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1
SAMMIE
The air smelled of petrichor the day I killed my husband. Rain had come after a long dry spell, providing relief from the pent-up heat and humidity of central Tennessee. Killing John had not been my intention. I didn’t have a violent bone in my body. However, a path of good intentions had led me nowhere in my young life but trapped in an abusive marriage.
My daddy, may he rest in peace, always said anything could be dealt with if one had a plan. For weeks, as dense moisture and muffled anger hung in the air, I’d thought through the steps to get away from John and his family. The Underwood clan ran our town, everything from the schools to the police, so it would be no small feat. Plus, I’d never done anything brave in my whole life, but I felt Daddy guiding me from heaven, helping me as I created a new identity and secretly packed for freedom.
Lately, I’d even given myself permission to dream of another life. A way out of the pain inflicted upon me by the man who was supposed to be my protector.
I’d had dreams in high school just like everyone else, believe you me. I was going to get a degree in interior design and move to Nashville. Rich music people would be my clients, and I’d get invited to all their pretty houses and fancy parties. Sadly, none of those yearnings came to fruition. Instead, I’d fallen in love with John Underwood and gotten pregnant right out of high school.
A friend of a friend with questionable morals helped people run. I had no idea how many other reasons there were for leaving a place and disappearing, but apparently, I wasn’t the only one. He’d created a driver’s license with a new name and a Social Security number of someone long since dead. In addition, he’d gotten me a replacement phone with a new number under my new name. I was now Sammie Scott. Sammie Wilson Underwood will have vanished into thin air by this time tomorrow.
My father had left me a small sum when he’d died a year after I’d married John. I don’t know how he knew to do so, but he’d put it into an account only I had access to. When I’d asked Daddy’s attorney why he’d done it that way, the man had simply looked me in the eye and cocked his head to one side. “Bill thought it might be nice for you to have a little money of your own. Just in case it was ever needed.”
That had hit me like a ton of bricks. Had he suspected what was going on or was it an innocuous suggestion? Regardless, in that moment, shame had washed over me. I was not leading the life he’d dreamed for me.
I’d also been picking up shifts at the local diner while Chloe attended preschool. I told John all the tip money went into the cookie jar and to feel free to grab some for his evenings out, all to disguise the truth. I’d been putting away at least half of my tips for a better part of a year. Between that and what Daddy had left me, Chloe and I could stay afloat, even if it took a while for me to find a job.
The day I planned to leave, I did everything I normally did so as not to tip John off that by sunrise I’d be in a car with Chloe tucked into her car seat heading as far away from him as I could get.
I dropped Chloe at day care and then clocked into what would be my last waitress shift at the diner. I felt guilty about not giving notice, but I couldn’t risk anyone knowing my escape plan. Fremont was a small town. Word got around. Especially anything to do with the former high school quarterback and head cheerleader.
Such a promising future, the gossips had said to one another. We were a country song to them. Young love, they’d all said when we married the summer after graduation. And a baby on the way? Well, these things happen in this day and age. They’re doing the right thing. What a sweet little family they’ll make. Especially with Sammie raised without a mother. Thank God for John’s loving family, who took her under their wing. Meant to be.
If only any of that had been true. Instead, the pregnant former high school cheerleader had woken the day after her wedding to find the quarterback was really a monster.
After picking Chloe up from day care, I packed whatever I could fit into two suitcases. It wasn’t much, but at least we’d have some clothes and toiletries, plus a few toys for Chloe. While she’d taken an afternoon nap, I’d made a lasagna, vacuumed the living room, and straightened the framed photograph of our wedding day. I wanted everything to appear normal whenever John returned to the house.
My intention was to ditch my car at a park Chloe, and I frequented. I would leave my phone in the car so that John would think I was there. He kept close tabs on me through the phone. What little freedom I had was impossible with a phone tracker in place, but this would actually work to my advantage during my escape. From the park, we’d take a cab to the bus station, where I would buy two tickets to Bozeman, Montana, all in cash, so that no credit card trail was left behind.
I didn’t know for certain where in Montana we would land. There were small towns scattered over the western part of Montana that seemed ideal for a woman and her daughter to hide from an abusive husband. I had enough money to keep me going for a few months, but I’d have to find work and a place to live as soon as possible. It was risky. All of it. But I felt deep down in my bones that if I didn’t get out of Fremont, Tennessee, I’d be dead before the year ended.
Last month, right before Labor Day, something had happened that I could not excuse. I guess you could say it was the final straw, the one thing I could not abide.
It had started when I’d found four kittens under our porch. Their mother had either abandoned them or been killed, leaving them alone and defenseless. They were maybe five or six weeks old, given their size. We’d fostered several litters of kittens when I was young, so I knew what they were like at various stages.
I’d brought them indoors, planning to take care of them until we could find proper homes. They’d slept in a pile that first afternoon. I’d googled what to do if their mother wasn’t around, and Chloe and I had gone to the drugstore to purchase droppers with which to feed them.
When John got home and saw them in the kitchen, he’d erupted in rage. How dare I bring home cats without permission. Why was I always doing things just to make him mad? On and on like that. He’d yanked them from the bed I’d made them, tossing them into a trash bag and vowing to drown them in the river. Although I’d tried, I was physically unable to stop him. I’d begged like a child, pleading for him to leave them, promising I’d take them to a shelter first thing in the morning, all the while praying Chloe wouldn’t wake up to see him hauling the mewing trash bag to his truck.
I’d waited for him to come back, crying and praying that he’d changed his mind. He hadn’t. When he returned, the trash bag was empty. I’d howled like a wounded animal. The idea of the poor little mites drowning in the river was more than I could take. I’d actually gone at him, striking him with my fists. Not for long, though. He quickly put a stop to that by slamming my head against the wall and punching me in the nose, causing blood to leak like a faucet.
Chloe, who had been asleep in her room, had clearly heard the ruckus and awakened. I’d only recently bought a toddler’s bed, so she no longer slept in a crib and could easily get out. She’d come into the kitchen. Her little hands clutched her baby blanket to her chest, and her eyes were big and frightened.
Her gaze had gone to the empty cat bed.
“I drowned the little flea-invested vermin,” John said.
“Kitties drowned?” Chloe began to howl in quite the same manner as I had only minutes before.
“Shut your stupid mouth, you hear me? Stop that crying,” John had shouted at her.
Before I could stop him, he’d hauled my baby girl up and hurled her into a wall. My sweet Chloe had crumpled to the ground and lay there like a rag doll, so quiet I thought for several terrible seconds that he’d killed her. But when I knelt beside her, she opened her big blue eyes, lashes wet from tears, and looked right into the depth of my soul. She didn’t have to say the words; I knew the message coming from her silent, tear-streaked face. Mama, get me away from him.
Rage like nothing I’d ever felt had possessed me like a demon. It was as if a light bulb came on in the recesses of my foggy, cobwebbed brain. I would figure out how to escape and disappear so that he would never find us. We’d start a new life, far away from the Underwood family. I had nothing to lose, other than the eggshell-walking fear that had become my unwanted daily visitor.
Leaving was like taking a new pharmaceutical drug. Controversial. Might not work. Bound to have side effects. But I had to try it. Not so much for me. I’d made my choices and suffered the consequences. However, my daughter was innocent. I wanted her to have a life full of opportunities and love. If I broke the cycle now, she might have a chance. She deserved better than to have her mother die on her as mine had.
