The Right Thing

I watched Ozzie walk out of the door worried it would be the last time I ever saw him. That this would be his last stand, his last fight. His eyes told me everything he wouldn't allow to come out of his mouth. He was saying goodbye and it took every ounce of self control I had to not fall to my knees and beg him not to go. He knew this was dangerous, reckless, stupid but his hand was being forced and he didn't have a choice. A deep breath and a quick swipe under my eyes, I turned to face the rest of the room. My eyes immediately found a little boy with the brightest blue eyes in the room and gave him a small smile.

I met Ozzie when I was 3, it’s my earliest memory. My mother's ex husband, Otis, had shown up on our doorstep, holding a little boy with curly brown hair and the brightest blue eyes I had ever seen. His clothes were wet, and dark. He had red paint all over his hands and sprayed across his face. And he was loud. Wailing, calling for his Daddy. My mother was frantic. Otis was calm. I remember being scared of him and not knowing why. Everything gets blurry. My mother took the boy, gave him a bath, and put fresh clothes on him. Otis made phone calls. Eventually Otis left and my mother tucked me and Ozzie into my bed. We watched Aladdin. He told me his Daddy was dead. I held his hand. When he started to cry I rubbed his back because he was sad and that's what my mom did when I was sad. At some point we actually fell asleep.

What 3 year old me didn't know was that Ozzie and his dad, Oliver, were walking home from the store and took a shortcut through an alley. A man jumped out and shot Oliver 3 times in the chest before running. That wasn't paint. Apparently Oliver was a very important person, no one ever specified why. All the women in Ozzie's family were converging on his Grandparents house to comfort and help them. All the men were gone, and Oliver's killer wouldn't see another sunrise. Ozzie didn't have a mother so Otis brought him to us. We were safe, far enough removed from the family to be able to give Ozzie comfort and stability for the night but close enough to be trusted. Because Ozzie was important too. He was the only son of the oldest son. The family was his now, which meant the targets from his father's back were also his.

I never recognized that Ozzie was important, he was always just Ozzie. He always liked that about me, that I was willing to question him, fight with him, tease him. That I didn’t bow to him. His Grandparents never liked me because I didn’t fit with what a woman should be. I wasn’t graceful, dainty, submissive but they didn’t get to have a say in who Ozzie courted. Ozzie chose me, he always did. When we were children and I got picked on in school, Ozzie chose to step in and stop it. When we got a little older and his Grandparents threw a massive party to officially introduce Ozzie to society, he chose me to accompany him. He bowed and I curtsied and we danced all night, despite the glares of every other girl in the room. When we were 16 and he got his first car, he chose to pull up at my house and I ran down to the curb, smiling ear to ear, ignoring my Mothers protests. He had kissed me for the first time when I was 10 but not again until we were 15. Ever the gentleman, he asked my mother's permission to date me, but also made it clear that a no wasn't going to stop him.

My mother tried to warn me, there was a reason her and Otis' marriage had failed. The life that Ozzie was going to lead was not going to be easy. It meant long days and late nights and disappearing with no contact. It meant having to have a guard at all times, in every place we went. It meant possibly losing him before I was ready to be alone. The difference between me and my Mother, however, was that I always knew what I was getting into with Ozzie.

As a child I knew Ozzie would grow up to be the most feared and respected man in the city. I knew he was powerful, I walked the halls of our high school watching the respect he was shown. I witnessed him silence men decades older than him with just a look and saw the nervous flicker in his Grandparents eye when they expressed their disapproval of me. I grew up knowing who Ozzie was and what kind of power he held and would gain. I knew what kind of life I would lead with Ozzie and, just as he always had, I chose him.

He chose me one final time when we were 17. The day I found out I was pregnant was the first and only time I was afraid of Ozzie. I watched his blue eyes turn to ice as he looked at the positive test, his shoulders squared, back straightened. It was a position I had seen before, he was preparing for a fight and I was terrified that fight would be with me. The moment passed however when his ice blue eyes turned to meet mine and melted. His eyes were glassy for a moment before the water spilled over and he whispered Ollie to me. His Grandparents didn't take the news as well. They tried to push Ozzie to ‘take care of the problem’. After a long night filled with screams, tears, and fights the matter was settled. Ozzie chose me.

Ollie came running into my arms and I scooped him up as I strode from the room, I never could stand to sit and wait. I heard our guard following and waved him off, the house was a fortress and no one was stupid enough to try to get to us. The family was tense though, sensing a trap, knowing this wasn't going to end well. I released Ollie to play with his toys and sat on the window seat, looking out across the lawn. This was the only room in the house where you couldn't see one of the armed guards that were posted along the property line and that was the sole reason it was my son's bedroom. 

They didn't like that either, I refused to allow Ollie to see a weapon unless we were in immediate danger. I wanted to give Ollie what Ozzie had always craved, what had attracted him to me in first place, normalcy. My child was just that, a child. He would not be treated as a leader, would not be deferred to. He was not a weapon, to be used at the family's disposal, until his father either died or stepped down. He was a little boy, innocent of his family's sins, and I would keep it that way for as long as I possibly could.

I felt the blast before I heard it, the pressure change then the boom, the front wing had exploded. Ollie's back straightened as his eyes found me, I tried to smile reassuringly, act calm, pretend it's a test. Ollie did as he was taught to, grabbed my hand and pushed the back wall. We climbed through the trap door and down the stairs, the tunnel would lead us out into the woods where a car was parked. We ended up in a safe house for the night before being sneaked into the airport, security for private flights really does suck, or maybe it was the name we gave that allowed us to pass. I told Ollie we were going to the beach, which was true but if he knew the full truth he wouldn’t have been so excited.

It had been a week since I saw Ozzie walk out of that door and I feared that he really may be dead. It didn’t feel like he was though, so there may be hope. We knew this was dangerous, finding the cracks in his family organization and manipulating them to get our son out. Playing with traitors is dangerous enough but if the family found out what we did all three of us would be killed on sight. Ozzie is the only person in the world who knows where me and Ollie are, no one boarded that flight with us and I changed the destination midway through. The pilot was killed when we landed, but we don't need to remember such unpleasantness, he wasn’t a good man anyway.

Ollie is adjusting, but he has asked for his dad far more than I thought he would. Ozzie would leave for weeks before but it's like Ollie knows this isn't just work. I can't tell him he's dead without knowing for sure though. It's almost as though I’m afraid if I speak the words it will make them true, and I can’t condemn Ozzie to that fate yet. He said to give him a month, it would be harder for him to get out then for us. 

Sitting in our small living room in the cottage on this island, life seemed peaceful, but I knew what lay beyond that ocean and it would not infect my son anymore then it had already. My sons genes, however, carry war in them. That's why he heard the footsteps before I did, why he knew who waited behind that door. Despite knowing, Ollie still looked at me as he reached the front door, and I gave him a small nod. I saw it then, as Ollie's shoulders squared and his back straightened but his eyes didn’t turn to ice as he threw the door open and stared up at the man behind it. We had done the right thing.