Faith (Rescue Me, A Contemporary Romance) (9 page)

“She was being abused. She was just as much of a victim as her father as Mac was. As we were.”

Still he looked out the window. By all appearances, not listening to her.

“The police found cigarette burns and rope marks all over her body. He’d been torturing her they said. Physically. Sexually.” She felt uncomfortable even repeating that last bit of information, and not just because she was talking to her teenage son. The thought of abuse made her queasy. No child deserved to suffer. Of course she couldn’t condone what Emily had done. She could have run away years earlier, or called to turn her father in years ago, but she hadn’t. She’d helped him choose his victims, helped him stalk them, find out where they lived, even helped him torture and murder them if he’d demanded it.

She’d confessed everything to the Ketchikan police
to help lead them to the whereabouts of her evil, twisted father, but without any success, creating what the local news was calling, ‘the biggest man hunt in Alaskan history.”

“Nope, this wasn’t your fault or her fault.” She repeated again. “Not really.”

She sighed, wondering if anything she said would get through to him at some point.

“The police will catch him Liam.”

“So what,” he answered.

“So what?” She repeated, confused.

“Yeah, who cares if they catch him. I mean, I hope they do and they fry him in the chair, but it won’t bring dad back will it.”

He was right. Nothing would bring Mac back. Not even when they captured the man responsible for his murder.

“No, it won’t bring your dad back,” Faith agreed. “But it might give us some satisfaction and peace to know that he can’t hurt anyone else. No other family will have to go through this.”

“I don’t care about anyone else,” he said gruffly.

At that, she pulled the car roughly onto the side of the road and turned to him. Surprised he stared at her, headphones forgotten.

“Don’t say anything like that ever again, do you hear me?” She asked him roughly. “Those are not the words of the kind, gentle, loving son I raised. Your father would hate to hear you say that. And I hate to hear you say that. You think Mac died in vain? Did that monster kill him for nothing? No. For some reason that girl of his came back to our house, none of the other victims ever saw them again, but she came back to our house and let herself be taken into custody. She confessed to the police after she killed our Mac.”

Faith was shaking with fury and indignation. “Do you think that’s a coincidence? This was supposed to happen. It makes me sick to know that Mac was used by fate in this way, but damn it Liam if you won’t admit that your father’s death may have served to stop this sicko, then you and I have a lot of conversation left and we’re not moving from this stop until you give your father the respect his death deserves. He died and no one else will have to die if the police can find the man that did this. Mac did that. It was the last heroic thing he ever did, but he did that.”

She was crying now and Liam was weeping too, his head against the window, not looking at her.

“I miss him so much mom,” he cried.

“Me too baby, me too.”

She grabbed him and pulled him close to her like the little boy he would always be to her. He didn’t fight her embrace, just let himself be clutched tightly and cried into her hair and shoulders while she cried into his.

They sat like that for what seemed like an eternity. Crying and reaching out for Mac’s spirit to be with them.

Finally they sat in silence. Each emotionally spent and weary of the tragic turn their lives had taken.

“Do you know the last thing your father said to me?” Faith asked Liam gently.

He shook his head and rubbed his eyes.

“He told us to live.”

Liam just looked at her confused.

“Did you hear me,” she demanded louder now. “The last thing your father asked of us was for us to live.”

His blue eyes, so much like his fathers, looked back at her, wet with tears and red with sadness.

“So what are we going to do about that?” She asked him.

At first he didn’t move; didn’t look at her, but she could see the wheels moving in his head as he thought about what she’d told him.

She watched as he steeled his shoulders, arming himself with an inner resolve.

C’mon Liam, she thought as she gazed silently at him, find it in yourself to get through this baby.

Finally, he turned to her, his blue eyes awash with unshed tears, but shining with a new steely determination she knew he’d need to help him get through the difficult months and years to come.

“OK mom, let’s do it.”

“Do what?” She didn’t want to push him too hard, but she knew that for him to get through this he would need to say the words out loud.

“Live.”

“Okay,” she agreed with a relieved smile. “Let’s do that.”

They had a long road ahead of them, both literally and figuratively. She hadn’t been to Nashville in years and her mother hadn’t sounded too enthusiastic to hear from her, even after all this time. It would be a chance for Liam to meet his grandmother and explore his roots. It could be very good or it could be very painful, she had no way of knowing what direction it would go, but she didn’t have much of a choice. At this point, there was only one way she could go. South.

“Okay,” she said to herself as she pulled the car back onto the road, “Let’s live.”

Nashville had changed over the last twenty years; that much was clear. It had gone from being a sleepy little Southern town bordering on hick and definitely straddling honky tonk, to wearing a shiny new patina of country caramel class and glamour. Country music was popular again and it turned out the world had been searching for a town to shine up and make new again – it appeared that Nashville was that town, and proud of it.

On the horizon the AT&T building, the tall glass tower that the locals called “the Bat Man building” for its twin spiked antennas on top, which resembled the points on the fictional superhero’s helmet, stood at a attention, proudly defining the Nashville landscape.

The other buildings stood slightly smaller, but no less proudly, around it – proclaiming to the world that country music, honky tonks, and good old fashioned American values reigned again.

Faith hated it all on sight.

She knew that was the wrong attitude. The worst attitude. But she couldn’t help it, she never could. Nobody understood what a burden it was to come home after so many years away. All the songs that espoused the joys and memories of returning to a childhood home or setting had never grown up in Myra Anderson’s house.

