The Cabin

by Alice Ward

  I nodded. “Yeah. Very good.”

  She sighed and set her cup down on the table. “Seems to me that it’s time.”

  It was also time for something else. The worst part of the trip.

  After saying goodbye to Mrs. Mills, I took yet another cab to the cemetery.

  I blew out a breath.

  My legs felt like stone as I walked over to the grave.

  “I miss you,” I said to the granite tombstone, two angels carved on the front. “Miss you both.” I knelt down, brushed a bit of dirt and grass from the base, and laid the bouquets of roses on the ground in front of it. One red. A small pink.

  “I don’t think a single day has passed when I don’t see something interesting and think, Jess would love that. I’ll get ready to tell you all about it, then I’ll remember that you’re gone, and it’s like I have to grieve the loss of you all over again.”

  I wiped my face with my sleeve. “And you, little one. You’d be running by now, dressing up for Halloween yourself. Would you be a princess or something scary? I still can’t believe that I don’t get to ever find out.”

  At the funeral, a number of people talked about how losing a child was the worst thing that could happen to a person. It took me a while, but I thought I understood why it was so hard. It wasn’t just the little human being you mourned. It was the stories that were so closely connected to them too.

  From the moment Jessica told me she was pregnant, I wrote a script in my head about how our life would be. The delivery. First steps. First birthday. First day of kindergarten. Then there’d be the first boyfriend. First broken heart. And as the years passed, there’d be the drama of driving a car. Next would come prom. Graduation. The wedding day, with me walking my daughter down the aisle, giving her away.

  So many stories that didn’t get to happen. Parents left to mourn them all.

  I’d never get through this if I focused on all the bad. Searching my brain, I tried a different tactic, something that helped me feel closer instead of so separate.

  “Remember how I always complained about you stealing my covers?”

  I chuckled. It didn’t matter how many blankets we put on the bed, Jessica would be rolled up like a burrito in them all the next morning, leaving me shivering in the ten inches of bed she left me as I hung off the side.

  “Guess what? I learned to flip and omelet.”

  Zoe had cheered and high fived me when I finally accomplished the simple task. Had that been only two days ago?

  “About that…”

  I scrubbed my face with my hands. Why was this so hard? Had my isolation made me crazy? Jess was dead. She couldn’t hear me. But it also felt good to be having this honest conversation, get it out of my mind where it was driving me nuts.

  “There’s this girl. This woman. She kind of just appeared. I wasn’t looking for anyone to replace you…”

  Dammit. I swiped at my face again.

  “Jess, I’m going after her, just like I went after you. And if she’ll have me, I’m going to build a life with her. But I’ll never forget you. I’ll never stop missing you. And the place that you own inside my heart will always be yours.”

  I stood, my knees cracking from the effort, making me feel like the old man Zoe teased me about. Leaning down, I placed my hand on the cold stone.

  “I hope, if there’s any way you’re hearing this, that you can rest easier knowing that I’ll be okay. Kiss our baby girl, hold her tight for me.” My throat seized, emotion choking off my breath. “Daddy loves you. I love you both.”

  I stood there, the sun shining down on the cool day, knowing it was time to go. I’d done what needed doing, faced what I’d been hiding from.

  “Bye.”

  Then I turned from my past and strode toward my future.

  If my future would have me.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Zoe

  The late evening sun was setting, casting ribbons of brilliant color over the westerly sky.

  Lisbeth stood alone at her bedchamber window, breathing in the cool autumn evening, watching the leaves from her favorite oak tree flutter to the ground.

  “To everything there is a season…”

  My voice cracked as I read that line to my mother. Lifting my gaze from the laptop before me, I watched another type of season end as time ticked away on the life of Cynthia Diane Meadows.

  I blew out a breath and began reading again.

  “Every season is beautiful, my love,” Byron said, encircling his hand around her rounding waist, lowering his lips to her hair.

  Lisbeth turned in his arms, pressing her cheek to his chest. The dark green silk of her skirts swished and settled between them. She ran a hand over his lapel, caressing the silk. “Did you get your business arrangement settled?”

  She looked up just in time to see the scowl crease his brow. He was still worried, she realized. His silence was an eloquent declaration. After the grandfather clock ticked nearly a minute away, he finally answered. “It was carried out by proxy.”

  Though her relief was great, Lisbeth dared not release the audible sigh lingering in her chest. There was safety in ignorance at times, and for now, she was content to allow the silence to stretch between them... for a few moments.

  When she could bear it no longer, she asked, “And you are still displeased?”

  The scowl returned. “I shall remain displeased until the bastards hang, my love.”

  She shivered. Should she hang too? For also wanting such an end to her family? The man and woman who gave her life only to attempt to take it from her in such a way.

  I stopped reading again and turned my attention back to my mother. If there was some small part of her that could hear my words, they needed to be said.

  “It wasn’t right what your parents did to you, Mom. They stripped you of the life you were destined to live. In my book, Lisbeth escapes their clutches. She turns the tables on them.” I squeezed Mom’s fingers. “I wished you could have escaped.”

  What if my grandparents hadn’t been money hungry sadists? What if they had been normal parents to Cynthia and hadn’t driven her into the sex industry?

