Chapter 24: Hit the Ground Running
I did it. I actually did it. I hit her.
I knew I still had it in me, I knew it was there. But it was standing bare foot on the tile by her lifeless form, watching the blood seep from between her lips and hair follicles that finally shook me into the truth, the reality of what I'd done.
Again.
That and his voice. "Roxy. Honey?"
I was in another galaxy altogether. One where I could hear him, I could understand him trying to get my attention, but could hardly think to move or react to it. I was still falling from a peak.
"Hey, Roxanne, look at me."
I lifted my face from the scene below, felt the bat heavily swaying at my side, and then got lost in the midst of blackness, of the rich, healthy life that I saw in his eyes.
"You with me? You okay?"
He always asked the strangest things at all the wrong times.
I nodded though, "Fine."
"Good," he whispered back with a smile. "You wanna get those keys now?"
I glanced down at Catalina and saw the chain and the keys dangling off her on the floor, seeping in the bank of a bloodstream near her jaw. There they were. It registered all over again, why I had hit her. I wanted those, to unlock, him. Reaching to the floor, I tugged them off her neck and let her blood stain my palm for a second before I stepped over her to get to Mort. Once there, I worked the dripping key into the lock on the cuffs, unwound them from his wrists and the chair, and took a much needed breath.
After rubbing at the tender skin of his wrists, unraveling the rope from around his burned ankles, and checking for Catalina's lack of pulse, he startled me from my otherwise distant thoughts, by his arm hooking around my waist as he lifted me clear from the kitchen floor and carried me out of the swinging door. I held onto his neck, buried my face in his hair and actually started to cry. I didn't know why I was. I hadn't cried when I killed Lindsey and nearly Ethan too.
Why did I feel remorse over my own fear now? Because I had a family to worry about too? Because I had killed for not only myself, but for my children?
I didn't have a clue. Not a stitch of one.
Mort took me upstairs, back to the second floor, then higher to our room on the third floor, locking the door behind him as he sat me on my feet. I wobbled there for a long time, in the middle of the room, a baseball bat still in my one hand and the pinch of a gun tucked inside of his boxer's at my waist. I watched as he shuffled around me, throwing things into a duffel bag and ripping clothes from out of the dresser. And then, he came to me, with jeans and a sweater.
"Roxanne?" He dropped the clothes to the floor and bent down to look into my lowered eyes. He must have seen something I didn't know existed, just from the way he held my face in the hands, searching, pouting almost. "Baby, it's alright. They're going to be fine."
That's what brought me back into focus.
"What?"
"The kids, my parents. I know they're fine. But we have to go and find them, okay?"
"Mort the kids aren't here." I rubbed my head where a headache was starting and he brushed the hair from my eyes.
"Where are they?"
"I told your mom to drive to Sydney's. They're in Manhattan."
At this, he smiled and held my face softer, trying to coax the same from me.
"You are something else…"
I was falling in and out of focus again, only half hearing and seeing things. I knew a moment later that he was unbuttoning his dirtied dress shirt, leaving me half exposed to the cold room and light of day pouring in. I watched as he laughed and tugged the gun from the waistband of his boxers at my waist, gently tossing it across to the bed.
He whispered, "Your plan B I presume," in my ear, as he tugged a fresh sweater over my head.
I was concentrated in thought as he removed his boxers and replaced them for me with fresh lace something or other and a pair of jeans. I was there, the whole time, as he wiped the blood from the nape of my neck where Catalina had hit me, from what felt like days ago now. I was right there, as he washed the blood from my hands and helped me get my boots and coat back on. And even though I could see and feel everything, I was still somewhere else at the same time, a strange sort of waiting room in my mind, where I was waiting for the next bad thing to happen.
Already.
"We'll get on the interstate and head for your sister's."
"No," I finally stopped him, pulling at his arm. "We can't go. The police. They're coming."
They still weren't there, even though a sufficient amount of time had passed since I called, but I knew when they did show up and we weren't here, it would be hell and then some. I didn't want any more issues with the New York law enforcement out here on the lake. We'd had our fair share of that for one lifetime as far as I was concerned.
