Water Walker: Episodes 1-4 Part 37

"He broke your leg!" she screamed, standing. "He commanded me to break it and when I didn't he broke it!"

"He hurt your daughter," I said.

"Yes! Yes, he hurt my daughter!" She was livid.

I let a beat pa.s.s.

"But don't you see, Mother . . . I'm not hurt." I sat up in bed and stared at her. "I don't feel any of the wounds that were in my heart only yesterday." I leaned over and began to unravel the bandages on my right leg. "I'm a water walker, Mother. Water walkers don't a.s.sign blame. Only their costumes can be hurt, and costumes come and go."

I continued to unwrap my leg.

"What are you doing?"

Zeke had opted not to put a cast on my leg so that walking was out of the question. But he'd never broken a water walker's leg before, had he?

"I'm showing you how unhurt I am," I said, and pulled the last of the bandage free.

My mother took a step back, eyes fixed on my right leg, which was smooth and white and showed not a single bruise, much less swelling, from any break.

"Sweet Jesus," Mother breathed. "Oh dear, sweet baby Jesus."

I swung my legs off the bed and pushed myself to my feet, still weak from the exhausting emotional journey I'd taken through the night. Then I walked to the window, parted the curtain so that I could see out, and stared in the direction of the lake.

"Sweet baby Jesus," my mother said yet again. "You . . . What happened?"

I turned back to face her. "Forgiveness happened," I said. "Just the way it's supposed to happen."

"You . . . Your leg isn't broken."

I looked down at my body. "No, it's not."

"But how?"

"I went for a walk on the lake last night," I said.

"The lake? That's why you're wet? How . . . I . . . I don't understand."

"You don't need to, Mother. I'm not sure I do either." I approached her slowly, heart bursting with compa.s.sion. "There's only one thing you need to know right now."

Her eyes searched mine, stricken with apprehension. This was new territory for both of us.

"I'm your daughter," I said, reaching for her hand. "You're my mother and I love you with all of my heart. And if I love you that way, your Father loves you far more, just the way you are. You can't possibly impress him or upset him, he's not that small. Everything you've done, you've only done because you were lost, but today you are found by your daughter and your Father."

Overwhelmed in ways that I couldn't possibly fully grasp, Mother sank to her knees, took me into her arms, and wept. I held her and stroked her hair, feeling beautiful and whole and overflowing with gratefulness.

I had finally found my mother and I found her only by finding myself.

For a long time we held each other. I didn't know what effect this might have on my mother, or her strict religious code, and honestly, I didn't care. I felt utterly loved and invulnerable, both in my mother's arms and apart from them.

Honestly, I felt as though I might be able to walk up to a bathtub and make the water float in the air if I wanted to, because in my mind's eyes, the very water that had once been my grave was now life.

When the tears had subsided and Kathryn had run out of ways to express her remorse, she stood and paced, but even then new tears came. She couldn't keep from looking at my leg.

"I don't understand, Eden." She sniffed and wiped the tears seeping from her eyes. "I just don't know what to think."

"There's nothing to think, Mother. What's done is done and there's no harm."

"You keep saying that, but all I can see is harm." Guilt seemed to have a strangle hold on her, but that was her journey to take. "I didn't mean to hurt you, sweetheart. You have to believe me."

"You can't hurt me."

"Of course I can! I did!" She stared at me with red eyes. "I don't know why I didn't see it before . . . I . . ."

"It's okay, neither did I. But we see now, right?"

She stared at my leg. "I see it but it's still hard to believe. How could your leg just . . . heal?"

"I don't know how, really. I just let go. My old beliefs about how the world worked had to die. I had to see that the troubled sea posed no threat to me."

Her face wrinkled with sorrow again.

"That's what I've put you in, isn't it? A troubled sea."

"No, Mother. It was and is my choice to see or not see trouble in the sea. It's all so plain now. I had to confront my troubles to learn they were only of my own making. I had to take that journey. It's like walking through the valley of death to learn that death is only a shadow, even there. Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death . . ."

"I will fear no evil," she said, finis.h.i.+ng one of her favorite psalms.

But she was still gripped by worry. Not the same kind of fear that had held her captive for so long, but anxiety nonetheless.

It was Zeke, I thought. She had to figure out what to do about Zeke.

"Now what?" she said.

"Now we are free, Mother," I said. "If you want to be."

"Free from what? I can't just . . ."

She was getting hung up. And no wonder-she had four decades of bad thinking habits to unlearn and she hadn't had the benefit of growing up in a monastery as I had. Nor had she met an Outlaw yet.

Well, there was me. I guess I was an Outlaw too now.

"Free from whatever you think keeps you safe," I said. "You get to step out of your own boat." Not having been on the lake, she might not fully grasp that a.n.a.logy so I used more familiar language. "It's up to you to walk into the valley of death and find only a shadow."

She stopped her pacing and looked at me for a long time. Then looked down at my leg. When she lifted her head, I knew she'd made a decision-I had learned to read my mother's resolve from a hundred paces.

"What are we going to do about Zeke?" she asked.

"I'm not going to do anything about Zeke," I said.

She set her jaw and gave a curt nod.