  Would my mother have been a school teacher? A nurse? And what of me? Would she have married a man with a normal sized dick, had me and maybe a few others?

  So many question marks, and those were only the beginning.

  If my grandparents had been normal and had created a normal child, who then created a normal me… would that mean I’d never have met Gray? Never had a need to isolate myself in a cabin, working in a career that allowed me to live as far away from other humans as I was able?

  My head was beginning to ache, my eyes red and scratchy. My ulcer was throbbing in my gut.

  “Can I get you anything? Water? Tea?”

  I glanced up at the nurse who had taken over the care for my mother at the seven o’clock shift change hours ago. I smiled my thanks and glanced at her tag clipped to her pocket so I could remember her name. “Unless you have a bottle of tequila stashed away somewhere, I’ll keep sipping on this water. But thank you, Jean. I appreciate the offer.”

  She laughed and nodded, her short gray bob swaying around her face with the effort. She had a kindly face, laugh creases at her eyes and mouth, strong looking hands that looked as if they were used to working hard. “If there was tequila around, it wouldn’t last long around here, believe you me.”

  I looked around the sterile room to the sterile hallway on the other side of the door. Listened to the incessant beeping of machines, the hissing and sucking of respirators. It was so very different from where I was this morning, inside a silent cabin, no sounds but the crackling fire and click, click, click.

  I missed Maggie.

  I missed Go.

  I missed Gray.

  Why had my rescue team come at the exact wrong moment? Why hadn’t we had time to talk about the pictures, the video camera, the way he had “watched” over me? If Mom hadn’t been dying, I would have stayed
, we could have been able to talk it through. Maybe fight. Maybe makeup. Was that part of my fate? To have happiness right at my fingertips only to have it yanked away?

  Those questions again.

  “It’s nice what you’re doing,” Jean said, changing a fluid bag on the IV pole. An unnecessary cost I was creating because I wasn’t ready to let Mom go.

  At my confused look, Jean nodded to my laptop. “Finishing your book so she can know the ending.”

  I felt myself blush. “It’s silly I know. She can’t hear me. Can’t understand.”

  “Nonsense,” Jean admonished. “No one really knows those things, and besides, the death process, in my opinion, is less about the person passing away and more for the ones they leave behind. So if it gives you some type of closure, if it will allow you to sleep better tonight and all the nights after it… you read to her. I can change these bags all night.”

  Her kindness caused tears to burn the backs of my eyelids. “Thank you. Mom had a hard life. If I can help, I’d like her to have a peaceful death.”

  Jean nodded. “I heard what she did for a living. It’s not my place to judge.” She met my eyes. “Must have given you an interesting childhood.”

  I barked out a laugh, then looked at Mom to see if I’d disturbed her, which was silly. “Yeah. Don’t they say that the genetics for mental illness is fifty percent genetics and fifty percent environment?”

  She rolled her eyes. “Depends on the study you read as to what the statistics are.”

  I sighed. “Well, no matter the statistics, I grew up thinking I was totally screwed.” I realized how that sounded. “And not in the Biblical sense.”

  Jean laughed. “Honey, most of us have so many skeletons in our closets that we don’t dare open the door. So, statistically speaking, we’re all screwed.”

  I guessed that was true.

  I patted my trusty laptop. “That’s why I like to write. In my books, the heroes and heroines become less and less screwed up over time, and every single one of them get a happy ending, no matter how rakish or whorish they were in the beginning.”

  “Are you giving your mama a happy ending in your book?”

  Emotion hit me again. “Yeah, sunsets and all.”

  Jean walked around the bed and rested a hand on my shoulder. “That’s good, honey. Just be sure that when you’re writing your own ending, it isn’t just in a book. Live it.”

  I was strangled, my throat moving but not working. I swallowed hard and forced a smile. “So I should ask, ‘What would my heroine do?’”

  Jean cackled. “Exactly. Maybe you should make a bracelet up for that or something. My mama always told me to take the advice I’d give to my best friend.”

  I smiled. “I like that. Your mother is very wise.”

  She lifted a finger to her lips. “Shhh… don’t let her hear you say that. But it’s true. We treat just about everybody better than we treat ourselves. I call it the witch in my head, except I don’t say witch, if you know what I mean.”

  I grinned. On one of the saddest days of my life, I was grinning. “Yeah… I do know what you mean. I say things to myself I’d never say to someone else.”

  “Exactly. I’m going to take a little break and let you get back to finishing your book. I’ll check back in on you in a bit.”

  “Thank you.”

  I returned my focus on the laptop, attempting to remember where I’d left off. When I found my place, I began to read again.

  “And if they don’t hang?” Lisbeth asked, needing assurance that he would let this go. That he would stop looking for retribution and look forward to a new future for them. Afraid of his answer, she stepped away, picked up the brush from her mirrored vanity and began to comb her long hair.

  “What do you think of the Americas?”

  The question came as such as a surprise, the brush fell from her hand as she whirled to face him, search his eyes. She needed to see if he only teased her or if his words rang true.

  “Could we?” She didn’t dare breathe. Unwittingly, her hand went to her stomach, to the babe growing in her womb.

