“Are you…God?”
The woman laughed and it sounded light and bright. Angelic. “Oh, darlin’, they wouldn’t want me running things. It would be like a two for one happy hour twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. It would be a lot more college frat and a lot less holy afterlife. You catch my drift?”
“I think so,” I answered. “Who are you then?”
She clapped her hands together. “I’m someone who is here to help.”
“How?”
The woman thought for a moment, tapping a perfectly polished fingernail against her chin. “You know how when a bad situation comes up people tend to tell you to always look ahead and never look behind you, or something like that.”
“Sure, my mother used to say that all the time.”
“Well, I’m here to tell you that it’s all bullshit. It’s what’s behind you that counts. It’s what’s behind you that is going to save you. Don’t wait for your knight in shining armor to rescue you, as hot as they can be sometimes. BE your own knight. Rescue yourself. Finn might have rescued your heart, but the rest is up to you now.”
As fast as she appeared and before I could ask her what exactly she meant, the woman in white was gone.
I opened my eyes and felt the water at my chin. Water was now splashing up into my eyes. I squinted over at my mother whose face was now only inches away from the rising water. I wished my dream were somehow real and what was behind me was really going to save me. The only thing behind me was the tree I was tied to and countless swamp animals waiting for me to shift from life to death so they could have at my carcass.
I wouldn’t give up.
I will never give up.
I felt a new resolve growing within me. A new kind of power, bravery. It was exactly what I needed to push on.
In a last attempt to free my hands I stretched my fingers under the water, searching for anything that I could use as a knife to cut through the rope. The water was flowing around us more like a river than a swamp so it was possible things underneath had shifted.
I touched something hard with my finger where moments ago there was nothing. It was at least six inches and broken or jagged at one end. I didn’t know if it was a pipe or broken piece of wood or rock, but I hoped it would do. I maneuvered it between the ropes and started sawing. I dropped it once and then once again before I could do any real damage to the rope. I growled out my frustrations into the rising water that had now reached my mouth. My thoughts were scrambled as I pressed my lips together tightly.
I didn’t dare look over to my mother knowing full well she had to be submerged by now. I couldn’t let anything distract me from the task at hand.
Both of our lives depended on it.
I had to hurry, but I knew rushing wouldn’t get me anywhere. I hummed the lullaby my mother used to sing to me during storms to ease my fears. And as my mind drifted over those times she gave me comfort when she had none of her own, I sawed away.
I took my last large gulp of air right as the water rose over my mouth and then my nose.
After reciting three verses of the lullaby in my head my lungs were burning like they were on fire. With one last push of the restraints against the object, and one last underwater scream, something snapped and my hands broke free.
I emerged from the water, gasping for my first full breath of air in what seemed like forever. As my lungs took their fill it was as if everything stood still. The splash of each raindrop in the water. The leaves falling from the wind rustled trees. I could see everything now. Everything smelled stronger. Sounded louder. Appeared clearer.
My mind completely cleared. I felt calm. Peaceful.
It was as if I’d been baptized in the dirty water. Christened by the hurricane itself and delivered into the swamp reborn.
I was no longer Sawyer, the girl running from her past. I was Sawyer, the girl from The Outskirts.
A true outlier just like the rest of them.
I remember reading an article for my religious study where a pastor from Alabama said that when God takes you into troubled waters, it’s not to drown you, but to cleanse you.
Suddenly, it became clear what he meant.
I stood up and blew the water from my nose, leaping over to my mother, wading through the thick water and underbrush. I lifted her head from the water with one hand and untied her strains with the other. I almost fell over with relief when she gasped for air. I put her arm around my shoulder and had only made it one step up the embankment when I lost my footing and together we slid back down into the water with a splash.
I was startled by the man looming over us. A man I never wanted to see again. My heart pounded against my ribcage like it was going to leap from my chest and lunge at Richard. The wind picked up, whistling through the trees.
Richard snarled. “Looks like you got yourself a problem there. Although, I’ll give you some credit. I half expected to be disposing of corpses by now. Figures that you were both terrible at listening and taking directions. It’s not a big shock to me that you two just won’t shut up and die when you’re told.” Richard’s words sent fear, but mostly anger, almost twenty-two-years’ worth of it, surging through my veins, igniting a fire of rebellion under my skin.
“Hey, Richard?” I asked, looking him right in the eye for the first time in my life. “FUCK YOU!”
His response was to chuckle. “You think you are so brave. But none of that matters when you’re dead, sinner,” he taunted.
“Father, we cannot pick and choose which sins we abide by. You speak out against sinning, but you yourself are a walking contradiction of sin. Of evil. You are guilty of lust, gluttony, wrath, envy, pride, and so much more. I know because I’ve seen it in the way you drink alcohol like your thirst is unending. I’ve seen it in the way you’ve beat and raped my mother. I’ve witnessed you speak of God’s will as if you are the only man in the world who understands it.” I laughed at how ridiculous this man really was. “Well, I hate to tell you, but you don’t. You don’t understand any of it.”
