Chloe wrapped an arm around Gwendolyn’s waist as they continued on passed the dark windows of the town hall to the river. The empty bucket swaying in her other hand. “But mommy, how do we know we’ll get to the river?”
Gwendolyn choked in tears, tears she forbade herself from showing her little girl.
“We have to, dear.”
The Scantic River, still flowed with a gentle current, partly iced over. Plenty of mossy river stones jutting above the surface, where the current cleaves around to where the water calms off into an inlet. And it is within this inlet, Gwendolyn noticed, many floating, bloated carcasses of fish. The water’s black, murky, and without hesitation, both Gwendolyn and her daughter scooped.
“Mommy! I caught a fish! Can we bring him home? Please, mommy!”
Keeping her calm facade, Gwendolyn planted her bucket down and gently took Chloe’s, tossing it back into the river. Gwendolyn turned to her daughter and in a soft, serious tone, said, “Listen here now baby, promise mommy that only I will find us food to bring back home. It will not be fish. Promise?”
“I promise, mommy,” Chloe’s head dipped.
“Look at me, baby.”
Chloe’s exhausted eyes rose to meet her’s.
“We get water from this river, and we make it back home fast. Do not look at anyone we see. It’s just us, baby!”
“Yes, mommy.”
Gwendolyn turned to face the black river with Chloe’s little bucket in hand again scooped. Then there was a silence, no Giggling from Chloe, no sound of snow crunching beneath her small boots, her mother’s instinct bade her to zip around to lay eyes on her baby girl. Nowhere!
“Sweetheart! Chloe! Where are you!”
Then the sound of giggling, so familiar, it must be her daughter’s. There was a large, fallen tree between her and the sound. Gwendolyn felt the panic soar up in her and ran around the uprooted trunk to find Chloe prodding something in the river with a long stick.
“Chloe! What are you doing!”
“Mommy mommy the man’s playing dead!” Chloe laughed.
With a stomach encased in terror, Gwendolyn stepped forward to a point where she could make out an eyeless face of a corpse, once a man wearing a blue jacket and jeans. Chloe had been poking at his blackish, bloated cheek.
Gwendolyn lost all composure and screamed, “Chloe stop that! Get away! Come to mommy now!”
Chloe tossed the stick into the water and ran to her mother; embracing her. Teardrops landing over Chloe’s jacket, Gwendolyn knew to survive, she would have to show every ounce of strength to Chloe, at all times.
With two buckets full to the brim of murky water, this mother and young daughter had learned not to retrace their steps back home. Lest an ambush would be waiting for them.
This time, they would trek through what was once an animal sanctuary, all cages of which had been cleared of the animal carcasses, their troughs cleared, their feed cleared as well by desperate vandals.
“Mommy, remember the pretty animals they had here? The soft bunnies were my favorite!”
For answer, Gwendolyn choked, “they’re all gone now, baby. They were brought to a safe place.”
“So, my bunnies are somewhere safe, mommy!” Chloe’s expression was in glee and had totally forgotten the depressing surroundings.
Gwendolyn again found her composure and cleared away the streams of tears over her coarse, frigid cheeks. Chloe noticed, “mommy, don’t cry! Don’t cry for God or me!”
Then the tear wells overflooded down Gwendolyn’s cheeks and she knelt before Chloe and said with upmost seriousness, “if we don’t make it back home, sweetie, then mommy promises we will go straight to heaven together, and be with daddy! Forever!”
“You mean we die? We all die together? We all go to heaven together, forever?” Chloe gave the most profound smile since before the war, after which her father went missing all those months ago. Chloe continued jubilantly, “I wanna see daddy right now!”
Holding hands, Gwendolyn caressed her daughter’s while softly saying, “We just might, Chloe, we just might.”
To Be Continued…
