Soul?
Maybe.
Heart?
Who fucking cares?
Brain?
Well if it’s there, I don’t use it anyway so whatever.
And still I stayed in touch with Addie Mae to keep an ear out about Faith. Make sure my old love was still okay. That Brett treated her good. That she didn’t want for anything or was in danger.
Stupidly, I felt like I was born to protect her like some stalking guardian angel. Many said Addie Mae had given me something back in the day. Put a spell on me. Some of my old team members used the tea as evidence.
Addie Mae had told me that the tea helped me heal faster. I believed her. Any ache I had that night, left the next day. My team mates had been jealous. I’d even caught Brett sipping some of it a few times as he brought it to me.
I should’ve stopped him from picking it up then.
He was stealing my tea and my girl the whole time, and I thought he was my friend. Damn him.
And I tried to move on. I married a sweet woman, built us a huge home in the woods, gave her as much money as she needed, had two amazing boys with her, and accidentally called my wife Faith, too many goddamn times.
Faith lived inside of me.
By the third year of marriage, I couldn’t pretend anymore and knew it wasn’t right to keep my wife in a loveless relationship. I gave her the house, continued to provide for her so she could be a stay home mom, and visited every day to make sure they didn’t have to worry about anything.
I’d been content.
And then Faith and Brett returned. At school, those beautiful daughters of theirs had the boys running after them. In town, Brett chased after every female between eighteen and twenty-five. And around their property, Faith just wondered that big space all alone.
On so many nights, I watched Brett drive off in the middle of the night, leaving his wife and daughters out there alone. Who knew where that piece of shit went or what he’d be bringing back to her? The best day this year was when I heard that Faith had kicked Brett out of the house.
Still, she never left the land, didn’t go to the store or movies. She just walked around there, carving and chain-sawing things.
By Fall, Brett came back and staged a sit-in on her property for a few days. The idiot had a tent that he slept in.
When Addie Mae told me, I wanted to storm off and beat the shit out of Brett. But Addie Mae said she’d already put something on the tent and him. The next day, he was gone and was walking around town with a disgusting rash on his face. Knowing Faith’s eccentric mother, the poor man would be dealing with more hell in the new year.
What am I doing?
I stopped the snowmobile.
Snowflakes fell around me.
The howls came again.
No. those can’t be wolves. Are they wild dogs? What’s happening?
The bag around my neck buzzed. It had been doing that a lot this week.
I ignored the thing.
Anytime Addie Mae gave me something, I never questioned it.
Faith’s mom scared me a lot, so much I never said no to her, nodded my head, and took whatever she gave me.
Lucky for me, she liked me or I would’ve been dead by now.