UnderCut

By Lisa J Lickel

When you are loved, you have everything to lose...

Lily Masters was born with a deformity that shaped her life. When she, white and rural-raised, and Cam Taylor, a biracial army medic and literary professor who left his work under a cloud of suspicion, m

• Language: English
• Publisher: Fox Ridge Publishing
• Release date: Sep 12, 2020
• ISBN: 9781087910239

Lisa J Lickel

Lisa J. Lickel is a writer who lives in Wisconsin. She has served on several historical society boards, and worked with programs, writing, and editing research projects. Lisa is a freelance editor, book coach, an avid reader, and book reviewer. Find more at www.LisaLickel.com.

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TUESDAY JUNE 21

Chapter 1

On the first achingly bright morning of summer, Lily Masters stood ready to conquer her source of shame. She posed in front of her mother’s rusty, full-length wall mirror in her Wisconsin childhood home and hesitantly opened her robe. She kept her eyelids welded shut before she endured a last lengthy look. A quick, shallow inhale did nothing to balance her nerves as chills ran the length of her arms to her fingernails. She squinted, daring herself. Then Lily caught a flash of her diamond engagement ring, the reason she could finally make the decision. She forced her gaze back toward her torso.

Taunts in her mother’s creaky voice echoed in a shroud of childhood phantom sounds.

You’re a freak! You’ll never get a man! Better be smart, reject. Learn to take care of yourself ’cuz I’m not feeding and housing you as a freeloader forever when you finally figure out no one could love you.

Lily had long ago stopped needing anyone to take care of her. Except last summer when she had crawled back to Barter Valley. Downsized. Her magazine editing career in the Twin Cities dried up and home meant moving in with her stepbrother Art. Mom had moved to the cemetery twenty-two years ago when Lily was six and Berta two and a half.

Wincing, she let the edges of her robe fall across her shoulders. She reached to finger the ravages of the defect. A puddled baby soft mound of flesh over a protruding march of ribs instead of a left breast. Misaligned nipple. No armpit hair to shave was the only positive. That, and it didn’t hurt. On the outside. No scars…not yet.

She inhaled and watched her normal right breast rise and pucker. Stepmom Marge had joined the family a couple of years after Mom left. Marge never bothered to look at her new stepdaughters much. Lily and Berta learned early not to need anyone. Until Cam.

An ethereal vision of Lily’s fiancé appeared behind her in the mirror. Cam stared into her reflected eyes while his slow smile made her toes tingle.

Don’t look, don’t look, don’t look…

His spectral arms reached around to enfold her. She shivered as she imagined the solid weight of his chin resting on her shoulder. She was helpless to halt the downward sweep of his eyes, a lover’s regard that would soon be filtered through the lens of wedding vows. Worse than the expected revulsion was his brow-crinkling sorrow. She never wanted to make him sad.

She thrust her elbows backward and Cam’s image evaporated.

Lily was absolutely ready to fix this. Decision made. No going back. The plastic surgeon had shown her pictures of what she and her team could do to make Lily normal. Create a fold along her armpit that everyone took for granted, build a normal breast, even make that wretched nipple match the other. It wouldn’t be useful, as in letting a baby suckle, but replacing the savagery of the Poland Syndrome would erase her lifelong sense of humiliation. The worst part would be healing from the surgery to take muscle from her back to transplant in her chest wall. Small price. She would soon be proud of her body and gladly share it after Cam became her husband.

Cameron Taylor had been a stranger in the woods who’d rescued her when she’d gotten turned around in a blizzard six months ago. They hadn’t been able to resist their attraction in the storm-fueled intimacy of being snowed in together. Their bond was borne of patient discovery and mutual agreement to respect the act of marriage, and in his goodness, he’d accepted her ten-year-old nephew Kenny as part of her package. Cam told her he didn’t care about the Poland Syndrome, and Lily believed him. But all of her life she’d been a freak with a body even her mother couldn’t love. She’d taken such care to hide herself away and strapped on a padded bra to cower behind. No more.

Lily had planted Dear Old Jailbird Dad and horrible Stepbrother Art next to Bad Mom and Wicked Stepmother six months ago. Quite the little family plot the Masters clan had going in Peaceful Rest Cemetery. Lily couldn’t wait to shed the Masters name and move out of this tainted house.

