Splintered (35 page)

Who is in the damn boat?

The men parted for CJ. He held Maddy in his arms.

Is she alive?

Maddy’s eyes were closed. Her head lolled against CJ’s chest. Her hair and feet were caked with dirt. In the filthy, oversize, bloody clothes she was wearing, she looked like a rag doll. Emma couldn’t bring herself to ask. For just another moment, she wanted to hold on to hope.

Then CJ nodded at Emma, breaking her frozen state. She rushed over to Maddy and put her fingers against the girl’s neck, praying she’d find a pulse. Instead of no heartbeat or even a weak one, Emma was surprised to find Maddy’s pulse racing. She practically buckled at the knees as gratitude rushed over her. Then an internal alarm went off.

“Maddy’s in tachycardia,” she told them. “We’ve got to get her to the hospital right away.”

CJ rushed over the bridge and laid Maddy on a stretcher. EMTs took over, pushing her up the hill.

Emma looked at CJ and mouthed one word—
Hank?

He shook his head.

Emma smiled.

Maddy’s alive. Maddy’s alive.

Lily repeated those words over and over in her head as she walked into the pediatric intensive care unit (PICU). It would help her remember what was most important. It didn’t matter what that bastard had done to her or what she looked like. The only thing that mattered was that the doctors said she would live. Even if Maddy was still angry with her, shied away from her touch, Lily could deal with anything—as long as Maddy was alive.

Lily draped herself in a sterile gown and scrubbed her hands. Tom had finished washing a few minutes earlier and rushed off to Maddy’s bedside.

“MomMom? MomMom?”

Lily heard Maddy’s frantic call. She weaved around Tom and saw her daughter lying on the hospital bed, her face turned away from him, yelling for . . . her.

“I’m here. Don’t worry, I’m here.”

Maddy held her hands out to her mom, and Lily grabbed them fiercely, locking fingers and pulling in close. She wanted to give her daughter a hug, to grab on and never let go, but she was afraid of hurting her. An IV was taped to the crook of Maddy’s elbow and machines beeped, tracking her heart rate. Maddy didn’t hesitate though. She pressed in closer, encircling her mom with her one free arm. The two cried together on each other’s shoulders.

As Lily wept, she let go of all the anxiety that had built up over the past three days. She realized that her worst fear had come true—but she’d survived. Not very gracefully perhaps, but she was still around to see the end of it.

It was time to make some serious life changes. Get the pill use under control, sure, but more important, get her head on straight. She was tired of living life always waiting for the worst to happen. Because she’d discovered that no matter how much she thought she’d prepared for tragedy, when it finally struck, no preparation was enough. No amount of shielding her heart had made it strong enough to resist shattering.

When Maddy had disappeared, Lily had regretted every moment she’d shrugged her daughter’s touch away, every time she’d been too busy to listen. All wasted moments.

She now understood that if she had to lose Maddy, she would prefer to lose her knowing she had loved her with wild abandon than to have squandered their precious time together.

Through a face full of tears, Lily whispered her newfound commitment to change. She wanted Maddy to know she’d do anything in order to become the mother that Maddy had always wanted. The mother that Maddy deserved.

Emma wanted to be in the PICU room during Lily and Tom’s reunion with Maddy, but she knew it was time to take a step back and let them try to heal their family unit. There would be plenty of time for her own hugs later.

She saw Maddy’s doctor in the hall and stopped him. Emma knew he wouldn’t give her any information because she wasn’t family, but it was amazing what the flash of a badge could accomplish. He told her Maddy had been in prolonged tachycardia and that all of her internal organs had enlarged to make up for the heart’s deficiency. Another day in that condition and she would have gone into organ failure. Maddy would be monitored in the PICU until the swelling went down and the right mix of medications to control the tachycardia was found.

