eduardo and jayne valseca, and their three children arrived at the country school not far from the rentals outside of san miguel de allende in mexico. as we pulled into the parking lot, i noticed that there was a small compact car in the far corner of the parking lot. and there was a man at the wheel who had a fisherman s cap on and glasses. the perspective parent, perhaps, for next year s class. we jayne walk the children to their classrooms. she stopped at the school office. and ask the administrator if she knew who the gentleman was and if he needed help. and she looked over and looked across the parking lot and said, i don t know who he, is he must be waiting for someone. eduardo was behind the wheel of the jeep, listening to the radio. the stranger s car was beyond it at the back of the lot. as i walked to the jeep, i looked across and made eye contact with him and actually smiled and he smiled back. if you are to put the deep in gear, pulled away, the strange car fell
against the wall. so you never saw their faces? never, ever, ever. they watched him on the web cam, kept him naked fed him an occasional piece of fruit or solid. a small bucket served as his toilet. it was rarely emptied. his kidnappers kept the light burning, day and night, blasted the inside of the box with high value music. i would say please, just turn off the music. just wants, please. they said, if we turn off the music and you are able to hear what we are talking about, then we have to kill you. how long how loud was this music? very loud to the point that i lost 50% of my hearing on the right side. the beatings, said eduardo, intensified each time he was ordered to write jayne a new letter begging her to pay. he broke my palms and all that, kicking me. i couldn t feel the shape of my head anymore, it was full of bumps.
it was the morning after fernando made his wish, over his birthday cake, for this very thing to happen. that s some birthday gift? just grateful. best birthday gift of my life. have my dad back. i just sprinted down the hallway, and i saw him in the kitchen kneeling down like this with his arms open. and i gave him a hug, and the first thing that i noticed was touching his bones and he was pale and he looked dead. but conscious. i remember i did not believe that that was my dad. i thought my mom hired an actor to play my dad. the old eduardo crept back into that cadavers body surrounded by his children, his plates of food, and the woman who fought for him every minute of those months. who cried for him, who saved his life. always jane. he followed me around a lot, he wouldn t let me out of his sight, not even to use the
truck, got bubble wrap as if she was giving up. leaving. she was packing up that furniture and she didn t even tell me, i had to ask parents are you moving? are you going back to the states? of course not. but that bit of theater seemed to work. after that moving the furniture around, the tone of the emails changed. to? what they began to drop the amount of money that they were asking. now, instead of millions the kidnappers demanded hundreds of thousands. that was money she might be able to borrow from some friends. i started asking people and some people would tell me yes, sure, call me on such and such a date but then i wouldn t get they wouldn t answer my calls or returned my messages. why? well, they somehow thought by helping me they would expose themselves to that sort of thing, somehow. eduardo s grown children
close and trusted friends. and they in a magic evening were transported back into the world they had left behind. the world they loved. it was wonderful. for jane and i, it was 100 percent therapy, to go back to the place and feel happy about it. feel safe about it. it was fantastic. the unease, if that s what it was that a company jane and eduardo back to their ranch in san miguel had vanished. this was home, and it was tugging hard. come back. and then? what just happened just not what happened. eduardo came in the door with the lawyer and told me that now the entire train has been destroyed on the inside, it s been ransacked. it was the pullman tar, eduardo s inheritance from his