Lily pulled her robe up over her shoulders and went to finish packing for her stay at the medical complex down in Houston. After a little slicing and repackaging, she’d come home, better than new. A few weeks of healing and therapy and she’d be racing down the aisle come September. Kenny would be theirs, and they’d have more kids together to fill up their cabin in the woods. They would be a family at last. A normal blended one. No more fostering, not kinship care, not being forced to take government funds to raise her own nephew or having to report to an impersonal caseworker. Berta had Kenny the first ten years of his life. Lily hoped it wasn’t too late to save him from embedded dysfunction.

The cheap flight meant spending most of the rest of the day traveling to one layover after another hop-skipping around the States. Tomorrow was more pre-op and prep. The next day, bright and earlier than decent, loomed the first day of freedom from freakhood.

On the way out of the door, she stopped to caress a photo of her and Kenny with Cam, surrounded by his dogs, on the front porch of his home in the woods.

THURSDAY JUNE 23

Chapter 2

"Thank you, yes, I understand. Could you…please? Okay. Okay, I appreciate it." Cam Taylor thumbed the off button on his phone and trembled with the attempt to keep himself from slamming the thing or throwing it across the gravel driveway into the unfurled umbrella patch of mayapples at the edge of the woods.

Iago, his part-Shepherd companion, thumped his tail on the cabin’s wood porch floor and whimpered.

Sounds of sawing and hammering out of tune and without discernable sync or rhythm drummed against Cam’s skull. It had been hours since he’d heard anything from Texas besides Lily’s sleepy phone kiss before the surgery. He was her official contact and had written, notarized permission as her personal representative to be given her medical status but nobody would talk to him. Cam pounded his fist on the porch rail. This…this procedure should have been over by the time he picked up Kenny from his morning summer school class where he built model airplanes and rockets.

Kenny—where was the boy? Cam stepped off the porch.

A pale balsawood flier on a low trajectory cut the horizon to his right. Kenny and the other dog, Lear, loped after it.

Cam let out his breath and put his hand on his hips as the morning’s frustrations replayed across his neurons.

He had dropped Kenny off at school and then spent the next two hours pacing at the Barter Valley Freeman newspaper office downtown. His ranting and raving about the difficulties of being a single parent with a loved one a thousand miles away had sent the editor, his buddy Matt Heuer, out on the town to gather news.

A real pal would not have left Cam alone to mutter, wave his arms, and ignore the trilling phone.

Lily’s operation to harvest muscle from her back and create symmetry to her already very fine person was not Cam’s idea of love. All this obsession with mammary glands made him insane.

Who. Cares? he shouted. His only audience was dust motes. Almost two years had passed since Cam’s rebirth from ex-soldier literature professor loser PhD candidate to future publisher. With Lily, the love of his life, and Matt, he planned to stun the reading public with beautifully created books.

Lily…he’d nearly lost her to a ring of traffickers after he’d rescued her from the embrace of a Northwoods blizzard. Falling in love had been as easy as watching the dancing snow.

Matt had his back, and believed in their fledgling publishing company. Made sense since he was already in the business.

Cam twitched his lip when he noticed Matt outside staring in through the large plate glass window as if contemplating whether or not to knock on his own front door.

Cam closed his eyes and held up his hands, paler palms outward so his malted milk skin—Lily’s words—greeted him when he peeked.

Matt had gone away again, apparently not ready to plop his bulk in his chair at the computer desk and listen to Cam.

Lily.

Major surgery…Lily shouldn’t have done it at all, but Cam understood. Reluctantly. He’d probably do the same thing if he had worn her life. Cam resumed roaming the small newspaper office and ignoring the phone.

What he hadn’t appreciated was her refusal to allow him to accompany her.

At eleven thirty Cam surrendered his vigil in the office to Matt and went to Barter Valley Elementary to pick up Kenny, the reason he was here and not in Houston with Lily.

After a quick lunch at the diner, he drove Kenny out to the cabin. Kenny warbled nonstop about wingspan and flaps, something Cam’s dad, who’d served with valor in the Air Force, would have loved. Cam pictured Secret Spy Dad and Kenny chattering and making engine noises together.

