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 we’re a pastor from Alabama send 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, waiting 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 between 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.” Richards words sent fear, but mostly anger, almost twenty-two-year’s 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. “Good bye, 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.
“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 spoke frequently 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 looking 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 affect 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 we’re in one piece.
; Both were alive.
Chapter 26
Finn