Chapter Thirty-Four
Gray
She barely talked to me these days, if at all. The time between exchanges with my daughter was becoming greater and greater, like individual grains of sand pushing through an hourglass. The tower of granules kept building, my chances to connect with her fading with each grain lost. I wasn’t sure I had a lot of time with her left and that had nothing to do with us being on the run again. The odds of the authorities catching up with us were the same as they’d always been, a possibility but nothing more than that. I feared I was losing my kid, but in a different way this time.
Her head lowered, Laura sat on the edge of the lake’s dock, the great mountains of Colorado around us. Our travels brought us here, nothing more than a map and gas, but we’d stayed for a couple of weeks now, the beauty of the land more than exemplary. I hoped in a way it’d help her, remind her of a similar lake and better times.
Ripples formed when she tossed a rock into the lake before her, her shoes off and her toes skimming the water. She never swam, just looked at the water like she wanted it to take her away. Perhaps, in a way, she did, no matter how farfetched that wish could be of coming to fruition. She understood we weren’t going back, that life had taken us here and onward was the only way we were going. We’d been in more motels than I could count, this cabin at the lake a better alternative. I couldn’t afford us much and it was only a campground we stayed on, temporary, but like I said, I hoped it’d help.
I watched her, unable to even see her eyes beyond her dark hair framing around her face as she studied the water. I had a feeling catching a glance of those big brown eyes would only gut me as, like the sand, they became more and more vacant every day. Her happy kept showing less and less and her laughter had all but gone now.
I found myself in a place where I was questioning everything again, questioning what I told Alicia and everything. I said if I went back to the moment in which I had to decide to fight or stay for a life for my kid I’d make my same decision all over again. I’d run in hopes for a chance at a safe life for her, a life free of her mom and the world I came from. I still felt my decision was best, but now I wondered at what cost.
Closing my eyes, I lifted them to the sky, the sun shining around and so beautiful. This place was stunning and had everything, everything but something stable. Like all things in my daughter’s and my life they were short-lived, a temporary paradise before another escape.
My fingers squeezed on the rocking chair I sat in, and lifting my head, I called to Laura. She ignored me at first, not uncommon until I emphasized my voice. I told her of my seriousness and, eventually, she stood, dragging her feet over to me. She got there and I nudged her.
“You finish your homework?” I asked her, back to homeschooling her for now. I was rusty at it but we were making do. I refused to have her get behind in school amongst other things. I was disrupting her life so much already.
Shaking her head, she barely looked at me, my stomach raw and tossing at the glimpse of sadness I caught in her faded brown eyes. Dropping my hand, I told her to go along and do that, the door of the cabin slamming shut behind her. I waited after that, made myself until that door closed and I knew she was far enough away.
The croak in my throat I kept silent, pushing my hands into my hair. I hadn’t slept in what felt like weeks, unable to, always on, always thinking.
Always missing her and regretting.
But there was no going back now and Laura couldn’t be the only one who had to accept that. Our fate had been determined, myself the one dropping the ax.
My face in my hands, I listened to nature and the birds call around me for a while, knowing I needed to get it together, but not able to at the moment. I was at rock bottom, the inside of the barrel empty with no escape.
“Why did you have to die?” my mind called out, my hands scrubbing down my face. “Why did you have to go? You always knew what to do.”
She always believed in me, Josephine. She showed me I was capable of things I never even believed nor thought possible. She allowed me to believe in a world and the possibility of happiness, then let me have it when she dropped her niece into my life. She gave her to me and I truly believed that.
I let it all go like I had everything else, but this wasn’t like the last time, money, things, and prestige only that—things. I could easily give up my old life for a potential one of safety for Laura, but the justifications of letting Mayfield and Alicia go were few and far between. I felt I let go of my kid’s safety in Mayfield.
And I let go of my safe haven in Alicia.
I thought about calling her so many times, just letting her know that Laura and I were safe, just wanting to hear her voice.
I could hear it even now, her voice in the wind like an apparition. She called me, “Gray,” then placed her hands in my hair, her touch glorious as she buried her lips there next. I could spend eternity like that, her in my arms as I pushed them around her. She was so warm.
She was home.
“Gray?”
My eyes closed at the sound until I knew it was just too close.
It was too familiar.
I looked up and I found her, a soft pink dress moving around the width of her hips and cinching to her tiny waist. Tying behind her neck, the dress left the top of her shoulders exposed, her hair wrapped up and bunched on top of her head in a messy way that displayed the hypnotic tint of her brown eyes, dark and just slightly lighter than the warmth of her ebony skin.
My blinks consisted of many, unsure if I was really seeing her, but the creaks in the floorboards as she came near…
And then her wonderful voice again.