“Blasphemy! Blasphemy!” he growled. He pointed a finger down at me. “You little cunt! How dare you!”
I found a sudden freedom in my words, but because I needed time to figure out how I was going to get to myself and my mother out of the swamp alive. “They say the truth will set you free. Well, Father. For your sake. I hope it does just that. Because your truth is that you are a selfish asshole who is going straight to hell.”
There we were, laying in the mud, looking up into the eyes of the madman who once dared to call himself my father when he wasn’t even a fraction of the man my real father was. My mother slid from my grip. She landed off to the side in the mud with an audible thunk.
Richard pointed at her. “I told your mother a long time ago that I would kill you while she watched if she ever betrayed me. Too bad she isn’t conscious to see me keep that promise.”
Richard knelt and reached for something in his back pocket. “Goodbye, Daughter.”
When you know the end is near you’d think that would be when you’re most afraid. It’s not. Because as I prepared it to all be over, I couldn’t help but to feel proud.
Proud of the woman I’d become. Proud of the relationships I’d made. And proud of the way I was standing up to Richard in my final moments.
Finn would have been proud too.
I made sure I was staring Richard directly in the eyes. If he was going to kill me he was going to have to do it while I disobeyed his stupid rules right to the end. Even the baby gave a defiant first kick against my hand as I protectively covered my stomach.
It made me laugh. I was literally laughing in the face of my own death.
Richard never got a chance to produce whatever weapon he was reaching for because something blunt made contact with his head. There was a dull thud followed by a noise that sounded a lot like a crusty loaf of bread being broken in half.
Richard’s stare went blank as he fell face first into the water.
&n
bsp; “Mom?”
I looked up to find my mother standing there holding some sort of white rock in her hand. “You’re right,” she said to Richard’s unconscious body. “None of it matters. YOU don’t matter.”
She continued to stare hatred down at him, cradling the rock in her arms like a trophy. “During your sermons, you frequently spoke about family bonds.” She chuckled as she quoted Richard. “I believe it went something like, ‘There is no greater bond on this earth than that between a mother and her child. And if someone attempts to destroy that bond? God have mercy on his soul.’”
She stood over him and squared her shoulders. “May God have mercy on your soul, Richard.”
“Is he...?” I asked, pausing as I saw the faint rise and fall of his shallow breathing.
My mother shook her head. “I don’t think it’s that easy.” She turned to me. Kneeling she looked me over from head to toe. “Is the baby okay?”
“The baby is fine. I’m fine. But you are the one who’s hurt.” I pulled gently on her head to take a closer look at the wound.
“It’s just a nasty bump,” she said, flinching away from my touch.
“It’s more than that,” I pointed out. “You kept passing out.”
“I did earlier. I think it was just an after effect from whatever he’d held over my nose. But I tell you what, nothing has a way of slapping you awake than the possibility of your imminent demise.”
“But you just passed out, just now,” I questioned.
She shook her head and winced. “Nope. That was called acting. I took a drama class once. Did you know that?” she asked as she helped me up. I was both impressed and proud and completely in love with my mother.
“No, I didn’t know that about you,” I said. “But maybe, sometime soon, you can tell me all about it.”
We left Richard in the water as we limped over to the boat he had parked between two stumps. It occurred to me that my mother probably did not see the roof of the library collapse.
We needed to get back. We need to see if they had made it out of the library. But first, I had to warn my mother of what we might find when we got back.
Or what we might not find.
I felt like time had stopped around us along with the winds from the storm. The amplified sounds and smells of the swamp from earlier had all died down. It was almost silent. I’m sure if you listened carefully enough you could hear my sorrow.
The words I knew I had to say grew thick in my throat and even thicker as they sprouted roots and wrapped around my heart, squeezing so tightly I didn’t know how I was going to breathe again never mind speak.
“Mother,” I choked out. “There’s something I have to tell you.” I shut my eyes tightly.
“What is it?” she asked, sounding every bit as horrified as she should.
A loud vibration rattled through the swamp, shaking every branch of every tree like the beginnings of an earthquake. An airboat emerged, zipping right over a thick layer of brush like it didn’t exist. Even in the heavy rain, I could make out the faces on that boat. I would know them from miles away. My soul would recognize them anywhere.
All the feelings I never thought I would experience again, happiness, joy, elation, and love, all came back to me at once. The weight lifted off my chest and I could breathe again. I was so light I felt as if I were floating above my own body.
Critter was driving. Finn was standing at the front.
Both were in one piece.
Both were alive.
Chapter 26
Finn
I still had no idea how Sawyer and her mother managed to free themselves from a man who would stop at nothing until he got what he wanted. What he wanted was their lives. By way of either submission or death. Which made me furious beyond reason.
My stomach rolls at the reminder of how close he came to getting what he wanted, of the despair I felt while thinking the absolute worst had already happened.
We were lucky.
Just because I don’t know how they managed to free themselves doesn’t mean I was surprised. There were never two more determined people on the planet. No one with stronger wills. No one braver.