The doctor went on to talk about Maddy’s long-term options for controlling the heart defect, but Emma knew all about radiofrequency ablation from when Maddy was a baby. What Emma said she really needed to know was the extent of the injuries Maddy had suffered at the hands of Hank Fry. The doctor outlined the more minor ones first—like the cuts on her feet, malnourishment, and dehydration—then worked up to more serious injuries, like the lacerations across her chest and stomach. Most had healed, but a few of the deeper cuts had become infected. For now, the doctor was holding off on stitching them up, preferring to allow them to heal from the inside out. If the Eastins were concerned about scarring, they could consult a plastic surgeon.

Most heartbreaking to hear about was the internal trauma Maddy had sustained to her vaginal area. The doctor was still unsure whether it would result in permanent damage. He’d know more after the swelling went down and the tears healed.

Maddy’s physical injuries would eventually disappear, but the scars to her psyche would remain forever. Emma hoped all the adults in Maddy’s life would be able to come together and surround her in a protective cocoon. Emma knew that meant she would have to take a more active role from now on too. In the past, she’d let her anger toward Lily seep into her relationship with Maddy, and the girl had suffered for it. Emma had abandoned Maddy when she’d needed her most. She wouldn’t make that mistake twice.

Emma would, however, make sure Maddy got counseling. She’d also help Lily accept the fact that she needed treatment for her addiction to pills, and somehow she’d make Tom keep an active role in Maddy’s life. Emma would be the one to hold them all together if she had to. For Maddy’s sake. Maddy—the girl who wasn’t her biological daughter, but was the closest thing she had to one.

Now that Hank Fry was dead, Maddy could begin the long trek toward emotional healing. The worst thing would’ve been sitting in a courtroom and looking at that monster enjoy the recounting of every vile thing he did to her. There was no way Maddy would have made it through a trial, no way any of them could have sat in the gallery listening to her describe every horrific detail.

But then, Emma had known Hank Fry would never see the inside of a courtroom. When she’d seen that CJ had been assigned to the entry team, she knew it was a lucky break. Two years earlier, his daughter had been busted on a drug charge—a charge that never got any further than Emma Parker. The girl was pre-med at Columbia. CJ hadn’t wanted his daughter’s entire future to suffer because of one bad choice. The girl had never been in real trouble, she just got caught up with the wrong boy on the wrong night.

Emma made sure CJ understood that the moment he forced his way into that shack, he needed to make good on the debt he owed her. His mandate was to find Maddy. If she wasn’t in the shack, CJ was to do everything in his power to make sure Hank Fry walked out alive. But if CJ found Maddy inside, the only way Hank Fry should be leaving was in a body bag. She knew the emotional health of the entire Eastin family depended on it.

Maddy sat with her pen poised over a blank journal page. The date was the only thing written on it. She thought about what she wanted to say. Her psychologist had suggested a new exercise to help her break through the barrier of negativity she’d been surrounding herself with. Write a passage of only positive statements, a summary of the last few weeks listing the things Maddy was grateful for.

It had been two months since Maddy’s limp body was carried through the woods, rescued from the beast who’d hunted her down like prey. And as happy as Maddy was to be home, she was finding it difficult to put those horrific three days behind her.

“Not
behind
you,” Maddy could hear her doctor say. “When a feeling comes up, allow yourself to feel it. Ride the emotion out, no matter how painful. It’s the only way to release it. If you take your feelings and push them down into a box, keeping them locked up tight, they remain inside you like a disease that eats away at you from the inside out.”

The doctor had told Maddy that whenever difficult emotions threatened to overwhelm her, she should try writing about them. It would help her push through the feelings. That’s exactly what Maddy had been doing for the past few weeks. She’d already filled two journals writing about her reluctance to leave the house, the jumpy feeling she got whenever she was by herself in a room, and everything else that made her uneasy. Pages and pages were dedicated to her inability to sleep through the night. Every time she closed her eyes, she saw Hank Fry’s face hovering over her. She couldn’t count the number of times she’d had the same nightmare about a pack of wolves chasing her through a forest.

That morning her doctor had suggested she start a new book, one filled with only positive thoughts. She could still write down her negative feelings in her old journal, but the doctor thought one book should be solely devoted to the good things that had happened since Hank Fry had invaded her life. That way, on particularly bleak days, she could reread her positive thoughts for an emotional boost.

