Page 107 of Longing for Liberty
He was gazing at me with the love of a man who saw far beyond my shell. “I got him, sweetheart.”
I nodded and stepped out front. I leaned against the railing and stared out at the tranquility of the rows of grapevines. Beside the house was the body of the guard, face down in dirt and blood. I felt numb to it as I stared down the road until the sirens finally began to wail.
I didn’t feel free yet—didn’t trust any of it. Even as the police swarmed, I stood aside. Even as they pulled a beat-up Amos Fitzhugh from the cottage in handcuffs with someone’s hand on the back of his head to keep him facing down as they shoved him into the back of a car. Even as Aidan ran up the stairs and enveloped me in a brotherly hug, and then Jeremy, who’d handed over the gun to authorities.
I looked out, my eyes searching, but Aidan shook his head. “I came alone. I was worried it’d be dangerous.”
I nodded, thankful.
Everything was surreal as we were taken to a police station in Florence, and I spent hours answering questions. It felt like a dream when I was let into the hall and my mom stood there. I immediately looked around her, my heart flip-flopping, but she scooped me into her arms and told me, “They’re at home. I didn’t want to scare them.”
Oh my God.
My children.
That was when I broke down, both of us falling to our knees together as we clung tightly and cried until I was so exhausted I literally passed out against her shoulder and had to be revived with smelling salts, scaring my poor mother half to death.
It didn’t feel real when we were walking out of the station, rushed through a massive throng of shouting reporters and flashing cameras into a car with tinted windows.
“Are you ready to see them?” Mom asked us in the backseat of the small car where I was crammed between her and Jeremy. I looked at him and we both nodded, our eyes filled, too overcome to talk. Then I crumpled against my mom’s soft body and let her hold me like I was still a child myself, while my fingers twined tightly with Jeremy’s.
FIFTY
I was shaking,but for the first time in so many years, this was the good kind of nerves.
“Now, remember,” Mom said to us in the back seat. “Asher was so young when we left. And though we’ve always shown him pictures, he might be…” She tilted her head side to side, looking for the right word.
“We understand,” I said, looking at Jeremy, who nodded. “We’ll be like strangers at first.”
She gave me a gentle smile of relief and patted my leg. “I don’t think Rainey remembers either, but she’s cognizant of the idea of you, and the pictures seem to trigger that feel for her, so she’ll be open. That one’s a spitfire, I tell ya.”
I laughed, and it sounded watery. “Always has been.”
“She’s quite the tomboy,” Mom told us. “Hope you don’t mind. She skateboards and plays soccer like a fiend, and she cusses in Italian. She asked to get her hair cut short.”
“We don’t care about that,” I assured her. In fact, it made me smile to imagine. For a moment, I wondered about Rebecca and Stanley. Were they okay? What was happening in the State?
“All three of them are fluent in Italian,” Mom went on. “Though I still struggle with it. And Summer…whew…what a little queen bee she is.” Mom shook her head, a look of pride in her eyes. “So mature. She watches the news every day, learning as much as she can about politics and keeping an eye on the State, which, of course it’s been impossible to get any real news out of there. I still can’t believe—” Her voice cracked as she got choked up, and we clasped hands. “I still can’t believe everything that happened. After they closed the borders and all the bombs were happening…. Every single day, we hoped to hear that the borders were open again. And then when Aidan got that call from Jeremy two days ago, oh, Lord have mercy. I never cried so hard in my life. I even thanked Mother Mary.”
“Are you Catholic now?” I asked, amused.
“I’m all the things now, honey.”
That made us laugh again. Jeremy rubbed my knee as I lay my head on my mom’s shoulder.
“Is all the world really at war?” I asked. “They told us Big Ben burned down and all this other horrible stuff.”
“No.” Jeremy was the one to answer. “It was all a lie to make us think the outside world was a wreck.”
We were all quiet as six years of lies were outed. And even though I knew better than to believe any of it, I’d always wondered.
“Did you tell them your news?” Mom asked Aidan, who drove with his own mom in the passenger seat. She held Jeremy’s hand at her shoulder.
“Ah…no. Yeah, me and Lena didn’t work out. She left me for some Italian Stallion as soon as we got here?—”
“Notas soon,” his mom corrected him. “Maybe six months after we got here.”
Aidan rolled his eyes. “So, anyways, I got me an Eye-talian lady now named Sofia. Sofia’s like me, she doesn’t want kids, so it’s better.”
