embarrassing death. The unwelcome audience impressed a sense of hurry, yet the fugitives needed the moment to last. Such a personal interchange on display; it could never satisfy. Still, the goodbye did succeed in one thing: it did last. It fairly haunted.

What did the detectives see that night? In the midst of their success in solving the case, did they stop to see into the fugitives’ eyes, to feel their pain?

The mother was 41, with freckles, fiery hair, and bright eyes. No one’s met anyone with a bigger personality than hers. It’s impossible. Whatever she felt, she somehow imposed on everyone around her until they felt it, too. She couldn’t help but tell the truth even when she lied. She never did anything halfway; she poured herself into every word, every action, every feeling. Her love and her hate, her laughter and her raving, her tenderness and her punishment—she really leaned into it. Even when she was lying, which was always. But she only lied when she had to.

Her daughter was 12. Freckled and fair, like her mother, but with dark hair and eyes of a more diffident blue. The mother’s fire smoldered in her veins, not often permitted access to adequate oxygen. She had dressed like a hippie for Halloween, had a boyfriend named Trevor, and was learning how to cook. Just that night, when the police arrived at her grandmother’s house with the mother in handcuffs, she had been in the kitchen making hamburgers. Wearing a red shirt with false buttons, she wiped the counters and silently justified her disdain for the old mothers in her life. The patties, made from a top-secret recipe she devised, would never be eaten, but they browned themselves in the oven just the same.  

The fugitives knew moving in with the grandmother endangered them, so they adopted all possible precautions. In case of spies, the mother required the daughter always to stay ducked down in the car when approaching the house. She must remain so hidden until the garage door completely closed. In case of audio surveillance, her name in the house was Amiee. (She spelled it that way in her mind because that was the inventive spelling of her friend’s name, but most undoubtedly, the old mothers spelled it in the traditional way.) One time, some unusual situation required the daughter to go somewhere with the grandmother, who, having lived and served in her community for decades, could easily run into acquaintances while about town. “In case anyone asks, you’re the neighbor girl, ‘Betty,’” the grandmother had said, without looking at the child. Lying made the old lady extremely uncomfortable, probably because she knew full well the identity of the father of lies, and stuck closely instead to the One who cannot lie. Hopefully, that One gave her a pass this time. Regardless, only a grandmother unacquainted with lying would have chosen the name ‘Betty’ for a 12-year-old girl in the ‘90s.  

(No one knows any more about how the grandmother felt about any of this, nor what sacrifices she made or risks she accepted in order to harbor the fugitives, because no one paid any attention to her before or after this episode in their lives.)

The mother was tired. She had lived out her prime in hiding. Moving, striving, lying, dying to herself every day to serve her cause. Different names, different backstories, different hair colors, different towns. Constant running, never resting. The adrenaline never could settle on its own; it always needed outside influence poured in. Times fell hard at the end—harder than ever. She knew the risks of this final move, and she worried over her dwindling supply of blood pressure medication. Trying hard to reassure the girl by day, she lay awake in the dark fending off panic attacks. With living on the streets with her girl the only other option—aside from turning herself in, which was no option at all—she accepted the risk and tried hiding in plain sight.

The detectives had seen it all. For eight long years they’d been on the case, with many tips leading them all over the state for nothing. But this—this happened right in their backyard, and they saw every bit of it. They watched and waited a little longer to gather evidence before making the bust. And it was big. Big enough, apparently, to summon the SWAT team to a grandmother’s house. Undoubtedly, they expected her to run out the back door in her house shoes, a Bible in one hand and the granddaughter in the other, only to disappear into the frontier wilderness of Oklahoma City in the winter. The show of force apparently achieved its intention, however. No one dared try anything.

After the detectives arrived with the cuffed mother, having apprehended her as she left work, they sat her down in the grandmother’s living room, along with the adolescent fugitive. No cuffs for her. They asked—or maybe the mother offered—the story. The reason for it all. Regardless, the detectives let the mastermind relate her whole, embittered account.

Five people and the girl’s small, white dog sat in the living room that December evening while the burgers burned, but no one remembers anything but her—the mother—and her words. She really leaned into it. The dog, sitting in the child’s lap, looked around nervously. The women in the room cried because they had lived it before. The men listened to a retelling of the story they thought they’d known better than their own. This version, though—daytime and prime time would beg for a story like this.  

The passion, the fury, the fierce love, and the desperate fear detailed for the detectives that night summoned soothing words of sympathy. A petite Hope tiptoed into the room and held the daughter’s hand quietly, while smiling reassurance to the grandmother. Hope nodded in confidence as the detectives expressed compassion and understanding. The room so shifted from lawman versus outlaw to one of camaraderie and partnership against injustice that even the mother looked Hope full in the face and considered her. The men spoke promises of protection and vowed to do everything possible to help. Before they could, however, they had no choice but to take the two fugitives to the station. Of course, they couldn’t help that the mother would spend the night in jail. The daughter—well, they promised to work something out for her.  

The two hugged goodbye.

It had to last for years. They knew it deep down.

Have you ever tried to share a hug when one of you is handcuffed?

The grandmother and her granddaughter’s dog must have stood in the doorway as the authorities relegated the mother to the rear of one vehicle and directed the daughter to sit beside Detective Charon, who steered the other. Both were taken to the police station, but, once there, led through different doors. Both concealed their anguish while their captors did their jobs.

They processed, caged, and deserted the mother.

They babysat, fed, and deceived the daughter.

Hours later, Detective Charon announced to the girl, “There’s someone here to see you.” Hope, which had ridden to the station with the daughter, stood suddenly and walked away without saying a word. The reality of the child’s stupidity and of the detectives’ betrayal rushed upon her. She had known not to trust them. She had always known never, ever to trust them, but she fell for it. She had bought every lie they had to sell. Lies meant to diffuse and to subdue and to make their job of home-wrecking easier to manage. The lie of hope worked, on the daughter at least. The mother, who never quite trusted Hope, had subdued her temper mainly in deference to the firearms.

Charon added, “He’s in the hall, when you’re ready.”

The father.

The one nightmare the daughter feared the most. The one person they had sworn she wouldn’t meet that night. The one ending that would end her. Before the detectives filed their papers and began their long-awaited weekend of celebration, they smiled and sent her off into the darkness with him.