Seagulls 

Chapter 1

            Jamie came out of the shower feeling like she was living a millionaires dream.  She had a six-month-old baby boy sleeping in the crib and she had Kyle, a rambunctious four-year-old who kept her days full of laughter.  Her husband, Robert, had been her high school sweetheart, college beau, and then her husband.  They had the perfect life that everyone dreams of. 

            ‘Good, Kevin is still asleep,’ she thought.  Jamie always liked to spend some time in the morning alone with Kyle so he didn’t feel jealous of the time she had to spend with Kevin.  Jamie pulled on her jeans and her favorite, thick, warm and cozy sweatshirt and walked over to Kyle’s bed to wake him up first. 

            ‘That’s odd’ she though.  Kyle was not in his bed.  There was just a lump of blankets where he should have been.  Jamie hadn’t noticed before, but now she heard the sound of the television set with the Scooby-Doo cartoons playing.  So, he got up while mom was in the shower and decided to watch television.  ‘Well, we are on vacation,’ she though, ‘so why not?’

            She walked into the second room of the hotel suite they book every October, and looked around.  No sign of Kyle again.  ‘Where did that boy go?  There is only one bathroom and I was in it,’ she thought.  Jamie was starting to feel the sense of panic that no mother ever wants to feel.  She was beginning to think he may have wandered off somewhere or someone may have come into the room and kidnapped him. 

            ‘Wait a minute,’ she thought with some degree of reason slipping back into her mind.  ‘He loves to play hide and seek.  I’ll bet he is hiding from me right now just waiting to surprise me.’  So, she went back into the bedroom and started looking under all the beds, in the closets, behind all the furniture and anywhere else she could think of.  Still, there were no signs of Kyle.