31. Aunt Daisy
Aunt Daisy
Vedder
I dove in after her.
This wasn’t how it would end.
I took a deep breath as the water rushed up to meet us, tilting so I broke the surface first. I didn’t let her go, even as the tide pulled us under and I kicked and flailed, the water around us turning pink. Blood poured from her thigh.
My damn boots were too heavy. With my arms tight around her waist and my hands clutching cloth and denim, my legs struggled twice as much to make up for my lack of arms.
I kicked to the surface, gasping as we broke through. The cold wind smacked us as we were dragged down once again, throwing us over rocks that slammed into my body. I kept her close, my larger form protecting her smaller one from sticks, stones, and rocks as we were knocked around.
I swam towards a bank, but the furious water rushed to meet the current. The closer I got to land, the harder it became. But I fought, grunting as my body and muscles ached with the heat of effort, my skin freezing from the cold.
I kicked blindly, afraid she wasn’t breathing. Terrified she was already gone. But I kicked and kicked because I had to get her out of the water. I couldn’t save her in the middle of fucking rapids, so I threw everything I had into getting us out. Until we finally landed on a bit of dirt.
Hands grabbed me by the trousers, yanking me up. I coughed, but I didn’t care. Melody was too pale.
“You’re a heavy son of a bitch!” Griff still had the back of my trousers while Daria dragged me by the collar. The side of her face was lit. Her phone.
I felt hot rain on my fevered skin as they pulled me back from the brink with Melody in my arms.
“Ready?” Daria asked. On three, they both heaved, pulling us completely up and out of the water.
My arms were wrapped around Melody’s torso, but she’d gone limp.
“Melody!” I would not lose her like this. “Melody!”
I used the Heimlich on her until she finally coughed water, but she wouldn’t open her eyes.
Her head lolled to the side. I pushed her hair from her face.
“Baby? Wake up for me, baby. Come on, darling.” I shook her, but she stayed limp.
Steam came from her nose, and I almost laughed in relief. “She’s breathing!”
“She’s been shot!” Griff reached for my belt, undoing it and slipping it off me.
Even that was a passive-aggressive fuck you from him. He could have used his own belt. But he was, even while he saved my life—and her life—a fucking asshole.
But I didn’t care.
If he saved her, then he’d be the best friend I ever had.
“Melody?” I shouted, shaking her as Griff started a tourniquet on her thigh.
“Yes? We need an ambulance to whatever piece-of-shit place we’re at!” Daria screamed into the phone. “Now! Now!”
Thunder clapped. Melody groaned as Griff cinched the tourniquet so tightly, it left a mark on her thigh. Then he tightened it one more time to compensate for her soaked jeans.
“Melody?” I said her name to wherever she was in her mind, fading and fading from me. “Melody? Melody!”
The world couldn’t take her from me.
Whatever gods there were, they couldn’t take her from me.
I’d just found her.
I held her to me, shielding her face from the rain with my body as lights, sirens, and engines rumbled. Guys in white paramedic gear tried to yank her from me, but I didn’t let go. They’d have to kill me to make me let her go.
But I let them take her while my hand stayed on her wrist, my fingers on her pulse, each little beat a reminder that she wasn’t gone. She wasn’t lost.
In the jostling ambulance, I held onto her, counting her heartbeats and breaths.
She was alive. And if she was alive, there remained a world of possibilities. One of those possibilities was Melody, healthy and bright with life, in my arms.
I prayed to every god and every deity.
I held her hand between mine, fingers pressed against my forehead as I pleaded with anything and anyone who would listen.
Save her. Protect her. Bring her back.
I promised everything to any being that might exist. I’d do anything for her to survive. To live. To pull through.
I’d rip out my own heart with my bare hands if any damn one of those sky gods made me an offer. I’d sign any dotted line, bargain with any devil.
Anything, as long as the melody continued.
As it turned out, when you were not actually married, they sicced security guards on you.
I was chased from her room, and when I lost my ever-living shit, Sheriff Whitlaw had to escort me out, threatening to put me in handcuffs. She advised me to go back to Melody’s house and take care of the terrified Miriam and Marcus.
I had no idea how to comfort kids. I’d never had to try. Other than Goose’s children, I’d never even been around them.
The storm was over, and the threat of flood was a suddenly distant memory as the blue sky peeked past the fading clouds, leaving only rainbows in the wake of its fucking devastation.
I drove the kids to the hospital at the start of visiting hours. After a few dirty looks from the security guards, I promised to stay quietly in the waiting area.
Once visiting hours ended, the kids came out, and I took them home. We had food delivered and ate on paper plates. I took out the trash. They went to sleep.
They didn’t talk. They knew as much as I did.
Melody and I argued. She walked away. Ian picked her up at gunpoint. He tried to make her stage her own suicide. She fought him, and they fell into the water. I went with her. Then we were rescued.
Miriam said Melody was barely lucid and that her leg looked gnarly. Her femur was broken. She’d be in a wheelchair for a while.
“Are you gonna stay and help?” Miriam asked shyly.
“If she lets me, kiddo. She might not need me, you know?”
She also broke up with me, technically. So I was an unwanted straphanger at this point.
Marcus never said anything. He just ate and slinked off. I tried to tell him to brush his teeth before going to bed. Did kids need to be reminded of that at seventeen? I would have needed it, but I was also an idiot, so…ya know. Maybe that was a me-problem?
“Can you remind me to bring her laptop tomorrow? She says she needs to send proof of hospitalization to her job.” Miriam genuinely looked concerned she’d forget.
She wouldn’t forget. But I did remind her.
The next day, I drove them down in Melody’s truck. Instead of waiting in the lobby, I went to the barn and grabbed my table saw, a ton of wood, sledgehammers, and the majority of my toolbox. Then I went back to her place and measured the house.
