"Jude, your momma loves you already. I'm so sorry that I brought you here. I didn't know that men could be so cruel. I should have known that when someone offers you something that sounds too good to be true at just the time you need it, then it is. Your father was a good man. We got married young and pregnant right after that, but I loved that man. He was in the Army and was killed in Desert Storm. His parents offered to help me, but they didn't have any more money than I did. I was applying for jobs when I got a visit from a man. He said he worked for a company, a medical facility, and they made drugs for pregnant women. The drugs were safe and they would offer me a place to stay, food, all the free medical care I needed, and promised that I would owe them nothing when it was all over. All I had to do was take their vitamins and let them monitor me. A drug trial." She sniffed, pulling her knees up as far as her belly would allow. I'd never seen my mom so vulnerable before. "I did it because I thought I was helping you. I had no insurance, no way to pay for all the medical bills that were about to pile up, so I said yes. I knew something was off pretty quickly when they wouldn't let me call your father's parents and let them know how I was doing. And when they did the first of many amniocentesis," she rubbed her belly harder, "which is a test where they stick a needle through my belly, I knew that something awful was going on. I'm so sorry I brought you here, baby boy. I'm so sorry."
The video cut out after a few minutes of silence and the next one started. She was sleeping. The next one started and my breath caught. She wasn't pregnant anymore. She paced the room angrily, stomping and hitting the door with her foot with each pass. Finally, the door opened and a woman held a baby in her arms. Mom took him from her and gripped him to her, cooing and crying that it was all right. The woman left and Mom laid me on the bed. She lifted my little shirt and gasped at seeing the IV port there in my skin. Even from that distance, my skin looked red and angry and I cried until she picked me back up.
Mom prowled the room for a few long minutes before she stopped. She slowly looked toward the closet, her back straightening with determination. She opened the closet and pretended to look for something, but her eyes never left the panel in the ceiling. Marley gripped my arm tighter as we realized the same thing.
"That's how she escaped," Marley said in awe. "We escaped the same way as your mom."
I didn't know how that was possible, or how she got down with me, but it happened somehow.
Mom spoke clearly, for all to hear, but only we would understand the true meaning of her words. "Even your death is better than your torture."
We watched her as she rocked and fed me for hours more on the video. Finally, she fell asleep, but she didn't let go of me. She woke and held me all the while, kissing my head over and over, as she sang the same song she always sang to me. "Hey, Jude…"
The video ended and there was no more after that. I knew why. She had escaped.
We
had escaped. She and I. I just stared at the screen until I felt Marley's hand on my cheek. She bit her lip and used her thumb to wipe under my eye. I wasn't embarrassed at the wetness she found there. The woman who had sang to me gave me everything, even her own life, the least I owed her was a few tears.
Marley took the laptop away and crawled into bed with me, wrapping her arms around me and letting me wallow in her warmth as I was finally able to mourn my mom. She ran her fingers through my hair as much as she could, but I felt with my fingers a large bandage on my head. I rested my head on her chest and we didn't say a word.
We didn't need to.
Marley cries were soft and when they became harder, I knew her sadness had switched from my mom to hers. I sat up and wrapped her tightly in my arms that were never, ever letting her go. She spent all night by my side on the bed with me. Her tears eventually dried up, the guilt for the way she blamed and hated her mother was wiped away by the pages in that file.
The pregnant women, mothers, and a few of the children came to see me the next day. Even the city came and gave me a plaque saying how I'd expressed exceptional heroism in the face of danger and risked my life to save others. Marley cried some more, but it was all happiness this time. They took a couple of pictures and the mayor said he was honored to be pictured with a real-life hero.
I wasn't a hero; I was just a guy with an opportunity to be heroic. Marley's mom? And my mom? They were the real heroes. For they not only gave their lives for us, they sacrificed it willingly so that we could live.
So that we could fall in love.
So that fate could bring us to each other.
So that we could smash into each other.
So that we could live happily…ever after.
EIGHTEEN
"I don't see any abnormalities. I ran every test I could think of. You both have a higher white blood cell count, but that's not going to cause any problems. Other than that, you're both perfectly healthy."
"What does that mean, exactly?" I asked him.
"It means you probably don't get as sick as other people. Other than that…" I looked over at Marley. I'd never been sick a day in my life. Her face suggested the same for her.
I nodded and took Marley's hand as we left, slowly for my benefit. "Thanks, Doc. We appreciate it."
My leg was still not right. The skin and look of it would never be the same, they told me. It hurt to walk on, the jiggle of my muscle with each step sent shooting pain through it, but for the most part, I was pretty normal again.
When we stepped out of his office, Marley sighed loudly. "Oh, my gosh. Thank you, thank you," she said with her eyes closed.
"We can relax now." I squeezed her fingers as I opened her door. "Everything is all right and it's going to be fine."
