Freedom's Child (24 page)

“They thought I was Rebekah.”

Why the fuck did you just refer to yourself in the third person?

I hadn’t before gotten a good look at her face. I put the flame between us. My heart sinks. If I wasn’t already sitting down, my knees might buckle below me. “You’re not Rebekah.”

“No,” she wheezes. “I’m her brother’s girlfriend. I’m Violet.”

Fuck
. The blood from my heart pools in my stomach. I try to swallow hard, but I can’t manage to. It feels like my ribs have sharpened themselves to daggers and are stabbing my heart to bloody shreds. Over and over I hear my head say
You’re not Rebekah, you’re not Rebekah, you’re not…

“I know your face,” she says. “A man visited me today, looking for you.”

I lean my head against the bark. My face scrunches with a sob, but I hide it in the dark and try to force something, something that I might say if I wasn’t so consumed by devastation. “I’ve no doubt about it.”

“Does Mason know you?”

I sigh with a forced groan. “Once upon a time.”

My name is Freedom
and I help Violet’s broken body limp into the waiting room of a hospital. I think it’s the fact that she dresses like a rich little girl that she’s taken in before the drunks and the vagrants looking for a warm spot to stay. That’s fine by me.

I close the curtain around us as the nurses become busy and leave us. I inspect the bruises on her wrists from being tied up, see the swelling of her leg even through her skirt.

“There was a cop who came by to see me while I was on my way out,” she starts. “After he left, I ran back in the house. When I came back out, they were there. They asked me if I was Rebekah. I guess they hadn’t heard the news of her being missing. And that was the last thing I remember.” She feels under her hair, winces when she finds a knot.

“You’re OK now.” I try to comfort her. But I think she can sense my disappointment, no matter how hard I try to hide it. With the nurses away for the time being, I go through the backpack that I took from Mason’s house and change into the clothes I stole from Violet. I’m sure she realizes they’re hers. That’s OK. Gotta get to the club. I’ll keep my boots on for the ride and slip on her heels once I’m there. I let her watch me leave Mattley’s gun in the backpack. Yep. I can tell in her face she recognizes the stuff. She gives me a nod. I thought she’d be a little more objecting about it and was ready to tell her to shut the fuck up and take the gun anyway.

“I heard those men talking,” she says. “You’re Mason and Rebekah’s mother….”

What am I supposed to say to that? I just stare at her without a word. What’s the point?

A nurse appears from behind the curtain. “Ma’am, are you family?” she asks me.

“I was just leaving.” And off I go. I can’t get distracted. I have to remember that Rebekah is still out there. Somewhere. I’m caught in this medium: between dragging my feet with disappointment over Violet not being my daughter and racing to actually find Rebekah. In this brief state, I must catch my breath. Think. Swallow all that has happened.

Out in the parking lot of the hospital, I skim through John’s cell phone until I reach “Mom.”

“This is Lynn. Leave me a message and I’ll get back to you soon.”

“Hello, Lynn,” I start. “I suppose I don’t need to make the introduction, you’ll know who this is. Your sons failed. You’re never going to find me. You’re never going to find my children. It’s a shame. Pathetic, really. All these years, you’ve been driven by your own hatred toward me. But I have no shame in the fact that without any effort, I could still keep you from happiness, keep you bitter.” I swallow; I think about how the same was reciprocated. “Unhappy you will stay. Bitter you will be. And as for me? I will stay free.”

Meanwhile, Peter, who still had the phone he stole from Lynn the day he left New York, listens to Freedom’s message on Lynn’s voice mail. He can’t help but smile.

Now that I no longer have to worry about the Delaneys, I can focus. Break time’s over. Now. Go get Rebekah
.

In Mastic Beach
, Lynn Delaney still can’t get herself up from the floor. It took all the strength she had to pull one knee forward, push an arm past it. This could be called crawling. But with Lynn, it’s a
project. Over a period of several hours, she finally made some headway over the carpet. And while she had the option to crawl to the front door and call for help, a choice that might very well save her life, she passed the door and went to the adjacent kitchen.