They might not think so, but they were well-equipped to handle the likes of Richard Dixon.
“I’ve never been so goddamn scared in my entire life,” I told Sawyer as she woke up from a twenty-hour nap. She rolled over took one look at me and smiled like I meant everything in the world to her. “I can’t help but think of what could have happened to you if…”
“Don’t. Come here,” Sawyer said, stretching out her arm. She rolled over so that we were lying facing one another with our arms and legs intertwined, a lot like we did the first night she spent in my bed. Except this time one of my hands rested on top of our growing baby.
I hadn’t gotten much sleep at all. I found my rest in watching my girl sleep, her chest and belly rising and falling with each intake of breath.
“I missed you,” Sawyer said sleepily. And although her words were simple, the look in her eyes said so much more.
“Me too,” I whispered.
Her eyes widened and met mine. “Richard,” she said, suddenly looking panicked.
“He won’t hurt you again.”
She relaxed into me once more. “What happen to him?”
I twisted my lips. I had a good idea what happened to him, but it wasn’t the same as what Critter had SAID happened to him. “Critter told me he was taking Richard back to the jail he escaped from.” Saying it out loud didn’t make it any more believable.
“Do you think that’s what he did?” she asked, knowing Critter just as well as I did.
I sucked in air through my teeth. “I think it’s best if we don’t know.”
“That sounds like something he would say,” Sawyer said, placing a hand on my face. I leaned in and kissed her, needing to feel her against me, needing to remind myself that although she was in my arms that she was really here. She was really okay.
“I’m here,” she reassured me, knowing exactly what I needed to hear.
“Yes, you are.”
She glanced over my head to the nightstand. I turned and noticed she was staring at her dirty clothes in a pile as well as the rock that her mother had been clutching to her chest when we’d found them.
“It was real,” she whispered.
“What was real?” I asked, turning back around to face her.
“You see that scarf?” she asked, pointing to the muddied purple piece of cloth on top of the pile. “I had a vision that this blonde woman saved me and she was wearing it. I know it sounds silly but it helped pull me through.”
I sucked in a breath, not wanting to think about how scared she must have been but glad she had found comfort in some sense, even if it was in a vision or a dream.
“What’s with the rock?” she asked.
I couldn’t help the smile that grew on my face. “That’s what your mother was holding. That’s what she hit Richard over the head with.”
“Strange looking rock,” she commented.
I sat up to inspect it closer. “You’re right. I’ve never seen a round rock like that around here.” I picked it up and turned it over. I almost dropped it when I saw what was on the other side.
“What?” Sawyer asked, scrambling to a sitting position on the bed.
The rock wasn’t a rock at all.
It was a skull.
Suddenly something clicked. The purple scarf. The skull.
I envisioned a certain picture hanging over Critter’s bar. One where I had my arm draped around Jackie. She was wearing the purple scarf I’d bought her at the craft fair. I even had her initials embroidered in the lining. JC. The exact initials that were peeking through the splotches of filth.
I dropped my head in my hands. At first, I felt my stomach roll like I was going to get sick. I took a deep breath through my nose but it didn’t help. This was her. This was Jackie. Suddenly it was two years ago and it was like I’d just lost
her all over again. Her death was like a knife to my throat.
“What! What is it?” Sawyer asked again. It was her voice that brought me back to the present. Her voice that reminded me that it wasn’t two years ago anymore. I’d almost lost Sawyer. The love of my life. The mother of my child. But I didn’t. And something told me the blonde woman in Sawyer’s vision was someone familiar to me.
There had been a reason we hadn’t found her despite countless searches over the years. And although it sounded ridiculous to even think it, I think she stayed out there for Sawyer...for me.
I felt a warmth grow within me. A sense of completion. Finality. Love. We’d found Jackie...or just maybe, she’d found us.
“Finn?” Sawyer asked again.
I quickly turned the skull back around. “Nothing, I thought a saw a worm on it. It was just a leaf.”
“That was an awfully big reaction for a worm,” Sawyer said, skeptically. “For someone who grew up in a swamp.”
I laid back down on the bed and pulled Sawyer down with me. “Worms are gross,” I said, pressing her body against mine. Relishing the feel of her lips as they brushed my jaw.
“No, tell me. Please.”
I sighed. “Okay, but it’s going to sound a little crazy,” I warned her, tracing the freckles around her right eye.
“Lucky for you, I’m used to crazy.”
I told her everything and she remained expressionless until the end. “That’s not crazy, Finn. That’s beautiful.”
We remained silent for a while after that. Content with breathing each other in. “Did you know that you are the bravest person I’ve ever met in my entire life?” I asked, not being able to hold inside how I felt any longer.
“Why do you say that?” she asked, running her hands all over my body like she too cannot believe that I was there. “You are the one who crawled out of a burning building.”
“Not so much,” I explained. “A rain squall came in at the right time and doused the flames before they could spread.”
“I thought you were crushed under the roof,” she said, resting her chin on my chest and looking up at me with glassy eyes. I needed to protect her from those kinds of feelings, from the pain.
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