When visiting hours were over, Miriam jumped into the front passenger seat and told me Melody was up and able to eat, but the painkillers made her sleep a lot.
I didn’t comment that she could probably use the rest.
She’d been sleep deprived for a while.
We had a few more hours of light, so when we got back, I pulled out two sledgehammers. Holding one by the head, I nudged the handle towards Marcus.
“Wanna help me smash things?” I asked. Despite looking confused, he tentatively took it. I turned to Miriam. “What about you, little lady?”
She took the other.
I grabbed an axe. Then, with a giant swing, I smashed one of the banisters of the already rotting porch.
The kids helped unload the table saw, the wood, and the other tools while we took turns pummeling the porch to smithereens. We had just enough light to load half of it onto the truck.
The next day, I dropped them off at the hospital, visited the dump, and went back to load the rest for a second run to the dumpster.
Visiting hours weren’t quite over when Miriam called to say Melody was asleep. I picked them up, we stopped by a drive-through, and then they watched as I started framing the new porch.
I taught Marcus how to use the table saw, and he helped me while Miriam measured and nailed things. She was pretty damn efficient with the nail gun.
Marcus got lost in the task of cutting, measuring, and building. It was good for him. He couldn’t talk about his feelings, but the tasks were mundane enough that he could think while also being involved enough that he wasn’t overwhelmed.
The little helpers and I had the porch mostly done by evening.
The next day, I drove them to the hospital again. “Call me when you’re ready to be picked up.”
“I…don’t think I want to go,” Marcus said from the back. Miriam and I both turned to him. He looked sheepish with his hands in his lap and his shoulders hunched. “I’m not useful in there. I can’t do anything to help her. I might as well help with the porch.”
Miriam opened her mouth, no doubt to tell him he was being a prick, but I lifted my hand.
They were different kids. They grieved and processed in different ways.
I said, “Alright, son. You can help me finish things.”
I told Miriam to call me if Melody wanted food or a change of clothes.
When Marcus and I got back to the porch, we sanded, primed, and painted one coat of white paint before he said anything.
“Mel doesn’t like me much, does she?” he asked quietly as we sat drinking water on the bed of the truck.
“Why would you say that? She loves you.”
“Yeah, but it’s not the same. She likes Miriam. But not me.” His fingers played with the bottle. Was this what had been going through his head? “Because I look like my dad’s side of the family.”
I couldn’t refute it; I didn’t know for sure, but I doubted it.
We looked out onto the valley as I pondered my words.
They had a swell view from their house. We saw rows and rows of mountains and spurs.
Green at our feet, then fading to a blue-gray mountain range in the distance as the shining silver river became a ribbon flowing out of the spool of Mourningkill Lake.
“I doubt it, son.” I clamped a hand on his shoulder.
“You have to say that.” He squirmed out of my hold. “If she wasn’t forced to, she wouldn’t have come back here. She takes care of us because she has to.”
I pulled my leg up and twisted until my back was against the side of the bed. I wanted to look the kid in the eye when I said what I would say. He didn’t have to look back. But he did need to know that I was looking to him.
“I don’t have to say it.” Wished I had an ice-cold beer, but it wouldn’t help unless the kid could have one, too—and I was already too deep in Melody’s shit list to risk that.
Did not need to add enabling underage drinking to my list of sins right now.
“My Ma didn’t like me. I’m the oldest of twelve. ”
Yeah, son, let’s talk about who was less loved, shall we?
“When your sister found out your dad was gone—and not coming back—you could have been sent to your uncle’s house.
She didn’t have to be your guardian. She didn’t have to drop out of law school, but she did.
Because she loves you.” I ran my thumb along my lower lip.
“My Ma? When her new boyfriend didn’t like kids—especially a hotheaded teen shithead like me—she sent me to live with Aunt Daisy. ”
Aunt Daisy, who had other reasons to keep me in her house. None of them maternal.
“Ma didn’t send me to school, make sure I got on the bus, and pick me up after.
If she coulda thrown me and my siblings out, she would have.
But her cult was the only thing that forced her to keep a roof over our heads.
She didn’t want to be embarrassed in the eyes of the congregation, or in the eyes of the pastor. ”
Who she had the damn hots for…
“Melody loves you so much that it doesn’t even occur to her to go back to school, leave you guys behind, or leave you in the care of someone else.
And it might look like she does it because she has to, but she doesn’t.
She coulda let you go into foster care.” I shrugged.
“She loves you so much that it’s not even an option for her. ”
“Is that why you like Mel so much?” he asked, brow furrowed. The next thing that came out of his mouth probably wasn’t meant to sound insulting, but it sure as hell was. “Mommy issues?”
I almost cackled, but he looked so damn serious.
“Yeah, a little. Melody is unlike anyone I’ve ever known in all the best possible ways.” I sighed. “I like nice people. I like good people. She’s both.”
I shook my head. Teenage boys had so much angst and so much going on in their heads, but at the same time, there was also nothing between the ears.
Too thoughtful and too blind. Teens were all things at once.
On the one hand, they were kids, but on the other, they were old enough to understand what was happening around them.
“It’s all our fault.” Marcus slumped. “Why she’s not in school. Why she’s still in this town. She hates it here.”
“You’re not wrong,” I said. He was not a bad kid.
Just a bit lost. “But if you love her—if we love her—then we do what we can to get her back on the path to her dreams. It’s gonna take work on our part, the way being your sort-of mom takes work on hers.
But if we can do things for each other, life gets a whole lot easier for everyone all around. You understand?”
He looked at me, brows furrowed. I’d probably thrown too much at him.
It was getting too serious and too heavy, so I jumped off the bed.
“Let’s get to painting the next coat before Miriam calls.”