The chilled box of wine on the bottom shelf of the refrigerator will ease her distress. The water is a close second.
How long are they going to fucking be?! Not even one visitor to help!

She rolls up fistfuls of Boar’s Head ham and dunks them into the jar of mayonnaise before stuffing them into her face.
I raised a bunch of good-for-nothing bastards
. In the bottom drawer, a carton of Newports, chilled to keep them from going stale. She opens a pack and pulls out a cigarette. She’s able to reach above her and pull the cord to the toaster. She pulls it down to her side and lights her smoke off the blazing red zigzags inside.
Good-for-nothing bastards
.

I am a boy, back in the arms of this redheaded stranger in the ocean. The people back on the shore are small, faceless. I use my hand to wipe the hair from her face, her smile brighter than the sun that warms my shoulders. A sky, clearer than glass, is interrupted by a banner trailing a small yellow airplane that buzzes through the summer. “Look, an airplane with a flag!” I squeal
.

The redheaded stranger looks up, her hand over her forehead to shield her eyes from the sun. “Look, Ethan,” she says in my ear. But I don’t know why she calls me Ethan. “It’s a superhero plane with a cape.”

“Wow, a superhero plane! What does that flag say?”

The woman points to the plane’s banner and replies, “Freedom.”

“That’s the superhero plane’s name?”

“That’s right,” she smiles. “We can call him Freedom McFly.”

“Go, go, Freedom McFly,” I yell with my hands up as the plane soars over our heads
.

“Now.” Her face close to mine. “Where is your sister?”

Mason jumps up to the sound of a man shouting, “Get him the fuck out of there, right now.” The short nap makes his head pound. The beating he’s just endured doesn’t help. A stranger marches toward him on the other side of the cell. His accent’s not local.

“You guys can expect to be hearing from the attorney general in regards to this,” he says as he walks toward Mason to examine his wounds. “C’mon, Mason. We need to get you the hell out of here.”

“Who are you?” Mason asks him.

Mattley ignores him and directs his words toward Darian Cooke and Dix. “Whatever bogus charge you have him on better disappear, you understand? Tell your sheriff once he gets back that he should start looking for a new job.” He helps Mason up and leaves the cell, stopping right in front of the officers. “The same goes for you two.”

After hearing of Rebekah’s disappearance and the peculiar circumstances back at the diner, Mattley thought it best to head to Goshen Police Department to try to get to the bottom of things. He had to suppress his surprise at finding Mason locked up in there, after recognizing him from his research on the Internet. In seeing him heavy-eyed and waking from a dream, he imagines Freedom in a different way. It takes him seeing Mason in the flesh and blood to view her as more than this woman he has a crush on from back in Oregon, more than a woman with a severe drinking problem, more than the bartender at the Whammy Bar, more than a woman who lives in a shitty apartment. It takes seeing him in person to realize that she has a history far richer than anyone could imagine. She is a grieving mother. She is a woman stopping at nothing to find the children she never knew, a woman who had sacrificed everything at the risk of suffering more than he can imagine. He finds himself wondering,
Who ever thinks about the birth parents of adopted children? Adopted children everywhere, adoptive parents everywhere, even celebrities. But who the hell ever thinks what’s behind the curtain? What the context was? Who thinks of the suffering on the other end when all we see is the one side, the face value?

Through the bars, Mattley studies Mason, looking at exactly what she had sacrificed. Flesh and blood. Freedom’s own flesh, her own blood, stretched from coast to coast. And Mattley can finally see exactly what she’s fighting for, striving for, running to. It makes
sense only when he sees him. And Mattley sees no other way than helping Freedom, even without her knowing.

They say nothing as he and Mason leave the police station. Only Mason, pretending to accidentally trip into Darian Cooke, lifts his police badge from his belt and sneaks it under his shirt.

Mattley helps him to his car, Mason’s grunts echoing through the stillness of the night, their breath visible in the cold. “Where’s Peter?” he moans as he sits behind the wheel of his Mercedes with Mattley’s assistance. “Who the hell are you?”

