I ran toward the vehicles, waving my arms. As I got closer, I stopped dead in my tracks.
David’s other car was a silver sports car.
I dove behind the nearest tree. I couldn’t believe it. David had gone back to the house, switched cars, then came out looking for me.
I took in the desolate forest all around. And what better place to dispose of my body?
Crouching on the ground in utter fear didn’t do much for my circulation. I started to shiver. I flipped open my cell phone again. Still no signal. And it looked like the battery wouldn’t last much longer in this cold.
I headed off into the woods, staying low, scurrying from bush to bush until I couldn’t see the cars anymore. Then I picked my way through the underbrush, hoping I was traveling somewhat parallel to the main road. I avoided the few patches of snow that lingered in the deep woods. All the exercise got my heart pumping. Everything but my ears felt toasty warm. I kept my hands in my jacket pockets along the way, playing with Rebecca’s fingernail as a motivator to keep moving.
Fifteen minutes or so later, I checked my cell phone again.
No signal and no battery. Looked like I was walking the rest of the way home.
I stayed in the woods until I came to the swamp. I had no choice but to cross on the narrow road. And once I was over, there were mostly open fields for the next several miles back to Rawlings.
About forty-five minutes had passed since I’d seen the sports car up at the gate. David would have figured out that I was nowhere around and left by now.
Still, I listened for sounds of traffic. I heard only the brush of the breeze against tree limbs.
I ventured onto the causeway. Pebbles scattered as I scurried toward the other side. Then out of nowhere, I heard crunching gravel and a revving engine. My heart lurched.
I threw a glance over my shoulder. David’s silver sports car was halted at the top of the rise, facing me and gunning its motor. And I was stuck on a ten-foot-wide strip of dirt surrounded by swamp.
Rocks flew behind the wheels as the vehicle blazed toward me.
I froze like a statue of a crazed gargoyle.
The car came at top speed. I could almost picture David smirking behind the tinted windshield.
Seconds before becoming roadkill, I flung myself over the wooden guard posts and into the swamp. The freezing water hit like a million needles piercing into my skin. I stood up in the knee-deep slime and gasped for breath.
I dragged my legs through the murky water toward the woods.
I glanced behind me. The sports car slid to a stop where the paved road began. The engine revved. Then the car sped off toward Rawlings.
43
My teeth chattered as I climbed out of the swamp and up the ridge. David didn’t need to stick around to make sure my body was floating in the swamp. He figured with a bath like that, I was as good as dead. Some hunter would find me next year, curled into a ball under a tree somewhere. And with my car parked up the road at the T gate, no one would even be suspicious.
And David would go around humming “Another One Bites the Dust.”
My body vibrated with cold. I could feel myself turning blue. I crossed the bridge again, safely this time, shivering in a slow jog. About a half mile south of the intersection, close to the road, sat a white farmhouse.
I set a goal to make it there alive.
Without trees to stop the wind, the cold cut through my clothes. I could barely feel my legs. They seemed to move by some power all their own. My clothing froze into a crusty shell. My lungs filled with molasses.
Not much farther. I was almost there. I couldn’t give up.
She groaned and opened her eyes. “Tisher, I don’t feel so good today.”
You haven’t felt good for two years, Gram, I wanted to say. “I know,” I said. “You’ll feel better after you take your pills.”
“I never feel better. I just want to die, Tishy.”
Then do it, already.
“I know, Gram. It’s hard.” I held her head up while she swallowed her prescriptions with a sip of water.
“Give me some more of those.” She pointed to her painkillers.
I moved the bottle behind a box of tissues on her bedside table. “Nope. It says one in the morning and one at night.”
“Give me one more. Then I can go back to sleep.”
“You’re not going back to sleep. Sit up. I’ll bring you a cup of coffee.” I propped some pillows behind her and went to the kitchen to make a fresh pot. I held back the tears as I thought about the letter I’d gotten the day before, a friendly reminder from the MSU financial aid department that my scholarship award expired that coming September if it remained unused.
Gee. Thanks for the update.
I brought Gram her coffee along with the morning paper and sat in the chair next to her bed.
“What terrible things happened yesterday, Tish?” she asked.
I opened the paper. The front photo showed a collegian in a cap and gown. It was graduation time again. I folded the paper back up and set it on the nightstand. “Nothing too newsy today, Gram.”
“Good. That’s the way it should be.” She sipped her coffee, spry as ever. “I have a hankering for some chicken paprikash tonight.”
“Chicken paprikash it is, Gram.” My life revolved around her appetite. I would give her a bath this morning, head to work at the Foodliner for the afternoon shift while a neighbor sat in, then come home with the fixings to make her special request.
And we’d do it all again tomorrow. I looked over at the paper. A corner of it showed a woman’s smiling face under the black cap and tassel. It seemed that would never be me. Grandma was still kicking up her heels at life, no matter how bad she grumped about the way she felt. If I hadn’t seen the x-rays of her lung cancer myself, I would have thought she was just throwing a hypochondriac tantrum so I wouldn’t go back to college and leave her alone. Still, she’d made herself completely helpless. I had no choice but to stay home and care for her. How could I have done otherwise? She’d raised me when my mother died. I owed her everything. And if she wanted to die at home, surrounded by the only family she had left, then who was I to deny her?
A woman answered. Her gray hair was pulled back in a bun. She wore a starched shirtdress. Everything about her reminded me of Aunt Bea. I only hoped her heart ran along the same lines.
“Merciful heavens,” she said. From the expression on her face, I knew I must look like Frosty the Snowman standing on her doorstep. She pulled me inside. Next thing I knew, I was in an old-fashioned farmhouse bathroom. The woman twisted the porcelain knobs of a claw-foot tub, then helped me out of my wet clothes.
“You just get yourself thawed out,” she said, leaving me alone.
I soaked in hot water, filling the tub with more as the temperature cooled, until the tank was exhausted. Feeling like a boiled jellyfish, I eased up out of the tub. I toweled off and wrapped myself in the terry robe hanging on the back of the door.
I walked out of the bathroom to thank my rescuer. Next to dear Aunt Bea on the stuffy Victorian love seat sat Officer Brad, sipping a cup of tea.
“Mrs. Westerman called in with a report of a half-frozen woman on her porch,” Brad said. “I never thought it would be you.”
His teacup clinked on the saucer as he set it down. He came to me and put his hands on my shoulders. “Are you okay, Tish?”