It was dumb luck I found the wedding certificate. It was all folded up, stuffed into a folder with a bunch of documents. I wasn’t looking for it. If you can believe it, I was looking for an old set of ninja turtle action figures I’d stashed up there, thinking maybe I could sell them on eBay for a couple bucks.
Instead I found the old certificate, which was actually a copy ordered later, so my mother could finish the paperwork to get remarried.
She looked horrified at the sight of it. Like it was a snake that might bite her. I’m sure she wished she’d thrown it away. At the time, I wished she had, too.
Now I don’t regret that I found it. I only regret how I reacted.
Some things can’t be taken back.
I’ve taken too long to continue, lost in thought. Riona reaches out and touches my arm, saying, “Are you alright?”
I clear my throat. “Yes. Of course. Where was I? Oh, right . . . My mother wanted Waya to stay with her. She was so scared. But he passed her over to his sisters, and they drove back over the border to Cherokee land, not stopping once. Waya stayed with my uncles.
“The next bit was the tricky part. They had to make sure that everyone in Silver Run knew that my mother had run off, and that Ellis was looking for her. But they couldn’t let him actually get close to finding her.
“So Waya, Uncle Abott and Uncle Earl, and some of my mother’s younger siblings kept watch everywhere they could. It was easier than they hoped, because Ellis was in a fucking rage. He went to the sheriff and reported my mother as kidnapped. He went to the bar where she used to work. He went to her old high school and her friends’ houses. My grandparents’ house, too.
“He screamed at them and threatened them. Even smashed a couple windows in their house. Beat my grandfather within an inch of his life, though he was probably too high to notice. Then Ellis grabbed one of the youngest siblings—my aunt Kelly. She was only four at the time. He grabbed her and acted like he was going to drag her out of the house. Maybe he thought he’d keep her hostage or something, to force my mother to come back.”
“Jesus,” Riona whispers.
“Well, Uncle Abott came running into the house with his junior league baseball bat and he said, ‘Let go of her or I’ll crack your fuckin’ skull.’ Ellis let go of Aunt Kelly and left.
“They followed him around for three days. At one point he came face-to-face with my auntie Lane as she was tailing him outside a gas station, but he just looked right through her and kept going. It was ironic, because Ellis had given her a skateboard as a gift when he was pursuing my mother. But he didn’t even recognize her face. Maybe he was just too enraged to notice.
“Anyway, on the fourth day, some people in town were spreading the rumor that my mother had been seen on Cherokee land. Ellis hadn’t heard it yet as far as my uncles knew, but they also knew it was only a matter of time until he did.
“So they put a slow leak in the tires of his car while he was eating at the bar where my mother used to work. He kept going back there to threaten the owners and harass the other customers. He bribed a few, too. It didn’t work—if anybody knew where my mother was, they didn’t tell him.
“Ellis got back in his car, more than a little tipsy. He started speeding down the road, back to his property. At first he didn’t notice that the tires were getting flat. Waya and my two uncles were following along behind him, in a borrowed car. Ellis kept speeding, even when the back right tire was wobbling and flopping.
“Finally the car started to fishtail, and he swerved and went off the road. He rammed the BMW into the space between two trees. It was jammed in there tight. So tight that he had to climb over the seat and go out the back door.
“He had a big cut on his forehead, but otherwise he was fine. Just swearing and complaining. Still dressed in one of his fancy suits.
“Waya pulled up and said, ‘You need a lift?’
“Ellis might have been suspicious if he hadn’t been drinking. But he just said, ‘Yeah,’ not even saying thanks. And he started walking over to the car. He got about five feet away and he stopped and squinted at the car windows. I think he saw that there was somebody in the back seat.
“Waya opened the driver’s side door, and Ellis reached into his jacket, like he was gonna grab a gun. He had one, but he’d lost it in the crash. By the time he realized, my two uncles and Waya had all jumped out of the car and surrounded him.”
I pause, glancing over at Riona to see if she knows what’s coming next. I can tell by her solemn expression that she does.
“They dragged him off into the woods. Uncle Abott wanted to kill him slowly. He wanted to cut and burn and beat Ellis, like Ellis had done to my mother. But Waya said no. It would be messy and noisy and leave too much evidence. And he said, ‘We’re not like him.’
“So they just marched Ellis a full ten miles out into the woods and shot him in the back of the head. Then they dug a hole and buried the body under enough dirt and rock that no animal would dig it up. Waya and Abott did it. Uncle Earl stayed behind to move their car, in case someone came along and saw the crash.
“Then Waya drove my uncles home, and he went back to his own house, where my mother was staying with his sisters. She went into labor a week later.
“After I was born, he told her what they had done. He didn’t want to upset her, but he didn’t want her worrying about Ellis finding her, either.
“She wanted to go back home to her siblings. Waya convinced her to stay. He said they had to wait—to make sure there wasn’t going to be any trouble for her. He thought it would look suspicious if she came back home, like she knew Ellis was dead.
“Ellis was reported missing at first. His work called it in. The sheriff found Ellis’s car shortly after. There was a hunt through the woods—they thought maybe he hit his head in the accident and wandered off, confused. But they didn’t think an injured man could wander far, so they only went a few miles in. They found some blood on the ground. So some people thought an animal had got him.
“Everybody knew he’d been drinking at the bar. He wasn’t a local, and he wasn’t liked. So nobody looked too hard for him.
“Meanwhile my mother stayed where she was. She fell in love with Waya, or fell in love with him all over again. They’d always cared about each other, growing up.
“Uncle Earl came to live with her, so did a couple of her youngest siblings. She got pregnant with Grady. Married Waya. Then a couple years later, she had Bo.
“Ellis stayed a missing person for several years. Then eventually, his work wanted to claim their insurance policy on him, so they did the necessary footwork to get him declared dead.
“When they did, my mother found out that she was the beneficiary of a pretty hefty insurance policy herself. Plus Ellis’s estate. He had no will, so it all went to her.
“She sold the house they’d lived in together without ever stepping foot inside it again. She used the money to buy the ranch. We all moved here.
“Of course, none of us kids knew anything about what had happened, or where the money had come from. Kids don’t think about things like that. We were all just excited to have such a big house. Except for Bo—she was pissed that we were leaving. She loved living on Cherokee land, with all our dad’s family around us.