by Dawn Mattox
“Please go away.” My shoulders quivered, words trembled. “I can’t. Don’t make me. I can’t change what I have done.”
The tension in Joyce’s voice ratcheted tighter. “You will turn over and look at me and not shame the memory of my husband.”
I gritted my teeth and swallowed hard as I struggled to obey. I turned over, but I still couldn’t look into Joyce’s eyes.
So this is hell.
Fiery pain shot like a flamethrower up my leg, and yet the agony paled before the emotional inferno that consumed me.
“Sunny . . .” Joyce’s voice softened. “Daughter—look at your stepmother.”
Kenny had called me that. He had called me his daughter. Ashamed, I raised streaming eyes and looked into Joyce’s brown wizened face. She sat, crowned with pure white hair that shone with an angelic glow beneath the ambient overhead light. Her eyes were sad, but there was strength in them. Joyce was a survivor. She had birthed nine children and buried five of them. Now Kenny would be laid to rest near the five.
Joyce studied me in silence, searching long and hard. And then her back stiffened, her shoulders squared, her chin lifted. She was Maidu royalty—proud and brave and beautiful as if she were sculpted from the heart of an ancient oak.
Joyce leaned in close and laid a leathery hand against my wet cheek, her eyes only inches from mine.
“Don’t you dare do this!” Her voice was stern and authoritative. “Don’t you dare blame yourself.” Joyce drew back. “My husband was a wise man, and I have never known Kenny to make foolish decisions. He knew exactly what he was doing when he took the road to La Porte.” Joyce nodded to herself. “The accident was unforeseeable because we are just people, not God. We live and die by our choices, but choices are ours to make.”
That sounded a lot like something Chance had said.
Joyce drew herself up. Her voice remained steady as her features softened.
“You will not diminish your stepfather’s honor and integrity with this foolish self-pity. He loved you, and so do I. When you are well, you will tell me Kenny’s last words. But for now, you must rest.” Joyce reached out and lovingly brushed the hair from my face. “Get well, Sunny. We will have the memorial in two weeks, and Kenny would want you there.”
Then she kissed me softly on the forehead, lingering as she continued to hold my cheek. Pulling away, she gazed lovingly into my eyes, imparting her great strength with a long reassuring look. Such was the Maidu way.
The sounds of silence told me it was the middle of the night when I woke. No TVs, just soft voices from down the hall. No other sounds of life beyond the soft whir and click of the monitors that continued to track my vitals. And yet, I sensed the presence of another person. There—silhouetted by the dim glow at the foot of my bed. I sighed with relief. Just an orderly dressed in scrubs, wearing a surgical mask.
I was halfway back to being fully submerged in a pool of sleep, when my eyes shot open, warning bells jangling in my head with a familiar rush of adrenaline coursing through me, strong enough to back up into the IV. I bolted upright as the figure jumped. We wrestled, and his mask slipped.
The specter of death had found me—a thin face with white hair and smooth, translucent skin. His lashless eyes were so pale, they looked corpse gray, and his breath smelled of decay. A knife glinted and flashed in the dim light. He grabbed my hair, yanking my face up and pressing the knife against my throat, sharp and intentional. Bloodless lips pulled back into a cruel sneer revealing crooked teeth as pale as his skin.
“The baby,” he rasped into my ear. “Where is the baby?” He seemed to breathe the words rather than speak them. “Baabee. Tell me where she is—or I. Will. Cut. Your. Throat. Unless”—he hissed—“unless you’d rather tell me where Logan hid the money he made from our guns. You decide but make it fast. The baby or the money.”
My heart jack-hammered in my chest loud enough to set off security alarms. I didn’t know it could beat so fast. My mind went crazy, scrambling for options when there were none.
“Trying to be brave, are we? How noble. How very . . . Christian. And that, after you murdered her mother.” He clicked his tongue in a tsk, tsk. “How about I open your morphine drip and let you sleep while I do some additional amputation? Maybe your thumbs, huh? Or maybe your nose?” He reached for the IV, and I shook my head no from beneath the blade.
