Savage (Daughters of the Jaguar) (18 page)

“How is your mother? Any news?” I asked while waiting for my food to be heated.

She nodded. “She will be home next week if she keeps improving, the doctor said today. There seem to have been no damage to her brain or anything vital, so that is great news.”

“It is,” I said and looked at her. She was shoveling food into her mouth with her fork while standing at the breakfast counter. She turned a page in her magazine. The microwave beeped and I took my plate out. I sat at the table and looked at all the empty chairs that were never used. I thought about dinners in my childhood home back when my mother had still been alive. She would have loved Aiyana and her family. She would have enjoyed the food, the music and happiness and would have known how to appreciate their way of living and their way of seeing things. She would understand. And I knew she would have adored Aiyana. I felt sad that they would never meet. My father would in no way be able to accept her or her family. He would rather see me end up with a girl like Heather who came from a decent and well-mannered family. I hated those words. Decent and well-mannered. They made me sick to my stomach. I looked at Heather, who was still flipping through her magazine. This was the kind of life my dad wanted me to have. This kind of house that I would always be too busy to even get to enjoy, like Dr. Kirk who was never home. I would get a family like this. A family that never even ate together, who never took time to talk to one another and if they did they didn’t know how to do it anymore, they didn’t know what to say, they had forgotten how to communicate and maybe they didn’t even care much anymore. Was that what I wanted out of my life? I knew I didn’t. But at the same time, I liked the idea of living a secure life with a secure income. Even if it meant I had to become a doctor. I wanted to provide nice things for Aiyana. I wanted her to be able to do exactly what she wanted to. If she wanted to do pottery or write, that was completely up to her. I would drown her in jewelry and beautiful things. I really wanted to spoil her and give her the world.

“So you start in Jacksonville on Thursday, I hear?” Heather said. She was done with her plate and put it in the dishwasher. Her magazine was under her arm.

“I guess I do,” I said.

Heather came closer and bent forward. Then she kissed me on the forehead. “You’re going to make an excellent doctor. I just know you will. Daddy sees it, too. Some people just have it in them. It is in their blood.”

Chapter 21

Aiyana’s mother turned out to be right. It didn’t take more than two days before the first opportunity to warn the woman from my dream presented itself. I had driven the Corvette to downtown St. Augustine and stopped at a small newspaper stand looking for the St. Augustine Record to see if my article had finally been printed. It hadn’t been in the paper the day before as promised, because it had to yield to a story about a Korean Air Lines Flight that was shot down by a Soviet Union jet fighter near Moneron Island when the plane entered Soviet airspace. All two hundred sixty-nine on board were killed, including U.S. Congressman Larry McDonald.

The story was still heavily covered in today’s newspaper, but to my great excitement they had also found room to put in mine. As I opened on page eight, there it was. Two entire pages of my story, written by Christian Langaa. It even had my picture and all. I felt a thrill through my body seeing my name in the paper like that. That was really something, I thought. It made me happy. I bought a few copies. I had promised to send one home to my father and I wanted to be able to give one to the Kirks to keep, plus I wanted to save a few for my own sake. It was nice to have extra, I figured. As I took out my wallet from my pocket to pay the man in the newsstand, my eyes fixed on a car—a red Ford. It just passed by me when I spotted the license plate. It said 829 YRH. I don’t know exactly what drove me there, but I had a hunch, a feeling that I had to follow. Eight-two-nine was the exact number I had seen in my dream and in the flashing visions the last couple of days. I threw a bill at the guy in the newspaper stand and jumped into my car and started following it. I had no idea what I was doing or if it had in any way anything to do with my dream. It was more like a feeling, like I was somehow drawn to that plate and that number that I had recognized from my dream. Most people would have considered it a coincidence and never done what I did then, but I was no longer like most people. I’d had enough experience with these kinds of “coincidences” that I knew this might be important.

I followed the red Ford all through town. As it stopped at a grocery store, I parked behind it. I opened the paper and put it in front of my face while I studied the person coming out of the car. The door opened and my heart stopped. That was literally how it felt. I had cold sweats all over my body. It was really her. It was the woman from my dream. I would recognize that face anywhere. Once you’ve seen someone cry out in complete despair like that you’ll never forget their face. It’ll stay with you till the day you die. She looked in my direction and I hid behind the newspaper while I studied her walk towards the store. My heart was hammering in my chest. I had found her. I had really found her. The numbers from my dream were on her license plate. That was what they meant.

I waited for her in my car as she came out with her bags full of groceries. She walked towards the car when all of a sudden one of her paper bags cracked open. In the next moment I saw all of its content spread all over the pavement. The woman was on her knees, desperately trying to stop escaping tomatoes and oranges. And it seemed like I was the only person in the universe that saw her on that pavement. Everybody else around us seemed not to notice her or to not care at all. I folded the paper and put it in the passenger seat. I exhaled. People were just walking past her without helping her collect her things from the ground. Some even kicked them by accident without noticing. I felt my heart racing. I couldn’t just sit here, could I? I would blow my cover if I got out and helped her. She would see my face and recognize me if I followed her home, which was my plan. A man in a blue t-shirt passed her without even noticing how she fought to get all of her stuff back. I sighed at people’s indifference and stepped out of the car. I started picking her items up from the pavement and gave them back to her. She put them on top of the other bags so they were now filled to the edge.

“Thanks,” she said and smiled at me. She got up.

“I am Chris by the way,” I said.

“I am Anna.”