Cam grunted in the right places, but his knowledge of airplanes was limited to bumpy transport rides out to the field and back on medical pickups during his own tours of duty. He turned off the rural highway at the dented, once-green mailbox marked Taylor and jounced along the driveway. As soon as Cam turned off the engine, Kenny ignored the usually fascinating sounds of a mechanical buzz saw and hammering. He lit for the woods and his tree house.

After checking in with his contractor, Roger, Cam had tried once again to get an update on Lily’s condition, to no avail. He stood in the shade of an enormous hemlock in his front yard, where his two dogs circled, looking for a comfy spot to wait for a chipmunk or mouse to chase.

Iago licked Cam’s hand. Yeah, okay, boy. We’ll get through this.

Figuring Kenny would be close on the heels of his flier, Cam pocketed the phone and tried to breathe evenly to force deep inside his frantic need to hop the next plane that would land anywhere close to Texas.

Wiry, dark-haired Kenny, her nephew—theirs when they finally tied the knot in September and gained permanent custody—appeared from the deep woods holding a pile of feathers in his hands. Apparently, he’d abandoned the model plane. Cam pinched the bridge of his nose near his brows. Now what had the kid dug up? Lily had signed Kenny up for summer school, swim lessons, day camp—all designed to keep them both busy while she...

Whatcha got there, buddy? Cam put on a grin and strode to meet the kid at the edge of the untidy yard. Cam’s heart ached when he looked at Kenny’s eyes, muddy green and too much like Lily’s.

It’s still alive, Cam. Dad. Kenny bit his lips and scorched Cam’s spirit with his do something! plea vibrating his reedy tone.

Cam bent over the bundle in the child’s hand, wincing at the thought of germs and microscopic nasty critters touching Kenny’s precious skin where the quivering breast of the ugly baby robin lay with its beak open. Must be a second hatch of robins this late in the season. Thoughts intruded of Lily, alone in the hospital, cuddled in a strange bed surrounded by monitors and anonymous masked medical people. He shook it off.

Buddy, where did you find it?

It’s not an ‘it!’ It’s a real, live baby, Dad. It needs me.

The boy had never known a father figure who was kind and loving. He had decided on his own to call Cam Dad and neither Cam nor Lily put up boundaries. Cam read between Kenny’s protest. Berta, Lily’s sister and Kenny’s birth mother, had treated her child as an unwanted it and wholly unwelcome burden.

If Kenny felt needed by anything, even a near-dead baby bird probably kicked out of the nest, Cam decided to seize the moment.

I can see that, Cam said gently. We’re the only chance this baby has to live. Cam went to his knees and bent over Kenny and his treasure. Let’s try something. Maybe it had tried to fledge and was strong enough to make it on its own. Or they could return it to the nest. Sometimes that worked. Kenny’s stubborn pout spoke volumes.

Cam touched the boy’s chin. Look at me. Sometimes it’s not possible to save something, no matter how hard we try. Do you understand?

Kenny bobbed his raggedy sun-streaked black hair. Cam sighed as Kenny brushed his bangs aside with a filthy little hand. Time for a haircut for both of them.

But we’ll try. First, let’s see how strong this fella is. Set him down and see if he can stand.

Kenny cast him a withering stare through bangs that fell across his brows. She’s a girl. Aviann.

Cam choked on his chuckle. Vocabulary lessons must be included in the all-things-aeronautic summer school class. Much to his surprise, the fuzzy little thing stood on its own and flapped its wings. Kenny giggled when it squawked. Just like Mom. He took a dive into the carpet of leaves littering new grass and rolled about, slapping them into the air.

You know what it eats?

The whine of a circular saw vied with cicadas and Kenny’s laughter.

Worm and bug barf from its parents.

Both the giggles and the saw went quiet.

Ewwww.

Love bites, kid. Cam helped Kenny to his feet.

Maybe we can, uh, mash one up? You think that might work?

Cam sent a sidewise smirk at the top of Kenny’s head after his eager remark. Good thinking on the fly. First, can you show me where you found it? Maybe its—her—mother wants her back.

Kenny bent and picked up the chick which promptly pecked and squirted the palm that held it. Kenny flinched but didn’t let go. Na, her mom kicked her out. Then he giggled again. I get it! I get it, Dad. Love bites!

