Jailbird (23 page)

“Where are we going?” she asked warily as we
passed the same moss-laden cypress tree and food mart for the third
time.

“Aw hell, I don’t know,” I pulled into the
store parking lot and rested my head on the steering wheel. “I
thought it made sense but now I’m wondering if maybe I was just
stalling rather than facing Daniel Winslow… I don’t know what I’m
doing anymore, sweetie. I am just so tired…”

“Well, why did you think you were coming
here?”

“I guess I was hoping to find an old friend
of mine. She lives not far from here.”

“Have you tried looking her up in the phone
book?”

“I don’t have a Thibodaux phone book.”

“I bet they do in there,” she pointed at the
door of the food mart. I pursed my lips in thought. She had a
point.

“You’re pretty smart kid, you know that?”

“I get my brains from Conrad.”

“Ouch.”

“Can I have a dollar to get a soda?”

“Verbally abuse me then take my money; some
job Conrad’s done raising you,” I teased as I handed her the money.
I asked the cashier if I could look at his phone book while
Gabrielle mixed regular, cherry & Diet Coke into one 44-ounce
surprise.

The teenage boy sighed heavily and rolled his
eyes, but fished the book out from under the register anyway. I
tried to focus on the names in front of me and not the smell of the
boy on the other side of the counter. Someone really should explain
deodorant to him. Pregnancy had heightened my senses, so the thirty
seconds it took to scan through the “Os” seemed to take an
eternity.

I found the address I was looking for and
jotted it down on a folded map I’d pulled from a kiosk by the
door.

“Hey,” the kid protested.

“Don’t worry, I’m buying the map,” I handed
him the book. “…just as soon as I get a drink.”

I grabbed myself an orange juice from the
cooler then snagged some nachos for good measure. Gabrielle made a
face that plainly said she wanted a snack, too, so I handed her my
nachos and went to make some more.

By the time I piled our goodies up on the
counter, the boy seemed quite perturbed with me. I wasn’t sure what
transgression I’d committed, and to be honest I really didn’t care.
I was becoming ever-more apathetic and I found that a little
unnerving. All this time on the run was turning me back into the
creature I had been before my escape.

Outside, we spread our map on the hood of the
El Camino and weighted it down with drinks and plastic nacho
containers, searching for the street I’d scrawled on the edge of
the paper.

“Here it is,” Gabrielle tapped the map,
nearly knocking her drink off in the process.

“Good eye,” I commented, trying not to smile
as she quickly stabilized the soda. “So we’ll make a left out of
here and then a right at that next stoplight. Right?”

“Sure.”

“That’s comforting.”

“You’re the adult here.”

“In theory.”

She smiled at me and collected her snacks
before disappearing into the car. I tried unsuccessfully to refold
the map twice before giving up and shoving it behind my seat. It
took me another couple of minutes to stash my drink and find a
place to balance my chips; then there was the whole matter of
finding a comfortable way to sit. Gabrielle just shook her head
through the whole process, as if she was a little unsure how I
managed to function in life being as slow as I was.

By the time my seatbelt clicked into place, I
was beginning to wonder the same thing. The bulky beast I had
become was not quite as efficient as the spry creature that had
lived off roots and fish caught by hand for forty days last
spring.

And yet it was the bulky beast that was going
to lumber into the lion’s den to rescue a hateful blonde? My plan
seemed to have a few more holes than I’d initially acknowledged now
that I looked at it in that light.

The big engine roared to life when I cranked
the key. Gabrielle and I exchanged a look and set off in search of
our street.

A few minutes later, we were counting down
addresses on the little houses that passed us by. The houses
stopped but the road stretched on. We followed it, figuring there
wasn’t much else we could do.

I’d just about decided to find a spot to turn
around when a house peeked through the trees ahead. I knew without
seeing the numbers, it was the one I’d been looking for.

I parked the El Camino behind a rusty green
Pinto, sending a couple of chickens scurrying to get out of my
path. As I climbed out and stretched my back, the thick swamp air
seemed to wrap its fingers around me. Even in the dead of winter,
there was something decidedly different about the air here. I
looked at Gabrielle, but my attention was immediately drawn back to
the house by the sound of the screen door banging shut.

