The Reformation of Marli Meade

by Tracy Hewitt Meyer

  “Stay out here,” Robert said. He looked at me. “I mean it.”

  “Okay.” The word came out shakier than I wanted. I wasn’t ready to see Charles and Edna. I looked down at my body. The clothes were as trendy as any I’d seen on the girls at school. And my hair…fortunately, the dye wasn’t permanent, and the hairdresser suggested I let it wash out on its own, but she had trimmed the ragged edges and now it fell around my face in soft curls.

  Nate stared at the door of the station. “I can’t stand the sight of them.”

  “Why are they here?”

  Nate started pacing again. “They want you back.”

  I stepped toward Robert’s truck, my feet ready to sprint. “Want me back?”

  “Yes. They’re trying to file kidnapping charges against Robert and delinquency charges against you.”

  “That can’t be right. We have witnesses to the punishing. It’s not safe for me to go back there. Can’t the sheriff do something?”

  Despite the low-slung clouds that obscured the soaring mountains’ peaks, the air was humid, causing Nate’s hair to curl around his ears and over his neck. I resisted the urge to wrap a strand around my finger, all too eager for a distraction.

  “We’ll go back to our original plan,” he said. “We’ll run. You will not go back to that mountain.”

  I couldn’t understand why he was so upset. There was no way they would send me back there. I wanted to stay with Robert and after the punishing…well, they wouldn’t make me return. No one would even suggest it. Would they?

  Robert’s voice could be heard through the thin windows of the station, loud and irate, though I could not make out what he was saying.

  They wouldn’t do that to me—they wouldn’t send me back to the mountain. The idea was absurd.

  Through the window I could hear Detective Ambrose yelling at Robert to calm down.

  There was movement in the window and suddenly Edna appeared, long and wiry. When she saw me, her eyes narrowed, and she looked like a satisfied serpent whose next meal was trapped by its long, powerful body. With a slow rise of her bony hand, Edna pointed at me.

  My heart pounded like a bass drum.

  Suddenly, the door burst open and Charles rushed out, scrambling toward me on long spidery legs.

  I stumbled backward as Edna shot out the door behind him. Nate jumped in front of me, ready to defend me from my family.

  Robert bolted out the door followed by Ambrose then the sheriff, but they were too late. With a violent shove, Charles barreled over Nate.

  I shuffled several feet away as Nate sprang to his feet and charged Charles, grabbing him around the legs and yanking his feet out from under him. Robert and Wilhelm grabbed Charles, struggling to shove him onto his stomach. The sheriff yanked out a pair of handcuffs and secured them around Charles’s wrists.

  Ambrose sprang after Edna, who was closing in on me like a bird-of-prey.

  My brain told me to bolt, to light a fire under my feet and flee as fast as I could, but my muscles seemed to say this couldn’t be real. Edna couldn’t possibly be diving toward me. This was all just a nightmare I would wake up from.

  But Edna didn’t stop and soon had me clutched in her skeletal hands, and something cold pressed to the pulse point of my neck.

  “Edna!” Ambrose screamed, lifting a pistol and aiming it at Edna’s forehead. “Put the knife down!”

  The men looked up from their struggle with Charles, eyes wide, stunned. Nate’s face drained of all color. Robert sprang to his feet.

  “Put it down, NOW!” Ambrose planted her feet.

  Sheriff Wilton stood upright and started to move forward inch by inch.

  “Someone must pay!” screeched Edna.

  The sheriff stopped, hands raised.

  Charles was sitting now, hands cuffed behind his back, unblinking eyes planted on his mother. The wound on his cheek from the marking stick was red and blistered.

  “Must pay for what, Edna?” asked Ambrose.

  “For the humiliation of my son! Robert never paid the price for the damage he did!” The knife tip pushed into my skin and I cried out.

  “Sarah paid!” Robert shouted. “Wasn’t that enough? She paid with her life!”

  “It’s not enough! This evil spawn…we allowed her to live so we could bring her up right! So we could wash her free of her mother’s sins!”