Cam shook his head. They spent the rest of the afternoon pounding earthworms into paste and trying to force-feed Aviann. He was pretty sure what would happen come morning when the chick couldn’t survive the night without the warmth of its siblings and security of the nest.

He prayed it wasn’t a sign as he hung up once again from a fruitless call to the Southern Shore Medical Center in Houston.

Chapter 3

A squeal and wave of dust from his driveway forced Cam’s attention away from Kenny dripping mashed earthworm into the open maw of the baby robin. Cam frowned at the sight of Matt abusing his pale blue minivan with the rusty wheel wells. When Matt got closer, Cam noted through the open window his friend was pale and sweating more than usual. Brakes squealed and the car door creaked open.

Apprehension pooled at the base of Cam’s throat. He pushed from his squat with a greeting and clasped his friend’s wrist. Brother!

Yeah, yeah. Matt breathed heavily. Check this. I tried to call you.

I know. My line was busy.

Matt thrust a printout of AP wire news at him and swiped at his glistening forehead as Cam’s phone buzzed.

Houston! Cam pulled the phone from his pocket and noted the caller ID. Texas, yes, but Amarillo, not Houston. What could his sister possibly want now? He debated whether or not to answer Georgia. A prickling sensation ran down the back of his neck. All the hammering and sawing noises ceased. A blue jay imitated the squeak of a screwdriver forcing a screw into a two by four and broke the quivering stillness.

In an out-of-body moment, Cam watched Matt’s face while he answered. Yeah?

Georgia’s voice gasped into his ear. Oh baby, I just heard the news. Is she safe? It wasn’t her, was it?

Cam swallowed and slowly dipped his face toward the pages he clutched in his other hand.

HOUSTON TEXAS (AP) BREAKING NEWS 10:30 AM CDT. BY THE HOUSTON CHRONICLE STAFF. EMERGENCY AT SOUTHERN SHORE MEDICAL CENTER. AUTHORITIES CONVERGE ON HOSPITAL COMPLEX AS SUSPECTED BIOTERRORISTS ARE IMPLICATED IN MURDER AND THE THEFT OF HUMAN ORGANS. TEXAS RANGERS POLICE DIVISION AND FBI ARE INVESTIGATING.

Cameron? Can you hear me? Are you there? Answer me! His sister muffled the speaker, yet he heard her call for her husband in the background. Adam, I don’t think—

I’m here, Cam said into the phone. I read…I was reading something about it. From Matt. I mean, from the AP. I don’t…Georgia, what have you heard?

Here, baby. Switch to the viewing mode and I’ll put mine toward the TV news.

Cam stared at his phone until Matt, having apparently overheard, grabbed it and pressed the right buttons to open the camera app.

Dad? Kenny tucked his slimy little hand into Cam’s. Cam gripped it fiercely. This child was not going to lose another member of his family. Not on his watch. Not Lily.

Everything’s okay, Cam whispered.

Kenny rested in Cam’s loose hug, face buried in Cam’s roiling gut, while Matt and Cam watched and listened to the screen. A talking head described bedlam at the surgery center of the huge multi-hospital complex that made up Southern Shore Medical Center.

This just in. The spokeswoman for the Houston Police Department confirms the death toll at eight so far. Two operating room teams. No names have been released. The woman newscaster tilted her head slightly to study a handheld monitor. The authorities are evacuating the building. We’ll go live to the scene where Lorinda Rasthanjani is waiting to update us. Lorinda, what can you tell us?

A beanpole in a red blouse, jeans, and sneakers held a microphone where she stood across a street from a block building. Her long black hair waved in a breeze as the camera closed in on her profile, then panned the area. Several people in business dress and medical scrubs and official uniforms scurried in the background. Beacons from emergency vehicles strobed while ambulances began to gather in front of the building.

Sharra, as we can see behind me, emergency vehicles are arriving as patients, visitors, and staff are being evacuated. I’m told it’s possible the perpetrators may still be on the scene. This is an active situation.

Lorinda, stay safe. Have shots been fired?

Lorinda turned to face the building where people in street clothes escorted by uniformed officers of various departments began to exit the building. She turned back to face the camera. I have not been able to confirm that weapons fire was involved, or what type of weapons may have been used. So far, no persons of interest have been detained. What we do know… The woman checked her notes. Is that witnesses have reported acts of mutilation. She gazed grimly into the camera. Then she broke her pose and held up her arm at someone out of range. Excuse me, sir!

