“That’s really what all this is about, isn’t it?” I asked him. “The violence, the control. You’re afraid. You’re so afraid of being left alone that you threatened to kill us to make us stay. My god, Aaron, you’re a child. A frightened, tantrumming child.” He turned his head away and, emboldened, I took a step forward. “What the hell happened to you, Aaron? How did you get like this? It’s because your mother left you, isn’t it? She left you alone with a father who beat you. You must know that your father’s abuse drove her off. But you’re still so angry at her that you took it out on—”
“Shut up!” Aaron roared. “Just shut the fuck up.” He fired the rifle at the ground to one side of me, and I startled, took a step back. “Don’t think you know me,” he said. “You don’t know anything about me. My mother was weak, unfaithful, a slut. She deserved everything she got.”
“What do you mean?” I asked. “She deserved what? What did your father do to her?” But even as I asked, I already knew. Aaron had replayed it with me and Evie that day. “Your mother didn’t abandon you, did she? You told me she left you, just left one day and never came back. But that’s not what happened, is it?”
Aaron’s eyes traveled wildly over the dense bush around us, and I realized some part of him was lost in a forest of his own. “She was leaving,” he said. “She packed our bags.”
“But she was going to take you with her, and your father stopped her.”
Aaron began rocking a little from side to side, as Olive so often did when anxious or afraid. He shook his head slowly. “The police didn’t find her body in the lake until years later. When they did, Dad went to jail. He went to jail even though it was her fault. If she hadn’t tried to leave—” He looked me full in the eye. “We would still be a family.”
“And you lived with your father all that time, until he was imprisoned?” I asked. “You said he beat you. Did you know he murdered your mother?” Aaron let the muzzle of the gun drop as he rocked back and forth harder, shifting his weight from foot to foot. Then it hit me. “You were there when it happened,” I said. “You saw your father kill your mother. He drowned her, didn’t he? You witnessed him drowning her. That’s why you threatened to drown Evie, isn’t it? You were reliving it.” Just like I had subconsciously arranged circumstances to relive my own childhood trauma.
“Shut up!” he said, aiming the rifle back at me. “Shut the fuck up!” Then he launched forward and gripped my upper arm hard, hauling me forward. “No more talk. Let’s go. Back to the cabin.”
I stumbled ahead of him as he poked me now and again with the muzzle of the rifle.
“Faster,” he said. “Run.”
I ran ahead and he kept pace, carrying the rifle in both hands.
“What are you planning?” I asked him as we reached the edge of the forest by the cabin. “You’re not going to kill me.”
He didn’t answer.
“The police are on their way.”
“Bullshit,” he said.
“Teresa phoned them.” Though I wasn’t sure they would find us here. “And Madison, Sarah and the girls are already gone.”
But almost as soon as I said it, I heard a girl’s voice, Olive’s voice, calling from beyond the cabin. “Kira? Kira, are you all right?”
Aaron stepped past me to scan the field and forest beyond, in the direction of Olive’s voice, then tilted his head back at me, his eyes glistening intelligently, menacingly, like a crow as it tried to figure out how to get a worm out of a Coke bottle to eat it.
37
Aaron grabbed my arm again, dragged me to the cabin steps and pushed me to the ground in front of them. I scuttled backward, my eyes on the gun.
“Come out,” he called over the roof of the cabin. “Olive, come out or I’ll shoot Kira.” When that didn’t get an immediate response, he cocked the gun and fired it into the air. I heard Evie cry out.
“I’m coming!” Olive called. “Don’t hurt her!” She stepped out from behind the cabin, carrying a sobbing Evie. The look on Olive’s face was beyond terrified. Numb. Madison followed as Sarah lagged behind, hugging herself.
I saw the flash of the hunting knives in the women’s hands. Aaron saw them too. He laughed. “Put those things down,” he said, then, louder, aiming the rifle at them, “Drop them!” First Madison and then Sarah tossed the knives to the ground. With his eyes still on the women, Aaron scooped up the two knives and threw them into the bush.
