Hallow Springs

Two

I slowly sank to the bottom and it had never felt so good. The water enclosed around me and so too did the silence. There is something peaceful about being submerged, floating there and feeling air bubbles slowly slip out and up to the surface. It's almost like your life is slowly slipping away... out of reach. I did it to block out everything, my work, my broken marriage, my past. It all floated away as if a river's current swept all my pains away overhead. It felt good to drift like that, so good maybe I wouldn't come up again.

So here I stayed, suspended between life and death in my bathtub in my shitty one-bedroom apartment in uptown Charlotte. Call it my screwed-up catharsis, but for the moment the pain left me. I didn't know if I was actually suicidal or just a depressed detective whose Zoloft had stopped working. My temples began to pulse as my body reached for oxygen. This was my nature banging on my door. "Stop, you need air, now!" The little voice in the back of my head said. But I would respond, "No, I don't..." I didn't need air, I didn't need anything, but a break from it all. If the constant pain could just stop for one second.

It was a different little voice that brought me back. "...mommy... mommy..." Her calls were muffled by the gallons of water plugging my ears. But I could still hear her calling to me. This is the point where the question surfaces, what the hell are you doing, Amanda?

I pulled myself back into the light. There she was – my daughter. Her face twisted into concern as she watched me gasping for breath.

"Mommy... are you okay?" Once I found some air, I forced a weathered, yet committed smile over my face – the kind only mothers develop.

"Yes honey, I'm fine... what do you need?"

"Have you found my shoes yet?" I noticed that she was still barefoot.

"No... honey... I haven't..." And then I broke down. Tears mixed with bathwater and streamed down my face. I shook uncontrollably and then the guilt came. The other cops at the station didn't know this emotionally imbalanced version of myself. They only knew me as the hard ass detective who would break their wrist if they tried to grab my ass. That's how you had to be if you were going to survive in a male dominated profession. I had done more than survive – I had thrived. Police Chief Buckner had called me a rising star in homicide, which other's chalked up to me being a female and the department pushing diversity. Having arrested and convicted four times as many felons as them had nothing to do with it I'm sure.

I lifted up out of the tub and wiped my face of the water and tears. I wrapped a towel around me and stared down my reflection in the mirror. Some would say I'm attractive, others would probably pass. My wet red hair fell to shoulder length and my green eyes had somehow grown darker over the last few years. My skin was pale and speckled with faint freckles. Over the years, my hair had darkened and my freckles had lightened. My daughter on the other hand still had that fire red mane atop her head and the cutest freckles over her button nose. Everyone said that she looked identical to how I did when I was a kid. She got all of her father's personality and all of my looks. Poor girl... She stood up on her tippy toes and peered into the mirror beside me. She flashed a wild smile full of gaps. I couldn't help but to laugh. I bent over and kissed the crown of her head.

She left the room and continued to look for her shoes. They were Pink Converse All-Stars and I couldn't find them for the life of me. You have no idea, how badly I've wanted to find those shoes... After drying off, I put some underwear on, a cami and an oversized Carolina Panther hoodie that belonged to my ex-husband. It was one of the few things that I had kept. Sam Parker and I were married for thirteen years. It was a benevolent divorce, if there has ever been one. It was inevitable – after what happened to us. We lived in a small town called Hallow Springs about two hours from here up North in the Blue Ridge Mountains. I grew up there and I still think of it as home. Unfortunately, it was a home that I had run away from.

After we signed the papers and said our goodbyes, I wanted to start a new life so I became Amanda Graves again, taking back my maiden name, and moved to Charlotte – the big city. It was an adjustment for a mountain girl like me, but it wasn't like you see in the movies. First of all, Hallow Springs is not some dumb redneck town where there are more trailers than businesses. They don't talk like Hillbilly cowboys or hate black people or marry their cousins. Don't listen to Hollywood. Hallow Springs is lovely, filled with smart and caring people. It was actually their support that made me run. I couldn't live a life of a victim, so I guess I moved to the city to bring justice to other victims. My therapist has a field day with that notion.

I plopped down on the couch and decided to do what most people do with their feelings – I ate them. I couldn't help but grin at the four scoop bowl of Cookies N Cream balanced on my knobby knees as I flicked on the television.

"I love you, Mommy." I felt my beautiful daughter, cuddling up to my arm like a cat.

"I love you too, sweetie." I tilted my head to hers as I found on the guide an old classic The Big Sleep. I watched Humphrey Bogart question a suspect between drags of his cigarette. And then I looked down to my arm again – she was gone.

She did that sometimes – pop in and out like that. Just to remind me how crazy I really was. I hadn't told anyone. If I had told a friend, they would call it the longing heart of a mother. If I had told my therapist, she'd call it schizophrenia. If I had told a paranormalist, they'd call it a ghost encounter. If I had told my boss, he'd call it a reason to not trust my investigative judgment. Whatever it was, it was the life I was living.

My daughter's name was Suzie Parker and she was murdered five years ago in Hallow Springs. 

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