Pocketful of Sand

by M. Leighton

  My heart sinks. “She had me followed?”

  He nods once. “From the moment you left the house. I’m surprised you didn’t expect that. Maybe you’re not as smart as I always thought you were,” he says.

  I guess I should’ve expected it. But I was so scared, so anxious to get away, to get Emmy away, that I just left. I didn’t look back. Not once. Not even to see if we were being followed.

  Ryan comes to sit next to me on the couch. He’s so close his thigh brushes mine, rubbing suggestively as he leans back and crosses his arms over his flat stomach. His eyes are on mine and I hold them. I’m not afraid of him. Not for myself. I’m afraid for my daughter, though. If something happens to me, she’ll have no one to protect her. No one to defend her from men like this. She’ll go to live with them and she’ll be abused until she can get away. But by then it will be too late.

  “Why wait so long to make your move then?” Please God don’t let him tell me that he was waiting for Emmy to get older. More to his liking.

  My guts twist at the thought.

  “She kept it well-hidden for a long time. But she’s not the only one who can manipulate. So here I am. To see you. And my daughter.”

  My pulse speeds at the way he emphasizes that Emmy is his. She is biologically his offspring, but not in any way is she his daughter. Not in the ways that count. She will never be. Not as long as there’s breath left in me.

  I turn toward Ryan, facing him fully, leaning in a little closer even. I hold his eyes. I speak slowly, clearly. “Do you really think that I wouldn’t fight you tooth and nail for her? Do you really think that you’ll ever be a part of her life?”

  His smile is smug as he see-saws his head. “I figure my chances are pretty good.”

  “And why would you think that? Have you lost your mind?”

  “I can be quite…persuasive, Eden,” he says, reaching out to run his finger from my chin down to my cleavage. I want to grab it in my fist and break it. But I don’t move. Still, I hold his gaze. I won’t be backing down tonight. Tonight or any other night.

  “I would rather spend my life on the run for killing you than give you five minutes with my daughter.” One smoothly-arched brow snaps up. “And if you don’t move that finger, you stand a good chance of losing it.”

  Fire is pouring through me. Rage, built up over years of being an unwilling sex toy, bubbles within my veins. Bitterness that this man has the right to claim my daughter as his own burns inside me.

  I feel at once powerful for standing up to him, angry for waiting so long and terrified that this won’t work out in my favor somehow.

  But it has to.

  I have to make it.

  Ryan does nothing, says nothing for long seconds. He doesn’t move his finger, but he doesn’t advance it either.

  But then he does.

  He moves so quickly I yelp in surprise. He fists his fingers in my shirt and jerks me off the couch, rolling onto me as we both fall to the floor. The jarring impact knocks the breath out of me. I gasp in an effort to get it back, but it doesn’t come. With his unrelenting weight on me, my lungs can’t expand.

  I start to kick and scratch at him, but he easily pins my arms to my sides. Like he used to.

  That’s when fear settles in. For a few seconds, I’m a scared child again, at the mercy of someone older and stronger. My heart races and my chest burns with the need for oxygen. I tilt my chin up, trying desperately to get even one good breath. But it won’t come. Ryan presses down on me with his muscular upper body, making my head feel like it might explode.

  I barely hear the knock at the door over the blood pumping behind my ears. But I do. I try to make some sound, but all that comes out is a raspy, wheezing sound. And then Ryan’s hand clamps down over my mouth, making it even harder to breathe. I wiggle the best that I can, anything to break free, to gain one inch of purchase with arm or leg, all to no avail. I’m too small. He’s too big. Too heavy.

  My head starts to swim lightly from hypoxia. The only thing left I can think to do is to sink my teeth into the finger that rests over my lips. So I do. With every ounce of strength in my jaws, I bite down. I feel the give of flesh tearing away from bone. I taste the coppery tang of blood entering my mouth. I hear the satisfying growl of my captor.

  And then I see Cole, a furious angel bearing down on Ryan. I see his big hands grab Ryan by the shoulders. I feel the weight lift when he slings him off. I breathe in relief when cool air rushes into my lungs.