“All of you, stand over there with Kira,” Aaron said, gesturing with the rifle toward me.
As I stood and brushed myself off, Madison, Sarah and Olive joined me in front of the porch steps.
“I’m sorry,” Madison said to me. “We saw Aaron chase you into the woods, then heard the gunshots. I told Olive to stay put, but she was so worried . . .”
“It’s okay,” I said. But of course, nothing about this situation was okay.
Evie, still crying, reached for me, but when Olive handed her over, Aaron intervened, taking my baby from me.
“No,” I said, clutching at Evie. “Aaron, please. Don’t.”
But he wrenched her away. When Evie’s cries grew louder, he shushed her and kissed the top of her head until she settled, then handed her back to Olive. He motioned with the gun for her to carry Evie over to the Jeep. “Wait in the car,” he said.
“Daddy, I—”
“I said, wait in the car!” he yelled. Olive started and carried my baby over to the Jeep, but she didn’t get in. She leaned against the vehicle, hugging Evie, her head down, but watching, as a frightened cat does from beneath the bed. I thought of her collection of stuffies then, all lined up against the wall, hidden beneath her mattress. It occurred to me that she had likely witnessed more of Aaron’s violence against Sarah and Madison than any of her parents imagined.
Aaron held the gun with both hands as he looked us over. “Well, well,” he said. “All my girls, together at last.”
All my girls. Madison and I exchanged a glance. Aaron’s girls. That was exactly it. He thought we were his property, to do with as he pleased.
He nodded at Sarah. “Good to see you again, Vicki.”
“I wish I could say the same,” she said. “I understand you wanted to talk to me?”
“No more talk,” he said. “It’s clear to me now that you’ve done far too much of that already.” Aaron bounced a little on each step he took toward us, rage rippling through his body, the rifle gripped firmly in his hands. “I’m putting an end to all this shit once and for all. Not one of you three witches is going to take my girls from me ever again. You won’t take my family from me.”
Did he plan to shoot all three of us? He didn’t have enough rounds left. But, my god, which of us would he take out? I had to buy us more time, distract him until, hopefully, the police arrived.
“How can you blame any of us for leaving you?” I asked. “After what you’ve done.”
“What I’ve done?” Aaron said. He waved the rifle at Madison. “You tried to take my daughter away from me.” He aimed the rifle at me. “And why is it you come up here any chance you get, huh? It’s not for the beach, is it? It’s Nathan.”
“No, Aaron—” But I choked up at the mention of Nathan’s name, picturing my old love unconscious on the floor. I hoped to god Teresa had found him, got him help.
“And you,” he said, pointing the muzzle at Sarah. “You screwed around on me too.”
“What are you talking about?” Sarah asked. “I never cheated on you.”
“Don’t give me that. You were with some asshole the day your kid nearly drowned.”
“I was not.”
“I saw you.”
Sarah tilted her head as she scrutinized Aaron. “You saw me? What did you see exactly?”
“You were sharing a toke with some guy. Laughing and getting stoned while your daughter almost died.”
“You’re talking about Russell? He was there to help me pack up, to protect me if you returned early, because I was planning to
leave you that day. He saw that I was stressed and afraid, and offered me a toke and told me a few stupid jokes to make me laugh. That’s all. We weren’t seeing each other.” Sarah shook her head as she worked things out. “How could you possibly have seen me and Russell smoking that joint? That day—that shitty day—you didn’t get home until after we’d come back from having Olive checked out at the hospital, after I revived her.”
“You revived me?” Olive asked.
Aaron shifted his weight from foot to foot as he looked away from his daughter.
“Or did you?” Sarah asked. “You did come home earlier, didn’t you?” Sarah squinted at him, scanning his face. “But we only smoked for a minute or two before I went to answer the door and found Olive outside, floating in the pool. So if you saw us smoking, you must have seen—”
Olive stepped forward, carrying Evie. “You mean, I actually drowned ?”
