The Outliers (The Outskirts Duet #2)

“It was adorable. Turns out it happened so often that they came to deal where Critter roped off a patch of sunflowers just for the boy to take as he pleased.”

The rising water was now soaking my jeans up to my thighs. I knew had to move faster if I any chance and cutting through my restraints.

My mother looked over to me. She raised her voice above the wind which had picked up. “You were named Sawyer because of Finn. She sighed happily as if we are about to go pick out bridesmaid’s dresses and weren’t about to meet our ends in a murky swamp.

My stomach felt rock hard. I wanted to flee from this nightmare. I held back the scream that threatened to tear from my throat. “Mother why aren’t you panicking?” I managed to ask, swallowing down my fear in one hard gulp.

She smiled over at me. “I’m terrified for you and the life you and your child may never get to live. But me? I came to terms with my own death years ago.”

My mother kept talking. I kept trying to free myself. “Critter and I even joked how if we ever had a girl that she could marry Finn because he already knew what most men would never learn, how to apologize.”

Now it was my eyes tearing up as I imagined a little version of Finn causing problems all around Outskirts and fixing them with a flower and a sly dimpled smile. “How did you get Richard ever agree to the name?”

She looks almost proud when she gave me her answer. “Sawyer means woodcutter in Celtic. All I did was stretch the truth a little. And since I couldn’t flat out recommend the name to him because he’d just swat it down, I told some of the ladies in church, but I told them that Sawyer meant carpenter, like the occupation of Jesus himself. Sure enough, before I was about to give birth to you, the name had made its way to Richard. One day he announced to me that your name was going to be Sawyer, like it had been handed down to him in a vision from God himself.” She began to laugh hysterically.

“That was very sneaky of you, mother. I didn’t know you had it in you.”

She sighed heavily. “I did.” Her eyes became unfocused and suddenly it was like she was staring through me and not seeing me. Her head began to make an orbiting motion, small circles.

“Mom?” I yelled.

No response.

“Mom!” I called out louder.

Her eyes closed and she blinked rapidly like she was trying to clear her mind. “Sawyer?” She asked, and then her eyes closed and her chin fell to her chest revealing an angry looking bloody wound on the top of her head. She needed help.

Soon.

“Stay with me, Mom,” I called over to her. The water was now above our waists and still rising.

Her eyes remained closed, but she spoke again, only she sounded like she was far away instead of right in front of me. “Mom,” she said. “I… I like it when you call me that. It’s much better than Mother.”

Then silence.

“Mom, Mom!” I yelled. Hoping for at the very least another incoherent answer.

Still no answer.

“Moooooom!” I groaned as the water rose and was now at chest level. If my mother stayed in her current position she’d be breathing in the murky water within the next few minutes. “You need to pick your head up, Mom. Pick it up!” My yells turn into screams.

I pulled at the restraints tying my hands together and growled when they didn’t give yet again.

I needed to stay calm. Think. Clear my mind.

With the water rising all around us and the fear of losing my mother and my unborn child’s lives, I harnessed my panic and attempted to find some clarity amongst the chaos.

I’d grown up in a home where the religion was strict and the enforcement of both God and my father’s laws were even stricter. I’d bowed my head thousands of times and recited words of faith because I was told they needed to be said. But I’d never truly prayed. I never put any meaning behind the words I was saying. I never believed them enough to be true or had the kind of faith that others found easy to trust in blindly.

Dear God, Universe, Ma’am, Sir, Flying Spaghetti Monster,

I don’t know how to pray anymore. Actually, I don’t think I ever did. I was taught to always give you thanks and never ask for anything because you would provide me with everything I needed and to ask for more would be questioning your will.

A sin.

But since so much has been a lie I’m going to go out on a limb and assume that asking you for something I need, not want, is okay. Maybe just this once.

I’d start by saying thank you for all you’ve given me but there isn’t any time. I’m going to jump right in and offer you a bargain. Maybe it’s wrong, but I don’t want to ask you for something so big without offering you something in return.

But I have to try because I don’t just have something to lose.

I have everything to lose.

Please, I beg you, spare my mother, she’s been through so much. She’s endured the unthinkable. She deserves a chance to live her bliss. To be happy. I want her to know how it feels to live without fear and be loved unconditionally by someone who doesn’t expect anything in return. And for your generosity in sparing her, I offer you me. But only after the baby is born and safe in her father’s arms. Then I’ll go with you. Willingly and happily the second I know they are all safe and together.

Please let my family live and I’ll do anything you want.

Anything at all.

I repeated my prayer over and over again and at some point, I must have drifted off to sleep because I was dreaming of a blonde woman with a bright smile and a purple silk scarf wrapped around her neck walking toward me. But her feet weren’t touching the water, she was walking over it. Maybe I was just hallucinating. Or maybe I was already dead. I felt the panic. The very real panic shoot through my veins like a jolt of adrenaline.

If I was dead. It meant the baby was dead too.

“No! I can’t be dead. I can’t be dead.”

The woman crouched before me and smiled. Her white pants and blouse were unwrinkled, unstained. She smelled like fresh linen. She looked familiar but I couldn’t place her. “Don’t you worry. You’re not dead. Not yet anyway. Your baby is safe, but you have to listen to me very carefully.”

“Are you…God?”

The woman laughed and it sounded light and bright. Angelic. “Oh, darlin’, they wouldn’t want me running things. It would be like a two for one happy hour twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. It would be a lot more college frat and a lot less holy afterlife. You catch my drift?”

“I think so,” I answered. “Who are you then?”

She clapped her hands together. “I’m someone who is here to help.”

“How?”

The woman thought for a moment, tapping a perfectly polished fingernail against her chin. “You know how when a bad situation comes up people tend to tell you to always look ahead and never look behind you, or something like that.”