Maddy doodled on the page, thinking of everything that had happened since her mom and dad first came into the PICU. Maddy had travelled a long road to physical recovery. After her organs returned to regular size and her body beat the infection coursing through her system from the cuts she’d sustained, she had a radiofrequency ablation to get her tachycardia under control. The medical procedure seemed to have worked, and she hadn’t had any problems since. For that she was thankful.

Her relationship with Aunt Emma had been strengthened. They had a regular Friday girls’ night in, and made regular phone calls in between. Maddy was amazed at how hard Aunt Emma fought to track her down and bring her home. How she put her career on the line, willing to sacrifice her own future to make sure Maddy had one. She only wished Aunt Emma and her mom could repair their friendship. But she’d finally realized that even though Aunt Emma had tried to make a go of it, the relationship would never be the same.

Sometimes no matter how much you wanted two people to love each other, they couldn’t. Maddy had always hoped her mom and dad would get back together one day, but she now knew that was just a child’s dream. Though it was a slow process, Maddy was rebuilding her relationship with her dad. She’d met his new boyfriend and was genuinely glad to see him so happy. At first she’d been shocked at the news that he was gay, but Dad had gotten her to realize it was something he’d known since the age of ten. All those years, he’d just refused to accept it. He also took responsibility for the marriage dissolving, another shocking revelation for Maddy. All this time she’d blamed her mom for running him off, but it turned out she’d been the one protecting Maddy by keeping his secret.

Dad had taken a new job within his same company—one that didn’t require so much travel. She was thankful he was around more and involved in her life. He was even helping her with her online courses. Maddy had dropped out of King High School and had enrolled in the county’s online school instead. She might go back to public school one day, but for now, while she continued healing, everyone felt this was the best decision.

Her dad had said he’d help her mom out with the bills while she went to rehab. Maddy had known something was wrong with her, but if she were being completely honest with herself, she’d been so checked out and full of self-pity that she hadn’t really cared. Maddy felt guilty for not recognizing the signs of drug use. With a lot of coaxing from everyone, her mom had finally agreed to seek treatment, but only in an outpatient program. Since she’d just gotten Maddy back, Mom wasn’t ready to let her out of her sight yet. But Maddy thought it might have more to do with her mom being scared that Maddy would never come back after living with her dad.

Maddy recognized that her mom definitely had a long way to go in her healing. She’d spent her life always waiting for the bad to happen, had essentially put her whole life on hold banking on a future event. Maddy couldn’t criticize her, though—she’d done the same. They’d both been waiting to live. Maddy had tried to stall life, waiting for her dad to come back home. But life didn’t work that way. It went on no matter how much you fought against it.

Maddy’s disappearance had changed her mom, for good and bad, but since the journal piece was only supposed to be about the positive, Maddy decided to focus on that. From the first moment she’d seen her mom in the PICU and felt the love pouring out of her, Maddy knew things would be different. With her counselor’s help, her mom was learning how to express feelings toward Maddy. The Ice Queen was forever banished, and for that Maddy was thankful.

Maddy thought it was weird how she went from feeling no one cared about her to knowing that all of the adults in her life were super-involved. At times it felt a bit smothering, but with the doctor’s help, she was learning how to communicate better and to express her feelings to others.

Maddy lowered her pen to the paper. She hesitated a moment longer, then began writing in her journal.

Only when faced with death can you truly be thankful for life. Only when you’re about to breathe your last breath can you be thankful for another gasp of air. Only when you have everything stripped away can you be thankful when it’s all returned. And thankful I truly am.

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Kelly Miller grew up shivering in Illinois but now enjoys the year-round sunshine in Tampa, FL. Her debut novel,
Dead Like Me,
won second place in the best mystery category of the 2011 FWA Royal Palm Literary Awards competition. It was also named a semi-finalist in the mystery category of The Kindle Book Review’s 2013 Best Indie Books Awards competition. The Detective Kate Springer series continues with the second book,
Deadly Fantasies.
In Kelly’s newest book,
Splintered
, she introduces her readers to a whole new cast of characters.