Family Counsel (The Samuel Collins Series Book 2) (12 page)

I watched her as she looked out at the storm.  Her hair was wet
from the blowing rain and it had separated into clumps of long red strands. 
We’d have to plead insanity.  Since we couldn’t plead stupidity, it was our
only defense.  I pictured myself trying to sell it a jury: 
Felicia
Armstrong came so close to knowing her brother, only to have him snatched away
when he was at arms’ reach
.”  Of course, I’d have to explain how she and my
wife had come to know of the Faker in the first place.  And the fact that the
three of us had sneaked back in to the hospital to look for him.  That would go
down well. 

“Can I talk to you for a minute?” I asked.

Both Maddie and Felicia turned to look at me.  I pointed at
Felicia. 

“I have to put you down, Max,” I told my son, but he clutched
his arms around my neck tighter. 

“No, Daddy.  Don’t like da torm,” he whined, and he buried his
head in my neck. 

“Hey, the storm’s cool,” I said encouragingly.  “The rain’s
awesome, Max.  See, check it out.  It looks like a lake out there.”  As soon as
I said it, the prospect of what was happening hit me.  I turned to Maddie.

“We need to get out of here before the river comes up.”  The
thought of being stuck with Felicia for a week was worse than the prospect of
going to jail. 

“I thought we were spending the night,” she said.  She put
Oliver down and he came straight over to me.

“Can you hold me?”

I made a snap decision.  “Everyone, get in the car!”

“Are you crazy?  It’s pouring,” Maddie said.

“I know it’s pouring,” I said irritably.  “And if it keeps up,
we won’t be able to get out of here for a week.  Now come on!  Leave all the
stuff; we can get it later.”

“But Samuel . . .” Maddie started to say, but I cut her off.

“Maddie, I can’t afford to get stranded.  I’m in trial next
week.  Get your purse, and come on.  I’ll meet you in the car.”  I swooped up
Oliver and ran with both boys to the Suburban.  “Bye, Felicia,” I called out as
an afterthought as we ran.  I’d deal with the Faker later.

We were beyond wet as soon as we stepped out from under the
porch.  By the time we got to the car, we were soaked. Max’s pants squished
when I put him in his seat.  Maddie was smarter.  She came out under an
umbrella, but she was still drenched by the time she got in the car. 

“Oh my Gawd, it’s freezing!” Maddie squealed.  She was
laughing, rubbing her hands together.  She put the heater on full blast and the
windows fogged up completely. 

“We wanted to spend the night,” Oliver protested. 

“We’ll do it another time, honey,” Maddie told him.  “We don’t
want to get stuck on this side of the river.”

“What’s wrong with this side of the river?” Oliver asked
suspiciously.

“There’s nothing wrong with this side,” she explained, “its
just that . . . remember where we came across the bridge and threw rocks in?”

“Uh huh.”

“Whale, if the water comes up over the bridge, we won’t be able
to get back across.”

The caliche road had already washed out in places and the
Suburban was bouncing around the ruts carved by the runoff.  We were slipping
all over the place.  I fishtailed around the last curve and we had a straight
shot to the bridge.  No problem.  The water was still a foot below the bridge. 
We must have been about 30 feet away from the water’s edge when we all saw it
at the same time.   

“Oh shit!” I slammed on the brakes and threw the car in
reverse.  There was a  wall of water heading toward the bridge from upstream. 
It looked like a chocolate milk tidal wave. 

“Hold on boys!” I turned away from the wall of water and
concentrated on backing up, gingerly hitting the gas so we wouldn’t slide out. 
It was raining too hard to see if I was on the road or in the grass, but at
that point it didn’t matter.  As long as we were heading away from the
riverbank.

I vaguely recollect Maddie and the boys screaming in the
background, but at the time I tuned them out.  I’d heard of what I was
witnessing, but the reality of the experience was overwhelming.  The car
skidded sideways as the wall of water closed in on us, and then we came to an
abrupt stop.

“Go!” Maddie yelled.

“We’re stuck on something,” I said, trying to keep my voice
calm.

The water was bearing down on us.  I gave the car some gas, but
we were going nowhere.  I put the car in drive and turned the wheel all the way
to the right.  We’d have to outrun it.  I punched the accelerator and I could
feel the wheels spinning, then the car lurched forward.  The water was so close
that I could see individual pieces of debris; sticks, tree bark, a coiled up
piece of barbed wire.