“What’s that you say?” He asked, leaning his dreadful face even closer.
I gasped, drenched with terror, shaking violently. I croaked out some strangled noises, and the pressure of the knife backed off my throat as he tipped his hideous head, putting his ear next to my face.
I bit, and he cut my throat.
Screams bounced off the walls, but there was no power on earth that could unclench my jaws. He did the damage to himself—yanking and jerking in his violent effort to disengage, leaving me with a mouthful of ear and blood dribbling down my chin as he fled, screaming a stream of curse words that trailed him down the hall, not caring if he was seen or heard. An alarm went off in the background, and I heard voices shouting and feet running.
No smiling faces to greet me this time. Dr. Lance, Chance, Mark, and—really? Was that really Travis? They seemed to be waiting, poised for the moment I woke up. They look tired, stressed, and strained—quite possibly worse than I felt, in spite of being pumped full of drugs.
I wanted to sleep forever.
“The baby or the money.” The memory snaked its way in. “Oh God—he wants the baby! Quincy!” Hysteria clutched me with fingers that squeezed with a smirking grin. The men looked at each other, and Travis bolted from the room.
I tried to pull myself up, but Dr. Lance gently pushed me back and used the electric lift to raise the head of the bed instead. The bed whined as my fingers explored the newest bandage, wrapped like a priest’s collar about my neck. I looked to my doctor for an answer.
“Dull knife,” said Dr. Lance in his usual glib manner. “Superficial cut. You’ll be fine.” He gave me an encouraging, compassionate look and a reassuring squeeze to my arm.
“What else?” Mark persisted, with Chance standing anxiously next to him. Always more questions. My mind spun like a washing machine trying to wring words from a muddy memory. Dr. Lance gave me something to relax, and within minutes, answers to questions trickled in.
No—I do not know the man. Yes—I have seen him before. He may have even followed me to Fresno. It might have been him outside the cabin. I’m sure I saw him at Little Grass Valley Lake.
“Money. He said something about . . . me having a choice. Something about . . . either the baby or”—my words broke with a sob—“or the money.”
Mark had assured me before he left that an armed guard would be posted outside my room until I was discharged from the hospital. Chance immediately volunteered for the job, but Mark declined, saying, “You’re on sabbatical,” and then looked from one of us to the other. “Okay. Fine. I will arrange for the hospital to let you stay here at night—in addition to one of my deputies.”
And then, it was just Chance and me. He lay down next to me and wrapped his strong arms around me. Just held me, nuzzled me, in much the same way I had held and comforted Quincy. Held me. Supported me. Loved me. His head resting on mine, our hearts clinging desperately to one another as he breathed into my ear, “It’s okay. Okay. Everything’s going to be okay. I love you.”
There was peace in surrender. I no longer wanted to keep score: my lies—his lies, his betrayal—my betrayal. At this moment, there was only love. I knew that we were both strong people—not always making the best choices but always choosing to do our best, sometimes with blessed results, sometimes with catastrophic results. But we were people of action, Chance and me, and for the most part, we acted and reacted out of love. We made our choice when we said “I do,” for now and forever. We would talk about everything when I was stronger, but in the end—there would be no end. We would continue on, for better or for worse.
Travis hus
tled back into the room and pulled up short at the sight of our embrace. His features were tight; he was in full cop mode. “The baby—she’s gone. The night nurse is dead. We don’t know how. No one knows how long she’s been missing, but things are in motion. Security is searching the parking lot, and investigators are scrambling to the hospital to review the security cameras. With luck, we’ll be able to issue an APB and an Amber Alert within the hour.”
“Quincy? Oh, my God. Chance, they have Quincy.” The words swelled in my throat.
Travis raised his brows and shot me a questioning look. “Quincy?”
Chance boldly met his gaze. “Sunny named the baby. We’re her legal parents now,” said Chance, sitting up and putting his feet on the floor.
