“You cannot stop us.” A thundering voice escapes her, deep, unmistakably inhuman. The voice of a thousand men, haunting, interwoven like rushing waters. “You cannot. Reagan must go home to her ancestors.” Ota—that thing staggers toward my baby girl. “Her true father awaits.” A horrible maniacal laugh escapes from that misshapen gaping mouth.
Something in me snaps when I hear it—see it taunting my child’s life that way. James has loved this child from the moment we found out I was expecting. Like a flood, all of the memories, our first sonogram, our careful wedding night, the birth of our precious child. James and I went through it all. And then the resentment grew so great because I knew that I should tell him, and then not knowing how. I became cold toward him, a festering wound. Yes, we had problems, and we both handled them poorly. Him worse than I ever did. But nobody threatens my family.
I lunge for Ota and capture her in my arms, the laughter of thousands of hyenas echoes through me like a tuning fork. I wrap my fingers around her neck and squeeze as her body writhes and chokes beneath me. My thumbs inch their way up until they land over those dark soulless eyes and I press into them with all of my strength, her body kicking and bucking beneath me until I gouge those demonic orbs out, the blood on my hands so real, so very convincing.
James plucks the gyrating girl from my arms, and in one herculean move he hurls her across the room, crashing her through the window, and we hurry to see her hit the frozen ground beneath with a slap before detonating into dozens of small black sparrows. One by one they float to the sky, dissipating to nothing, disappearing to some other worldly plane that I hope to never visit.
Reagan latches around my leg and I scoop her up. James wraps an arm around the two of us.
There’s a stillness filling the room. A beautiful silence that feels full of peace and dare I say, joy.
“It’s over?” I shake my head in disbelief. I think deep down we both realize it’s far from that.
James pulls me up by the chin, and I see his tear-slicked face. “How about we start all over again?”
“I think that’s the perfect place to begin.”
He holds us tight as the iced air breezes in and washes us clean, breathes its blessing of renewal over our lives.
We are starting anew.
The doorbell rings downstairs and the three of us walk down together.
16
James
Rich and McCafferty are not impressed with our efforts to explain away Reagan’s reappearance with the truth—most of the truth anyhow. McCafferty isn’t buying the old Indian curse. She needs hard evidence with logical explanations behind it, a drifter, your run-of-the-mill psychotic serial killer, a demented grandfather whose legalistic ways ultimately did him in. No, I didn’t give her my father. There was no point. I let Rich discover the body as he circled the premises. My father’s heart stopped at some point in the night. He was found sprawled out, face up to the sky, eyes wide open, mouth agape, arms strung out. My father had hung himself on the cross of his own disabling judgment. His impossible rules had already taken the life of so many, and now they had finally taken his.
After the first twenty-four hours of having Reagan home, the media circus died down, snuffed out like a flame that we never wanted burning in the first place. The public’s opinion of us remains the same, at least for now. Allison and I were money-grubbing schemers who made up a second girl—profited off the false kidnapping of our own daughter. My father’s storage facility was exposed, but the public doesn’t believe for a second that Allison and I didn’t have a hand in it. They say Reagan is too well-adjusted for a child who was left alone in a locker for the better part of two months. But she wasn’t alone. My father visited daily. There was a stash of sedatives found that he used to knock her out when he wasn’t around. It must have been hell. He could have killed her. I’m shocked he didn’t for the sport of it. After all, he had a record to maintain. I’m not sure about Monica’s role. But the rest of the time without my father—it must have been so very hard for Reagan.
Allison, Reagan, and I drive down to the Concordia cemetery, to the inadvertent family plot where my father has a prepaid hole in the ground waiting for him. We’ve gone through the motions of planning a funeral, the wheels of which my father had started turning over thirty years ago. A part of me doesn’t know what to make out of the fact that my dad had paid for and planned his demise for over three decades. My father always was a planner. The only regret here being, he should have gone first.
We pull along the curb in the middle of the cemetery, with all of its winding roads, its birch and aspens already bald as we head into winter. The mound of dirt waiting to cover my father’s casket sits right there next to him in his new two-by-six cell—one he will never escape from. A small crowd has gathered, mostly reporters, old colleagues, talking amongst themselves.
I reach over and give Allison’s hand a squeeze. “You okay?”
“I’m okay if you are.” Her milk white teeth graze over her lips. So beautiful. It’s the only thought I have of my wife lately. So perfectly beautiful and she’s all mine.
“Let’s do this.” We deliberated briefly on how to go about it, but at the end of the day it wasn’t about me or our anger toward that demented fool who brought so much tragedy to so many. It was about Reagan. She loved him. At the moment, she doesn’t know any better. She wants to say one final goodnight to Papa. And I’m sure one day, when we spell out exactly what kind of a monster he really was, she’ll appreciate knowing the location of his grave so she can swing by once in a while and spit on it.
We get out and I take Reagan up in my arms. My daughter. I may not be able to say she is flesh from my flesh, but I feel it even in that way. No one will ever take Reagan away from me again. She is mine, through and through. Allison heads over to say hello to her parents. Her mother, another psychotic in a long line of psychotics fate has surrounded us with—and she accepts her with open arms.
“Auntie Mony!” Reagan’s miniature feet swim near my legs as she points to a familiar brunette.
I glare over at Monica with her thick black coat, matching dark hat with its widow veil, dark sunglasses that eat up half her face. My father mentioned she helped out—at least in the beginning. She’s just as culpable in my eyes.
Reagan bucks as if spurring me in that direction. “Auntie Mony let me stay at her house until Papa took me to our great adventure. She has a puppy. I want a puppy, Daddy.” Her fragile arms wrap tight around my shoulders. “I love you.” Her tiny features morph into a mask of worry. “I don’t want any more big adventures. Next time you and Mommy need to leave—please take me with you.” Her voice breaks with a whimper and I pull her in close, my hot breath in her hair.
“I will never leave you. You will never spend the night alone again.”
“I was never alone, Daddy.” Her frail hand slaps against the side of my face as she grips me. Her eyes sparkle into mine, and I don’t have the heart to delve too deep into the trauma we just pulled her out of, but my blood runs cold at who it could have been. “Auntie Mony taught me to play Old Maid. She said she loved that game when she was a little girl my age. And jacks. We played lots and lots of jacks.”
My rage shifts toward Monica and the dark ludicrous path she followed my father down.
I set Reagan down on the damp grass. “Why don’t you head over to your mom and say hi to your grandparents?” She takes off without any further prompting, but I head over to the merry widow, a grin on those bright red-stained lips of hers. “Don’t bother smiling at me. You will never get one out of me again.”
“That’s harsh.” She shudders as she looks to my father’s baby blue casket. Blue. Of all the colors of the rainbow, my father chose something youthful, far too innocent to encapsulate himself in forever.