She squealed happily and threw her arms around my neck before kissing my cheek and leaning back to hop in. I laughed as I went to the driver's side of the beautiful old Chevy truck we still possessed.
We went back to Alabama so Marley could finish her classes. And I could finish my Spanish credit. Yay…
The police were mighty happy to get the USB flash stick and the files we had. They said it was a miracle we had taken it. We copied everything of our moms' to keep and passed everything else over. They said it was a sure-fire open-closed case now, thanks to us. Honestly, I didn't even want to follow it and see what happened. I just knew things were going to work out, but we did have to go in just once for our testimony. Man, that sucked. Watching Marley get up there and try to hold it together sucked so badly. Once it was done, we walked away and never looked back.
They offered to put us into some kind of witness protection or something, but with Biloxi gone and everyone else in prison or jobless or…whatever, everyone decided we didn't need that. Besides, if we did that, Marley's credits for college would go away and I didn't have the heart to make her start over from scratch. So, we said no thanks and decided to start a new life. One where running wasn't a requirement.
I started working full-time. When we got back to town, I went and explained everything to Pepe. I told him that was why I wanted to be under the radar, why I asked him to pay me under the table, all of it. He met Marley and told me to watch out for beautiful woman. Then he blew my mind by offering me a general manager position since he fired his
ex-
wife and the position was available. I accepted and, not even a few weeks later, Pepe decided he wanted to branch out, open a few chain stores in the state, and gave me one to run since he trusted me.
A pretty nice little raise came with that and I couldn't believe it had happened to me. We were moving to Georgia and Marley was transferring her credits to UGA. She got some assistance with the tuition and we would come up with the rest. It was what she wanted and somehow, some way I was going to see it to fruition.
We had been staying in my crappy apartment for the past five weeks since we'd been back. And we started preparing to move into a bigger crappy apartment in Athens that wasn't in the college district and was on the quiet edge of town. The party scene, the college life…wasn't who I was anymore.
Boxes lined my wall, not many mind you since we didn't have much of anything, but what we had was ready to go. I couldn't wait to move.
My past was catching up to me in this town. I'd run into more than one girl who wanted to rehash or relive a time we'd spent together. On more than one occasion, Marley had been with me either walking around campus or out for groceries or dinner. The fact that they treated her as if she were invisible pissed me off royally.
Catty, petty girls.
So as Marley got her last day stuff settled at school, I was busy cleaning up and getting all the trash taken care of in the apartment.
When there was a knock on the door, I wasn't surprised. I knew exactly who it was. There was only one girl who I had been avoiding that hadn't managed to catch me yet. And only one girl that would show up at my house even knowing about Marley.
I pulled a shirt on real quick and opened the door. "Hey, Kate," I said evenly.
She bit her lip, chewing on it really. "Hey."
She heard about Marley. She wasn't herself. She wanted me to tell her it was just rumors. "I'm leaving. We're moving to Georgia. We leave tomorrow."
"We," she said wryly. "Jude Jackson has an official 'we' with someone?"
I paused to keep calm and then nodded. "Yeah."
"How come that couldn't have been me?" she asked and stepped noticeably closer. "Can I come in?"
I really didn't want to let her. She'd only ever been there twice before and we didn't spend the time talking. Gah…I pressed my palms into my eyes. "No, Kate." I came out and shut the door, coaxing her to sit on the steps with me. "I'd rather sit out here."
"You're not even going to give me a chance to convince you that I'm better for you, are you?" She hadn't sat down yet.
I looked up at her. "No. I don't need convincing that I'm in love with the girl that lives here with me."
She sat with a huff. "I would've done anything for you."
I sighed. I had been such a bastard. But this girl was an idiot in her own right. "Kate, I know that. And that was your first mistake."
She parted her lips in surprise and huffed. "What?"
"I'm saying this…as your friend. I was an ass. I never called you unless I wanted something from you. Never took you on a date, or even just to get some food. Never asked you how classes were going. I treated you horribly-"
"The sex was great though, wasn't it?" she asked, forgetting everything I just said. Her eyes were hopeful.
"Yeah," I admitted, resigned. "The sex was great. But sex doesn't equal love, Kate." She visibly deflated. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry for being such a jerk. You need to find someone who wants more than sex. If he doesn’t call you and see how you're doing or see if you wanna catch a movie or take you to your favorite restaurant or just talk and laugh at stupid things, then he's not the guy for you."
She was angry, understandably, but didn't seem as broken up as before. I relaxed a little. "Do you do all those things for that girl?"
I nodded.
I was the best kind of whipped for that girl. She never even asked me to pick her up from school, I did it because I wanted to. She never had to wonder if I was going to kiss her or ask how school went and listen to her groan about her professors when she got into the car. She never had to wonder if we were going out on Sunday morning for breakfast like an old married couple at the cheap diner and then go sit at the lake and give our crumbs to the ducks as we people watched. Or if I was going to kiss her under the big willow tree I found for her there and not care who was watching.