Mattley closes the door after him as Mason opens the driver’s-side window. “I’m a police officer from Oregon; I’m helping with the disappearance of your sister,” he answers.

“Oregon…” He trails off. “I’d heard Rebekah was trying to get to the West Coast,” he says, remembering the information he received from Gabriel back at the hospital. Mason leans his head on the steering wheel, frustrated. He suddenly remembers that he’s supposed to meet Peter at the Phoenix back in Louisville. “Listen, I’m sorry, I can’t stay and talk.” He starts the car. “Send the bill for my bail to my office. I promise to repay you.”

“It’s not about the—” Mattley starts.

“Listen, if you really want to help”—he reaches into his pocket and grabs another business card from his firm, just like the one he handed the drunk girl in the jail, a sense of urgency making his joints twitch as he jots something on the back—“find Joe. He’s with the ATF. He’ll be a helluva lot more help than me. Tell him what’s going on, that the sheriff is behind something.” Mason hands him the card and drives off in a hurry. Mattley’s face heats up when not able to get a word in edgewise. There’s so much to be said, so much to explain.

But Mattley, seeing Mason’s rush, wakes to the grasp of solving Rebekah’s disappearance not just as a priority, but as a time-sensitive matter. He reads Mason’s words and gets a move on to find Joe, who should be at, according to Mason, the Bluegrass bar.

Mason leaves Mattley alone in the parking lot, and as he fades away from sight, Mason drives down the roads where the streetlights stop burning. He feels more alone than ever. Stillness, unlike anything. He pulls over and cries.

“God, if You’re there, and if You give a shit about me, help me. Help me, Lord. Hear my prayer in my hour of need.” He goes on to recite the Twenty-Third Psalm of David. “
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou
art
with me…
” The desperation feels new to him, his cries to God almost regretful as he’d just about convinced himself that God did not exist. But left this vulnerable, in praying, Mason doesn’t know what else to do.

Get a grip, Mason
. He swallows the wariness of what the future might hold, a new wave of determination, like he can, and just might, take the world head-on. He wipes away the tears, almost feeling embarrassed by them, though there is no one around to be embarrassed in front of.
Let’s do this
.

Forty minutes later, Mason enters the Highlands section of Louisville, a lively part of the city full of faux-Tudor buildings and old Victorian homes turned into apartments. A big sign stands high in the heart of the district, all black with white typewriter font that reads
KEEP LOUISVILLE WEIRD
.

The sidewalks swarm with women with shaved heads, colored hair, and steel protruding from their faces. A lot of hippie types, a lot of gothic. The corners are decked with local musicians with tin cups and open instrument cases, lots of indie rock. Mason looks at the clock when he parks in an alley. 11:45. The smell from the nearby Vietnamese restaurant fills his nostrils, scabbed over on the inside with dried blood. Parked behind a Dumpster, he grabs some spare clothes in the back, ones he keeps for the days when he wants to head to the pool hall with the guys straight after work without going home to change. He walks through the back door of a tattoo parlor, but meets with a sign:
RESTROOM FOR CUSTOMERS ONLY
.

Mason pulls out a hundred-dollar bill and holds it up to the lone tattooist as he works on the calf of another man. “In the back.” The
man jerks his head. “Wash your hands. This is a sterile crib.” Mason leaves the bill on a glass countertop.

Death metal plays from the parlor, something that sounds akin to James Earl Jones belching underwater.

Under the sink in the small bathroom painted black, Mason grabs one of the small garbage bags they use for the bathroom pail. He peels off his sweaty and bloodied clothes and puts them in the bag. He takes a birdbath in the sink, scrubs the dirt and dried blood down the drain. He pulls out a wad of paper towels from the dispenser and pats himself dry before he slips into a pair of light blue denims and a fresh, white undershirt and a brown leather jacket.

On his way out, as the tattooist isn’t paying attention, Mason takes his hundred-dollar bill back and heads for the Phoenix nightclub just a couple blocks over. He hopes that there, he will find Peter. Answers. Explanations. If anyone can shed some light on any of this, it might be Peter, if he can convince him. And if he leaves now, he can just make it on time.