Page 62 of Born to be Wilder

Bayou Bill tinkered with the rudder for another minute until it moved with a satisfying clack-clack. Then he waded back to the boat and gave the rosary to Doris.

She took it with both hands and pressed it to her heart. “Oh, thank the Lord. Thank you, Bayou Bill. Thank you so much.”

“Happy to help, ma’am. Chain’ll need fixin’, or maybe you can just knot it back together, but the cross came through fine.”

He pushed the boat off the bank and turned it around before climbing back aboard, the muddy water not wanting to let go of his legs as he hoisted himself over the side.

He stood, hands on his hips as he looked at us. “Well, we should be ready to roll now. Do you want me to take you back to the dock, or would you like to finish the tour?”

“The dock,” Doris, Alice, and Sylvie echoed.

I looked at the widows. They were covered in mud and draped in moss. They looked like they’d been through a war. Then I looked at the open water ahead.

I grinned, walking a few steps to find my Viking helmet lying on the floor. I popped it back onto my head. “Bill, the captain doesn’t quit just because of a little setback. Let’s keep going.”

“Ugh, Marge!” Alice stomped. “I’m disgusting! I need a shower!”

I looked at her, my chin lifting. “We don’t back down just because of a little setback, Alice. We pick ourselves up and go on. You hear me? We always go on.”

I knew somewhere deep down I wasn’t talking about the airboat ride but about the bigger battle waiting for us when we got back home. A battle that she couldn’t quit, not ever, not on her hardest days. I wouldn’t let her. And today, we weren’t quitting because we had a little mud on our faces.

“We’re no quitters. Not now. Not ever. Fire it up, Bayou Bill.”

He tipped his head, a little appreciation glinting in those blue eyes. “Yes, ma’am.”

He jumped back up in his seat, and the four of us climbed back into ours.

“Doris?” I said.

Doris looked up. “Yes?”

“Put that rosary in your pocket or I will strangle you with it and send you to meet God first.”

She shrank a little in her seat, then shoved the rosary in her pocket.

“Let’s roll!” I called to Bill, slapping my earmuffs back on, then sliding my helmet over them.

I wasn’t ready for this journey to end. When it did, cancer was waiting for us back home. So I would try like hell to outrun that reality for as long as I could.

I wasn’t a runner. Never ran away from my problems and always faced them head-on like a bull in Pamplona.

But that reality crashed back into me as I glanced over at her.

I couldn’t fix this.

I’d known from the moment she’d said the word cancer that I was powerless.

Fixing things was what I did, and this was a thing I couldn’t fix.

The airboat took off across the water, the wind whipping in our hair as we pushed on, and I did the only thing I could do—let the noise and the speed and the excitement crowd out everything else in my mind.

Chapter Thirteen

I rubbed my eyes, a little crust of sleep still clinging to the corners since we hadn’t showered yet before heading to breakfast. My stomach was rumbling too hard to wait for three widows to shower and get dressed before we checked out the little diner called Gilly’s Grits I’d seen when we’d parked Bertha nearby last night.

“Slow down. My tattoo is really sore today.” Alice sauntered along behind me down the little sidewalk.

Sylvie kept pace beside her. “Mine too. Probably from all that bouncing on the airboat yesterday.”