“Yeah, Perry told me,” said Travis, his body rigid and green eyes slanting as they fixed on Chance. “But that doesn’t make it so. The word isn’t father; it’s fraud, but I doubt the Atchison’s will press charges.” Travis shifted his eyes to meet mine, and the tension was temporarily defused. “I know I won’t press charges if we agree to work together and agree to find the truth. Quincy deserves to know who her real father is. But we can all talk after we recover the baby.”
Travis left, and I could see that Chance was anxious, torn in two, afraid to leave me yet eager to join in the search for Quincy. It felt as if hours had passed when Travis returned to say they had a lead from the hospital’s video.
“Here’s what we have: a large, middle-aged, dark-skinned African-American woman entered the nursery, and after talking to the charge nurse, she did something—probably injected her with something, because the nurse collapsed on the floor, and there weren’t any visible injuries. Then the perp put . . . uh, Quincy . . . under the shawl she was wearing, and walked out. She kept her head down to avoid the cameras. Also, Plumas Hospital doesn’t have cameras in the parking lot. The bad news is, we don’t have any clear face shots.”
A deputy arrived to take up his position, standing guard outside of my room. I told Chance he should go.
The days that followed were a blur of faces: pain, morphine, sleep—and deepening depression. I didn’t want to talk or visit with anyone. I wanted to be alone, back in the mountains, on the backside of Pilot Peak. Or maybe on the moon. Far from everyone and everything. Far from my past and my present. No questions, no I’m sorry, no pain, no guilt that continued to eat at me with greater ferocity than the amputation.
Tick-tick-tick. I was alive, and Kenny was dead. Tick-tick-tick. I was alive, and Paige was dead. Tick-tick-tick. I was alive, and Quincy was missing. Somewhere a family was mourning the loss of the nurse—a mother, sister, daughter, friend. My face was scarred. Three toes and a missing chunk of my left foot keep cramping, the pain shooting up my leg. Nightmares haunted my sleep. Nightmares when I was awake. Tick-tick-tick. If only, if only, if only . . . tick-tick-tick . . . my fault, my fault—All. My. Fault.
Guilt threatened to crush the life out of me. Had everything happened for nothing? God may not have been keeping a scorecard, but self-imposed hash marks kept cutting away.
The days had flown with no further leads as to the whereabouts of Quincy or the woman who had taken her.
Dr. Lance dropped in to say that I was going home tomorrow. Tomorrow is New Year’s Eve, and although I would be home to usher in the New Year, there would be no celebration. I could only think of those who would not share in its arrival.
Chance was home, sleeping. He usually arrived around eight p.m. When he did, we talked, but rarely communicated. The focus was mostly about Paige’s death and the child abduction. Details, always more details.
Details were the very thing I wanted to forget. My eyes trailed around the hospital room for the millionth time. I had memorized every inch: the number of squares on the ceiling, the slight overlap where the curtains met at the top of the window, a wood knot on the bathroom door that looked like the Madonna, the faint stain on the back of the chair next to my bed and . . .
“Travis?” It was good to see him. “I didn’t hear you come in.” But then, I had rarely ever heard Travis enter or leave a room. The man lived in perpetual stealth mode.
The warmth of his smile echoed in his voice. “Sunny.” He said that word as if it were a complete sentence. He was incredibly handsome as he stood there; his green shirt perfectly matched his forest-green eyes. Brown pants and shoes offset his sandy-colored hair. He moved next to my bed, and I breathed deeply, taking in the familiar spicy scent that always moved with him. We were like two old lovers who were alone at last. And in a way, the thought was true.
“I’ve missed you.” His voice was soft, and his fingers slid down my arm to clasp my hand. Without thinking, without a clue how it happened, we found ourselves wrapped in each other’s arms, holding each other so tightly that we could feel the beating of the other’s heart. When we separated, Travis cupped his hand over the bandage on my face and softly stroked it with his thumb.
“I’ve kept up with you—your work, the cabin, the rescue, your health. I’ll never stop caring about you.”
I disengaged and lay back on the bed, pulling a curtain of sadness between us.
“Then I guess you know how badly I messed up. Paige . . .” My chin quivered, and Travis moved closer, completely disregarding the space I had just put between us.
