Facing Egan
By the time they’d reached Sacramento, it was nearly eleven at night. and despite the lovely couple offering to let her stay in their hotel room with them, she asked them to drop her off at the bus station.
However, the minute the couple left her, she was climbing into a taxi and making her way to the airport. From the airport, she booked the first available flight to Vancouver using her fake Canadian passport and driver’s license.
Ten hours later, landing in Vancouver, she walked up to the nearest flight counter and booked a flight to Toronto. From Toronto she took a short flight to St. Catharines and then she drove the forty minutes. to the Fort Erie border crossing in a rental car and crossed back into
the USA.
“Ma’am, you’ve been through two US borders today.” The border patrol agent was reviewing her history.
“I know. As you can see from my passport, I’m originally from Vancouver. I was in Seattle on business yesterday and I swear, the moment I touched down in Vancouver, my boss was demanding I fly to Buffalo to meet with a prospective client. You’ll see my paperwork for working is in order. Even my car rental is in the company name. My meeting is at nine tomorrow morning and the only way I’m making it is by driving across this border tonight. The next flight from St. Catharines was tomorrow and I wouldn’t have made it. I really wish he’d let me
Facing Egan
2/10
know when I was still in Seattle. I could have gotten a direct flight from there to here, I’m sure.”
“What do you do for work?”
“I’m an acquisitions editor. I meet with authors to try to convince them to sign books which we think will do really well in the market. We’re a small publishing company but we’re starting to make a name for ourselves. If I can get this guy to sign with us tomorrow, in addition to the guy who signed yesterday, we’ll be on the map. I really can’t miss this meeting.”
“Do you have a hotel booked?”
“My boss sent my itinerary, and it included a stay at a motel.” She lifted her phone, “I can bring it up if you want.”
“No. You’re good. How long will you be in Buffalo?”
“I’m hoping no more than tomorrow. My boss needs to give me a vacation after this,” she rolled her eyes for dramatic effect.
“I’d say. Have a safe drive. If I were you though, ma’am, I’d demand your boss book you a direct flight from Buffalo to Vancouver. You were doing a live version of Planes, Trains, and Automobiles.”
“The John Candy movie! I loved that one.” She smiled brightly at the border agent.
The agent waved her through and then she was on her way.
Facing Egan
3/10
It took another hour before she reached the town of Medina, New York. She parked the car and let out a shaky breath. Her hands were trembling so viciously as the car engine shut off, she knew she needed to collect herself before entering the Inn.
She’d done the impossible for the second time in her life. She’d escaped Kiefer O’Reilly and his Iron Force Gang. However, once again she was going to be forced to reinvent herself, find another town to run to and hide in and pray chance encounters didn’t destroy her.
Taking her time to get her emotions under control, she quickly locked the car up and went in search of Astra. She entered the Inn and nodded to the person working the front desk. “I’m here to visit my friend Astra and her son. Can I go right in?”
“Absolutely. You know where they are?”
“Yes. Room two twelve. Second floor.”
Astra told her she’d be in room four twenty–four of the Fairmont in downtown Vancouver. If anyone managed to intercept her. phone, they would not have known they’d preplanned years ago to divide the room number in half.
Knocking on the door of the room, holding her backpack on her shoulder, she was shaking like a leaf.
She heard the whispers in the room and the footsteps from Astra as the woman tread carefully to the door and Genesis made sure she was seen through the peephole.
Facing Egan “Password?”
“Chocolate Fudge Oreo.”
4/10
The door opened and Astra was yanking her into the room, wrapping her arms around her and squeezing her tight. “They didn’t follow you?” she whispered in her ear.
“No. Flew into Vancouver on my fake id so we’ll need to get me
new ones.
!!
“Already done. I have them in my bag.”
She pulled from her friend’s embrace and looked at the angry child sitting in the middle of the bed, arms folded across. his chest and eyes blazing at her. Oh, he was breathtakingly beautiful even when he was furious with her.
“Hey buddy!”
“I didn’t want to leave all my friends.”
“I know.” She swallowed nervously as she studied the blue eyes so much like his father’s. The spiky red hair a flaming homage to his genetics was the icing on the cake of his clonelike appearance. Egan was every bit the image of his father. “I’ll make it up to you.”
“Why did we have to come here? Why Mom? I was playing with my friends at recess and then Auntie Astra came and took me from school, and I was having fun,” he punched the bed furiously. “She made lie and say Auntie Astra was my mom and
Facing Egan
we got on a plane! I don’t like planes! They’re smelly!”
5/10
“Egan,” she took a breath and sat on the edge of the bed. “You are six years old now and you need to understand some things. I’ll explain it to you but first, can I have a hug? I really missed my favorite boy. Please?” she batted her lashes, and he lunged. at her and wrapped his chubby arms around her neck and squeezed.
“I was scared, Mommy. Auntie Astra was worried, and I could tell, and I was so scared, and I thought she was kidnapping me away from you.”
