Chapter 3 Alive

Terri

I have sat by her bedside almost a month, day after day. I have watched every twitch, every nightmare, and heard every weak little sound that escaped from her lips. I am watching over her because I feel obligated.

I left her behind that night.

I knowingly left her on the boat.

I was selfish. I wanted my family safe, and no one else was on my mind.

Nightmares haunted me for weeks after. I believed the girl was dead, and it was my fault. But I was wrong, surprisingly wrong. The girl lived. She proved us all wrong.

Still, guilt sits heavy in my stomach. I feel that I owe her my life. A life is something I cannot give somebody, but I can give her a chance. A way out. An opportunity big enough to change everything.

When we arrived in Wears Valley, Tennessee, I fell in love with the place instantly. The mountains, the quiet, the smell of rain on dirt, everything I had forgotten I missed. I knew this was where I wanted to spend the last years of my life. My family respected it. They agreed to stay.

I called a few old friends, good people who knew how to build, how to fix, how to run a small place without needing a city around them. Before long, we had a carpenter, a store owner, a veterinarian who was not afraid of mud, a cook, a fisherman who knew the creeks like scripture, and a businessman with more money than sense, but a generous heart when it counted.

We made a small community here. Not fancy. Not loud. Just real.

She was found in late spring, cold, half-dead, still strapped into a life jacket like she had fought the water itself.

Gannon, the carpenter, and I were out in the rain, standing ankle-deep in muck, laying out rough lines for what would become a working homestead. My dream as a boy was to be a rancher. I fantasized about soil under my nails and crops coming up green. I wanted to raise animals from birth to death, not because it was pretty, because it was honest. I wanted to wake at dawn and work until twilight and feel like the day meant something.

I never had the chance. My parents needed me in their hardware store. That might not sound like much now, but back then it was pride. It was survival.

Because I owe Mollie my life, I cannot think of any better gesture than to hand her my dream.

I plan on giving her the homestead.

I believe it will give her a fresh start from whatever life she ran from. And I feel she will do great things with it.

I can feel the fight in her veins.

I felt it the first day I laid eyes on her. I remember it as if it happened yesterday, though it has been a month.

Terri’s flashback

Gannon and I were ankle-deep in dirt and rain in the middle of the field when that fisherman boy came sprinting toward us, shouting like the world was ending.

“TERRI! GRAMPS! DUDE! COME HERE!”

I assumed he had gotten a hook in his hand or a snake in his boot, nothing serious.

I limped my way over and saw him cradling a woman’s body in his arms.

She was pale as snow. Skin wrinkled, waterlogged. Lips blue. Eyelids bruised dark.

It was the look of someone already gone.

I leaned in, thinking about who I would have to contact, who would need to be told. Parents? Family? Someone.

The boy cut off my thoughts.

“Is she who I think she is?”

I nodded. There was no doubt.

This was Mollie, the missing girl from the wreck. The one my grandkids mentioned from the boat. The one they talked about like she was trouble and tragedy wrapped into one.

The boy grinned, bright and stupid.

“Awesome,” he said. “I knew mermaids existed.”

I stared at him.

“No, son,” I said, firm. “This is Mollie, the missing girl from the wreck.”

“Oh.” He looked embarrassed, then rushed the words out. “I saw her near the bank tangled up in branches, with a big backpack still strapped on. I thought she was dead. There is no way a person can look that dead and still be alive.”

He swallowed. “Then she started coughing up water.”

Hearing that, I nearly jumped out of my trousers.

“What?” I snapped. “She is alive?”

I looked closer. And there it was, barely visible at first, her chest moving. Shallow. Fighting.

“Hurry,” I said. “Get her inside. Now. Lay her in the bed.”

I looked to Gannon. “You go get Felicia. She will know what to do.”

We got her into the house. Felicia arrived fast and took control like she had been born for emergencies. Warm blankets. Dry clothes. Checking for fever, for pneumonia, for the kind of silent damage cold water can do.

Her temperature was low, but not deadly.

And the girl kept clinging to life.

Every twitch. Every little mutter. Every grimace like she was fighting something we could not see.

She was a trooper.

A fighter.

I knew it right then. This girl had what it took.

End of Terri’s flashback

“What the hell…” a rough, cracked voice muttered.