  I scramble away unsteadily, aware only of the crash of things breaking as I crawl frantically to the other side of the room. I lean into the corner near the door and I watch Cole silently, viciously beat the blood and breath out of Ryan.

  He’s straddling him, pummeling him with first one fist and then the other. Back and forth, never stopping.

  Blood starts to spatter the walls, Cole’s shirt and face. Ryan stopped moving several punches ago and his visage is completely unrecognizable. Some part of me relishes what’s happening in front of me, but there’s another part that realizes this won’t end well. As much as I’d like to know Ryan is gone, as little as he deserves to live, this can’t happen. It just can’t.

  “Cole, stop,” I say in a hoarse croak. He doesn’t even pause. “Cole, stop!” I call louder.

  This, he hears.

  When he turns his head to look at me, it’s as though he’s still seeing Ryan. For just a second. Maybe two. He looks murderous. Confused, almost, that he’s seeing me. And then his expression softens. It softens into something that makes me want to cry and curl up in his arms and never move.

  But then he looks away. Back to Ryan, who is unconscious beneath him. He climbs off him, kicking him once in the ribs for good measure, before he reaches into his pocket for his phone. “I’m calling the police.”

  And so he does.

  As he speaks to the 911 operator, I stand to shaky legs and make my way to Emmy’s room. I knock on the door. “Emmy? Unlock the door, sweetpea. I want to come in.”

  I wait, listening for rustling or crying, afraid of what I might find.

  I hear nothing.

  I knock again, a little harder this time.

  “Emmy, open up, baby, it’s Momma.”

  I wait. I listen. Nothing.

  I try the knob. It won’t turn. It’s definitely locked.

  “Emmy, you’re scaring me. Please open the door. You’re safe now. I promise. Cole is here.”

  My heart picks up the pace again, my soul coming into the clutches of some nebulous fear. I knock again. Try the knob again.

  “Emmy, please. Open the door.”

  I sense Cole’s presence before his arm shoots out past me to try the knob.

  “It’s locked,” I explain unnecessarily. “She locked it when I told her to stay in her room and not come out until I came to get her.”

  “Emmy, can you open the door please?” he asks, pecking with his knuckles.

  No response. I press my ear to the door. No sound. Not one.

  “Ohgod ohgod ohgod,” I mutter, racing into the bathroom for a hairpin that I can use to pick the lock. When I return and bend to push it into the tumbler, Cole moves me back with one hand and kicks the door in, startling a shriek out of me.

  The first thing I feel when the door flies open is cold air. That’s when I see her open window. And my whole world comes crumbling down around me.

  TWENTY-NINE

  Cole

  I SEE IT register on her expressive face–that fear that everything you love, everything you live for is hanging in the balance. In a balance you can’t see, in scales you can’t find.

  Panic clouds her vision. It’s there in the way her eyes dart around the room in confusion and circle back to the open window, around the room again and then back to the open window.

  “Emmy!” she cries, flitting through the space as though she’s missed something. “Emmmmy!” she screams, nearing the window.

  A hollow pit opens up in my stomach as I watch h
er, this woman that I love. She’s trying to understand one of life’s most terrifying possibilities. But also trying to deny it.

  I want to say something, but I know that even if there was something comforting to say, it would fall on deaf ears. The only thing that will help Eden right now is to find her daughter.

  So that’s what I’ll do.

  “Stay here. I’ll find her,” I tell her calmly. My voice, my expression, my presence is solid. Steady. But my insides are clamped down, the fear in the air an all too familiar black cloud.

  “I’m coming with you,” she says, not even meeting my eyes. The devil himself is nipping at her heels. I know that feeling well. And I know there’s no use in arguing.

  I step out of the hallway and reach for Eden’s coat. I hand it to her as she scrambles for her boots. Before we head out the door, I grab the blanket that’s folded along the top of the couch. Emmy will need it when we find her.

  And we will find her.

  I promise myself that much.

