1. Sammie

The air smelled of petrichor the day I killed my husband. Rain had come after a long dry spell, providing relief from the pent-up heat and humidity of central Tennessee. Killing John had not been my intention. I didn't have a violent bone in my body. However, a path of good intentions had led me nowhere in my young life but trapped in an abusive marriage.

My daddy, may he rest in peace, always said anything could be dealt with if one had a plan. For weeks, as dense moisture and muffled anger hung in the air, I'd thought through the steps to get away from John and his family. The Underwood clan ran our town, everything from the schools to the police, so it would be no small feat. Plus, I'd never done anything brave in my whole life, but I felt Daddy guiding me from heaven, helping me as I created a new identity and secretly packed for freedom.

Lately, I'd even given myself permission to dream of another life. A way out of the pain inflicted upon me by the man who was supposed to be my protector.

I'd had dreams in high school just like everyone else, believe you me. I was going to get a degree in interior design and move to Nashville. Rich music people would be my clients, and I'd get invited to all their pretty houses and fancy parties. Sadly, none of those yearnings came to fruition. Instead, I'd fallen in love with John Underwood and gotten pregnant right out of high school.

A friend of a friend with questionable morals helped people run. I had no idea how many other reasons there were for leaving a place and disappearing, but apparently, I wasn't the only one. He'd created a driver's license with a new name and a Social Security number of someone long since dead. In addition, he'd gotten me a replacement phone with a new number under my new name. I was now Sammie Scott. Sammie Wilson Underwood will have vanished into thin air by this time tomorrow.

My father had left me a small sum when he'd died a year after I'd married John. I don't know how he knew to do so, but he'd put it into an account only I had access to. When I'd asked Daddy's attorney why he'd done it that way, the man had simply looked me in the eye and cocked his head to one side. "Bill thought it might be nice for you to have a little money of your own. Just in case it was ever needed."

That had hit me like a ton of bricks. Had he suspected what was going on or was it an innocuous suggestion? Regardless, in that moment, shame had washed over me. I was not leading the life he'd dreamed for me.

I'd also been picking up shifts at the local diner while Chloe attended preschool. I told John all the tip money went into the cookie jar and to feel free to grab some for his evenings out, all to disguise the truth. I'd been putting away at least half of my tips for a better part of a year. Between that and what Daddy had left me, Chloe and I could stay afloat, even if it took a while for me to find a job.

The day I planned to leave, I did everything I normally did so as not to tip John off that by sunrise I'd be in a car with Chloe tucked into her car seat heading as far away from him as I could get.

I dropped Chloe at day care and then clocked into what would be my last waitress shift at the diner. I felt guilty about not giving notice, but I couldn't risk anyone knowing my escape plan. Fremont was a small town. Word got around. Especially anything to do with the former high school quarterback and head cheerleader.

Such a promising future, the gossips had said to one another. We were a country song to them. Young love, they'd all said when we married the summer after graduation. And a baby on the way? Well, these things happen in this day and age. They're doing the right thing. What a sweet little family they'll make. Especially with Sammie raised without a mother. Thank God for John's loving family, who took her under their wing. Meant to be.

If only any of that had been true. Instead, the pregnant former high school cheerleader had woken the day after her wedding to find the quarterback was really a monster.

After picking Chloe up from day care, I packed whatever I could fit into two suitcases. It wasn't much, but at least we'd have some clothes and toiletries, plus a few toys for Chloe. While she'd taken an afternoon nap, I'd made a lasagna, vacuumed the living room, and straightened the framed photograph of our wedding day. I wanted everything to appear normal whenever John returned to the house.

My intention was to ditch my car at a park Chloe, and I frequented. I would leave my phone in the car so that John would think I was there. He kept close tabs on me through the phone. What little freedom I had was impossible with a phone tracker in place, but this would actually work to my advantage during my escape. From the park, we'd take a cab to the bus station, where I would buy two tickets to Bozeman, Montana, all in cash, so that no credit card trail was left behind.

I didn't know for certain where in Montana we would land. There were small towns scattered over the western part of Montana that seemed ideal for a woman and her daughter to hide from an abusive husband. I had enough money to keep me going for a few months, but I'd have to find work and a place to live as soon as possible. It was risky. All of it. But I felt deep down in my bones that if I didn't get out of Fremont, Tennessee, I'd be dead before the year ended.