"Roxy, when did you call?"
I shrugged, "Maybe thirty minutes ago."
Mort rolled his eyes and grabbed the gun, then my hand, pulling me to the door. "They aren't coming."
"Yes, they are."
He shook his head, tossed the bag over his shoulder and tugged me down the stairs, still less than interested in the idea of sticking around for the cops who were forever trying to put him away. I didn't blame him, but I didn't want to run and have to deal with something worse. He always just wanted to run.
"If they show up and find her, then they'll end up calling us anyway. We'll tell them we went to find our kids, the ones she threatened to kill. They'll understand that."
"Mort--"
I attempted to hold back on the strength of his walking movement down the stairs, through the living room and towards the front foyer of the house.
"They're going to throw me in jail. Or both of us! Stop!"
"NO. Damn it," he growled, reaching out for a scarf from the rack at the door and tying it around my neck.
I fell against the wall as he pulled his boots on, half defeated by life, and half defeated by my own temper, my own will to defend, like all good mothers should. The tears weren't coming this time, only short, raspy breaths. Mort finished tying his boots and stepped back to me, holding my waist gently as he yanked one of my snow caps, the green one, on top of my head. His breath was warm on my face, promising, loving, and I realized then why I had done all of this, why I had left Catalina in a crumpled, bleeding mess on our kitchen floor.
"You amazed me in there. You stole my heart all over again. You know that?"
He turned my chin up higher, peering down into my eyes as I examined his carefully.
"I'm not going to let anything happen to you. I won't let them take you anywhere."
My lip quivered as his mouth came to mine, "Y-you swear?"
He nodded and held the back of my head softly, bringing my lips to match his, to be consumed by the heartache and sudden determination of his. It was like being healed and absolved of all my sins and crimes, all over again. He tasted like he'd been through the trenches of war and back, just to be able to hold me there like that, to kiss me.
I let him hold my mouth captive in a stumble for the door, all the way out onto the porch and practically down to the driveway. When we were there though, we realized that the only car was Catalina's heavily trashed Mercedes. Mort laughed and patted my cheek when he saw the already well assessed damage of non-existing windows and thorough denting. His favorite part, as I imagined it would be if he ever saw it, was the Roxy Love scratched into the hood by way of our truck's keys.
"Signing a masterpiece, were you Picasso?"
I sighed and grabbed his arm, pulling him off toward the woods where I had parked the Explorer for safe keeping. In record time, we trampled to where it sat half sunken in snow that had since fallen, and jumped inside to make our getaway. Mort threw back the keys in ignition though, and only one sound came to our ears.
CLICK. CLICK. CLICK.
"Oh you've got to be shitting me," he reverberated the keys again, forcing harder on the engine with a tap on the gas, but nothing happened. "Fuck."
He rammed his foot against the pedal only that much harder then, doing the same with the ignition. I pulled on his arm, as if reprimanding a child in a fit.
"It's too cold. You're only making it worse. Stop!"
His fists slammed into the wheel before he kicked open the door of the truck and ran out into the snow again. The hood was popped by the time I had gotten out to stand beside him, watching as he toyed with a few things I had no clue about, shaking my head at his temper the entire time.
"Fucking radiator's frozen."
He continued to mumble and growl at a distance as I slowly walked off, aimlessly I guess, for no apparent reason except to wait for red and blue flashing lights playing against all the white around us. I knew they'd be coming soon, whether he liked it or not. They were the police, and even if they weren't too fond of this lake and all of the attention it got criminally, especially by us, they were obligated to show up, eventually.
"Roxanne, I'm gonna go back up to the house to grab--"
Mort's voice was cut, of his personal devices, and it made me turn out of curiosity, to know the rest of his statement. When I did though, I realized it was cut by instant panic, not any paid attention to the frozen guts of the car. His panic was mine, in a flash.
