A Welcome Reunion

by Lucinda Berry

Janie didn’t just tug at your heartstrings—she pulled them straight out.

Janie’s narrative was all about redemption. How she’d been rescued by the Bauers when they thought they could help her, but how they’d thrown her away when they didn’t think they could fix her. That’s when she’d gone through her darkest hours, and it was in that place that she’d discovered the strength she needed to be her own savior. Or so she said.

“Is that why you hurt your roommate at New Horizons Correctional Facility?”

“You snipped off your roommate’s earlobe with a nail clipper, and you crushed another resident behind the washing machine, breaking three of their ribs and collapsing their lung.”

Snipping off your own earlobe first so no one would suspect you of hurting your roommate was cunning.

The conditions of his plea bargain were that he have no contact with her, and he wouldn’t risk it. Not after how hard he’d worked to keep his medical license after the trial.

Sometimes you got through tough things by putting them behind you, and that’s all we wanted to do with everything that happened with Janie—put her behind us.

“You know it was your husband who was smitten with her, not me, right? I was never Team Janie. I was always Team Reality.”

She was back, and she was coming for my baby.

And there it was. In black and white, the scrawled signature: Christopher Bauer.

I’d tried to drown a little girl in a bathtub. He’d hit me when I said she deserved to die. And now this? In a way, we were destined to be together. Trauma-bonded for life.

“They’re planning on running away together.”

I’m stopping her from having any babies and carrying on the line. But most importantly, Christopher, I’m keeping her from killing anyone else, and you know she will. You know it.”

We put down dogs when they have rabies. Once they get that poison in their blood and they turn on people? We don’t let them live. I did the same thing to her, Christopher.

“People aren’t dogs.” “They are when they act like savages.”

I’d protected the one I loved and saved the world from a monster. It was finally over. She couldn’t hurt us or anyone else ever again.