Last month, right before Labor Day, something had happened that I could not excuse. I guess you could say it was the final straw, the one thing I could not abide.

It had started when I'd found four kittens under our porch. Their mother had either abandoned them or been killed, leaving them alone and defenseless. They were maybe five or six weeks old, given their size. We'd fostered several litters of kittens when I was young, so I knew what they were like at various stages.

I'd brought them indoors, planning to take care of them until we could find proper homes. They'd slept in a pile that first afternoon. I'd googled what to do if their mother wasn't around, and Chloe and I had gone to the drugstore to purchase droppers with which to feed them.

When John got home and saw them in the kitchen, he'd erupted in rage. How dare I bring home cats without permission. Why was I always doing things just to make him mad? On and on like that. He'd yanked them from the bed I'd made them, tossing them into a trash bag and vowing to drown them in the river. Although I'd tried, I was physically unable to stop him. I'd begged like a child, pleading for him to leave them, promising I'd take them to a shelter first thing in the morning, all the while praying Chloe wouldn't wake up to see him hauling the mewing trash bag to his truck.

I'd waited for him to come back, crying and praying that he'd changed his mind. He hadn't. When he returned, the trash bag was empty. I'd howled like a wounded animal. The idea of the poor little mites drowning in the river was more than I could take. I'd actually gone at him, striking him with my fists. Not for long, though. He quickly put a stop to that by slamming my head against the wall and punching me in the nose, causing blood to leak like a faucet.

Chloe, who had been asleep in her room, had clearly heard the ruckus and awakened. I'd only recently bought a toddler's bed, so she no longer slept in a crib and could easily get out. She'd come into the kitchen. Her little hands clutched her baby blanket to her chest, and her eyes were big and frightened.

Her gaze had gone to the empty cat bed.

"I drowned the little flea-invested vermin," John said.

"Kitties drowned?" Chloe began to howl in quite the same manner as I had only minutes before.

"Shut your stupid mouth, you hear me? Stop that crying," John had shouted at her.

Before I could stop him, he'd hauled my baby girl up and hurled her into a wall. My sweet Chloe had crumpled to the ground and lay there like a rag doll, so quiet I thought for several terrible seconds that he'd killed her. But when I knelt beside her, she opened her big blue eyes, lashes wet from tears, and looked right into the depth of my soul. She didn't have to say the words; I knew the message coming from her silent, tear-streaked face. Mama, get me away from him.

Rage like nothing I'd ever felt had possessed me like a demon. It was as if a light bulb came on in the recesses of my foggy, cobwebbed brain. I would figure out how to escape and disappear so that he would never find us. We'd start a new life, far away from the Underwood family. I had nothing to lose, other than the eggshell-walking fear that had become my unwanted daily visitor.

Leaving was like taking a new pharmaceutical drug. Controversial. Might not work. Bound to have side effects. But I had to try it. Not so much for me. I'd made my choices and suffered the consequences. However, my daughter was innocent. I wanted her to have a life full of opportunities and love. If I broke the cycle now, she might have a chance. She deserved better than to have her mother die on her as mine had.

John had isolated me from my friends. Taken my dignity. Lied to me and manipulated me. Yet down deep, I knew he couldn't destroy me. I was fighting back. This time I would get away. Not like last time, when I'd been naive enough to think he wouldn't ask his friends and family at the local police station to look for me. I'd only gotten to Nashville before they found us and brought us back. I had a better ruse.

John had left that morning for his job, grumbling about how hard he worked with no appreciation or help from his wife. He said all this while carrying the lunch box I'd carefully packed for him the night before.

He was employed by his father. When I'd first asked him to explain what he did, his answers were evasive and confusing. The second time I asked, he slapped me across the face. I stopped asking after that.

From the window of our small sunlit kitchen, I watched his truck bounce down the dirt road, dust swirling up from the dry earth. Fanning myself with a piece of mail, I breathed a sigh of relief.

We'd had an unusually hot autumn. By the end of September, we'd all grown beyond weary of the heat. Nerves frayed. Sweat-soaked shirts the moment you exited the grocery store or mowed the lawn. We had air conditioning, but John refused to use it most of the time, knowing how much I hated hot nights. It was just another way to hurt me.

As I stood watching my husband's truck disappear down the driveway, a drop of rain fell from the sky. And then another and another until the dirt had a polka-dot pattern. I'd opened the windows to let in the fresh air that smelled of petrichor.