  Edna dropped her hand from my arm but grasped my short hair in a tight fist, yanking my head back. “Look at her! Look at what she’s wearing! One day off the mountain and she’s turned into her whore of a mother!”

  “Mother, please.” Robert dropped his voice to soothing and soft. “None of this is Marli’s fault. She is innocent.”

  “She must return to the mountain.” Edna did not drop the knife.

  “You want me,” Robert said, “not her. The sin is mine. I am the only one who can atone for Sarah’s actions.”

  Edna shook my head like it was attached to a child’s ragged doll. “Look at her! In these shameful clothes! Shameful whore paint on her face! One day off the mountain!” Her words echoed off the building, the trees, the mountains. “Evil spawn.”

  Ambrose stared at Edna, finger trained on the gun’s trigger.

  “Edna, drop the knife,” Sheriff Wilton said. “We will talk this through. I’m from the mountain, too. Remember?”

  She whipped around, jerking my head. I was pretty sure I felt one of my neck muscles tear. “You’re a traitor. You’re nothing but a no-good, worthless heathen!”

  Ambrose followed Edna’s movements, the gun always pointed at her head. But Edna was moving too much and I was shaking too hard. She would never get a clean shot.

  Tension hung thick in the air, threatening to suffocate us all. Finally, Charles said, “Mother, stop. Release her. It’s over.” All eyes fell on Charles. “Let her go.”

  “Let her go? Son, you know what they did. They…they betrayed you and the church! We will never be able to free her from the sins of her mother unless she is on the mountain!”

  Charles shook his head, his shoulders slumping like every ounce of fight had left his body. “It’s over.”

  Edna yanked my head hard and I whimpered from the pain. Ambrose moved a step closer. Edna pushed the knife into my skin until I felt a thin layer give way. Was that blood running down my neck or sweat?

  “Give her to me,” Robert said. He held out his hands as if he was preparing to accept a gift.

  Edna lowered the knife and lessened the grip on my hair. Just as I thought Edna was going to let me go, she yanked my head back, whipped the knife back to my neck. It was slicing into my skin when a gunshot rang out.

  Edna collapsed. I fell on top of her. Someone was screaming and it wasn’t until Nate yanked me into his arms that I realized it was me.

  “Marli! Look at me!” Nate put his hands on my face and forced me to look up. “You’re okay. You’re okay.”

  I closed my lips, swallowing the next wave of screams. “I’m okay?”

  “You’re okay.”

  “She didn’t slit my throat?” I touched my neck. When I pulled my fingers back, they were covered in blood.

  “She cut you but I don’t think it’s deep.”

  “Who fired the gun?”

  “Ambrose.”

  “At Edna?”

  Nate nodded. “At Edna.”

  “Did she hit her?”

  He nodded again. “She’s gone, Marli. Edna’s gone.”

  I went numb.

  NATE’S ARMS WERE warm and strong, wrapped around me so tight there was no end to his body and no beginning to mine.

  We were in Sheriff Wilton’s office, huddled on the couch. After the shooting, he’d scooped me up like a child and hurried inside, far from the chaos that descended. He’d helped me clean up in the bathroom before bringing me in here and closing the door.

  I appreciated the solitude more than I could say. I didn’t want to be around any of them right now, including the sheriff, Ambrose,
and even Robert. Just Nate. Nate was all I needed, all I wanted.

  Every now and then he would rub my arm, back, head, as if trying to make sure I knew he was still there. I relished every touch more than he could ever know.

  Edna had tried to kill me and now Edna was dead.

  She was my grandmother. She really thought killing me was the answer?

  A strange, strange world I lived in, for sure. Did everyone else have drama like mine? Somehow I doubted it.

  “Are you hungry?” Nate asked at some point.

  “A little, I guess.”

  “I think I saw granola bars out front. I’ll be right back.”

  “Thanks.” I stumbled to the bathroom to splash water on my face. There was a small cracked mirror over the sink, and the reflection that stared back at me didn’t look alive. It looked like a ghost haunted by demons past and present. Dark circles colored the skin beneath my eyes. My bones were too prominent, cheeks sunken, adding to the effect.