“Oh baby, no, no,” she shot Astra a look, but the woman shrugged helplessly.
“I told him I was bringing you to meet him but when we got here ahead of you, he didn’t believe me. I couldn’t take him out of the room just in case.”
“Egan, Mommy needs to explain some things and I need you to listen very carefully, okay?”
He nodded, his blue eyes watery and the freckles on his cheeks dark in contrast to the pallor. She brushed the tears away with her palms and kissed his forehead.
“First and I cannot say this enough, I love you more than anything or anyone in the entire world and so does Auntie Astra. She loves you so much. If anything, ever happens to Mommy, she is the one who will always keep you safe. Always. You can trust her no matter what.”
Facing Egan
“I was really scared.”
“I know baby, I know.” She bit her lip, “remember when in kindergarten last year and the kids were making father’s day cards and you asked me why you didn’t have a father?”
“You said I did but he didn’t live close by.”
“Right.” She took a shaky breath and began, “your father.”
“Is a fucking criminal.” Astra muttered and then realizing she spoke aloud coughed. “Sorry. That was not my in my head voice, was it?”
“My dad is a bad guy?”
“Fuck it,” Genesis thought with a sigh. Taking a deep breath and then letting it out she nodded, “a long time ago, I met this man who was so nice to me at first. He made Mommy feel like the most special lady in the universe.”
“You are special.”
“Thank you, baby,” she kissed his forehead, and he beamed at her. “I met him in a country called Ireland. Auntie Astra and I saved up for four years to go there. Astra’s grandmother was born there and she always wanted to visit. So, on the spring break before we graduated college, we went. We were there for two whole weeks and on the last few days there I met a man named Kiefer.”
Facing gan
“Kiefer,” Egan rolled the name on his tongue as if tasting it.
“Right. I fell in love with him like a princess in the movies and when my trip was over, I was so sad to leave him behind, but he came with me, and he promised me I’d never be alone again. We came back to America together and it wasn’t long before we got married.”
“You were married?” his eyes grew wide at the revelation.
“Yes. I married Kiefer because I loved him very much. Then his family moved in with us. Kiefer’s sister and her friend came to stay. Kiefer and his sister argued all the time, so he stopped coming home and he left me alone with them all the time. I didn’t get along with the girls either and they were really mean to me. I was there, in the house all the time with mean people and I became so lonely.”
“You did?”
“I really did.”
“Why were they so mean?”
“They were assholes,” Astra offered the explanation.
“Auntie Astra!” he giggled at her words.
“I’m not wrong. They were two mean assholes who thought it would be fun to pick on a woman who was lonely and sad.”
“You were lonely and sad?” Egan gave his mom big eyes of pity.
20
“I was.” Genesis felt bad telling him such things, but she needed him to understand they were running for a reason.
“And they were mean to you?”
“They were.” She took a breath, “they were really mean, Egan and like all bullies, the more Mommy was upset, the greater their enjoyment of their activities. I wanted to tell Kiefer what was happening but each night he would only come home after I was already asleep and, in the morning, he was already gone. They went from teasing and saying mean things to pushing Mommy and hurting her with their hands. One day they pushed me down some stairs and Mommy got really hurt.”
“Oh no.” He frowned and then as if a lightbulb went off, he exclaimed, “is it how my brother died?”
“It is,” she nodded.
“Why were they such bad girls?”
“Kiefer’s family were extraordinarily rich and sometimes people with a lot of money think they can do whatever they want, and money can make what they do wrong go away. The family also,” Genesis. squeezed his hands, “well, Egan, they didn’t always obey the law and rules. They didn’t care about the police or being good. They didn’t care about anything but themselves.”
“The whole family were bad guys?”
“They were not good guys,” Astra didn’t back away from her
Facing Egan
feelings on the matter.
9/10
“Egan, I can’t say everyone in the family were bad guys. Some of the family were genuinely nice to me.”
“But not Kiefer’s sister.”
“Or his brother at first.”
“Oh.”
“I realized then Kiefer couldn’t keep us safe. If the people in his own family were able to hurt me and my babies and he wasn’t seeing it, then it meant I was in danger and you,” she tapped his nose, “were in danger. However,” she didn’t know how to say the rest without scaring him, “Kiefer told me when we got married, I needed to stay with him forever. He was never going to let me. leave him. So, I needed to run away to keep you safe from the mean girls in his house.”
“How did you run away?”
“Well, remember when I said sometimes the family broke the rules and didn’t care about the police?”
“Yes.”
“Well, when I was in the hospital after I fell down the stairs, some police officers came to talk to me. They said if I helped them by telling them where Kiefer was doing some of his work the police wanted to catch him doing, they would help me runt away.” She lifted her chin, “so I told them I saw Kiefer breaking
Facing Egan
10/10
the law and I signed a paper. Then when they were talking to him and keeping him busy, Mommy ran away from him and his whole family.”
“You tattled?”
And like that, he channelled his father without even trying.
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