I hadn't heard from John after his shift, but assumed he'd gone out drinking with friends. Regardless, I knew that he would come home three sheets to the wind. Once he passed out, I would quietly get Chloe and take off.

Fully dressed, I waited under the covers in our bedroom. The clock struck midnight. He was later than usual. He and his work friends typically stopped at the local watering hole after work on Friday evenings. I'm not sure what the other men told their wives, but John always texted that he was going for a few beers and to put his dinner in the oven. Only once in the almost four years since we'd married had he come home and eaten the plate I made and left for him. Usually he stumbled in around eleven, blind drunk and crashing into things. Unless he woke Chloe, I would stay as quiet as I could, pretending to be asleep, praying he'd pass out before he came into the bedroom and wanted what he usually wanted.

John threw open the door so hard that it slammed into the wall, then stumbled into the bedroom. I heard dry wall crumbling. I'd only just patched it up from last time.

Light from the hallway filtered through my eyelids, even though I kept them closed.

"Where are you hiding?" John's words were slurred. Five thousand sheets to the wind. Had he driven home? I knew the answer to that question. I always knew. The better question was—how had he not hurt someone yet?

I opened my eyes but remained in a fetal position. Backlit in the doorway with his bulky build and disheveled hair, he looked like an evil lumberjack without an axe. John didn't need an axe. He carried a gun wherever he went.

His boot must have caught on the rug because I heard him trip, curse, and face-plant into the floor. He tried to rise on all fours like an enraged bear, but his balance was impaired. He fell over, this time hitting the side of his head on the end of our sleigh bed. For a second, I held my breath, praying it had knocked him out. Instead, he erupted into a rage. He tore off his jacket and tossed it aside.

"Wake up, bitch," John yelled. "I need help."

I remained still for a moment, considering my options. If I continued to pretend I was asleep, he would haul me out of bed by the hair. He'd done it before. I'd had a bald spot at the back of my head to prove it. Remembering that, I sat up, hoping to God he didn't notice I wore jeans and a T-shirt.

He lumbered over to the wall and switched on the overhead light. Blood from his head wound trickled down his cheek. Strong instincts to help him, despite how often he hurt me, surged through me. I'd taken care of him through injuries before, but this was different. If I could get him to lie down in the bed, he would pass out and probably forget the whole incident by morning.

I swung my feet to the floor and stood. He stared at me, eyes like a feral animal. "Why are you dressed?" Anyone else would not have understood his slurred speech, but this was one of many nights I'd had to interpret his drunken mumblings.

"I fell asleep reading," I said. Lies came out of my mouth too easily these days. "Come to bed. Do you want water and some painkillers? You must have had a long day."

He pointed a finger at me. "How many times do I have to tell you to shut your mouth?"

I inched toward him. "Would you like something to eat?"

"You told Jacob's wife something about me. Lies. Now everyone thinks I'm a bad guy."

You are a bad guy. I just didn't know it when I married you.

"Come to bed," I said in my most cajoling voice. If he hit me, so be it. I was getting out of here. As long as I could drive, I was getting us out of here.

He reached into the pocket of his jacket and pulled out the small pistol. He lurched toward me, waving the piece near my face. "Do you see this? Your big mouth's going to get you killed. You talked. You broke the rules. The vows of marriage."

I backed away, smacking into the dresser. "I'm sorry. I don't know what I said to her that's made you mad but it's nothing, I'm sure. They all know what a great husband and father you are." It hurt me to say it, but I knew my only chance to make it out of here was to flatter him.

He lurched forward, slamming into me. With one large hand, he pressed against my chest, trapping me against the dresser. A knob pushed into the small of my back. I whimpered from the pain.

With his other hand, he cocked the gun and pointed it at my face. "This time, you're done. I've had it with you."

"Mama." Chloe's voice rang out from her bedroom across the hall. The racket had woken her. "Mama." She started to howl. The child could sense when things were bad. It had happened too many times before. I prayed every night she wouldn't remember any of it.

"You're a worthless mother, you know that?" His breath smelled of sour whiskey and sweat—so pungent that it almost knocked me over. "You're an ugly, sad, stupid woman who doesn't deserve to live."

