Page 14 of Savior
“You said you injured the man who attacked you?” Manning flips through his little notebook. “Smashed his hand?”
“Yes,” I say slowly. “What does that have to do with Gavin?”
“Mr. Lance has a broken hand,” Manning says.
My mother gasps, my father curses, and I wonder how much more pain I can possibly take.
Piper
As the Greyhoundbounces and groans its way through the flat of Florida fields, thatches of paradise peek through the expanse of pine and palm trees. A familiar sugar-white beach is first, much to my delight. It is already full to bursting with pink tourists and shrieking children. A postcard-perfect picture. I can’t help but sigh at the sight. I’ve missed the ocean.
Along the front of the beach are tourist attractions, put-put golf, and go carts rentals. Places to rent beach equipment, a couple of diving shops and boating places. Farther down are brightly painted buildings gathered in groups. The whole scene makes me smile, and the muscles in my cheeks protest. I’m so used to wearing a scowl.
I’ve been coasting on gut impulses and luck for the past six months, and so far they haven’t done me wrong. For a while after the night Paige was murdered I’d given in to the pressure to pursue therapy. Hours and hours of therapy at my mother’s request. It may have given me some tools to deal with the night terrors and depression, but it did nothing to help with the fear or the overwhelming guilt or the constant need to look over my shoulder.
Finally, when I realized that the anxiety was going to suck what little there was left of me, I decided to leave. I just hopped on the first bus out of Miami—the place I’d begun to consider home—and lit out to see anything and everything.
I’d stuck to Northern cities, Boston, Chicago, a brief stint in New York, hoping to lose myself in the anonymity of the crowd. For a while, it worked and the memories were crushed by the day-to-day obligations. Being on the move meant having to find a new job to support myself in each city. The old me had been a little too wild. Too reckless. Careless. Working and worrying about paying for rent and food hadn’t been too high on my list of priorities. Now, endless, menial work serves to distract me from the ghosts of my past.
My phone rings and I find Chloe’s name on the caller I.D. “I’m almost there,” I say without greeting. Chloe is the only person in the world who has any idea of the trauma I’ve been through. A couple years ago, she was taken hostage along with a couple dozen other people on a ferry and strapped with bombs. She was my sole employee at the little travel agency I’d opened in Jacksonville and my closest friend. When I started to feel the fingers of the past reaching out to drag me back, I decided to put Jacksonville in my rearview and passed the agency over to her very capable hands.
“You’re going to love it,” she says.
I’m not quite so optimistic, but I force myself to be cheerful. “So you’ve said. Repeatedly.”
“I wish you could have seen it in summer, but the country air will do you some good.”
“I think I remember saying something similar about you before I made you take the ferry from hell.”
Chloe just scoffs. “Best and worst time of my life. At least I got Gabe out of the nightmare.”
She ended up marrying her rescuer afterwards. Now the two of them and his little girl live together in Jacksonville. I make a mental note to go visit them the next time I can now that we’re so close.
“You never know, maybe you’ll meet a guy there,” she says.
I roll my eyes at the seat in front of me. “Not a chance.”
I don’t have any plans to date, but maybe I can finally relax, finish school, and make friends again. Find some way to put together the tatters of my old life. It may not be perfect, but it will be mine. And it is time I take my life back. It is time I have any life at all. Eventually I know I will have to face my family and my faults, but before I do that, I know I have to come to terms. Perhaps Nassau is just what I need to lay those demons to rest.
The thought is comforting as the bus pulls into the depot across the street from a gently lapping lake in a pewter blue. Even if I can’t make this paradise my temporary home, I can at least enjoy the brief respite from traveling. What could be better for that than some Florida sunshine? That’s one thing I missed from living in Miami. The constant sun. So much of the past few years had been spent in gray, dreary places.
Sucking the marrow from life was one seed that had been borne from tragedy and grief. I promise myself every day that I will take joy from anything and everything that I can. Life is, as they say, way too short not to enjoy every moment of it.
“I’m getting off the bus now,” I tell Chloe. “I’m going to try and find a place tonight and get settled. I’ll call you as soon as I can and we’ll make a date.”
“I’m going to hold you to that!” Chloe says. “Miss your face.”
“Miss you, too. Thanks again, for recommending me to your friend about the job and everything. If I haven’t already said it enough.”
“No need to keep saying it. That’s what friends are for. Don’t forget to call me!”
“I will. I’ll talk to you soon.”
“Later,” she says.
I tuck my phone into my pocket and grab my bags down from the empty seat next to me—two well-worn duffels I'd gotten from a second hand store. They held the outfits I'd grabbed in a hurry. Four pairs of jeans, two pairs of shorts, one pair of capris. Three T-shirts, two tank tops, two long sleeves. None too dressy, nothing like I used to wear. All serviceable and in semi-good repair.
The verdant air wafts through the bus the moment the doors open. I have to steel myself against the scent of pine as it throws me back into the memories of that night. After a few breaths, I manage to calm myself and try to enjoy the warm air. It lifts my long blonde hair and whips it around my face and shoulders. I’d grown it out in the years since I left Miami, allowing my shoulder-length hair to grow down past my waist. Not to mention I wore it like a shield. I’ll never forget the feeling of his voice as it curled around my neck, the scruff of his beard on my bare nape. The mere thought of it makes me shiver and glance around the occupants who dawdle as they disembark, oblivious to my sudden bout of paranoia.