Out of Captivity : Surviving 1,967 Days in the Colombian Jungle

202 OUT OF CAPTIVITY“I agree,” Marc said. “We can’t have our wives or fiancées wonderingabout what is going on out here. This is all tough enough without havingto worry about what our wives are going to think when the newscomes out. And trust me, it will come out.”“Well, I know it wasn’t one of us, but that won’t do us much goodunless someone else steps up and vouches for us. Preferably Clara.”Tom nailed it on the head. None of us had been around her longenough to have been the one to impregnate her. We were curious outof natural human inquisitiveness but also to protect our asses. I wasengaged to one woman and assuming Sombra had made a mistake,I was the father of twins with another; all the other guys in our campwere married. We were wondering what our women would think whenthey heard that a hostage was pregnant. Maybe I was just a little moresensitive to possible accusations and assumptions because of my personallife.The whole conversation made me return to Malia’s message andwhy she had seemed so distant. Telling me that “we all can’t wait foryou to get back up here to South Georgia” made it sound as if I’d gonenorth for the summer like some retiree. If I had any chance with thewoman I’d spent the last six years of my life with, the woman whomI’d taken this job for so I could provide us both with a big house we’dplanned to build, then a “miss ya” wasn’t going to cut it.I figured that Malia had likely changed her mind. I’d told her whenI confessed to her about my affair with Patricia and her pregnancy thatshe didn’t have to stand by me, that I’d understand if she bolted andwouldn’t blame her if she did. Instead she told me she loved me andthat we could work things out. My being kidnapped wasn’t anythingeither of us could have foreseen or prevented, but if she’d changed hermind because of what happened before I was kidnapped, I could understandthat. What I couldn’t understand was if she decided that because Ihad been kidnapped, she now had an excuse to do the easy thing.To make matters even more confusing for me, shortly before Clara