The reporter beckoned to her camera person and strode after a man in green hospital scrubs stumbling slightly then falling to his knees on the lawn.

The scene morphed back to the newsroom. Stay with us for more breaking news from the Southern Shore Medical Center complex, Sharra said. We’ll bring you live updates as they occur. And now, back to our regular programming.

There. Georgia’s face appeared on Cam’s phone. Have you heard? About Lily? She was there, wasn’t she?

Ye-yeah. Cam clutched Kenny tighter. I mean no, I haven’t heard anything. And yes, she was… He dropped his voice. There.

Matt held his work phone up to the sky. You seriously don’t get much reception out here? One bar? What is this, some third world nation?

Thanks sis, Cam said. But I have to go. Let’s talk later. He pushed the off button despite Georgia’s wait!

What’s gonna happen? Kenny asked.

Cam squatted and took Kenny’s shoulders. Kenny was turning eleven in July, moving out of childhood too quickly, but he was on the scrawny side. Six months of regular food and sleep had made a huge difference, though Cam doubted he’d ever get close to six feet in height. The hardest part of any activity in life is waiting. When we practice patience in any circumstance, we control our reactions.

Kenny stared back as lines of confusion creased the skin between his brows. Slowly, as if drawing peace from Cam, Kenny began to relax his facial muscles, then his shoulders. You’ve been trying to call Aunt Lily, haven’t you?

Cam nodded. It sounds like some bad folks have hurt people down in Texas where she went for her operation. I guess the hospital people have been busy so they haven’t had time to let me talk to someone taking care of Lily.

Did they catch him?

Him who?

The bad guys. Kenny gestured with his crusty hand at the phone on top of the newswire pages Cam set on the ground at their feet.

We don’t know that the…the people who hurt others were guys. This was not a time to have a gender respect conversation and Cam backed off, recognizing his tendency to go off tangent when hit with double-bore problems. No, not of as a few minutes ago, if the news people were right. But we have faith, right? That God is in control?

Kenny shivered and pressed his lips tight. Yeah. Right.

Cam tucked away the urge to hug Kenny for all he was worth. He squeezed the boy’s thin shoulders. Cam narrowed his eyes. They lowered their chins in unison, their personal code for yes sir.

Aw, cripes…No, no, no. Not good…O Lord, not good. I can’t believe it. Matt trotted toward them with his belly jiggling at each step. This here says patients are involved too. One of ’em matches Lily’s description.

Chapter 4

Lily tried to open her mouth to scream. Why wouldn’t her muscles obey her? No one should be touching her face…her eyes…Could she be having a nightmare under anesthesia? She’d never had an operation before. Oh Lord…

Hurry! a harsh voice demanded from somewhere away from the painfully bright light. Attempting to recognize it shifted her attention briefly from the slicing agony of her back and now her eye.

A large dark shadowy figure loomed over her face flashing a shiny object.

Scrape out the whole thing! Move, the same guttural tones rasped.

Do you want them intact or not? the blobby figure’s shaky voice snapped. He breathed coffee fumes into Lily’s nostrils as he held her lids wide and scratched at her eyeballs. Lily couldn’t twitch. The searing overhead lamp burned her sight. The stink of body odor, the kind that grew from nerves, assailed her next.

Metallic clanks sounded near her ear. Gooey gunk was smeared over her eyeballs. Got it. The gloved hands moved away from her face. Lily’s eyelids couldn’t quite close against the blurry burning light.

A squishy ripping sound, followed by a man’s low groan and noisy exhale, made her cringe inside. The crack of something hard hitting a solid surface escalated her breathing, but her lungs were slow to expand. Lily fought against hyperventilating. The lights went out and the room felt empty.

She tried to swallow to wet her mouth. Tears leaked down her temples, the salt burning whatever they’d done to her eyeballs. Somebody would come. This wasn’t right. This was nothing like the surgeon had explained to her yesterday. Finally, she could work her jaw. She opened her lips and tried to scream. Only a gurgle escaped.

Cam…she wanted Cam. She wanted a do-over. Delete! Delete, delete… She changed her mind, didn’t want the surgery after all. Please…somebody, come. Black dots danced across her partial field of vision.