  We strike out, leaving an unconscious asshole in the middle of Eden’s living room floor amidst the wreckage of busted furniture and broken things. He’s the least of my worries right now. Hopefully the Sheriff will get there and keep an eye on him until we get back. This is more important.

  This is more important than anything.

  Eden can’t lose Emmy. I know what that does to a person and I can’t let that happen to her. Besides that, I can’t lose Emmy either. She needs me. And I need her. We all need each other.

  We walk along the road from house to house, both of us calling to Emmy. The wind is whipping off the ocean, howling through the streets, carrying our voices out to sea before they can get very far. I hear the panic rising in Eden’s tone. The way she says Emmy’s name is becoming more and more shrill, more and more desperate.

  My heart is thudding heavily in my chest and I try to imagine where a little girl might go when a monster from her past pops up on her front porch.

  Icy fingers of dread grip me when I think of her love of the beach, when I think of how the empty stretch of dark sand might seem like a safe place to hide to a scared child. A place no one would look for her. I push the thought away. I refuse to consider it as a possibility, even as my feet turn in that direction.

  We call her name. Still, there is no answer. No small forms hiding in the shadows or running toward us in the pools of yellow light shed from the street lamps.

  “Let’s check the house I’ve been working on,” I tell her, steering her toward the sidewalk. “Maybe she hid there.” I pray that she did, but some strong sense of foreboding tells me she didn’t. Or that if she came here and found it empty, she moved on.

  I unlock the door and push it open for Eden. She walks through, shuffling from room to room calling for her daughter as I walk around the outside, repeating her name over and over and over.

  “She’s not here! She’s not here!” Eden whimpers when we meet at the door. She clutches my biceps with shaking fingers as her anxiety rises. “Where could she be? Where would she go?” she asks.

  “Maybe she went to my house,” I tell her, praying that she did exactly that. That she could find it in the dark. That she was level-headed enough to think that way.

  “OhgodOhgodOhgod,” Eden mutters, her voice trembling as we start around the curve that leads toward the beach.

  We both scan left and right as we walk, calling, calling, calling. My pulse pounds faster as we draw closer to the beach.

  Patches of snow still cover long swaths of sand. They gleam silver in the moonlight. Everything else is nearly black in contrast.

  Above the gust of the wind, I hear Eden’s gasp. I hear her following sob, trailed by the sad song of her daughter’s name from her lips. My stomach knots for her. My heart bleeds for Emmy. So much like my own child. So damaged in her own way. She doesn’t deserve this. Neither of them does.

  We walk quickly along the beach, drawing closer and closer to my cabin. It’s when I’m doing a left-to-right sweep that I see the object. It’s floating just off the shore, just beyond where the waves begin to break. It bobs in and out of the slice of moonlight that slants across the ocean.

  Without thought, I take off at a dead run down the beach toward the water’s edge. I focus on the object. The waves rise and obscure it. Then they break and reveal it. I see a tiny pale hand floating on the surface and I know that it’s her.

  I throw down the blanket and sprint into the surf. I pay little attention to the fifty-some degree water when it hits my skin. I ignore the clench of my stomach muscles when it creeps under my sweater. I lift my chin when everything inside my chest locks down. Just a little farther and I can grab her.

  Just a little farther.

  I turn my body to the side and reach out, stretching my arm and my fingers as far as they’ll go, grasping at the five little digits that float nearest me. I pinch at one, but my joints are stiff and it slips right out of my grip. I lunge forward, grabbing again before she drifts farther into the deep. This time I squeeze the end of her finger as hard as I can and pull toward me until I can get a better purchase.

  A finger. Two fingers. Five fingers. Her arm. As I drag her toward me, every small movement is increasingly difficult. My muscles are sluggish as I finally pull Emmy’s cold, limp body into my arms and turn with her. My legs struggle to cut through the undercurrent. They scream as I push them to carry us to shore. But push them I do, step after step.

  Closer to shore the waves help force us onto the sand. I fall to my knees, still cradling Emmy’s body. I barely hear the crying over my own heartbeat. The world is mute and I can only see Eden when she’s kneeling in front of me, reaching for her daughter.

