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“You sure about this?”
“No.” I let out a long exhale. “But there will be nights that I lay my head down on a pillow, and a few hours later I’ll wake up screaming from what he’s done to me. And when I wake up, I need to know beyond a shadow of a doubt that he’s gone, and thatIdid it.”
He didn’t say anything for a long time and then he asked, “What’s the name of the town?”
“Valley of Hearts. That’s where I was kept. Valley of Hearts.” I turned my head to look up at him. “When do you leave?”
“Couple of days,” he said. “It’s gonna take some time to plan. Gotta talk to Mateo Sanchez and the Idaho boys. What we’re about to do will be insane.”
“The Idaho boys? You’re going to involve them?”
“Yeah. A lot of them are ex-military. We need that.”
“This is so much bigger than Waco, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, darlin’. Way bigger than Waco.”
* * *
The next few days crawled by. Even with visits from the Old Ladies, I still found myself with a lot of downtime. And the problem with downtime was that you had time to think. Thinking led to self-examination.
It took you down a rabbit hole that was dark and deep. Into places long forgotten, some even previously undiscovered.
I thought a lot about my parents. I wasn’t sure how I was going to deal with them moving forward. I was already estranged from my father. And my mother had blown our chilly relationship to smithereens when she’d invaded my privacy. But now, if I reached out to them, how was I supposed to have a relationship with them? How was I supposed to explain my substantial injuries? How was I supposed to justify any of this?
And it wasn’t even as though I missed them—more like I mourned the loss of what never had been. Perhaps it was better this way. Perhaps this was how it was supposed to be. Maybe it was easier.
I wasn’t even sure I was still able to practice medicine—and becoming a doctor had been such a sore point with my mother. I couldn’t tell heranythingabout my life. Not without revealing far more than I was comfortable with.
The truth of the matter was I didn’t want a relationship with either of them. Even when I hadn’t been involved with Boxer and the Blue Angels, I didn’t particularly care for them to be in my life. I didn’t see the purpose of trying to reconstruct a bridge that had been blown up with emotional grenades. I was trying to rebuild a life; I was trying to rebuild a life that made sense to me, and my parents had no place in it.
I didn’t see much of Boxer during the days. He checked in with me via text on the burner phone he had given me, but I knew he was dealing with club business and coordinating with Mateo Sanchez and the Idaho boys about what was about to go down in Mexico.
Every night, he slipped into my hospital room, and we fell asleep watching television, his arm around me. And in the morning, the nurse on duty would find us in bed together, though she never put a stop to it.
Late one morning, I said to Boxer, “I have a newfound respect for you.”
“What do you mean?” he asked as we shared a piece of banana cream pie. I was pretty sure Boxer was keeping Pinky’s in business by bringing me and the entire floor food.
“I mean, it’s hell lying in a hospital bed watching nothing but bad TV and not being able to move around and live your life.”
“You’re ready to live your life?” he asked.
“I wouldn’t go that far,” I said, “but I think I’m ready for what comes next. By the way, whatiscoming next?”
“The boys and I are leaving tomorrow morning. Early.”
I nodded, my heart in my throat.
“We have cabins,” he said. “In the Kisatchie National Forest in Louisiana. It’s about a six-hour drive. They’re off the grid, and you won’t find them on any map. It’s private land run through an LLC by our attorney, so there’s no link to anyone from the club. While we’re gone, you, the other Old Ladies and the kids are gonna stay there.”
“Are we?”
“Yes.”
“Why can’t we stay at the clubhouse?”
“We want you all out of Waco. Peace of mind, since only the club knows about the cabins.”