My wipers were useless.  I was driving blind.  We skidded to
the right and when the tires found a gripping surface, I floored it.

Maddie was turned around backward in her seat and Oliver was
straining to see behind him while harnessed in his seat. 

“Go! Go! Go!” Maddie was yelling, hitting my arm every time she
said it.

“Is that water going to hit us?” Oliver asked.

I didn’t hear Maddie’s answer.  The wipers swiped the
windshield and I caught a glimpse of the road.  I swerved just in time.  It was
the steep hill that would take us back to the house. 

“We’ve got it!” I said to anyone that was listening, but I’d
spoken too soon.  In a matter of seconds, the river’s edge had risen 40 feet,
and it was lapping at my tires.  I could feel the back of the Suburban lifting
off the ground.  Something smashed against the car and shoved the back end
around.  I turn into it and we straightened up again, climbing up the road,
away from the water.  We cleared the river’s edge, but I kept going, well away
from the threat of a second wall of water.  When I stopped, it was because I
had to.  I parked on the road and got out in the pouring rain, and threw up in
the mud.  I was standing there, leaning over with my hands on my knees and I
felt something on my back.

“You okay?” Maddie asked.

I shook my head and hurled again.  “I almost killed my family.”

Maddie took my face in her hands and made me look at her. 
“Killed us?  Baby, you saved our lives back there.”

“Maddie, I almost drove us straight into the river,” I pointed
out.

She shook her head.  “You had no way of knowing what was coming.” 

She hugged me and I couldn’t tell who was shaking more.  We
stood there out in the rain, looking back at the raging waters we had narrowly
escaped, and it was at that moment that a thought occurred to me.

“We forgot Morgan.”

The change in subject took a second to register with my wife
and then her eyes got huge and her jaw dropped open.  “Oh my Gawd!” she
exclaimed. 

“We forgot our baby,” I repeated in disbelief.

“How could we do that?  Oh my Gawd!  We’re terrible parents!
What if we’d gotten to the other side without her?”

“She’d have been stuck over here with your cousin.  That’s a
scary thought.”

She slugged my arm.  “She would have been fine with Felicia,”
Maddie asserted.  “I can’t believe we did that.  We can’t tell anyone.  They’d
think we’re terrible parents.”

“We are terrible parents.  We forgot our baby.” 

It wasn’t funny, but we’d been through too much in too short a
period.  Between the Faker and the flood, forgetting our baby seemed to fit
right in with the bizarre happenings of the day.  Hard as I fought it, I could
feel a smile start to creep across my face.  Maddie caught it too, and the next
thing I knew, we were laughing uncontrollably out in the pouring rain.

“It’s not funny!” Maddie said between fits of laughter.

“I know,” I agreed, barely able to get the words out.

Oliver snapped us back to reality when he stuck his head out
the door.  “Dad!  The phone!” 

“Did you forget something?” Felicia asked.  I could hear
laughter in her voice, but then I’d be a hypocrite to begrudge her the humor of
the situation.

“We’re on our way back,” I said, and I left it at that.

There were puddles of mud on the floor below my feet and
Maddie’s.  On top of that, whatever had hit the side of the car had blown the
back tire.  I wasn’t about to get out and change the damn thing, so I drove on
the rim the whole way back to the house, the Suburban clunking along in
protest.

Felicia was on the front porch with Morgan wrapped up like a
papoose. I thought back to that day when Maddie had been out of town and as
much as I hated to admit it, Morgan would have been fine with Felicia. 

We’d gotten back inside, and the four of us were changing into
dry clothes.  Max was staring openly at Maddie as she pulled on her new Victoria’s Secret underwear.  Scarlet red.  He had a quizzical look on his face.

“Where your penis?” Max asked.

Maddie looked at me, obviously trying not to laugh, then back
to Max.  “Only boys have a penis,” she said.

My son looked confused.  “How you pee?”

“With my pee hole,” Maddie said, and she gave me a funny look.

“Where your pee hole?”

“It’s hiding under my hair,” Maddie explained.

Max’s head snapped up.  “Lemme see!” he exclaimed, straining to
see the top of Maddie’s head.