  Such a shame my clothes had gotten ruined with Edna’s blood. Now I had on sweatpants and a sweatshirt that Ambrose had given to Nate for me to put on. I had really liked that unicorn shirt, too. Maybe, if and when my life veered toward a more normal path, I would buy myself a new one.

  I should start a list of all the ways I wanted my life to be normal from now on, all the drama that I was going to leave behind, all the fresh new and inconsequential teenage stuff I was going to fill my days with.

  Number one: leave behind people who wanted to murder me.

  That wasn’t so inconsequential but it was a good start.

  After washing my face and rinsing out my mouth, I left the bathroom only to find Robert standing by the door. For several minutes we stood like statues. Robert and I stared at each other as Nate glanced between us.

  “I’m so sorry,” Robert said.

  I nodded, my throat swelling. My grandmother was dead. There was a part of me that hurt. She was family, after all. But she’d also tried to kill me, and some part of me registered that. But mostly I felt numb. Lifeless. Drained.

  Number two: remember how to feel alive.

  I slid my hand into Nate’s and immediately eliminated the need for number two.

  “Do you want to come home?”

  Home. I guess that was now the only home I had.

  “Okay.”

  “Okay?”

  “Okay.” I turned to Nate. “Where are you staying tonight?”

  “My PO helped me find an apartment close by. I’ll take you to see it soon.”

  “You’re staying there tonight?”

  “Yeah. He’s taking me by Goodwill tonight for a few things. I’ll be fine.”

  I nodded. “I’m so happy the emancipation came through. It’s the best thing for you.”

  Nate leaned into my ear. After offering a soft kiss to my lobe, he whispered, “I’m going to get you a cell phone tomorrow so you can contact me anytime you need to.”

  I clung to him. “That would be nice. You’ll have to teach me how to use it, though.”

  He chuckled. “You are so sheltered.”

  I inhaled the smell of his skin. “I know. You’ll have to change that.”

  “Deal.”

  I stepped toward Robert. Nate stayed where he was, hands in his pockets, watching me. He smiled and it was more reassuring than I expected. Did he have a good feeling about my future? His own? The look on his face suggested as much. I tried to offer a smile in return but was still too stunned and half-delirious to do so. Instead I moved back to his side, desperate for a kiss. He was eager to oblige and gifted me with a quick and chaste kiss to my lips, but somehow making it amazing at the same time. I followed Robert to his truck.

  I NEED TO get some things from…home…my other…the mountain.” I shifted on my feet.

  It was early the next morning and Robert was sitting on his patio, cleaning a gun. On the table lay three other guns, all oiled and shining, an opened box of ammo off to the side.

  “I’ll take you up today. I need to check on things anyway.” He looked up. “Let’s leave in thirty minutes.”

  I nodded then went to my room. My room.

  When I’d first come here two nights ago, the room was prepared for an infant, a baby—me. Thanks to help from Robert’s friend who owned a discount furniture store and was able to make a quick delivery, now it was an adult room with a simple twin bed, no frame, a nightstand, and a dresser. The bedding was soft lilac with a sparse mockingbird pattern, and sheer white curtains framed the window.

  The rocking chair was still there, the one thing I could not part with; that and, of course, the picture of my mother and Robert.

  I pilfered through the dresser drawers until I found a loose pair of jeans and a roomy blouse. When I went downstairs, Robert was waiting on the front porch, the gun he was cleaning in his hands.

  We climbed into the truck and started the long trek up the mountain in silence. The fog hung heavy this morning, thick and opaque, obliterating anything lying outside a five-yard radius.

  “Is my fa-…Charles there?”

  “I don’t know. Edna’s funeral is tonight so he’s probably busy.” He squinted as he slowed the truck, the fog closing in. “Do you want to go?”

  I turned toward the window but saw nothing. “I don’t think so. What’s going to happen to Charles and the church?”

  “I’m not sure. This fight goes beyond the Church on the Mountain.”

  “All the way to Tennessee?”

  “All the way to Tennessee.”

  “How could that church, in another state, have so much control over this church?”