“Grayden,” she said, stopping in a perfect ray of the sun. It was like heaven itself had highlighted her, Josephine herself casting that glow.
I sat up, but unable to move more than that.
“Why… Why…”
Speech was that of a challenge, Alicia coming over and out of the light. Stopping, she looked inside the cabin, through the screen door and inside and her smile told me she’d spotted Laura. She always sat at the table to do her homework.
Alicia placed her finger to her lips then, tiptoeing around me so Laura couldn’t hear us. She took the other rocking chair reserved for Laura after that, one she never used. My daughter just rarely came outside these days. She could never just be like she used to.
Rocking in the chair, Alicia took my hand and I’d forgotten until that very instant what it felt like, how it felt to truly feel something, someone.
I watched her, unable to formulate words, as she clasped my hand then reached into her purse that hung on her shoulder. From inside, she retrieved an envelope and I noticed my name when she placed it front side up on the small wooden table between us.
“Grayden.”
My eyes squinted at the cursive, knowing the handwriting right away.
Nodding, she instructed for me to take it, but I couldn’t make myself.
I squeezed Alicia’s hand instead, bringing it close.
“Why are you here?” I asked her, then closed my eyes when she touched my face.
She was that warm I remembered, that feeling of her skin upon mine.
“My sweet Grayden,” she said, reminding me so much of someone else. Only one other had called me that and only one other could. Alicia touched her forehead to mine, then picked up the envelope between us, managing to do so with one hand as I couldn’t let hers go.
Leaning back, she read to me then, read to me the final words of a dear friend and I wasn’t sure how I was able to sit through it, the woman so right in her words. I had been able to love.
I had been able to heal.
After Alicia was finished, she continued to keep her voice low, no doubt because Laura was inside like I believed before.
“She called me,” she admitted, brushing her thumb down my cheek. “Laura called a few days ago. She said she was at a gas station.”
I’d taken Laura into town to get supplies, something we’d done every week. She had been gone for a long time that day, stating she had to go to the bathroom.
Clasping Alicia’s hand between mine, I braced it, knowing what I had to say.
“This can’t change anything,” I told her, but knew this time…
It’d be so hard to let her go.
It’d nearly broken me the first time, and using my hands, Alicia brought them in between us, her thumb brushing my lips.
“But it does,” she told me, trying to do the impossible, trying to tell me things were possible I knew weren’t. We couldn’t go back, my reasons standing.
Alicia’s vision panned then, her smile in the direction of the house.
“You can take her home,” she said. “Home to me.”
“Alicia…” I hated she was doing this, making this so hard for me. I dampened my mouth. “We can’t—”
“The charges have been dropped.”
My lashes flickered up, a smile I hadn’t noticed before. It was one of telling and lit up her entire beautiful face.
I touched it, my fingers roaming her soft lips. “What are you talking about? The charges dropped?”
Her head nodded with my words, that smile doing nothing to fall away. She pushed her hands on my face, making me look at her.
Making me listen to her.
She told me a story of a relentless woman, she herself trying to fix this for me. She did this despite my protests. She fought for me when I couldn’t even fight for myself.
And thank God for her.
“We found Laura’s mom,” she said at one point. “My firm and I, we found her and you were right. Once she came to her senses and realized you took her, she put out the warrant.”
I suspected as much, coming upon it when I saw my own face on the back of a gas station wall. It’d been the day I decided to leave the state and put as many miles as I could between myself and Laura’s mom.
“But she hasn’t changed,” Alicia stated, her expression sad. “She’s still into the same habits. She put the warrant out hoping she could get something out of you. It had nothing to do with Laura.”
I wasn’t surprised, the woman out of control.
“That made negotiations with her hard, but we managed. She signed over her parental rights in the end, though. We let her know what could happen to her with the allegations you had about what she’d done to Laura. She signed easily after that. She gave up easily.”
Gave up…
“She’s yours, Gray,” Alicia told me, nodding with a smile. “Laura is yours, legal and binding. All you have to do is sign the papers. She gave up all rights.”
It’d been the worst time to not understand English, to not get what she was saying to me and it took her touching my eyes for me to realize I did understand. I got what she was saying to me, the tears on her fingers the evidence.
“She’s mine?” I asked her, noticing her tears as well. I clasped her cheek, the drops dripping down on my arm with her nod.
“She is,” she said. “She’s yours.”
She’s mine…
I closed my eyes, my mind connecting me to a far-off place and a woman in a small town called Mayfield, a woman who gave me the gift of love and more homes than I could possibly imagine, her niece the most important one.
“Let’s take her home,” Alicia said, then she might have said something else.
Had my lips not met hers first.