WALKING FROM THE small-town grocery store back toward their new home at the Safe Haven Women’s Shelter, Rita O’Dwyer felt her shoulders start to relax. Maybe this was going to be okay. For her boys, and even, maybe, for her.
They passed a little tourist stand, full of South Carolina beach trinkets and toys.
“Mom, can we go in?” her middle boy, Cash, pleaded. “Please? I want to see what they’ve got.” He was the most driven of her three sons, and she always joked that he’d become a billionaire, but his strong focus worried her a little. Today, like any other kid, he just wanted to see the toys.
She paused. Even her oldest, Sean, leaned past his brothers to look in the little shop, and of course her baby, Liam, joined in the begging. “Please, Mommy? There’s swords and stuff!”
They sounded like normal kids. Normal, wonderfully whiny kids, and she couldn’t resist their request.
She ached with the desire to give her boys a carefree childhood.
While the boys looked at the beachy souvenirs, Rita fingered a little five-dollar necklace, with a sea turtle, a shark’s tooth and a palm tree. If she could spare the money, she’d buy it for herself. A symbol of her new life, away from Alabama and Orin.
She gave her head a little shake and bent down to look at the candy. After the long hours in the car and the strangeness of setting up housekeeping in a women’s shelter, they all needed a treat. And candy was cheap.
“You don’t want that ordinary stuff, ma’am,” said the tall, stoop-shouldered clerk. “You’ll want some real Carolina pralines for your boys.” As he spoke, he slid three caramel-colored candies into a bag. “And for you...” He plucked the necklace she’d been studying from the stand and held it out to her.
“Oh no! We can’t afford all that!” What was this guy’s agenda?
He smiled with an expression of wisdom and sympathy older than his years. “Just consider it a little Southern hospitality. Y’all look like you need a lift.”
For some reason, she trusted him. Again, hope rose in her. Maybe this was all going to work out. “Thank you. You’re very kind.”
She’d just taken the bag and turned to locate the boys when she felt something poke into her side. A familiar, sickeningly strong cologne assaulted her.
Orin.
Silent terror exploded inside her, making her head spin and her stomach heave with nausea. She looked around frantically. There were Liam and Cash, fingering the crocodile heads on sticks. But where was Sean? He had to get the other boys to safety, now.
How had Orin found them so quickly? And what new punishment would he inflict on her and, worse, on the boys?
“You’re not leaving me.” Orin’s voice was a quiet snarl.
“Everything okay, miss?” the clerk asked from behind her.
“You tell him it’s fine and come with me,” Orin said into her ear, “or I’ll kill him, and then those worthless boys, and then you.”
She nodded back to the clerk, forcing a sick smile across her face. “I’m fine.” Her chest seemed to crumple inward, as if all the backbone she’d tried to build in herself, all her bones, turned to jelly.
Her dreams and plans to save her children faded, then disappeared.
Orin pulled her along like they were normal people in a hurry, jamming the gun into her side. As he reached the pickup and opened the door to shove her inside, she saw Sean, squatting on the sidewalk, caught up in his favorite battered military novel, one of the few possessions he’d insisted on bringing along when they’d fled Alabama.
There were people out on the street, shopping and chatting. Should she scream? Or would that incite Orin even further? He was shaking, his face red with fury. She’d never seen him this bad. Her head spun; her heart thudded.
Think. No. She couldn’t expect help from strangers—not without endangering them and the kids, too—but she had to get Sean’s attention. “Oh, Orin, you don’t have to be in such a hurry!” she cried in a loud, fake voice.
Sean looked up, and their eyes met, and then his gaze turned to his father. Bleak understanding darkened his eyes. Always protective, he scrambled to his feet and started to come toward her and Orin, but she gave a sideways jerk of her head, indicating that he should go to his brothers, help them first, as she’d drilled into him on the ride up from Alabama.
He looked back, biting his lip, and every tendon sung with the need to go to him, to hold him and tell him not to worry, she’d take care of it. As a mother should.
But she couldn’t take care of this. He was only thirteen, but today, he had to be a man and protect his brothers from their father. Her stomach ached like dull knives were stabbing it. She’d failed.
Sean squared his thin shoulders and headed toward the other two boys, who were play-fighting inside the store, now armed with toy swords. Tears filled her eyes to witness their last minute of carefree childhood.
Then she was shoved headfirst into the pickup truck and the door closed behind her.
THREE HOURS LATER, sore in every public and private part of her body, she fell from the truck to the side of the road, limp as a rag doll, barely feeling the gravel dig into her elbow and cheek.
“You wanted to live here, you can die here.” Orin’s voice was dim, and then the truck door slammed. There was a roar and the truck drove away.
Her consciousness was fading, her vision blurring.
She tried to move. Couldn’t.
Tractor trailers roared past on the highway, but none of them stopped. Maybe no one could see her. It was getting dark.
Liam was scared of the dark. Who would he turn to when he had a nightmare? Who would teach Cash the right values, how to be more generous? How would Sean have a childhood now?
Her thoughts circled, becoming more distant. Something burned her eyes, and she realized, vaguely, that she was crying. Crying for all the mothering she wouldn’t get to give to her sons.
A vehicle was coming, a truck. She clawed at the gravel and managed to heave herself closer to the pavement. Another claw to the gravel, another heave. She had to get help, had to get to her boys. She pushed herself up on one bloody elbow, tried to lift a hand to wave to the truck as its headlights beamed so bright that she reeled backward. Pain made her stomach roil, and blackness dimmed the edges of her vision.
She pushed herself up higher. “Hey!” she tried to call out.
The truck thundered on past her and she collapsed down again.
Her head hurt like the worst headache she’d ever had, times ten.
She hadn’t wanted it to end this way, but somehow, she’d always known it would.