With Savanna home safely, and suffering from major post traumatic stress, we didn’t talk much about it. She saw a doctor and through therapy and medication, she finally got better. What really healed my wife was Noah. He made her forget the pain and look forward to our future.
My son held true to being Savanna’s biggest supporter. In the police station, he stayed by her side, clinging to her. On the way home, she sat in the back seat next to him, while he was still holding her hand.
Noah was a good boy. He never asked questions, but just stayed close to her for support. It was the same case once we got home and she started to relax. Instead of going upstairs to his playroom, he cuddled with his mother on the couch. After a couple of hours, he finally fell asleep still attached to her. I carried him upstairs to his bed, before coming down to sit with Savanna.
“You okay, Darlin’?”
She leaned her body into mine. “I’m sorry for losing it today. I saw them and everything that happened came flashing back into my mind. Our baby, the miscarriage, I just couldn’t handle it Colt. I know that neither of us will forget our baby, but that just brought back all of the bad shit too.”
“Darlin’, you don’t have to apologize to me. If I could trade places with you and take away that pain, I would in a heartbeat, you know that. I hate that you went through that.”
“I just panicked. One minute I was apologizing for bumping into her and the next second I am running for my life again. I can’t explain it any better than that.”
I kissed the top of her head and ran my fingers through her hair. “Try not to let it bother you. You positively identified the other two people involved. You gave them the vehicle. They have their names and will catch them Savanna. They both have records and they will be put away for a long time. They will be held responsible for what they did.”
She sobbed in my arms and finally, after some time, her sobbing subsided. “There is something I have to tell you about that night, Colt. I can’t keep it from you any longer.”
My stomach immediately knotted up. I couldn’t imagine what she needed to tell me. My first thought was that he raped her. The saliva was building up in my mouth just thinking about someone doing that to my wife. A part of me didn’t want to know, but I knew I had to. “You can tell me anything, Darlin’.”
She shook her head. “Not this Colt. If I tell you this, then you probably won’t want me anymore.”
Is she nuts? I could never not want her.
“That’s not possible, Sugar.”
I brushed the tears away from her face and waited for her to start talking. She looked down at her wedding ring and began twisting it around. “When Tucker took me I was so afraid. All I could think about was getting home to you and keeping our baby safe. He had me tied up in that basement by plastic wire ties. At first he wasn’t physically violent. He was verbally threatening me, but he never inflicted physical violence on me, aside from subduing me.”
She leaned over and took a drink of her water. “He kept leaving me alone in that basement. I could hear him upstairs talking to the two other people. A couple times he came downstairs to check on me. Every single time he left me alone, I did everything I could to free my hands from those ties.”
“I saw your wrists Savanna. I know what you had to do to get free.” I ran my hand over her face, moving the hair out of her eyes.
She shook her head again and looked right at me. “He came down this one time saying he was going to make a phone call and that I had to tell you I was okay, so I guess he could get your money. Tucker didn’t know that I had freed my hands. I wasn’t going to sit around waiting to be found. Nobody would have known where I was. So, I waited until the right moment. He went upstairs and I tried to climb out of a window. He came flying down those steps and ripped me from the window, causing me to fall all the way down to the concrete floor.”
I was picturing it all playing out in my head and all I could see was how petrified she must have been. “You don’t have to tell me anymore, Darlin’.”
“No Colt, I do. You need to know this.” She wiped her tears and looked back at my face. “I tried to fight him, to protect myself and the baby, but he kept kicking me and hitting me. I felt that boot go into my stomach and my side. I felt what was happening inside of my body, Colt. Tucker killed our baby, but I couldn’t put all of the blame on him.”
I cut her off. “What are you talkin’ about? Of course you can blame that son of a bitch for it.”
She shook her head again. “No Colt. As he was beating me, he was telling me that hurting me was never the plan. He was beating me because I ruined his plan. It was my fault he laid a hand on me. It was my fault our baby died. I killed our baby. It was me. I did it, not Tucker. If I would have just sat there and waited, our baby would have lived. It was all my fault.”