Chapter Twenty-Three

We stared at each other for a while, rooted
to our spot. Maybe it was the shock of seeing the other on the
outside that anchored our feet in place. Who knows?

I also couldn’t say which one of us moved
first, but we must have because we met somewhere around the
broken-down front gate in a tearful embrace. We cried and clung to
each other and cried some more. In the back of my mind I registered
the sound of Gabrielle letting the tailgate down to have a seat but
I couldn’t seem to let go of Mary long enough to introduce the two
just yet.

This woman had been my lifeline for a long
time. Now, with my new-found world crumbling down around me, it
felt really good to be in her presence again.

“I’m so sorry I left you there,” I begged
forgiveness.

“Thank you so much for getting me out of
there,” she shook her head as if to say no apology was needed. “If
you hadn’t left that night, we’d both still be there.”

“I don’t know why I ran; I just did. The
Chicas had me, and once I started running from them, I just
couldn’t seem to stop…”

“I heard. It was the talk of the place for a
really long time.”

“Please tell me they didn’t hurt you after
that.”

“The Chicas? No, they gave me a pretty wide
berth after you broke Dawn’s nose.”

“But Conrad said things weren’t good for you
after I left,” I was confused.

“The C.O.s gave me grief, but that’s because
they thought I was in on it with you,” Mary shrugged. “It wasn’t
much worse than any other day. I think Conrad just wasn’t prepared
for what it would be like in there. Seeing it on
Law &
Order
is one thing. Being there is another.”

“True,” I smiled a little at that, wiping my
eyes with the back of my hand.

“Look at you… you’re reproducing again!” Mary
held me at arms length and took stock of my appearance. “You didn’t
waste any time, did you?”

“Speaking of reproducing,” I turned and held
a hand out to Gabrielle. “This one was significantly smaller last
time you saw her.”

“And it was from a distance at that,” Mary
opened her arms to Gabrielle. “It’s good to finally meet you little
one.”

The term was amusing coming from Mary, who
was barely two inches taller than Gabrielle. To her credit, my
daughter hugged my friend and let the comment slide.

“You are two of the strangest convicts I have
ever met,” Gabrielle shook her head at both of us.

“Met many convicts in your day?” I
challenged.

“Lots. You know Conrad—he’ll leave a kid with
just about anyone.”

“I’ll be sure to tell him you said that.”

Mary ushered us inside and insisted on
feeding us even though we were both still full from the nachos we’d
wolfed down in the car. Her family surrounded us, eager to meet me
and Gabrielle. I supposed I should worry about so many people
knowing who and where I was, but I had the distinct impression this
crowd wasn’t one to turn me in.

Given our own heritage, neither Gabrielle nor
I were what you could call pampered, and we were used to living in
close quarters. But even we couldn’t get over how many people
seemed to live in this little house. It was like a clown car.
Everywhere you looked, there was a red-headed, green-eyed
O’Donnell. Occasionally, someone with brown or blond hair would
walk by and I’d feel a certain amount of reassurance that the
family tree did have at least a fork or two in it.

It was good to see Mary happy and healing.
What surprised me was how my throat constricted as she and her
family gushed on and on about Charlie. I guess I hadn’t realized
just how much I’d tried to tuck any thoughts of him out of mind.
But now he was there, at the surface, an image of him dancing in my
mind’s eye and a lump the size of a golf ball forming in my throat.
The more people talked about him, the more I absentmindedly rubbed
my stomach.

And then my stomach bumped me back. I stared
at it in disbelief for a second, and then to my complete
mortification, I could no longer keep the tears from pouring from
my eyes.

Gabrielle stared at me in worried shock. Mary
was instantly at my side, rubbing my arms and telling me everything
would be okay. Then everyone was talking at once, offering their
own reassurances. I felt like a total fool.

“No, it’s okay… I’m sorry. It’s just, the
baby moved for the first time. I wish Charlie could have been
here...I miss him… I’m okay,” I tried to formulate a coherent
sentence that would put their minds at ease. “I just really miss
Charlie.”

