Breathing.

Thinking.

Finding familiarity in the breeze, in the ocean, in the wideopen space of wildness.

Wave after distant wave, she calmed. Her tiny shoulders relaxed, her face lost its pinched fear, and she lay her head on my thigh, growing drowsy to the sounds of our old home.

I’d always lived near the ocean. Always connected to the watery horizon, never able to be tamed. I would never have guessed that waves would become my heartbeat, my breath, my hope.

I sighed...Pippa, Conner, Galloway...they’d all gone.

I hadn’t been alone in three and a half years.

Once upon a time, I’d savoured silence. I’d hankered for peace. I’d been cruel in protecting ‘me’ time. Even poor Madi was held at arm’s length when life became too noisy. Yet, now...I would’ve given anything for company. I would’ve swum all the way to Fiji if it meant my world returned to the simplistic heaven of before.

Before our bodies ran out of nutrition.

Before death tried to destroy us.

I wanted Conner alive.

I wanted Pippa back.

I wanted Galloway free.

So many wants....and only one would hopefully come true.

But not tonight.

Scooping up my sleep-standing daughter, I pulled the comforter off the bed, spread out two pillows, and lay on the thin carpet.

The hardness was welcome.

The pillows sensational.

We’d eaten, taken the recommended vitamins to boost our depleted systems, and, as I drifted off to sleep, I didn’t notice it had been dark for hours and I hadn’t once turned on a light.

I’d bathed my daughter in the dark.

I’d prepared a meal of cheese and crackers from the fully stocked kitchen by starlight.

I’d lived my life the way I had for almost four years...

In comforting moon-cast shadows.

Chapter Seventy-Three

...............................................

G A L L O W A Y

......

MY INCARCERATION ENDED as fast as it’d begun.

I’d eaten the dinner provided (hotdog with relish), I’d stared blankly at the television locked to the wall (some silly rom-com), and settled unwillingly into bed (all while suffering physical cravings for Estelle).

I’d slept with her for so long that I struggled to fall asleep. The worry of how she was. The concern over Coco, the smarting agony of saying goodbye to Pippa, and the uncertainty if my dad could free me again, fermented in my chest with wicked heartburn. A headache also tormented me (a side effect of cellulitis) and my finger still felt tender.

But I shouldn’t worry.

I should trust.

After all, my father wasn’t the reason I’d been sprung from my previous sentence early. Even though he hadn’t accepted the court’s verdict and gathered testimonials from families of patients murdered by Dr. Joseph Silverstein, he’d had no power when it came to swaying cold hard evidence that I’d pulled the trigger.

However, miraculously, I hadn’t been the only one plotting murder.

A few weeks earlier, another family, unbeknownst to us, had just lost their mother to a malpractice check-up. Silverstein had been the woman’s physician for decades. In that time, he’d already killed twenty people (some with uncourteous service and others with full intent—prescribing deadly doses of drugs, arranging unneeded chemotherapy, wilfully killing while pretending to be a caring, worried doctor).

Only this time, when the woman went to him complaining of a rattling chest, back pain, and trouble breathing, he sent her home with an antiseptic throat spray. He didn’t listen to her lungs, take her temperature, or monitor her blood pressure. He ignored the signs of pneumonia on an eighty-four-year old woman. He denied her the most basic of treatment...the same treatment he swore to uphold with his Hippocratic Oath.

He told her to go home.

She called the next day begging for relief.

He told her to stop moaning.

She weakened.

She suffered.

A few days later, she died of complicated pneumonia with pleurisy that any other doctor would’ve been able to clear up (or, at least, send her to the hospital). If only he’d listened to her chest. Observed her complaints. And done what was right.

But there was nothing right about Joseph Silverstein.

He’d done the same to my mother. He’d told her time and time again to trust him. When she said she’d like a second opinion, he struck the fear of hell into her with complicated terms and jargon. He said he knew what was right for her.

All while he got off on watching her waste away.

However, that was my mother. And she was my revenge to pay.

The husband, now turned widower, was ninety-two, heartbroken, and had his own vengeance burning. After a marriage of sixty-three years, he welcomed death because without his wife...his life was over anyway.

His tale was spookily close to mine.

He bought an unmarked gun.

He boarded the train (his license had been revoked for bad eyesight), and set his electric wheelchair on fast mode as he sped to the door of the man who’d killed his wife.

Only, I got there first.

He saw me bounding from the scene with bloody knuckles and smoking illegal weapon. He watched me throw the gun into a nearby bush, not thinking clearly, and witnessed a nosy neighbour run from her home screaming for the police.

I hadn’t had a silencer.

People had heard the shot.

I was seen.

The old man made a decision.

While I was chased by sirens and busy-bodies, he pressed his accelerator and wheeled himself toward the bush.