Covering my face, I turned my head away from him, but he had me trapped. "Please, John, just let me be. I need to check on Chloe." I hated myself for crying. I really did. I wanted to be brave and fight him, but he was a large, muscular man and I was a small woman. I'd long ago given up any hope of winning a physical altercation. I had the scars to show for my lack of strength. However, I'd been taking kickboxing classes on a YouTube channel I'd found while he was at work. Over the last six months, my body had gotten stronger. I needed to believe in myself. I was strong and smart. I was going to change my life.

"Shut your fat, ugly mouth."

From the other room, Chloe called for me through her howls. "Mama. Mama."

He moved his hand to my neck, his fingers like small boa constrictors wrapping around my tender skin. "I told you to keep your fat mouth shut, and now you've ruined everything." He pressed the gun barrel against my temple. "Do you understand what you've done? That bitch told her brother—the cop. She told him what you told her."

Oh my God. Why had Sheri done that? I'd confessed to her in confidence. She'd seen the bruises on my upper arms when I'd lifted Chloe from a swing at the park. It had been a moment of weakness. Now it was going to kill me.

Chloe would be forced to grow up without me. I had no family left. There would be only John, his father, and the horrible racist brothers left to raise her.

No, I would not die today. Not because of this bastard who had held me prisoner for too many years. I imagined smashing his face with his own gun but knew that was impossible. There was only one vulnerable place I could reach. It was a move I'd practiced.

I held my breath and shoved my knee as hard as I could into his groin. He yelped in pain and stumbled backward, letting go of my neck and the pressure on my chest simultaneously. He recovered, standing and pointing the gun at me. No time to think. I had to act. Using my kickboxing muscles and technique, I kicked with the ball of my foot, knocking him off-balance. He tried to get up, but I thwarted him with a roundhouse kick to his head. He fell all the way to the floor this time, but then he was up again, lunging for me. I bobbed and weaved, avoiding his flailing fists. He was drunk, which gave me an advantage. A low kick to his groin followed by an uppercut under his chin had him back on the ground.

He roared like an animal. Shaking his head like a wounded tiger, he scrambled to his feet. He caught hold of me and tossed me onto the floor, then straddled me. One giant paw pinned my hands above my head. The other raised his gun. Frantically, I asked myself what would my kickboxing teacher do? The answer came to me. Headbutt. It was my only chance. Just as he was about to pull the trigger, I rammed my forehead into his. His head ricocheted like one of those bobbly heads. He let go of me, stumbling, eyes dazed. The gun fell to the ground. I scrambled for it, almost reaching it in time, but he was too fast. He grabbed the weapon and pointed it at me.

Not like this. I would go down fighting at least. When it came out what had happened, my daughter wouldn't be ashamed of me. Somehow, I managed to get to my feet. What to do? The words of the trainer from a recent session played in a track between my ears—pretend to be a ninja.

I would do a jump-kick on him. He wouldn't know what had hit him. Thanks to my early dance training, I leaped through the air without much effort and struck him with my foot right in the middle of his chest. I followed with a spinning hook kick to his head. He crumpled to the floor and seemed to shrink, like a helium balloon losing air. As he landed on his stomach, I heard a crunching sound, like bones breaking. He shook his head again and toppled to the floor.

The roar of a gunshot made my ears ring.

The gun had gone off. I knelt beside him, pushing him onto his back. "No, no, no," I whispered.

I gasped at the sight of blood. The bullet had torn into his chest. Red seeped through his shirt and puddled on the floor, spreading like a red felt blanket under him.

Chloe screamed even louder.

I pressed into the gunshot wound, hoping to slow the blood loss. He howled from pain and looked straight into my eyes. "You bitch. You shot me."

"I didn't. The gun went off," I whispered. Panic and adrenaline surged through me. I started to shake.

From her bedroom, Chloe hollered in desperation. "Mama."

His eyes shifted from me to the ceiling. He went still. His expression slackened, and his eyes deadened right in front of me.

I felt for his pulse but in my panic couldn't tell the difference between my own pulse and his. Could he still be saved?

Oh my God. I should call 911. That was the right thing to do. They could take him to surgery and keep him alive. People lived after bullet wounds all the time. Didn't they?

But what would that mean for me? Would they think I'd killed him? Essentially, I had. The gun would not have gone off if I hadn't kicked him. If I hadn't fought back.

Finally.

No, I would leave him here. They wouldn't find the body for a few days. This was my chance to run. Just as I'd planned.