Page 95 of Swerve
“Are you both okay?” he asks.
“Yes,” Emory says, her gaze dropping to the bloodstain on his side. “You’re hurt.”
“So are you,” he says.
He fumbles for the phone in his back pocket.
“Let me.” She takes it from him and taps the screen. A moment later, she says, “Yes, we need an ambulance at the Hotel California. There’s been a shooting. Please send the police too.”
Emory
“The wound is the place where the Light enters you.”
?Rumi
IN THE MONTHS following that awful night at the Hotel California, I put my focus on Mia and getting her the things she will need to feel safe again, among them the most highly recommended trauma therapist I can find.
Grace is in therapy as well. Mia talks with her on the phone for long stretches of time, and I know that they will have a lifetime bond that no one else will be able to truly understand.
For the first couple of months, Mia goes to therapy three days a week. She can’t sleep at night, and it isn’t unusual that she climbs in bed with me sometime after midnight. I don’t mind though. Each time is a reminder to me that she is safe.
She decides to put college off for a year, and I make sure that we spend all my time off from work finding memorable things to do together.
In the initial weeks after she’s told the police everything she knows, I agonize over whether charges will be brought against Mia for the death of that horrible woman. But after hours and hours of questioning, the police declare the shooting self defense, and Mia is left to focus on getting life back to normal.
And so we spend hours on the couch with Pounce, watching movies that offer little more than an opportunity to laugh and be somewhere else for a bit.
Mia loves the chickens, naming them Emma and Esther. Pounce is less fond of them, but with a good bit of encouragement from us, finally gives his approval to their presence in the form of completely ignoring them. We drive to the hardware store one morning and buy materials to make them a house in our back yard. Luckily, the fence we already have in place is high enough to keep them inside.
On another day, we decide to get out of the house and drive to Poplar Spring, an animal sanctuary in Poolesville, Maryland. It’s an hour or so away, and we arrive in the middle of the afternoon when the cows and goats are lazing under the trees in front of the main house, napping and looking as close to a glimpse of what heaven will be like as I can imagine.
“Do you remember when we came here before?” I ask Mia, looking out at the pond where dozens of Canadian geese and white ducks are dunking for bugs.
“We found that goose with the broken wing,” Mia says. “All the other places you called said she would have to be put to sleep. But you wouldn’t accept that, so you kept calling places until you found this one. They said she could live her life here with the other ducks, and she would be protected, so not being able to fly really wouldn’t matter.”
I smile at the memory. “She was so happy when we put her in with the others.”
Mia nods, her gaze on the ducks. “I guess we all need to be with those who get us, don’t we?”
“Yeah,” I say. “We do.”
Mia is quiet for a moment, staring out at an older horse grazing near the fence. “What you did for me is what this place does for the animals that come here. You wouldn’t give up until you found me. I knew you wouldn’t. Emory, I’m so sorry for all the times I made you think I didn’t appreciate you. I was horrible to you. I was awful. Can you ever forgive me?”
I feel a great rush of love for my sister and at the same time, gratitude that I had not given up on finding her.
“Mia, don’t,” I say. “You were just a girl trying to grow up. And I’ve been a sister who didn’t always handle things the way I should have.”
“You were there for me when Mama and Daddy died. If you hadn’t been, I would have had nowhere to go. You gave up your life to take care of me. And I threw that back in your face. I thought about that so many times while I was in that nightmare, praying I would have the chance to make it up to you.I spent so much time acting like I didn’t need you, Em. The truth is I always have. No one will ever be for me what you’ve been for me.”
I reach out and put my hand on top of hers. “I don’t know why horrible things happen in this life. What I do know is that we need to find a way to use what we go through to somehow put good back into the world.”
“I want to,” Mia says. “I don’t want to let evil determine what I end up being.”
“It won’t,” I say. “You’re too strong for that.”
Mia looks off across the pasture, a cloud crossing her face. “Do you think they’ll ever find Sergio?”
Just the name sends a familiar chill through me. “I don’t know.”
