Overcomer - The Journey by Judy Colella (top 10 non fiction books of all time txt) 📕

“Not me,” said Retta.

Letitia sighed. “Get out of the car.” Shaking her head, she opened the driver’s side back door. The cool, fragrant air was lovely, and she began thinking it would be a good time to open all the windows in the house. She unlocked the front door, and they stepped inside.

Silence. No feeling of life, no hint that their presence had been noticed by anyone or anything, but no smell of death, either. “Well, come on, you two – we’re gonna do this together or I’ll make you sorry we didn’t.”

Her children shuffled after her to the kitchen. When she got to the basement door, she stopped, stunned. Already open, the wood around the lock was splintered, but since it opened inward to the basement, she knew the boy couldn’t have done this from his side. Someone else had to have been in the house and kicked it open.

“Hey!” she called into the darkness below. “You down there, stupid?” Nothing. “Doggone it!” She stomped down the stairs, slapping at the light switch on the way, hearing Retta right behind her, but not Buddy. What was that boy doing?

The mattress was unoccupied. Next she checked the bathroom – empty. Retta looked in the other parts of the basement and found no one.

“How in the world did he get out? Who would’ve come in here? It isn’t like we got anything worth stealing...”

“Ma!!”

Letitia hurried upstairs. “What is it, Buddy? You find him?”

Her son was standing next to the small table by the front door. “No, Ma, but where is the tape recorder?”

“What? Why’re you asking a dumb question like that?”

“It’s not dumb, Ma. You left the recorder right here on this table when we left. If he took it with him, he coulda given it to the police or something...”

“Aw, crap!” Buddy was right – she’d put the recorder there herself, and the tape was still in it, a tape that could get her arrested for child abuse. Unless she could convince the authorities that it had been used for something else…

Footsteps sounded on the front porch, followed by a loud knock.

Oh, now what? Adjusting her tight yellow skirt and composing her features to appear nonchalant, Letitia opened the door.

“Mrs. Pettijohn?” A large man stared down at her, looking uncomfortable in his dark suit.

“Yes, sir,” she answered with manufactured sweetness. “What can I do for you?”

“FBI.” He held up a leather cardholder, which he flipped open to reveal his official I.D. “You’re under arrest, ma’am. Please turn around and put your hands on the back of your head.”

“Hey!” yelled Buddy. “Why are you arresting her?”

“For the same reason we’re arresting you, Buddy Pettijohn. Uh, Retta? You, too, sweetheart.”

By this time, he had been joined by four other massive officers who cuffed them, then read each of the Pettijohns their rights as they were pulled out of the house and into the vehicles that had been driven onto the lawn.

“What the hell are you arresting us for?” the woman demanded, no longer caring about being polite.

“Child abuse, battery on a minor, conspiracy to commit murder, and murder in the first degree, ma’am.”

“What?! I never killed nobody! And I never laid a hand on that boy!”

“Yeah? What did you hit him with?” The FBI agent glared at her. “I’ve seen your foster son’s file, ma’am, which includes clear photos of his scars and bruises.”

“Nothing – he, he hurt hisself!”

“Still sticking with that one, are you?”

She shut her mouth, furious, scared, and totally unable to come up with an answer, with any words at all.

Except one – “comeuppance.”

*******

“Why do you think you stammer?” A nice-looking man in his early fifties, Dr. Libman, the head psychiatrist for Georgia’s Marcus Institute, had been introduced to Cian that morning.

The room in which they sat, with its muted colors and comfortable furniture, had large windows covered by sheer white drapes that filled it with a diffused, calming bath of sunlight. Under other circumstances, Cian thought, he might have found this place pleasant, relaxing. Not these circumstances. While better by far than his previous situation, this one was presenting new issues. Gratitude and relief had settled in, leaving the door open for other things. Confusion about what all of this meant. Uncertainty about what was expected. No, he was not relaxed.

Why am I talking to this man? Can he really help me? Do I have to tell him the whole six years of my experience? I certainly can’t tell him where I’m from… He pulled his mind back to the question. Why, indeed, did he stammer? He’d been asking himself that since the day it had started.

“Take your time, Cian. We’re in no rush.”

“Th-thank you.” He bit his lower lip, remembering the first time he’d been forced to listen to the tape. His silence continued, but not because the doctor had told him they weren’t in a hurry. He simply didn’t know where, or how, to start.

“May I ask you something?”

“Y-yes.”

“When, exactly, did your stammer first begin?”

“The t-t-tape. A-after the fi-first time sh-sh-sh-she ma-m-ma...”

“Cian, listen. She’ll never hurt you again. Neither will her son or daughter. You must allow your mind and heart to rest on this issue, to be at ease. You’re safe. Please believe that.”

Cian nodded, but couldn’t help believing he’d wake up in the basement, and none of this would have happened. “Where... a-are they n-n-now?”

Dr. Libman stood and went to his desk, opened the top drawer, and pulled out a manila envelope, which he handed to Cian before returning to his seat. “They were arrested a couple of weeks after you were rescued from that house. This is a police report as well as the follow-up. Read it, please.”

