The Returned

“He’s perfect baby, thank you.” We both looked him over, exclaiming over his perfection. I could hear my rugrats outside the door with their grandparents raising hell ten seconds before they busted in the room on their spindly little legs.

They got to talking in their twin speak and I got the idea they were talking about their new brother. These two scare me just a little bit. Already they have this secret code that their mother and I have yet to crack. All I need is for them to mutiny against the new kid.

Thankfully Cadyn, the leader of the pack, seemed to like her little brother and the adults in the room breathed a sigh of relief when she kissed his little head. Fuck if she didn’t make me give him back to his mother so she could sit in my lap though. Damn kid thinks she owns me.

The air grew much lighter now that my whole family was gathered in the room. Three generations on my side and all the family my wife had in the world. I was happy for her, for us, that she had this. So vastly different from the first time.

Will I ever get away from that shit? If I can’t I don’t see how she ever will. I don’t think either of us ever could. But maybe there’s a way to live with the shit and not let it take us over or under.

Epilogue

CADE

Life is strange as fuck! Three months after my son was born I paid my last visit to the underground bunker where Mindy was being held. Mike had been coming here in my stead for the last few months. She’d have been better off with me.

The room was covered with pictures of Zandi and I with the kids. There was a monitor set up on the wall across from the bed and on the screen was a home video of my wife and kids playing outside the house. My brother is sick as shit.

The woman laying on the bed was almost unrecognizable. She’d lost a lot of weight to the point where her cheekbones now protruded and her arms were damn near skeletal.

Her eyes were glazed over when they stared at me, almost as if she didn’t know me. She said nothing as I took the pictures down from the walls, and unhooked the monitor.

I took them out to the car before going back for her. I took her out of there, the same way I brought her in. Only I didn’t take her back to her home. Instead I drove to the old abandoned cabin in the woods.

I lifted her from the trunk and untied her. “You come near me or my family again, I won’t let you live.” That’s just in case she comes to her damn senses and start talking.

I dropped her ass on the doorstep and walked away without a backward glance. There was no real fear of her talking, no one believes crazy. Now she can be committed somewhere to spend the rest of her life in a padded room.

Mike was set to make the anonymous call that would lead the cops to her sometime tomorrow morning, and that would be the end of my involvement with her.

It seemed almost surreal all that had happened in the last year or so. I’d done all I could to hang onto my humanity and had come close more than once to ending Mindy’s life. It was only knowing that I wouldn’t be able to face my wife and kids if I took a life that kept my hand still.

I’d made up my mind to tell Zandi the truth now that it was all over. I figured it would help to eliminate some of her lingering fears and give her some of her own back.

That night I took her to bed and made love to her into the early morning hours. She didn’t know it but I was working on planting another kid in her. She seemed to be at her happiest when she was carrying my child so why not.

Just as the sun was coming up over the horizon, I took her out to the patio of our new home, wrapped in the blanket to ward off the early morning chill.

We sat in silence for the longest while as I tried to put the words together. “Did you let her go?” Say what now?

“What did you say?” She turned in my arms and looked at me.

“Mindy, did you let her go?”

“How…. did Mike…” She shook her head.

“He didn’t, I figured it out on my own but when I confronted him he didn’t deny it. I asked him not to tell you that I knew. I knew you needed to do this.”

“How long have you known?”

“Long enough. Where do you think Mike got the pictures and the video?”