"Well, I am," she said.

28.

KATHRYN HAD spent two hours swinging wildly from states of great peace to places of terribly anxiety. The battle in her mind refused to give her any final emotional resolution. It was amazing how moments of complete clarity could so quickly fog into moments of confusion and fear.

But Eden's leg isn't broken. How's that possible?

And then she'd remember.

She paced, and she tried to make herself busy around the house without truly knowing what she was doing, and she listened to Eden telling Bobby how beautiful he was while she played blocks with him in his room, seemingly oblivious to the war raging in her mother's mind.

But surely Eden knew as well as she did what had to be done. Kathryn had to undo everything she'd done, of course.

The problem was, she kept teetering on the brink of exactly what did have to be done. Was undoing everything really the wisest thing?

Yes, of course it was. She'd subjected her own daughter to a life of expectations she herself couldn't possibly satisfy. And she'd been courting that realization for days now without realizing it. For months, even. Maybe even since the first time she'd baptized Eden.

Once having taken that step years earlier, she'd silenced all her reservations and refused to look back for fear that doing so was only a demonstration of weakness in her own flesh.

How she'd come to see her guilt so clearly in Eden's room, she wasn't sure. But the moment Eden had suggested she'd done nothing wrong, the floodgates had opened and Kathryn had seen just how much she had done wrong.

In truth, she'd been a monster deserving of her own drowning. The fact that Eden didn't see it that way only filled her with more guilt, and following that guilt, a terrible need to right all she'd done wrong, even if Eden didn't think of it as wrong.

Eden, whose leg was no longer broken.

So she had to undo what she'd done, and that meant freeing them from Zeke's control.

But was that really the wisest thing to do?

She couldn't just confront him. What if he lost his mind and killed them all? She couldn't just run to the police, could she? Zeke would never be so careless to allow it. He no longer trusted her. He'd already taken the cell and cut all the telephone lines. He would undoubtedly have a guard in place, or the road blocked.

Even if she did get past him and made it to the authorities, what then? She would go to prison and leave Eden without a mother to care for her. Was that fair?

She could hold back and look for an opportunity, but it was only a matter of time, maybe today, before Zeke discovered that Eden's leg was no longer broken. Then what?

It doesn't matter, Kathryn. She threw the dishtowel she'd been dragging around for no particular reason onto the table and set her jaw.

It doesn't matter what then. Eden's right. Only your own fear is keeping you from facing the truth.

There was only one way to step into the valley of death, and that was to step into that valley. There was no skirting it or finding a better way around or running away from it.

She had to do this, as much for herself as for Eden.

And she had to do it now, on her own, before she lost the courage.

Kathryn walked to the door, s.n.a.t.c.hed the keys off the nail on the wall, turned the handle, and stepped out into the sunlight.

The sound of the insects in the swamp stopped her cold, there in the doorway. For a moment she became Eden. A young girl who'd awakened five years ago to the same sounds. This was the sound of her prison, reminding her in every waking moment that she was trapped in swampland with no way out.

Kathryn swallowed hard. It was her prison too, wasn't it? It always had been.

She had to undo what she'd done. Yes, she had to.

Walk, Kathryn. Just walk.

She closed the door behind her, stepped down from the porch, and headed to the truck, refusing to lift her eyes to scan the perimeter. Was there a guard there? She didn't care. She just had to walk.

Walk, Kathryn.

Problem was, she did care. She cared enough to be terrified because she knew that Zeke owned her and was waiting.

Yea though I walk into the valley of the shadow of death, I will slay that vile beast and make the path right . . .

No. No, that wasn't right. I will fear no evil. I will walk and I will fear no evil. Just like Eden. Just like my daughter.

So she walked. But she still felt fear.

She felt fear when she opened the truck's door and climbed inside and she sat there for a full minute, rehearsing what might or might not happen.

She felt fear when she started the truck, put it into gear, and started down the driveway because now she was moving, and moving meant closing the distance between her and Zeke.

She felt mind-swooning fear as she guided the truck down the long gravel road, driving far too slow because fast meant sooner, and she wasn't that brave yet.

She felt a chilling spike of fear when she saw Claude's white truck parked on the side of the road past Zeke's house. She was right; Zeke wasn't taking any chances. The only way in or out was through him.

By the time she made the turn and pulled into Zeke's driveway, her fear was so acute that her vision blurred. She brought the truck to a stop, turned off the motor, and tried her best to gather herself.

Yea though I walk, yea though I walk, yea though I walk . . .

She whispered the mantra, hoping to gain strength, but barely heard the words much less found any power in them.

I will fear no evil, I will fear no evil, I will fear no evil . . .

But she did. So much that she considered turning back to rethink a better plan because the one she had in mind was doomed to fail.

At any moment, Zeke would come out, wondering why she'd come and even more, why she was sitting in his driveway like a dead duck. She had to get to his phone and she had to do it now. Just get to the phone in his office, which was the only one she knew of, and make the call to the authorities, and that was all. Just that.

Taking a deep breath, Kathryn opened the door and stepped out. See, now it was too late to turn back. And, surprisingly, that simple thought gave her a moment's courage.