Cian opened it and slid out several sheets of paper. After a quick glance at the doctor, who nodded, he sat straighter and began reading.

*******

Dr. Libman sat back, watching, and tried to interpret Cian’s reactions, his body language and the subtle expressions in his eyes. He had read through the report several times himself, and knew that Letitia had been charged with several murders – two social workers in Atlanta, a doctor in her local hospital, and her own husband. The only one she’d been foolish enough to admit outright as having done by her own hands was her husband’s.

The investigator suspected that the social workers and the doctor had been killed on her orders but carried out by two other people: her husband in the case of the social workers, and her son, who had caused the doctor’s death. When asked if this were the case, Letitia’s silence and refusal to look up from her lap was close enough to an admission to warrant a hearing.

Before the month was out, she would face a judge. Buddy, who was no longer a minor, was facing the possibility of life imprisonment with no chance for parole. Retta, on the other hand, had been remanded to a psychiatric institution for observation and treatment, having neither committed nor been implicit in any crime other than abuse, but questions had been raised about her behavior being the result of her mother’s direct influence.

As for the horrible abuse meted out to Cian, this would be factored in if the case went to trial – something Dr. Libman believed was a foregone conclusion at this point. In the report he’d given Cian, the investigators and law enforcement officials were pressing charges based on overwhelming evidence, not the least of which was Cian’s physical condition and mental state. And then there was the recording…

As Cian read the report, he gave away little of what he was feeling, much to the doctor’s surprise. But when he was done, he slid the pages back into the envelope, let it fall to the floor, and sat back, eyes closed. A moment later, tears began sparkling under his closed lids, made their way through his lashes and down his face, to fall, finally, in long splashes on his shirt.

The tears continued silently for a few more minutes, and then, doubling over, Cian began to sob.

*******

Cian finished reading, his mind numb. Like an automaton, he put the pages back in the envelope, dropped it on the floor. Closed his eyes. Let the feelings burst through. Like a dam unable to remain intact once cracks had formed, came the flood of pain and sorrow that had begun the first night he’d entered that house. He bent forward, burying his face in his arms crossed over his lap, and sobbed. Deep, painful spasms as he mourned the loss of family, homeland and childhood, the lives lost on his behalf. Simultaneous relief, sorrow, rage, grief, and elation tore at his soul, scouring his psyche.

The report had answered questions he’d made himself forget because they touched things too painful to think about: that couple in the beautiful house where he’d first gone to stay and where his parents and a man who had come with them – the name was gone from his memory – had eventually left him to continue his quest alone; those two people who, with their soft speech and kind ways, had eased the loss of his family and taught him so many things that would help him... how had they ended up dying in such a violent, horrible way? Now he knew. That disgusting woman, the one who had the nerve to call him her foster son, had been responsible for their brutal deaths.

But why? What had they done to Letitia to make them a target like that? Their relationship with him? And Dr. Lee – was it because he believed him? Had he told Letitia he knew she had administered the slashes on Cian’s back? Perhaps by telling him what had really happened, he had caused the man’s death himself. No, no, I won’t blame myself – telling him wouldn’t have caused his murder if she weren’t so evil!

Reconciliation of the conflicting emotions brought a new pain as the broken places in his heart started knitting back into wholeness, jagged, angry edges forced together by a relief he’d believed would never come. Pain that hurt almost more than he could handle. Yet he knew pain, had learned to accept it. But this?

Sometimes Letitia would lock him out of the house in winter, forcing to sleep on the frozen lawn. The pain of near-frozen hands and feet thawing in warm water the next morning was much like this inner mending. The beatings that lacerated his back were almost pleasant by comparison.

He heard Dr. Libman come to the chair and lean down, one arm across Cian’s shoulders. Thank you for your concern. He couldn’t say that yet, couldn’t stop sobbing. Cian lost track of how long he sat that way, letting all of it out. But at last the wracking gasps began to subside, the soreness in his ribs a small price for release.

Sitting straight, head throbbing, he took an offered tissue from Dr. Libman and blew his nose. Head back, he closed his eyes, drained, unable to move for a few seconds. “S-Sorry,” he whispered.

“No need to apologize, Cian. That was something you needed to do.”

He nodded and opened his eyes, blinked a few times against a threat of new tears, and took a deep, shaky breath. “I h-hope they die. Es-especially h-her.”

The doctor went back to his chair, looked at Cian with his head to one side for a moment. “What would you do if they didn’t?”

A faint recollection about childhood in the 6th Century whispered, “Kill them yourself.” That was the right thing to do back then, perhaps. But his century had changed, had changed him. In this less direct, more “civilized” society, he knew he could do nothing without getting into a whole lot of trouble. So he met the doctor’s gaze with a modified version of his instincts. “Hope that f-fate would c-c-catch up w-with them so-some day.”

“That was a good answer, Cian. I trust you meant it.”

That made him curious. “Wh-what