Aaron shook his head slightly, like a doddering old man. But he wouldn’t look at Sarah. He blinked rapidly as he stared at the forest that surrounded us.
I pictured Aaron arriving home to find a stranger’s truck in his yard, knowing Sarah was leaving him and taking Olive with her. He would have reacted as he had earlier that morning when I said I was leaving him and he submerged Evie in the kitchen sink.
“It was you who almost drowned Olive, wasn’t it?” I asked him. “Just like you threatened to drown Evie, just like your father drowned your mother—”
I shared a look with Sarah and saw grief consume her face as she understood. She launched forward to grip Aaron’s wrinkled violet shirt in her fist, and her voice became shrill. “You tried to drown Olive? You threw our baby into the pool?”
Aaron’s face darkened as he pushed Sarah away with the gun, gripping it with both hands. “I should have killed you instead,” he said. “It would have saved me all this grief.”
“What about me?” Olive cried. “You were trying to kill me?”
Aaron, caught, blinked. “No, but your mother needed to learn—”
“You were, weren’t you?” Sarah asked. “You would have killed us both. What stopped you?” She paused a moment, remembering. “Russell’s buddy turned up to help just before I discovered Olive in the pool. We heard the knock at the door, and as I went to let him in, I saw my baby—” Her voice cracked. “You knew you couldn’t fight off both men, so you ran.” She grabbed Aaron’s arm, turning him so he’d look her in the eye. “You fucking coward, you ran and put the blame on me!” Sarah slapped him hard.
In return, Aaron backhanded her to the ground.
“Jesus, Aaron,” Madison said, rushing to help Sarah up.
Olive pushed Evie into my arms and faced her father. “How could you do that!” she cried. A look of confusion passed over her face, and I knew the inner turmoil she felt in that moment. “It’s not true, is it? You didn’t really try to drown me. You wouldn’t do that, would you, Daddy? Not to me. Don’t you love me?” Her face was streaked with tears. She had witnessed this horror, all this evil, and yet she was still a little girl, just wanting her father’s love.
Aaron saw it too in that moment, and his face changed into that of the loving dad I was used to seeing, wanting his daughter to keep gazing at him with those adoring eyes, thinking maybe he could still win her over and forget all this.
He reached out his hand to her. “Oh, Olive Oyl, of course I love you,” he said. Keeping one hand on the rifle, he wrapped an arm around his daughter and kissed her head.
But then Olive pulled the knife from her pocket and stabbed him in the right hand.
“Christ!” Aaron dropped the rifle to grab his hand, blood oozing through his fingers.
Olive threw the knife to the ground and picked up the rifle. She weighed it in both hands for a moment, cocked it as the characters did in the games she played, and aimed the loaded gun at her father’s head.
38
Still holding his bleeding hand, Aaron took a step toward Olive. “Are you really going to shoot me?” he asked. But he quickly jumped back when Olive put her finger on the trigger.
“Olive,” Madison said. “What are you doing?”
“He wants to kill Evie, and you, and Kira and Sarah.” She glanced at her birth mother as Sarah held a hand to her bruised face. “I won’t let him.”
“Baby,” Aaron said, his face flushed. “Come on, baby, you don’t want to hurt me.”
“For god’s sake, Aaron, sit down and shut up.” I nodded sideways at the stairs. “Before you get yourself killed!”
Aaron hesitated and then slumped down onto the cabin stairs like a moody teen who’d been caught using his mother’s credit card online. For porn.
I turned back to Olive. “Put the gun down, Olive,” I said. “This isn’t the way.”
Madison reached out to her. “Please, sweetheart.”
Sarah waggled her head as she stepped, distraught and panicked, toward her daughter. “Please, no,” she said.
“I’m tired of all the fighting,” Olive said, her voice rising in anguish. “I’m tired of you guys yanking me around, telling me I’ve got to live here or there. I’m sick of feeling scared all the time. I just want it to end.”