My head snapped up.

Her hand was pressed to her forehead, brows drawn tight like she was splitting in two.

She was awake.

“FELICIA!” I shouted, bolting to the door. I flung it open, catching Felicia in the middle of painting trim near the window. “SHE’S WAKING!”

Mollie

My head was splitting in two. It felt like my brain was in a jar being shaken, bouncing and slamming into glass. I pressed my palm to my forehead, trying to keep it together.

Where the hell am I?

Did I get too drunk again? No. This was not a hangover. I did not taste alcohol.

Did I take too much heroin?

No. My veins felt clean. Like that time I stopped for a couple months. It never lasted, but I remembered the feeling.

Did I get drugged?

A sick panic crawled up my throat.

“Are you awake, Mollie?” a gruff old voice asked quietly. “It is time for you to wake.”

That definitely was not Paisley.

My stomach twisted.

Please tell me I did not end up with some creepy old man.

What if he was psychotic? What if I was trapped?

I tried to think of an escape plan, pretend asleep, wait, run.

But my eyes would not stay closed. They craved light.

I peeled them open.

The brightness stabbed through me. I flinched and squeezed them shut again.

“Close the curtains,” the old voice ordered. “Her eyes need time.”

The room dimmed. I tried again. Blinked. Blinked harder.

My vision was blurry, swimming, but slowly it cleared.

I was in a small, warm house, country-simple, clean, handmade. Pine walls. A kitchen with an island and a tablecloth with a brown-and-orange plaid pattern. A vase by the window above the sink. A living room with an L-shaped couch facing a brick fireplace, and a red oak coffee table that looked homemade.

It was stunning.

The kind of place that felt like a life could start over inside it.

“It is nice to see you are okay,” the old man said.

I turned my head toward him.

“Your name is Mollie,” he said. “Am I right?”

I nodded, my throat sore, my voice cracked. “And you are?”

He frowned slightly. “Memory loss did not occur to me. Do you remember the wreck?”

Everything slammed back into me. The flash of light. The violent tilt. The rushing water. The missing lifeboats. The life jacket. The cold swallowing me whole.

“I am alive,” I whispered, staring at my pale hands. “How am I alive?”

He exhaled, emotional, and told me what happened. How they left. How they believed I was gone. How I was found near the bank, still strapped into the jacket, my backpack still on me like I refused to let go of myself.

“I am gravely sorry,” he said. “Leaving you behind haunted me. I can finally be at peace, seeing you here, alive.”

“It is okay,” I rasped. “I am here. You cannot change the past.”

His face brightened into a wide, toothless grin.

“I have a surprise,” he said. “Something that will change your life.”

My heart kicked.

“What is it?”

“This home can be yours,” he said. “And the land around it.”

Warmth flooded me.

“I love it,” I breathed.

He nodded, pleased. “And there is more. The acreage out back, the cleared ground, the barn frames, we were building it as a working place. A farm, if you want it.”

My jaw dropped.

“A farm?”

I sat up too fast. The world went black and fuzzy. I had to breathe through it until it passed.

A farm. Animals. Crops. A life where the air did not taste like smoke and regret.

Once the dizziness faded, I stood. My legs were jelly, unused for weeks, but I did not care.

I needed to see.

I opened the front door and shielded my eyes against the sun. The air hit me like salvation. Grass, wet soil, pine, fresh-cut wood. No smog. No neon. No stale perfume and sweat.

I stepped out barefoot and felt dew on my skin, grass between my toes.

A rush slammed through me, stronger than any high.

“It is stunning,” I gasped, wandering into the field like I was dreaming.

There were logs and rocks and weeds, but the soil was dark and alive. There were barns, one large, one medium, one small. A giant birch tree stood at the highest point like it had been planted there on purpose.

I dropped to sit on a stump, breathless, staring down at the small valley community below. Houses tucked among trees, a couple kids playing near the water, a man fishing in the distance.

The Smokies rose around everything. Green valleys. Thick forest. Rocky slopes.

Wears Valley, Tennessee, quiet enough to hear yourself think.

I felt him behind me.

“So?” he asked gently. “What do you think?”

I turned, my voice steadier than it had been.

“I will be honored to call this place my home,” I said. “It is perfect.”