  The Americas would provide safety. A new life. The fresh start she’d always longed for.

  “Yes, my love. I’ve given it much consideration and have come to the conclusion that my home is wherever you are. You and our babe.”

  The small being living inside her fluttered, as if showing his or her approval.

  I looked up from the computer screen. Not for the first time, I wondered what Mom was thinking when she took that bottleful of pills. Was she thinking fresh start too? I liked to think so. It was easier for me to think of her swallowing those pills looking forward to a brighter existence than believing she took them trying to escape the demons on earth.

  In one study, it was believed that seventy-five percent of sex workers have attempted suicide, and sex workers have a mortality rate forty percent higher than the average person.

  Looking back at my screen, I returned to fiction. It was so much more pleasant than reality.

  “Thank you, Byron.”

  He smiled and held out his hand. “Come closer, my love.”

  With all the weight of the world lifting off her shoulders, she practically floated in his direction and placed her hand in his. “Is this close enough?” she teased.

  He pulled her to him, pressing his lips to hers. “You’ll never be close enough.”

  And after a fortnight passed, he held her in the safety of his arms as their ship set sail to a land that was fresh and new. With him by her side, she’d never felt so protected.

  Facing into the direction of the wind, Lisbeth allowed herself one… and only one… look back.

  “Goodbye, cruel world. I know where I’m not welcomed.”

  Breathing in deeply of the ocean air, she faced forward again, linking her fingers with those of her husband.

  Today, she would discover what it was to have a home.

  Tears fell on the laptop, causing the words to blur in front of me. I clicked to the next page.

  Dedication

  To Cynthia

  Be free. Find the peace you deserve.

  Very slowly, I tucked the computer away in its protective sleeve and stood for the first time in many hours. Leaning forward, I stretched out the tight muscles in my back.

  “Miss Meadows?”

  I turned to the door to find the nurse hovering just inside. I smiled at her and wiped away the tears. “I’m ready.”

  Her smile was filled with compassion. “I’ll get the doctor and be right back.”

  She was. In only a few minutes, I was signing the form that would end my mother’s life.

  Beep… beep… beep.

  I closed my eyes, listening to her heart beating for the last time. Opened them and nodded to the doctor.

  He flipped a switch.

  Beep… beep………… beep………….. beep.

  And that was it.

  The vessel that had contained the vibrant Cyn Meadows transitioned into a shell.

  And I was an orphan.

  I touched her hand. “Be free, Mom.”

  When I turned away, Leslie was standing in the doorway. She didn’t say anything. She didn’t need to.

  Our fingers linked as we walked away from the hospital, through the throng of reporters, and to her car.

  Be free.

  There was a lesson in that.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Gray

  The last evening Los Angeles sunbeam shone down on me as I straightened my tie, feeling constricted and uncomfortable in my new suit.

  I nodded to the driver. “I’m not sure how long I’ll be.”

  It could be a few minutes or a few hours.

  “That’s fine, sir. Simply text when you’re ready and I’ll meet you here.”

  It was strange.

  I’d been rich for a few years now but until yesterday and today, I’d never utilized the privileges it gave me. A private plane. Thousands of dollars’ wo
rth of clothes. A personal car and driver to attend my every whim.

  As much as I loved my cabin, I would live this way if this was what Zoe preferred. We could buy a house here, maybe with sweeping views of the ocean. We could fly between the homes as well as other homes. It wouldn’t matter as long as she was there.

  It became obvious that I was at the right funeral home by the way the women were dressed. Outrageously over-the-top sexy seemed to be the theme for the night, and I received a fair share of cleavage, ass, and thigh glimpses as I strode into the rambling building, moving past the group of paparazzi standing by to catch a piece of the action.

  “Are you here to pay respects to Cyn Meadows?” one of the them shouted. I ignored him and hurried into the building, where I stood in the long line of people waiting to pay their respects to the porn queen.

  Then I saw her, standing alone by a golden casket, looking as beautiful as sin itself. She looked tired, like the joyous spirit I had become so familiar with had drained away. But she smiled and nodded, shook hands with everyone who passed. Behind the calm façade, I saw the pain she was trying so hard to hide, and I wanted to go to her, sweep her away from all of this.

  I couldn’t.

  This was where she needed to be. She needed to know, in the years to come, that she had done the best she could for her mother. I knew how important it was to reduce the possibility of regrets.

  Just before the line moved from the hallway and into the large room, I hesitated. I didn’t need to draw her attention away from what she currently needed to do. Whether she would be happy to see me, angry, or simple unsure, she didn’t need the distraction of my presence.

  Stepping out of the line, I looked around, unsure of where to go. I didn’t want to leave. Zoe might need me. I would watch over her. Again.

  Finding a quiet vestibule, I leaned against the wall and waited, keeping an eye on Zoe through the large window. When some sleazy guy leaned down to kiss her on the cheek, my hands clenched but I didn’t move, even when she cringed away from the touch.

  If I needed to intervene, I would. I could be at her side in seconds.

  “Gray?”

  The sound of my name surprised me, and I turned to find a familiar blonde standing in the entrance to the small room. “Leslie.”