“You haven’t seen him since this whole mess
started, have you?” Mary’s mother, Louise, sympathized.

“I think I’ve lost count of the days.”

“Six weeks and two days,” Gabrielle quickly
supplied. The number felt like a splash of cold water. Six weeks?
Would this ever end? My shoulders sank and I sniffed. I’d waited
ten years, what was six more weeks?

“You know what? We’re being rude. You girls
need to get some sleep,” Mary straightened and declared. Suddenly
the room was a-flurry with O’Donnells as the living room was turned
into a guest room. Gabrielle and I both climbed gratefully into the
couch bed. I wanted to talk to Mary. There was much to talk about,
much to do. But now was the time for sleep. In the light of a new
day, the pain of Charlie’s absence would fade. The bone-weary
feeling of being trapped in a never-ending nightmare would ebb.
Everything would seem clearer in the morning.

“Mom?” Gabrielle interrupted my
self-reassurances.

“Yeah, kiddo?”

“You rub your belly when you miss Charlie.
Did you notice that?”

“No, I hadn’t… I guess I do.”

“The baby makes you think of Charlie, doesn’t
it?”

“I guess you could say so,” maybe if I
weren’t so tired, my brain would have kicked in a little sooner.
But I was tired and it wasn’t until I heard her muffled sob that it
occurred to me the track her mind had taken.

“You know, I think I will go live with
Conrad… when this is over, I mean,” her voice trailed off.

“Oh, baby girl,” I rolled over and pulled her
into my arms. “You know what I think when I look at you?”

“What?”

“That God can make a miracle spring from the
darkest night. And you are a miracle, Gabrielle Langston. Don’t
ever let anyone tell you otherwise. You make the sun shine for an
awful lot of people.”

“But how can you look at me and not think of
him?”

“Because hard as I try, I just don’t see him
in you. I see me. I see Conrad. I see my mama and daddy. But not
him. Trust me, I’ve tried.”

“You’ve tried?”

“I didn’t want it to sneak up on me sometime,
you know?”

“I guess that makes sense,” her tone
suggested it didn’t really.

“I can’t explain it, baby girl. But in my
mind, you belong to the Langstons and no one else. Well, except
maybe the Russells,” I smiled against her cheek. “I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

The baby in my stomach fluttered like
butterfly wings. Gabrielle sighed contentedly in my arms. It
occurred to me that life could certainly be worse.

All the same, my dreams were an eerie mixture
of fences, alligators, and hazel-green eyes that once were kind but
now seemed tired. I followed his voice down endless hallways but
the shadows always seemed to take him further and further away. It
was useless. I was just running in circles.

“Mom,” Gabrielle nudged my side and I woke
with a start. “Mom, wake up. You’re dreaming.”

“I’m up,” I assured her. “Sorry if I woke you
up.”

“It’s okay. Do you have bad dreams a
lot?”

“Sometimes more than others,” I admitted. The
first light of the sun was peeking through the canopy of trees.
There was no use going back to sleep now; surely there would be
work that needed to be done soon. I rolled over to my back and
absentmindedly rubbed my belly. The baby stirred at my touch and a
smile played upon my lips. I pictured him here. I could almost feel
his fingers glide along my skin, his thumb as it brushed my lips.
If I concentrated, I could remember the way his breath could make
electricity shoot through my body.

“You know, you could call him,” Gabrielle
handed me my phone. “You have the technology.”

“I’m trying to save my minutes.”

“Just call the man.”

“Bossy little thing, aren’t you?” I took the
phone, considering her words.

“I take after my mother. Now call him.”

“Yeah, maybe I will,” I sat up to put my
shoes on.

“Tell him to say hi to Cara for me.”

I felt bad calling so early; I was probably
waking him up. But the relief of hearing his voice made the guilt
flee.

“Hey sweetie—everything is okay,” I quickly
reassured him. “I just wanted to hear your voice.”

“Oh darlin’ I can’t even tell you how much I
miss your face.”

I wanted to cry again at the sound of his
voice. “How are you?”

“Lonely. I miss my wife.”

“Your wife misses her husband. A lot.”