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Navesink Bank.
Aurelio Grassi, Navesink Bank.
And there it was.
An address.
I brought up another window, plugging in the address of his home and this library, finding directions.
Only about a fifteen-minute drive.
But I had no way to drive there.
I toggled over to walk, and my heart sank at seeing it would take almost two and a half hours.
Judah would be miserable by then.
Hungry, inconsolable.
My arms would be jelly.
My feet raw.
But… what other choice did I have?
This was survival.
We could survive two and a half hours of misery to get to a better future.
So I painstakingly jotted down the directions on my stolen piece of paper.
Then I took Judah to the water fountain, watching him giggle and drink the water that I hoped would help artificially fill up his tummy for a bit, then I hiked him up on my hip, and I started our long walk toward freedom, praying that Warren wouldn’t happen by as we made our way there.
My heart was in my throat for the entire first—blessedly overcast—hour as we walked down a busy road, me constantly having to shift the restless Judah from hip to hip before, finally, putting him up on my shoulders to give my arms a short break.
After the main road, though, we found ourselves in a neighborhood. Quiet. Safe. Making us look a little less out of place. Surely lots of moms walked around with their babies in their neighborhood.
And as any mom knew, toddlers were moody and unpredictable. So when Judah’s hunger made him whimper then start to wail, it didn’t exactly draw any attention.
Half an hour of crying later, my heart squeezing, my ears buzzing, he cried himself to sleep.
There were tears in my eyes, feeling like the worst mother in the world as I kept walking. And walking. And walking.
Until, finally, my directions told me I’d made it to his street.
Fairmount Avenue.
I liked the sound of that.
It was an affluent area full of beautiful, large houses. Not exactly mansions, but large, large houses that, in this area, likely cost well over a million each.
Each was different than the last, no two homes or even styles the same. Colonials and Victorians, Tudors and Georgians.
According to my search, Aurelio Grassi lived at number sixteen.
I glanced side to side, finding the right one at a distance.
It was something I might call a Modern Farmhouse, but almost with a gothic twist. There were black accents on the front mixed with gray-wash stones.