Lily was suffocating, or drowning……save me, help me, please... The pain was head-pounding intense, but she couldn’t move, couldn’t call out.

That voice. The one from out of the dark at Kingston’s cabin last winter. She had agreed to be the bait for the Department of Justice agent, and went to a fake job interview. The voice then had been lisping, sibilant…a voice of doom and despair from Old Man Limm and his children, Shawn, Maury, and Annalise, who promised good paying, exciting work but instead sold people into bondage.

Sirens and tramping feet were the last sounds she heard before the inappeasable hurt and black spots grew over everything and shut out the world.

Chapter 5

Cam squeezed Kenny’s fist where they all stood in the driveway of the cabin. C’mon, we’re going for a plane ride. Let’s go pack and load.

Matt scurried ahead. Cam continued his urgent stride toward the four-wheel-drive SUV he and Lily picked out last March. Matt planted himself in front of Cam’s door, spread his feet wide and, sweatingly defiant, folded his arms. He cocked his head toward Kenny.

What? Cam asked. The tick of fear made him feel as though ants swarmed him. He dropped Kenny’s hand and urged the kid toward the back door.

Uh… Matt dipped his chin and widened his eyes.

I don’t have time for this.

Matt whispered, Minerva said—

Cam held up his hand. Right. Cam’s attorney, the horsey, shawl-loving drama queen, was working on a custody plan for Kenny. With Berta missing and no other known living relative, Lily was the obvious choice to keep Kenny. He glanced sideways toward Kenny, who stood watching the adults through slit eyelids.

I, uh, forgot, Cam muttered. Buddy, Minerva says we have to stay in Wisconsin while your aunt is in Texas. Minerva, as guardian ad litem, had filed a temporary custodial plan to appoint Matt as standby guardian in the event Cam became hurt or injured or otherwise unavailable while Lily was gone. But no one was ready for that contingency.

The burn of unused adrenalin filled Cam’s chest and rose into his throat. He should have as much right to say what happened even if he wasn’t blood kin since he also happily contributed to child support. Lily had requested Kenny stay in Barter Valley for summer school while she had the surgery. It hadn’t seemed like an issue, and after they’d hashed out the reason Lily needed privacy, and that she’d only planned on being away for a week or so, he’d reluctantly agreed. Matt, so help me…

I got her on speed dial. Matt held up his phone like the shield of faith. Hold on, it’s ringing. Matt turned his face away to answer. After a too-short response, the situation was obvious.

She’ll get back to us, I know it, when she hears my voice, Matt said. I told her it was top priority.

In a fit of insanity at the time, Cam and Lily had hired Minerva, a semi-celebrity attorney, to help them file for permanent placement for Kenny. If Cam took off on his own to get to Lily, things would get destructively complicated. Minerva might enjoy an exciting shoot-out now and then, but there was no way she’d let anyone take Kenny down to Texas into a potentially dangerous situation.

If Minerva won’t let me take him…

Shh! Matt held his finger to his lips while he hissed like a rattler.

Kenny wiggled his skinny self between them and alternated upward stares.

I have to be there! Cam sputtered.

No, you don’t, man, Matt replied. What would Lily want?

Lily didn’t plan for an act of… Cam lowered his voice. "Terrorism! An act of God we could understand. But this…this…What?"

Cam’s shout signaled the restart of hammering and sawing. He swung a dark look toward the cabin. Roger gave him a nod and thumbs up which only fueled his rage. All was not okay in this world.

Kenny pulled Cam’s hand. Aunt Lily needs us. We should go.

It’s not that simple, buddy, Cam said. He took a deep inhale of sawdust and pine pollen. Lily should be here, watching with delight as their future home took shape. She should never have thought of herself as anything less than whole. She should never, ever have been called a freak. Certainly not by her own mother. Lily’s sister Berta had been worse. Cam’s and Lily’s together vow had been to shelter Kenny from any more abuse at the hands of so-called family. He’d made sure Georgia understood that one more temper tantrum from her would rate an eviction notice from his life. Family should not be more of a trial than the unkindness of strangers.

Cam narrowed his eyes as the sound of a souped-up engine on wide treads headed toward them shook the ground. Talk about destructive complications. A dropped gear