I had to leave the room so I could laugh out loud.  I went back
out on the porch and thought about everything that had happened.  Not only were
we trapped on the wrong side of the river, but there was a chance that we were
trapped with some homicidal maniac; someone so deranged that he had to be
sedated to the point of oblivion.  There was no telling how long it would take
the river to subside, but if it kept raining upstream, it could be a week or
even more.  The thought of spending even one night in that house with my family
while the Faker was down in the cellar was unsettling, to put it mildly. My
only consolation, and it wasn’t much, was that there was a lock on the cellar
door, so the guy was basically a prisoner down there. 

“There’s a problem,” Felicia said.  She’d sneaked up on me and
I jumped when she said it. 

“You mean
another
problem, in addition to the ones we
already have?”

She nodded.  “The cellar’s flooding.” 

I stared at my wife’s cousin.  

When I didn’t say anything, Felicia continued.  “We need to
move the Faker.”

“
We
?”

She had the nerve to look insulted.  “Fine.  I’ll get Maddie to
help me,” she said flippantly, and she turned on her heel and strutted inside. 

I fumbled in my pocket for my phone and speed-dialed Niki Lautrec.  “
I’m sorry
,” the  recorded message informed me, “
your call cannot be
completed at this time.
” 

“Well, doesn’t that just figure,” I shouted at the phone.  “Piece
of shit!”

“You owe me a quarter,” Oliver said from behind me.  My penance
for using four letter words.

“Where’s your mom?”

“With Max.  He’s trying to poop on the potty.”

“Really?”   That was a first. 

“He likes the potty.  You have to pull a long chain to make it
flush.”

I went and found Felicia before she recruited my wife to do her
dirty work. 

“I’m going down there to check it out,” I told Felicia. I was hoping she was exaggerating and that we could leave the guy down there.  A few
puddles weren’t going to kill the guy.  I mean, he was unconscious anyway. 

Felicia was right on my heels.  The light was on in the cellar,
but I knew by the sound even before I got to the landing that things were bad. 
There was a continuous stream of  water coming in from the window, trickling
like a fountain into what was quickly becoming an indoor pool.  The water was
halfway up the bottom step. 

“What’s in that IV?” I asked.

“Fluids and something to help him come down from the drugs,”
Felicia said. 

“Can you take it off him?”

“Of course, I can take it off.  I used to be a nurse.”

I turned around and stared at her.  If she’d told me she’d been
to the moon, I wouldn’t have been more surprised.  “You were a nurse?”   

She nodded.

I scratched my head.  “Okay.  Then take that thing off of him
and I’ll get him upstairs.”

I stood on the stairs while Felicia went to work on the IV, and
when she was finished, I took my shoes off and sloshed through six inches of
water over to the cot where the Faker was lying.  I could picture myself in
handcuffs before the judge:  “
But, your Honor, I saved the man’s life
.”

With a small degree of difficulty, we managed to get the Faker
upstairs and to what was to have been the boys’ room.  For someone who had been
bedridden, the guy was pretty damn heavy, and it took some ingenuity to stoop
on the stairs without dropping him.  Oliver and Max sensed something noteworthy
was going down and they were waiting at the top of the stairs when I emerged
from the cellar. 

Oliver’s eyes lit up and he bombarded me with questions. 
“Who’s that man?  What’s wrong with that man?  Why are you carrying that man? 
Where are you going to put that man?”

I was winded and I grunted.  “It’s no one.  Go see the
kittens.”

“Who’s dat man?” Max chimed in.

I looked at Maddie.  “Will you take them back there,” I said,
motioning with my head towards the living room. 

I carried the Faker into the bedroom and plunked him down on
the bed while Felicia fiddled with the IV pole.  The guy didn’t move a muscle. 

Oliver poked his head in.  “Hey!  This is our room!” he whined.

“Not anymore.  You get to sleep with Felicia.” I gave her a
look that dared her to contradict me.  Neither Felicia nor my son argued.

Maddie came in and shooed Oliver out before she approached the
bed.  “What are we going to do with him?” 

“Felicia?  Why don’t you field that question,” I suggested. 
“What
are
we going to do with him?”  I crossed my arms and glared at
her, but as always, she seemed oblivious to my intimidation techniques.