“Later, babe. You don’t have to relive it again. You’ve been through it enough. Now isn’t the time.” He let go of my cheek, gently running his fingers through my hair. “I’ve taken care of everything. It wasn’t your fault.” A sad smile crossed his face. “Everyone knows how hard-headed Paige could be.” The muscles along his jaw flexed, his mouth tightened into a straight line, and I noticed his lashes batting at tears he fought to rein in.
“I set a date for Paige’s funeral—two days after Kenny’s. Are you okay with that? I figured you would want to attend both and then put them both behind you.” He continued to stroke my face. “It won’t be easy for you, but there’s no sense in dragging it out. Your doctor said you should be strong enough if it’s okay with you.”
I nodded wordlessly and wondered how I could possibly survive attending Kenny’s and Paige’s funerals when they should have been attending mine.
CHAPTER 33
Home for New Year’s Day and the dogs went crazy with joy as Chance helped me from the car. Mercy beat a path, racing back and forth and up and down her long pen. Kissme spun like a whirling dervish until I scooped her into my arms and we swapped kisses.
The sky had aged to a hoary gray. Clouds dangled and trailed like beards sweeping across a sooty sky, draping over the lavender mountains that silhouette the skyline. The air smelled like rain, and the first drops fell as we unlocked the door.
The following week was dedicated to healing—both physically and relationally.
“For you, sweetheart,” said Chance, holding up a pair of JW Stannard wind chimes, appropriately named First Light and Moonrise. He hung them at either end of our deck, adding, “You are the music that flows between them.” I loved my husband beyond words.
In bed, our arms tangled, fitting together like the last two pieces of a three-dimensional puzzle. Kissme snuggled next to my feet, and I felt safe and content. The feeling didn’t last.
Chance grew restless in the days that followed, always pacing and fidgety. He finished unpacking and moving in, and while I welcomed his presence, it was frustrating to have his things piling up on top of mine. There was a time when we were first married that all our things fit side by side. Somehow the house had shrunk, or things had spread out during our separation, and now they overflowed. The tension wasn’t about love. Love didn’t have anything to do with the dirty underwear I picked up off the floor and had nothing to do with commitment. I was committed but not particularly happy—especially when I tripped with my partial foot over the boot Chance had left under a bath towel, nearly landing me in the toilet—and he had left the seat up.
Things literally reached the breaking point on the followin
g day when I whacked my foot on his tackle box. The same tackle box I had asked him to move more than several times. Real world stuff. I howled, and we squared off like a couple of gunmen at high noon, both shouting, frustrated, something about not being able to take it anymore. At least we agreed on something.
It was time to talk the talk, and we spent the day talking about everything from recent events to dirty underwear. I encouraged Chance to join in the investigation and search for Quincy. He knew better than to argue when I assured him, “I have a gun, and I can take care of myself.”
Ashley stopped by to tell me that she heard Pastor Mac was shacking up with his new girlfriend, Oma.
“I thought they broke up,” I said, smiling at her gossip because she was my friend. I didn’t embellish it this time, but I didn’t end it either.
Ashley frowned in thought. “I haven’t seen her in church. It’s just something I heard.”
And of course, Ashley had questions. Always more questions. Ashley wanted the details of “everything” that had happened.
How could I tell her without reliving it? Isn’t it enough that I relive it every minute of every day? So I minimized everything and skipped the part about signing paternity papers. Quincy was gone, and I told Ashley, “If it weren’t for my foot and face, none of this would seem real.”
“Maybe that’s why God allowed you to lose your toes,” said Ashley, “so you’ll never forget who brought you through it.”
Ashley put my hand on her belly, and I could feel the soccer game going on inside her. Must be boys, I think, although Ashley and Shane were adamant about not wanting to know the sex of their children in advance of their birth.
“We want it to be like our wedding night,” said Ashley with a slight blush. “We want it to be a surprise—unknown and exciting. There aren’t that many opportunities for those kinds of surprises in life, and we don’t intend to miss out on this one just for the sake of color coordination.”