She glanced over at her son, Liam, where he slept in the passenger seat next to her. He had been sleeping for about an hour, which was good because he was still waking up with screaming nightmares every night they’d been on the road from Alaska.

When would the nightmares end, she wondered?

The night his father, her husband, Mac had been killed still haunted her and she was a grown woman. It was no surprise that her sensitive, 15-year-old son was still grappling with the attack, even if he kept his vulnerability confined to his sleeping hours.

Luckily, she had to concentrate on finding her way around the strange streets to her childhood home in East Nashville, so she couldn’t afford to let her mind start its slideshow of gruesome images from that night. Visions and pictures she hoped she’d never have to see again. Even without allowing it, she could see the reel starting up again behind her eyes, deep in her subconscious.

Click. Picture one: the fender bender with a strange and sinister looking young girl, Emily.

Click. Picture two: seeing Mac standing outside on their porch in their Alaskan home with an expression she’d never seen him wear before. Concern and stark terror for their safety.

Click. Picture three: Mac as she would never see him again; sitting at their kitchen table with a beer while their son started a fire crackling in their cozy living room.

Click. Picture four: The knock on the door. The look on her face and Mac’s as they both realized their lives were about to change forever.

Click: Picture five: The screaming, the grunting, the pleas for help during the attack from the strange girls father.

Click. Picture six: And finally the last photo from that night. The sight of Mac’s broken body on the staircase and then again in the hospital bed, begging her to be happy and live without him.

Faith felt a tear rolling down her cheek as she checked street signs and patiently waited at the red light. Angrily she brushed it away and looked quickly at Liam to see if he’d noticed.

Nope, he was still asleep she was grateful to see. It was fine for her to break down, she knew it would be part of the healing process for god knew how long into the future, but she didn’t want her son to see her crying all the time. She had to be strong for him.

Besides, she told herself ruefully, there will be plenty more to cry about in the weeks ahead.

Back home with mom…how was that possible, she wondered?

As she navigated the Element through the gray streets she thought about what she would be doing right now if she was back in Alaska, in the life she’d led before the attack. Right now it was about noon in Ketchikan and Christmas was this weekend. She would be wrapping the last of the presents, grateful that she didn’t have to go to work this week, and
thinking about what to make for Mac and Liam’s dinner.

For a moment she indulged her fantasy and let herself relax into her daydream. The snow would be falling outside the window and she could have a hot chocolate and imaginer herself living in a winter wonderland.

The baby used to love hot chocolate, she remembered sadly.

With a pang of loss she touched her belly where she could still feel the bump where the baby used to be. Although she’d lost her child only two weeks before, she could already feel the swelling disappearing. Soon her stomach would be flat again and no one would ever know that a child had been growing inside her only weeks before.

She would not cry! Faith had to be stern with herself this afternoon. The road trip from Alaska to Nashville had been mostly uneventful over the last few days. Drive for 10 to 12 hours and then stumble into a motel with Liam and fall asleep. Get up the next morning with a cup of gas station coffee and do it all over again. That had been their pattern and it had been mind numbing and a relief. Nothing to think about, nothing to cry about; just drive, drive, drive.

But, now they had arrived. Their destination had snuck up on them as soon as she’d let herself get comfortable with the dreary routine, she thought bitterly. When she’d started out she’d wished they were there already and now that they had made it in one piece, she wished they were still on the road.

Just persnickety – that’s what Mac would have called her mood right now – persnickety; and he would have been right.

“Liam,” she reached over to shake him awake, “wake up honey, we’re almost at grandmas house.”

It felt so strange to call her mother ‘grandma’ for Liam’s sake. Myra had never been anyone’s idea of a ‘grandma.’

She prayed that her mother had mellowed or changed in some other good way. Liam had been
through so much, she didn’t want to burden him with a cold, unfeeling grandmother too, but the brutal fact was that she had no choice. They were broke.

Mac had meant well, but he had never been much of a financial whiz. He’d tried investing their meager retirement savings himself and he just wasn’t as talented with managing their finances as he was with
managing people and fish.

When she’d pulled out all the insurance records
in the days following his death and her miscarriage, she’d seen the truth of their financial future. Bleak.

She knew Mac had been making some investments after getting advice from some of his friends, but she had no idea the extent of his investing and losing.

Their retirement fund was almost entirely gone. It hadn’t been too impressive to begin with, only about one hundred thousand dollars, but she had been grateful of its existence every time she saw a senior citizen struggling down the street or bagging groceries at the local Safeway. Now it was gone. Her one safety net, was gone. It was a lot to deal with and she still wasn’t sure she was processing it well.

It’s going to be alright, she’d told herself, we have the life insurance. Or so she’d thought. Unfortunately, Mac had let the premiums lapse and it had been cancelled. She knew her husband, he had probably thought they would have plenty of time to renew it or save more money for Liam’s college or something. He always thought everything was “fine” she remembered, and heaven help them but it always had been…until it wasn’t.

Without life insurance or a retirement fund to dip into, she’d had no choice at all in the matter. She had to depend on the only family she had left – Myra.

Mac had no one on his side for her to turn to as an alternative. She wished it had been an option to move her and Liam and their few belongings to green Ireland and immerse herself in a cheery clan with Mac’s charming brogue and sense of fun and adventure. But, like so many other things, that had been a dream – nothing but fantasy.