“Are you okay, Honey?” Mom asked, walking out of the kitchen and sitting on the long blue and white upholstery chair in the living room, where Lisa, seventeen, sat.

Lisa wore black and white joggers and a red short-sleeved shirt. She shrugged. “I don’t know, Mom.”

Mom nodded, wiping her hand on the yellow and white kitchen towel before throwing it on her left shoulder.

“I understand. Do you want to talk about it?”

Lisa shrugged again but took the black and white palm-sized remote control lying between them in the chair and paused the YouTube video she was watching.

“I don’t know, Mom,” Lisa said, sighing. “I was so certain I knew what was going on, but look at this now.”

Mom gently rubbed Lisa’s back as tears clustered in Lisa’s eyes.

It started a few days ago when Lisa was home from school because of a school holiday.

It was around 1 pm when she was sitting on the patio facing the road, reading a novel. She heard a woman’s angry voice saying, “Beat him! Beat him! Don’t let him get away!”

Beat whom? Lisa wondered, getting up and resting the novel in the vacant black and blue picnic chair. She leaned a little over the railing, looking for the speaker.

Lisa saw a group of people coming her way, with two men at the front pushing a man. The man fell.

“Get up! Get up! What are you falling for?” the woman yelled again. 

With his hands on the tarmac road, the man struggled to his feet. 

“Something’s happening!” Lisa yelled after rushing into the house. “I’m going outside to see what’s happening.”

“Wouldn’t it be better to look at it from the patio?” Mom asked, standing in the kitchen.

“Yeah, but…” Lisa replied, pushing her feet into her yellow open-toe slipper, and within seconds, she was out of the apartment.

By the time she reached the outside, the large crowd of about fifty people, including children, had passed her apartment, but Lisa saw her friend Paul and rushed to catch up with him.

“What’s going on, Paul?” Lisa asked.

About forty-five minutes later, Lisa returned home and sat on the patio with her mother. Mom, a short and thin woman with long, curly, dark orange hair, sipped on iced tea.

“Okay,” Mom said, “tell me what happened.”

“This happened in one of the Timbers’ apartments, a block away from us.”

“Okay,” Mom said.

“This guy broke into an apartment and was walking out of the bedroom with their newborn baby when the grandmother, who had just stepped out of the bath and was checking to see if the baby was still sleeping, caught him. She screamed immediately, waking up her son, who was sleeping because he was a security guard and had worked the night shift.”

Mom nodded.

“The son took the baby from him and beat him up. The man tried to run away, but the son would not let him go. He dragged him outside, and he and some of the other people who formed the group took turns hitting him as they made him walk to the police station.”

Mom shook her head. “People are getting bolder and bolder as the days go by. What did he think would happen to him by breaking into the people’s place?”

“I don’t know, but he got what was coming to him,” Lisa replied.

Mom shook her head as she drank from the glass.

“I think that someone burst his head,” Lisa said.

“I hope you did not hit him too,” Mom said, looking at her over the glass before putting it down on the small wooden table she’d brought outside with her.

“No, no, I didn’t, but I wanted to, but I couldn’t get to him because the crowd kept increasing.”

Mom nodded. “What was he thinking? Why was he trying to kidnap the baby?”

“I don’t care why. But some people said he wanted to sacrifice her for financial reasons.”

“Ohhh. So, someone recognized him?”

“I don’t think so. I think they were only generalizing,” Lisa replied.

“Wow,” Mom said, shaking her head, “some people would go to any lengths for money.”

“Yeah, and I don’t feel sorry for him. I can’t even think about what would have happened to the baby if the grandmother hadn’t caught him.”

“Yes, true, true,” Mom said.

“Yeah. Oh, I didn’t realize how thirsty I was. I’m going to get some iced tea, too. I’ll be back.”

Later, the evening news covered the foiled kidnapping, and the following morning, Mom, as she prepared to leave for work, told Lisa that the morning news reported that the kidnapper had died.

“What?” Lisa asked. “How?”

“I don’t know,” Mom replied, grabbing her car keys.

“Maybe it’s from all the beating,” Lisa yawned.

“Maybe. Love you. Bye.” Mom said, opening the front door.

“Love you. Bye,” Lisa replied, yawning.

The following day, Lisa clicked on a live link that Paul sent entitled, “Wife of alleged kidnappers said the child was theirs.”

To be continued…