Page 5 of Ruthless Salvation

“This is bad, Blue. This is so,sobad.” I shouldn’t have responded this way. It wasn’t normal.

You think after everything you’ve been through that you’renormal?

True. Despite my best efforts, my past had changed me. I was proud of the woman I’d become. She was savvy and resilient and maintained compassion that could easily have been lost. She’d survived remarkably well despite the past, but sometimes crazy left a stain that could never be bleached out.

It had apparently left its mark on me, inside and out.

The Past: Six Years Earlier

I clampedmy lips shut to keep from throwing up. The airplane I was in was making a sketchy touchdown, but that wasn’t the reason my nerves were acting up. I was more concerned with what I’d find once I stepped off the plane.

Honey would have said nerves were good and kept a person grounded. I adored my grandmother, and most of her advice was spot-on, but I wasn’t sure I agreed on this one matter.

Agree or not, there’s no escaping it now.

I swallowed down another surge of nausea.

I knew this wouldn’t be easy for so many reasons, but I’d made the decision to try, so I wasn’t going to chicken out. Who cared that I hadn’t stepped so much as a foot beyond the Georgia state line since first arriving when I was a year old? Did it matter whether my first solo trip was one thousand or ten thousand miles away?

Somewhere English-speaking would have been nice.

Okay, yeah. That was true. But this wasn’t just any destination. I had arrived in one of the coldest, most inhospitable places on earth. My birthplace of Moscow, Russia.

This was a trip into my past, an exploration of the culture I was born into, and a chance to meet my birth mother. I knew that part was a long shot, but my chances were zero if I never tried.

Honey acted like she was going to have a seizure when I told her my plans.

“Sweet child, I know your heart is hurting, but this just ain’t right. You don’t know a single soul over there, not to mention the language or anything else about the place.” She began to fan herself. “Good grief, I need a nip. You’ve got my insides twisted up somethin’ fierce.” She pulled out a bottle of peach schnapps secreted away at the bottom of her china cabinet and poured a healthy dab into a porcelain teacup.

She’d sipped from that same set of floral finery my whole life. I only discovered once I was older that the contents weren’t always tea. The cherished china had been passed down from her grandmother. It should have gone to my mother next, then to me. Instead, it would be skipping a generation when I took possession.

“I know there are no guarantees, but I have to try. And yes, I fully understand that even if I found my birth mother, she won’t magically fix things.” Nothing could ever fill the gaping hole in my heart gouged out by the unexpected loss of my parents. “No one could ever take their place, but that doesn’t mean I’m not interested in learning more about my roots.”

“Your roots is here, under these oak trees, draped in moss and swaying in that warm ocean breeze. You’re no more rooted in that giant iceberg than Miss Scarlet over there.” We both looked at her small white poodle napping in a patch of sunlight on one of Honey’s cozy armchairs.

People always thought Miss Scarlet was named for the epic character Scarlett O’Hara inGone with the Wind. The assumption made sense unless you knew about Honey’s obsession with the game Clue. Her previous canine companion had been Professor Plum—the Professor for short.

Miss Scarlet refused to step outside when the weather dropped below fifty degrees. I couldn’t help but smile at the thought of her layered in doggy sweaters and yipping angrily in the Russian cold. She would have been furious.

When I turned back to Honey, my eyes softened. She was the only family I had left in the world, and I adored everything about her, even her penchant for worrying over nothing.

I closed the distance between us and took her wrinkled, knobby hands in mine. “It’s only a couple of weeks, Honey. I’ll be back fussin’ at you to lock your door at night like always.” I fought back a quiver in my chin as my emotions threatened to overcome me. “This is something I have to do, and I sure don’t want to argue with you before I go.”

She pulled me into a bear hug stronger than should have been possible for an eighty-year-old. “You always been stubborn as the day is long.”

I huffed a laugh as we pulled apart.

Honey nodded. “I suppose I should get cookin’. I’m not sending you off without plenty of snacks and a full belly.”

“With all the sweaters I’ll need, there won’t be much extra room in my bag,” I warned her.

“Nonsense. There’s always room for a box of praline cookies.”

Mmm, praline. They were my favorite. I supposed it wouldn’t hurt to let the old woman win at least one battle.

I grinned. “I’ll grab the pecans.”

That was a week and nearly ten thousand miles ago.

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