Cody McFadyen - Abandoned

“Yes,” I tell her. “Of course I will.”

Something lifts inside me now that I know her hope will survive against her despair, and I look to the window myself, searching for the sun. My four-fingered hand finds my belly and cradles it and the burgeoning life within. For all its horror, life is filled with so much wonder sometimes, such beautiful irony. I am happy I’ve chosen life over death, whatever that means, wherever it takes me, whomever I lose. Life is monstrous, but life is beautiful.

“Let’s go see your son,” I tell her.

She smiles, and for a moment she is the sun.

EPILOGUE

CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

I sit in the chair in Leo’s room, watching his chest rise and fall. It is evening, the door is closed, and we are alone.

Another week has passed. Much has happened. Law enforcement raided the other locations. Another five women were freed. Some were thankful, but many will never recover. Mercy Lane stole something fundamental from them, some certainty about the worth of the way the world turns. Too many years in the dark.

Heather Hollister is making a comeback. She held her son and she has no intention of ever letting him go again. Social services seems as happy about this as I am. Her light grows stronger day by day.

I run a four-fingered hand over my head. I trail it down my face, feeling the scars left by others.

Who am I? Am I a result of what I decide or what’s been done to me?

I think both, perhaps.

Life rolls on. Sometimes I dream that I did shoot Mercy. I see the play of headlights on the sand, hear the chunk chunk sound of shovels against the dirt. Bonnie knows something happened but seems content to let it go, as though she can sense when she shouldn’t ask some questions. Baby is just a baby again, not a fetal Buddha dispensing wisdom from a mind-lit meadow behind my eyes.

Life rolls on. I return to work tomorrow. Alan has remained mute, and I don’t know if he’s really serious about retiring or not. I’ll have to wait and see. The promised press conference is scheduled, and I find myself ambivalent about it.

Life rolls on. Months from now a child will be born to a nine-and-a-half-fingered mother. He’ll have killers for parents, an ancient thirteen-year-old for a sister, and a collection of mildly crippled aunts and uncles going blind from peering into the darkness. What does that bode for the child? Good or ill? I have no answer to this question.

I’ve thought about Mercy a lot in relation to my wondering about the soul. Mercy Lane was taught that she was just meat, but it takes more than cutting off her breasts to make a woman a man. What drives a runner, puking, to the finish line? What makes you love a child you haven’t laid eyes on yet? What makes you saw the breasts off your own daughter?

When I close my eyes and remember Matt and Alexa and Mom and Dad, when that overwhelming surge of sadness and love and joy and grief runs through me, is that just a chemical reaction? Do cells feel love? Or is something far, far more beautiful involved?

I don’t have all the answers, but I do know this: I have looked into the eyes of Mercy Lane, and I have looked into the eyes of my husband, and I found something very different behind them both.

It’s this certainty that’s brought me here now. If we’re all just meat, if I really believed that, I’d feel no onus to keep my promise to Leo.

The machines hum and whisper. His chest rises and falls.

I’ve agonized about Leo and the choice I made. I’ve asked myself the hard questions, and I’ve wept and doubted. I’ve examined myself without filters, in the brightest internal light. It’s a process that’s humbled me, that’s given me answers but little peace.

I know now that if I hadn’t been pregnant, I would have chosen to give myself over to Mercy. I would have been willing to let my mind die so that Leo could stay Leo. I became a hunter of monsters because I want others to live. I’m driven by a duty to protect them, and I’ve been compelled by that instinct since I was very young. I don’t know where it came from—God, the soul, genetics—but I am certain of its existence. Mercy’s puzzle asked me to choose between Leo and myself, but in reality I only ever chose between him and my child.

Knowing this has calmed me, but it doesn’t help with the guilt. Neither does the truth that it would have been Leo, whatever I decided. I am here, and he is there; it’s a scale that will never be balanced.

I stand up and walk over to Leo’s bedside. I reach out a hand to touch his forehead. It’s dry and warm. The body lives.

“I’m so sorry, Leo,” I whisper.

It doesn’t matter that I would have taken his place under different circumstances. It doesn’t matter that Mercy was just playing a game. I chose, thinking a choice was needed. There is a world where he died so my child could live. I lean forward and I kiss his cheek. The machines hum lowly. One tear falls. “Thank you.”

Then I keep my promise and I send him gently into the darkness, hoping the stories are all true, that, for the good souls, the dark turns into light.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

CODY MCFADYEN is the internationally bestselling author of Shadow Man, The Face of Death , and The Darker Side. The Face of Death was #5 on Amazon.com’s Best Mystery/Thriller Books of 2007 list. McFadyen lives in Colorado.

www.codymcfadyen.com