"Running from the law so soon? I thought you Rainey's usually waited until one of you were in jail, or in a hospital bed?"
I gulped and tried to move my feet, but they wouldn't budge. Not with a pistol pointed at me all over again, by the woman, the demon I thought I'd finally beaten. She was unstoppable, and like a cat, ironically, seemed to have more than one possibility of life.
"I have to admit you make a good team. The baseball bat, the checking of my pulse, the getaway car hidden in the woods." Catalina smirked with a bloodied lip, swollen eye and forehead, and staggered toward me with the gun. "If only the darn thing had started, huh? If only you'd hit me a little harder with that rookie swing of yours, Roxy. Maybe you'd have gotten away. Maybe--"
She raised the gun and cocked it back at the same time that I heard a shuffle of boots in snow behind me, at the truck, where Mort had been. Where he wasn't anymore, because I could see a shadow of him at my side, rushing toward me the same way Catalina's gun directed all of its attention on me. I saw her finger wriggle against the trigger. I heard the sound of a rushing bullet, of a fired gun. I heard my own scream. But I never felt a bullet cutting through me. I only felt Mort.
Beneath him, I landed in a soft pile of snow, jolted, weary, but alive. He covered me entirely, hugging my waist, his face buried near my chest when I finally was able to glance up again from the ground.
"Mort."
Catalina was watching from a close distance, breathing heavily, eyeing me strangely.
"Mort?"
He didn't answer me. Of course he didn't answer me. How stupid did I have to be?
My questions were all answered when I felt a warm trickle of something on my stomach, where his was pressed to mine, unmoving and barely inhaling. My head shifted in a sideways glance to the white ground and saw it painted with droplets of red. My heart beat fiercely as I struggled to make him answer me, to make him listen and get up. All the while, avoiding the fact that Catalina still had a gun aimed toward me and that she was gasping with sobs of her own.
"Mort, get up! Please!"
"I didn't want to shoot him!" She yelled at me, the wetness soaking her cheeks like mine. "I never meant to kill him! I wanted to kill you!"
And she proved it, by trudging towards me in the snow bank, hands wired tightly on the gun this time to be sure of the aim she had. She was three feet away from finishing off the job, when I felt something poking out of the back pocket of Mort's jeans and tugged at it, thinking that it was at least a fair enough shot at survival.
What else did I have to lose now?
Her finger tapped the trigger of her gun and again, I heard that imminent clicking in my mind.
CLICK. CLICK. CLICK.
But it wasn't the truck this time. It was Catalina. Her last defense was clicking with a warning that said, 'You forgot to add bullets. Pitiful, stupid woman.'
When I heard the red flag and saw it plastered on her face, that's when I cocked back the handgun in my own hand, leveled it to where she was tripping backwards to get away, and--
BANG.
Not click. BANG.
And for decent measure, as I half sat up from under my bleeding husband, I let the trigger play under my sensitive index finger one more time and listened for the imminent, fatal--
BANG.
Catalina made it one foot before she limply toppled down into the snow a yard away from where I was pinned under Mort's weight. The handgun fell from my hands with a shake. All I could do was think of Mort then, still in my lap, still shot. I wrapped my arms around him, crying a river before I even managed to turn him over onto his back in the snow. His face was growing pale already, his nose red from the cold, but his chest faintly rising and falling.
"Mort…Mort, please—look at me. You're okay--"
My head dropped to his chest, concentrating on the tired pitter patter of his heart beneath his heavy coat and drowsiness and semi-consciousness. Tears fell down from my cheeks to mix with the blood, while my eyes attempted to avoid paying attention to the thick bullet wound mere centimeters from where I laid near his heart.
"I'm so sorry—" I choked, unable to tear myself away to help him. I couldn't leave that wispy sound of his heart beating, I was drawn to it. So much so, that it wasn't until the sound of their engines were practically on top of the scene where we laid in the cold, that I even noticed the echo of a siren and saw the twirling police lights dancing in the white fir trees.
I was mesmerized with melancholy daydreams.
