Forty-Two Grace
I have what I need. It may not be enough evidence for the FBI, but it’s enough for my court. Regardless, I compile what I have onto a flash drive: the things I know, the things I’ve found (illegally), and the things I suspect.
I still don’t have proof of a lot of things.
No proof that Frank was arranging to have me killed.
I only have Wyatt’s word. No proof that he killed Morgan and Brooke.
No proof that he killed my dad. But that’s for the FBI to figure out.
I can’t do it all. I do have some proof of the drugs the police have been stealing and planting.
I make sure to add the audio clip from Garrett Wilson’s apartment.
Frank will pay for his crimes. If the FBI can pin them to him in an official way, good for them. But either way, he will go down for the things he’s done. I need to get the USB to Wyatt before everything else happens.
But before that, I need to make a phone call.
I dial the familiar number and pray for an answer. It’s late. But not too late. Not for a college kid.
She answers on the third ring.
“Hi, Mom. What’s up?”
“Hi, baby. How was your day today?”
She sighs dramatically, and I smile through teary eyes. I miss her so much.
“It was okay, I guess. I got a C on that paper I was telling you about. I seriously do not know what this professor wants from me. I can’t get higher than a C.”
“Did you make an appointment with him like I told you to?”
She admits that she didn’t but swears she will in the morning. She reminds me of Geny that way. I was good in school but only because it was expected. By my parents and by my coaches. It would genuinely bother Geny if she didn’t get a perfect grade. Greer is like that too.
“Enough about me,” she says. “How’s life back home?”
“Good,” I say. “Boring without you.”
She laughs. “Because I’m such a riot. I’ll be home for winter break though. It’s coming soon.”
I fight back the tears that push even harder to come out. I might not be home for her winter break. She might be visiting me through a window of thick plastic. Or do we get to sit at a table together? I don’t know. The movies are always different.
“I’ll let you get back to whatever you’re doing. I just wanted to check in. I love you, G. So much.”
“Love you, Mom. Bye.”
She hangs up and I press the phone to my heart and finally let myself sob.
Greer is my entire world and my reason for everything.
When I found out I was pregnant with her, I was alone and afraid in a motel a few hours away from home.
I was trying to figure out how and where to live for the next six years.
And then that second pink line showed up and changed everything.
I couldn’t go back. Not then and not in six years.
I knew without a doubt she was Frank’s. At the time, the thought made me sick.
But the timing was undeniable. There was never a doubt in my mind that I would keep her.
And so I knew, I couldn’t go back and let Frank find out about her.
He’d take her from me one way or another.
Either by trying to get rid of me or taking custody of her.
I wouldn’t let that happen. And so I grew up more in eight months than I had in nineteen years. My baby wouldn’t suffer because her mom was an idiot kid who got herself into a bad situation. My baby wouldn’t know of any of this.
I turned twenty a week before Greer was born.
I wished so bad I could talk to my sister.
Tell her happy birthday. Going through labor alone in the hospital was the worst experience I’d ever had.
But right after was by far the best. When they laid my chubby and swollen baby on my chest, I knew nothing would ever be the same. And nothing was.
She’s why I can never truly regret what happened. Why I can’t be fully sorry I didn’t come back. It was all for her and I’d do it all again, even knowing everything that would follow. I’d do it again in a heartbeat.
It was only after having Greer that I stopped blaming myself so much for what happened with Frank. To see my little girl and her blind trust and beautiful innocence . . . it made me see myself differently.
I was just a girl, and I trusted a man who was a friend of my family. He was the officer assigned to keep us safe at school. The sheriff who was voted to keep our town safe. He was an adult who worked slowly and methodically to put himself in the right position to take advantage of me.
And now I’m going to take his life for taking mine and every other person’s life he ruined.