Chapter 10 #3
“So, one night, Me, Mitch, Jonah, and Sean—that was Jonah’s husband—were playing three-deck rummy.
Well, Jonah and I were…we’ll say colluding.
Some may call it cheating, but that’s such an ugly word…
” Wynn snorts. “So Jonah was feeding me the cards I needed throughout the game with the husbands none the wiser, right. But after a few drinks, we got a little sloppy in our sneaking and Sean figured out what we were up to. He jumped onto the table and pointed an accusing finger at us and yelled “You cheatin’, bitches!” in his thick Texan twang.
We all about died from laughing so hard and the phrase just became a thing we all said to each other all the time. ”
Wynn cracks up and I can’t help but join him, laughing at the memory even as the familiar pain settles in my chest. God I miss them all.
I miss those days together, our lives, how the world used to be.
We finally get ourselves under control and I tell Wynn to float the idea of the car lot distraction to Jonah too.
He promises he’ll deliver both messages for me.
After a bit, I lean back on my hands and eye him.
“So, level with me here, Landry. Is all of this real? This whole paradise in the middle of the apocalypse thing?” I gesture back towards the compound.
“Everyone thinks this place is hell on earth, but being here, that doesn’t jive.
So, which one is the truth? Are the people just brainwashed and he’s really good at hiding the hell from me so far, or… ?”
Wynn gives me a knowing look.
“You’re smart. What do you think?”
I puff up my cheeks before letting a long, slow exhale.
“I think…that he might just be a genius,” I begrudgingly admit.
The rumors of his brutality and the horrors to be found at FOS not only keep his power in his grasp, but it keeps this place from being overrun with people wanting in.
So, he’s only a monster outside of these walls or when he needs to be.
I think about all the lives he’s taken and all the things he’s done: Kevin’s son used as an example killing, the other settlement being destroyed in retaliation for an attempted attack, heads on pikes and disfigured members of his group being strung up outside of other settlements to show what happens when he wasn’t obeyed.
Was it all for show? Is he really just playing a part and doing what has to be done?
And if that’s the case…what toll is it taking on him? And why do I fucking care?
I pinch my forehead and groan. Wynn chuckles.
“Is it a perfect system? No. But it’s doing the best with what we’ve got and even though its hard to see it sometimes, it really does keep everyone as safe as they can be.”
I don’t want to believe it. I want to believe that he’s really just a sick bastard who likes being large and in charge and hurting people along the way. I want to believe that he’s evil. Because if he isn’t…
No. I don’t go there. I don’t even let the treacherous thought take shape. Instead, Wynn and I start chatting football and life back in Louisiana, passing the time until dinner.
A few days later, I see an older woman struggling a bit to carry a heaping basket of laundry in from the outdoor lines near the edge of the lake.
I supposed there are probably still dryers somewhere deep inside the hotel, but there’s no reason to waste the energy on them when the sun can do the job just fine.
I sprint over to the woman.
“Here, let me help you with that.” I take the basket and the older woman straightens with a bright smile, her sienna skin wrinkling at the edges of her amber eyes.
She’s tall and thin, with an easy grace to her movements, like a dancer.
Her hair is a deep, chocolate brown, streaked liberally with silver, and pulled into a tight bun on top of her head.
“Thank you, Mel.” My brows rise and the woman chuckles.
“Everyone knows your name, mija. We haven’t had a fresh addition in quite a while…
especially one that Austin has kept such a close eye on.
” She glances over my shoulder and I frown in confusion.
I turn to follow her gaze and find Traeger just across the lawn, watching us as he talks to Johnson.
He raises a hand in greeting and the woman smiles and waves back.
I turn back to her. Hearing someone refer to Traeger as anything but Traeger is so strange.
I’d honestly almost forgotten his first name was Austin.
Even his nightly visitors scream Traeger, not Austin.
“You’ve been the talk of the town, of course.”
Her smile is warm and inviting, her eyes kind, and her Columbian accent reminds me so much of my late mother-in-law that my heart clenches in my chest, one of those swift, stabbing pains that comes out of nowhere sometimes.
I’d loved Gabriella as if she’d been my own mother.
Hell, she’d been more of a mother to me than my own ever had.
Mitch had always joked that his mom loved me more than she loved him.
And I had always responded with “can you blame her?” I smile inwardly at the memory, but it fades quickly.
We’d lost her just before we’d found out I was pregnant, and it still breaks my heart that she’d never gotten to meet Gabby, the granddaughter that had been named for her.
But I do like to think that in whatever life is after this one, wherever we go next, Gabriella does know, and that she, Mitch, and Gabby are all together somewhere, safe and happy.
“Oh, well, I’m no big deal,” I say to the older woman with a smile.
“It is nice to meet you officially finally. Everyone just calls me Abuela.” She smiles, her eyes crinkling again, and I think that she must be older than she looks.
“It’s nice to meet you too.” I glance back to Traeger only to find him still watching. “So, uh, does Traeger not usually keep a close eye on newcomers then? They don’t all stay in the suite beside him at first?”
Abuela laughs, a deep, hearty sound that warms my chest.
“Oh no, my dear.” She leans in and adds with a mischievous glint in her eyes, “And he most definitely does not watch every new resident of our little community like that.” She nods conspiratorially towards Traeger and I just stop myself from turning to look again.