My heart was beating fast. “Let me help you to your car,” I said, and took one of the bags out of her hand. I walked towards her car and realized that she must have been wondering how I knew which one was hers. But it was too late. I was already standing behind it looking at it. I smiled. “This one?” I asked.

She nodded and opened the trunk. As she did one of the overly filled bags cracked open and more groceries spilled onto the ground. She exhaled, annoyed.

“No worries, I got it,” I said and bent down. I picked it all up and lastly I grabbed a pack of spaghetti from the ground and gave it to her. “For tonight?” I asked. Somehow I had the idea that she had been about to make spaghetti in that big pot of boiling water that would end up over her daughter and burning her.

She looked at me with great confusion. She probably thought I was hitting on her or something. That’s a picture for you. A twenty-two year old boy hitting on a forty-something woman in front of a grocery store. “The pasta, I meant.”

“No,” she said while stuffing it all back in the trunk and closing it. She looked at me while dangling the car-keys in her hand. “Have I seen you before?" she asked.

"I don't think so," I answered, avoiding her eyes.

"Listen," she said. "Thank you for your help. It was really nice and all. But I have to get going.”

“Oh, of course. Me, too,” I said. I realized I had been staring at her and tried to find something else to look at in order to not make her feel uncomfortable. “I am just … getting back to my car,” I said and pointed at the white Corvette. I wanted so badly to say something to her. I wanted to tell her everything I knew, but how could I? She would think I was some kind of lunatic.

I got back in my car and started it not knowing what to do next. I couldn’t let go of her now that I’d finally found her. I simply couldn’t. It would kill me. So I did the only thing I could do. I followed her. I kept my distance since my car was pretty flashy.

The rest of that afternoon I followed her in her red Ford as she drove back with her groceries to her house and afterwards ran all of her errands across town. At first she went to the dry cleaners and picked up a suit, and then she met up with a friend and had a cup of coffee with him. I sat in the car studying them while waiting for her to come back. It took an hour or so and then I saw him follow her to her car and get in with her. From the distance I couldn’t tell for sure, but I was pretty certain they kissed—a passionate and heartfelt kiss. And he wasn’t her husband. I knew that much. The husband’s face was one I would never forget, either. After a few minutes, they drove off together.

Slightly uncomfortable by the situation, I followed them to a house near the beach where they went inside. I guessed it had to be his house since. I heard laughter from an open window and realized that I was now in way over my head. This had suddenly become more complicated than I had expected. This was none of my business.

I backed out of the neighborhood and waited at the end of the road for her to come out. It took an hour or so before I saw her in her car again. Alone. I followed her to the school where she picked up the daughter. Again my heart started racing when I saw the girl’s face. The daughter was pale and looked like she hadn’t slept much lately. She had black circles under her eyes. She was the real victim in all of this, and she would be the one who was about to pay the highest price.

I followed them from a safe distance as they drove home. They lived in house number twenty-nine on Eighth Street. My heart was racing inside of my chest when I realized it. There it was again. Eight-two-nine. This was no coincidence, that was sure. Some greater power than me was telling me to do something. All I could do was play along.

They stopped the car in the driveway and went inside. I parked the car in front of another house farther down the road, and then I waited. For what I had no idea, but I felt like I couldn’t leave them. If this was the night it was going to happen, if this was the night my vision was to come true, I wanted to be there to prevent it. Somehow. Someway. There just had to be a way. An opportunity that would present itself. But I had no idea if this was even the night. It could be any night for that matter.

I waited for another hour and a half when I saw a car come down the road, driving towards the house. It was a police car. At first I worried that someone had called the cops on me because I had to look pretty suspicious sitting there in my car for hours in a quiet family neighborhood, and I started the engine intending to drive away. But the police car didn’t stop; it kept going and stopped at the driveway of house number twenty-nine. A man in uniform got out. I gasped. That face was very familiar to me. It was the husband. He had that same mean expression on his face as he did in my vision. He slammed the door to the car behind him and walked with heavy steps towards the gray house where he went inside.

Uncertain of what to do, I stayed in the car until all the lights went out in the house. Then I drove off. I was too upset to go home yet, so instead I decided to go see an old friend.

Jim’s car was parked in the parking lot at the entrance at the Twelve Mile Swamps. Jim, along with his friends, was unpacking his hunting gear as I arrived. Unfortunately, he saw me and waved. I waved back and parked the car next to his.

“What are you doing out here?” he asked.

“I was just out driving and wanted to hear if there was any news about the jaguar?” I said with a forced smile.

“We’ll get the beast tonight,” he said. “It can’t keep hiding forever. I can smell it is still in there. It is waiting for me.”

“So, you’re not about to give up, huh?”

“Never. I will never give up. I know you want me to, but I am determined to get it. It is not about what happened to you that night anymore. It attacked me, remember? I want to shoot and kill that creature. That’s my right after what it did to me.”

I nodded as if I understood his desire to kill my friend. It was going to be hard to get him to stop hunting for it. The only way I could prevent him from killing it was to make it somehow illegal for him to shoot it, to make the authorities stop allowing them to hunt for it. Yes, that was my plan. I know it was farfetched but I wanted people to feel sorry for the animal. I wanted them to like it. My series of articles were supposed to do that—turn the opinion of the public. But that isn't as easy as you'd think.

“So how is med school treating you?” I asked, keen on changing the subject.

“Great. I hear you’re finally joining us next week?”

“Where did you hear that?”

“Dr. Kirk asked me to tutor you.”

I swallowed hard. It was like a nightmare. I mean, Jim had turned out to be nice and all, but he and I had absolutely nothing in common. And he had no respect for me after that night when I had been unable to pull the trigger. I knew that.