57
Wyatt
I was floating, first just above my body, then high above, like the snow angels we had made that time only real. I saw Rachel turn the key in the lock. I saw the rhapsody wilt.
And then, I saw Rachel begin to climb down.
I was dying. And yet, it didn’t matter, for I had fought. This time I had fought. I had done the right thing, the good thing. I hadn’t let fear or even inertia stop me. I had done what I was meant to do. I closed my eyes. Even though I was bleeding, nothing hurt. I felt relaxed, at peace.
Then, there were hands on my body, on my face. Something wet. Tears.
I opened my eyes.
Rachel was there.
“My darling,” she said. “My Wyatt, it’s not too late.”
“You came back. I didn’t expect you to. I didn’t know if you’d still be able to heal me. I was willing to sacrifice, for you, for them.”
She kissed me and said, “Yes, but I’m so glad you didn’t have to.”
The room was empty. The rushing water had stopped, and the rhapsody, just wilted, was melting away. All the workers had streamed up the stairways and out the door, the Fox brothers behind them. It was as if the rhapsody had never been there. I held out my hand to Rachel. “Hey, your hair looks cute short,” I said. “And you’re pretty strong. Mind giving me a hand?”
She took mine. “Gladly.”
She helped me up and gestured to Mrs. Greenwood, who was standing nearby. “Mama, I think you’ve met Wyatt.”
She nodded. “Lovely boy . . . if a bit of trouble!” She reached for my arm. “I think you’re going to have to help me a bit with these stairs. The trip down was bad enough.”
We rearranged ourselves, one on each side of her, and started toward one of the staircases. “This one goes outside,” Rachel said.
But when we reached it, there was a girl standing halfway up. A woman, actually, about my mother’s age, with light blond hair.
“I thought . . . ,” she said, “I thought someone should come back to thank you . . . and to explain. You see I’m—”
“Suzie!” Mrs. Greenwood said. “Suzie Mills!”
“Suzie?” That had been the name of the old man’s daughter, the one who was missing.
“Of course I remember you, Suzie. You’re the one who brought my Rachel to me.”
“Yes,” she said. “I brought her to you, because, even though I was crazy, addicted, I knew it was wrong. They told me to kill the baby, and I couldn’t kill a baby. I just couldn’t. And, then, they told me this wasn’t just any baby . . .”
She started to cry.
“You did the right thing,” Mrs. Greenwood said. “There’s nothing to cry about.”
“But there is. I had a chance to escape then, but I didn’t. I could have gone home, but the drug, it had such a hold over me that I went back to it, back to them, instead of going home to—”
“Your father,” I said. She was so skinny, maybe eighty pounds, and she was much older. I wondered if he would even recognize her.
“Yeah,” she said. “My dad. We fought all the time when I was a teenager, but I know he was right. I was doing crazy things back then, and it made me an easy target. That’s what they did, chose kids who were easy targets, runaways, or kids like me who were already in trouble. And I made myself one with a lot of partying, but it was nothing like the rhapsody.”
“Won’t it be hard without it, even now?” I asked.
She nodded. “Yeah. It’ll be hard, really hard. That’s why some of the workers there fought against you. They wanted it to stay the way it was, even if they had to be prisoners.”
“But you didn’t?” I said.
“No. I’ve seen how it is. People have been getting sick, they’ve been dying. The younger ones don’t know, but I do.” She sniffed.
“It’s all right,” Mrs. Greenwood said.
“I know. I’ll have to find the strength. We all will.”
“You will.” Mrs. Greenwood stroked her hair.
“I was just wondering . . . ?” Suzie said between sniffles.
“If we knew where your dad was?” I asked.
“Yeah. Is he alive still?”
“Yes,” I said. “I saw him, just yesterday.”
“Really?” she said. “So you can bring me there, to him?”
“I can. Or we can,” I said, starting up the stairs again. I turned back to Mrs. Greenwood and put my arm around her. “And, after that, we can go home and play Battleship and watch Star Trek—all three of us.”
All of us, Suzie first, then me and Mrs. Greenwood, with Rachel behind us, started up the stairs. It was a long walk, but considering what had been going on up until then, it wasn’t that difficult. When we reached the top of the stairs, we saw that it was daylight. I escorted Mrs. Greenwood to her own car, then, after I ascertained that she was okay to drive it, I took Rachel and Suzie to Josh’s old truck.
We drove east, into the sunrise.