My cheeks flush and I rub the back of my neck a little self-consciously.
“Well, I didn’t ask for special treatment. I didn’t ask to come here.” I purse my lips. “Ok, well actually that’s a lie. I did technically ask, but it wasn’t like I wanted to come.”
“Is it so bad here?” Abuela asks.
I let out a long exhale and Abuela nods to a picnic table nearby, as if she can sense that this is a…
complicated question. We sit and I think about it.
Is it so bad at FOS? Though I still don’t want to acknowledge that Traeger isn’t actually the monster I thought him to be, and feel like a traitor admitting the truth, I can’t really deny it any longer. I sigh.
“No, it really isn’t so bad here at all.”
“Did you leave people behind then?”
“I did. Jonah.” I try to breathe around the lump in my throat. “He’s the reason I left. I offered myself up to Traeger to keep him safe, to make sure he stayed there where he needed to be.”
“Well, that was very brave of you, given what I’m sure you had heard about this place.”
I hike a shoulder. I didn’t feel brave for doing it, I just knew it was what had to be done.
I love Jonah more than anything, but he found Mulligan and had another chance at real happiness, at a real life after all the pain and suffering and surviving.
I couldn’t let that be taken away from him.
And I couldn’t let anyone else at The Cove suffer needlessly either.
Everyone there had…someone. I didn’t. I was the expendable one, so it made sense for me to be expended.
“So, you don’t mind him?” I tilt my head towards Traeger. He isn’t staring anymore, instead deep in conversation with a couple of FOSers and looking thoughtful.
“Of course not,” she says, looking at me like I’m crazy.
“But…you know the things he’s done, don’t you?”
“Mija, you know that the world has changed. Right and wrong, good and evil—it isn’t as it used to be. There are no clear lines anymore, everything is blurred. He has done what needed to be done to keep everyone safe, to give everyone the best chance at life again.”
“I understand that. Believe me, I’ve done my fair share of what needed to be done too, but…he’s different."
“How so?” It isn’t defensive or angry, just conversational, like she really wants to know what I’m thinking about the man.
“I’ve killed, but it was always in self-defense or to keep my people safe.
He kills just to kill. To prove a point and make people fear him.
I get that the fear is necessary to an extent, to keep everything running the way he wants it to and to keep the people here safe, to keep everyone in Haven safe, I guess, but…
” I shake my head. I know I’m grasping at straws, but I can’t quite make myself just fucking give in and accept what I know to be true.
So, I’m still fighting. I’m still going to throw everything I have at the wall and see what sticks. My guess? Not much.
“He wiped out an entire settlement,” I point out, desperate to have her confirm that he is, in fact, a horrible person, that even if it was a necessary move to solidify his place as a leader and keep the other settlements in line, that it doesn’t make it ok.
“Did he now?” Abuela says in that motherly way, likes she’s letting me discover the right answer on my own. The old woman places her elbows on the table, resting her chin in one upturned hand. I narrow my eyes at her suspiciously.
“…didn’t he?”
“He did,” Abuela says breezily, “but not in the way you think. That settlement was a true hell, worse than even the worst rumors you have heard about FOS. The men there were the worst kind of humans left, the rot of the earth. They kept women and children as slaves, used in whatever manner they wanted. Any man who stood up to the others was tortured in unspeakable ways. The people were starved, beaten, raped, tortured, forced to fight each other and fed to Bloodies for entertainment.”
My mouth falls open in horror and fire flares in Abuela’s eyes, a rage on the surface and pain just below it.
“Until Austin. He did wipe that settlement off the map, and he did deliver the heads of those men on spikes to the other settlements as a warning, but he rescued the others. He saved them, gave them a safe place where they were cared for and respected and felt unafraid for the first time in too many years. They were all too happy to keep his secrets in order to preserve the peace and safety they’d found, in order to help others have that same safety, and to keep the same thing from happening anywhere else ever again. ”
I stare at Abuela with wide eyes. Every word rings with absolute truth—truth of someone who witnessed it firsthand.
“You were there.” It isn’t a question. She inclines her head.
“That man is not what you think he is. He is not perfect. He can be vicious and cruel and lethal when needed. He does what is necessary, but the lives he takes are never without cause and never just for show, I promise you. He’s smart and calculating and shoulders far more than you could ever imagine.
He lets everyone but those within these walls think and see the worst of him.
It takes a toll,” she says sadly. “He’d never admit it, but I know that it does. ”
“I…” I don’t know what to say to that. I knew that Traeger wasn’t the sadistic, blood-thirsty dictator he likes to pretend he is, but I hadn’t realized that the people he hurts might…
deserve it? That he’s strategic in the pain and fear he distributes.
That he’s…I shake my head, not wanting to go too far down this line of thinking right now.
Abuela gives me a knowing smile and reaches for the basket, waving me off when I try to help again.
“I just needed a little break, I’ve got it now, mija. I’m glad to have met you and glad that you are here.” After another brief look to Traeger, she adds in a low voice, “Keep an open mind. Happiness is often found in the most unlikely of places.”
She winks and leaves me sitting in stunned silence with too many thoughts roiling in my head.