  Until I hear her scream.

  “Nooooooo!”

  Dear reader,

  What if you could have a do-over? Would you take it? Would you take your rewrite and see what MORE is? Or would you just want to ride off into the sunset with your happy ending? Let things rest as they are? Well, here, you’re in control. You get to choose, but choose carefully because your answer will decide the fate of Cole, Eden and Emmy.

  Click DOOR NUMBER ONE if you want your happy ending now.

  Or click DOOR NUMBER TWO if you want MORE (that will lead to a second book).

  Or, if you’re like me, you’ll want both. And by all means, take them.

  DOOR NUMBER ONE

  THIRTY

  Eden

  “NO! EMMY!” I cry, tears blurring her face as I take her out of Cole’s arms and into my own. “Oh God, baby, open your eyes! Look at me!”

  She’s so cold. Her body feels like ice against mine. Her hands rest limply atop the dark blue of her wet shirt and her feet dangle lifelessly from her legs.

  “Emmy, baby, please wake up,” I wail. “What am I supposed to do?” I ask Cole, who’s staring at me as though he’s reliving the worst day of his life.

  “Eden, let me help. My cell phone is in my pocket and I’m sure it won’t work now, so you need to run ahead to my house. The side door is unlocked. Call 911 immediately. I’ll be right behind you. I’m going to start CPR and then I’ll bring her on in. Give me five minutes.”

  “No, I can’t leave her. I can’t leave her, Cole! She’s my little girl. She’s my baby. I can’t leave her. She has to be okay. She’ll be afraid when she wakes up. I can’t leave her.”

  I feel more frantic the longer I talk. I hear my own words. I hear the desperation. The fear. It feeds the terror that’s swelling within me, around me. Threatening to drown me. Like the ocean that tried to drown my daughter.

  “Eden!” Cole snaps, his fingers gripping my upper arms, digging in. As his eyes bore holes into mine, I see his own anxiety. The alarm. The dread. The hopelessness. Fighting its way to the surface. Wrestling him for control. “We don’t have much time. Do what I say and do it quickly. Emmy needs our help. Right. Now.”

  Without waiting for my agreement, Cole takes my daughter from my straining arms and lays her gently
on the dry part of the sand. With wide, burning eyes, I watch him set to work on her–checking her neck for a pulse, listening to her chest for breath sounds, tipping up her chin, plugging her nose, blowing air into her lungs.

  Her chest rises and falls, once, twice. He spares me one sharp look and one loud word. “Go!” And then, with the heel of one hand, he’s pressing into her chest, pumping life-saving oxygenated blood through my child’s gravely still body.

  With a sob that’s torn ruthlessly from my throat, I clamber to my feet and run as fast as I can to Cole’s house. I find the side door and fling it open, not even bothering to close it behind me. I race to the kitchen for the phone. Surely this is where it would be.

  I spot it immediately and dial 911. With breakdown fighting me for dominance every step of the way, I speak to the operator, directing rescue workers to this location the best that I can without an actual physical address. She transfers me to an emergency worker who begins questioning me about the circumstances in which we found Emmy. He asks about water and how long she might’ve been immersed. He asks about her responsiveness and the color of her skin. He assures me that chest compressions are the best thing we can do for her until they get here, and that warming her very slowly and making sure she stays still and horizontal are important as well.

  When I hang up, I start off back toward the side door, only to find Cole rushing in with Emmy. He takes her into the living room, kicking the coffee table out of the way so that he can lay her flat on her back on the floor. Without a word, he resumes chest compressions immediately.

  As I watch, my eyes are focused on my daughter. The bluish cast to her skin, the darker purplish color of her lips. The closed lids, the lifeless limbs.

  I’m not even aware of my legs giving out until I’m on my knees within a few inches of her body. I take her cold hand in mine and bring it to my trembling lips. “Please come back to me, Emmy. I can’t live without you, sweetpea. You’re my whole world,” I tell her tearfully. “Please, God, don’t take her! Don’t take her from me!”