  “Intimidation. Manipulation. Fear. Pretty simple words that have a severe and irreparable impact on people’s lives, especially on those who were born and raised in the church and know nothing else.”

  “But…I was able to see another life.”

  Robert slammed on the breaks as a herd of deer darted across our path. When the road was clear, he sliced his eyes my way before pushing on the gas. “But would you have been able to achieve another life had this series of…” He waved a hand in the air. “Extraordinary events not happened?”

  I tumbled into silence, thinking. I opened the window and stuck my arm out, relishing the cleansing feel of the moist, dense air on my skin.

  “I’m not sure I have achieved a new life.”

  “You will.”

  I watched my fingers dance in the fog. “I hope so.”

  Thirty minutes later Robert pulled the truck to the back of his cabin. I gazed at the house where I was born and raised. Parts of it were lost to the mist like it didn’t fully exist in this world.

  “Do I just walk in there?”

  “I’m coming with you.”

  I slid out of the truck and waited for Robert. It was strange, being here. The air held the same sweet freshness it always had. The trees were as soaring and as grand, their tops so far overhead the sky swallowed them. The sunlight was as choppy and indirect.

  I wasn’t sure I would ever return to this mountain top. I guessed time would tell.

  There was no sign of Charles as I let myself in the back door, Robert one step behind me, pistol protruding from his pocket. The house was quiet, as still as a stone pulled from the earth.

  I hurried to my room and filled Heather’s duffel bag with my things—underwear, bras, socks, my big sweater that had always warmed me in that tomb of a church.

  In all, it took ten minutes to pile my meager belongings into the bag. On the way out of the room, I grabbed my backpack and any notebooks, pens, and pencils I could find. The screen to the window was still leaning against the wall and the window was still open. I didn’t bother to shut it.

  Robert was staring out the front window when I closed the bedroom door behind me.

  “Can I ask you a question?” I asked.

  He glanced at me.

  “Can you show me where you buried my mother?”

  After a pause, he nodded. “Yeah. I can
do that.”

  Robert started toward the forest behind his house, strides long yet hesitant. “You sure?”

  “I’m sure.”

  We hiked deep into the forest, the canopy thick enough to obliterate all direct sunlight, the ground uneven and rocky. Fifteen minutes later, we came upon a blackthorn tree.

  With a loud swallow, Robert nodded toward the tree. “Over there. You, ah, take a minute and I’ll be over here.”

  At first I didn’t see what he was talking about, but then there was no mistaking it. A gravestone, small and gray, sat nestled at the base of the tree, the only one like it. Flowering Queen Anne’s lace grew all around despite the meager sunlight, like Mother Nature’s very own blessing.

  I eased onto my knees and rested my forehead against the cool surface of the stone. I traced the rough engraving. Sarah Sheehan Meade. Beloved.

  “Mama?” My voice came out raspy and raw, and I coughed to clear my throat. “I don’t know if you can hear me, if you are there in Heaven or not…if there is even a Heaven up there…if you know me or not.” My throat tightened. “I miss you. I wish I had known you. I’m sorry this happened to you.”

  I rubbed my fingers over the stone, wondering what words to say. I had never had a mother to talk to and didn’t know how to proceed. After several minutes, I decided to talk to her like I talked to Polly. Friend to friend.

  “I have a boyfriend. His name is Nate Porter.” I smiled. “And he’s really handsome. Kind. Protective, which is one of the things I like most about him.” I started to feel comfortable with my flow of words. “We haven’t known each other long, but we have grown…close in that little bit of time.”

  I traced her name with my fingertip, unable to keep out the sorrow that was knocking at my conscience.

  “You must have been so scared. I was scared but they didn’t get to me. Robert made sure of it. Robert and Nate.”

  A single tear slid down my cheek.

  “Robert misses you. I can tell. He really loved you. I hope that brings you some comfort wherever you are.”

  In the distance heavy footsteps disrupted the quiet, and I looked up to find Robert standing a few yards away.

  “I should’ve saved her.” He shoved his hands in his pockets, his grief so palpable it filled the air like a gas.