“Not like this,” I said. I handed Evie to Madison and stood in front of Aaron, shielding him with my hands out. “Olive, give me the gun.”
“Get out of the way,” Olive cried.
“No.”
She lowered the muzzle. “You’re protecting him?”
“I’m protecting you. Olive, you would never forgive yourself if you hurt him.”
“But you killed your father!” Olive burst out.
I froze. Was that what she thought?
“I heard you talking to Nathan. You told me it was an accident, but you told him you meant to do it.”
I took a deep breath and stepped toward her, slowly, as if I was approaching a skittish fawn. “I did mean to, for a moment. But that’s not what happened.”
I remembered that moment as if it were only yesterday, hearing the shot echoing through the trees.
“Jesus!” My father’s voice rang out from the bush. “You nearly hit me!”
I dropped the gun to the ground and stepped back, terrified now, as my father stepped over a log and into the clearing, his brown camouflage almost indistinguishable against the foliage of the dormant November forest. But he was wearing his hunter-orange vest and cap. I had seen them glowing brightly in the bush before I pulled the trigger. Oh god, what had I done?
“What have I told you?” my father demanded.
What you see in the bush is rarely what’s really there.
“You could have killed me.”
“I’m sorry,” I whispered, barely able to breathe. “I’m so sorry.”
My father searched my face and all the air seemed to go out of him.
“You hungry?” he asked dully. He sat on a log and pulled out a paper bag, lightly stained with oil, filled with Finnish pastries. He held it out to me.
I took one out but then only held it, my mind clouded. I was shaking.
“It won’t bite back,” he told me, trying, without energy, to resurrect an old joke. “It’s just a pig.” A pastry loosely shaped, like my father’s pancakes, to resemble a pig.
I took a tentative bite and put the remainder back in the brown bag.
“You don’t like it?” my father asked.
“I’m not hungry.”
He bit into his. “More for me, then,” he said.
He poured coffee into the thermos cup and handed it to me, then reached for his travel mug and topped up his own. I sniffed the cup and sipped, making a face at the acrid taste.
“Here,” he said, offering me a bag of sugar cubes. Then he took two for himself, setting them between his teeth and sipping his coffee through them.
I did the same, drawing the bitter in through the sweet. My father grinned at me, showing what was left of the sugar cubes, like two goofy teeth. An old game that was funny once. I didn’t smile bac
k.
“You’re not enjoying yourself?” he asked. “You used to love our hunting trips.”
When you’re older, you won’t have to go, my mother had told me. You can decide for yourself not to visit him. But for now, he’s used the courts to force you to take these trips with him. There’s nothing I can do. Just be prepared to defend yourself when you need to.
Not if, but when. I slept with a hunting knife in my hand beneath my pillow. My sleep came in fits, and I woke exhausted. The sound of my father chopping wood outside for a morning fire made me flinch.
Now, sitting on a log opposite my father, drinking strong coffee, my knee wouldn’t stay still. It bounced of its own accord. My cup sloshed as my hand shook. “I’m just tired,” I said.
He held my gaze for a long moment. “I heard the bullet whiz past my ear,” he said quietly. “It was that close.” He tossed the remains of his coffee to the ground and put the travel mug back in his bag. “But you know that,” he said. “You saw my vest and cap. You looked me right in the eye.” He knew what I had done—what I had almost done. He knew it wasn’t an accident. Grief puckered his brow. “Do you really hate me so much?”
There were so many things I could have said, things that would have saved my father’s life, and my own. But I didn’t say any of them. I sat upright, both hands on my bouncing knees, and fought back my own tears as he sank his head into his hands and sobbed so hard his shoulders shook.
Finally, my father stood, wiped his face, his snot, with the sleeve of his jacket. I felt a rush of adrenaline as he picked up his rifle. Pure, raw fear. But then he said, “It’s clear you don’t want to be here. Go back to the cabin and phone Teresa, ask her to pick you up on the road. You can stay with her and Nathan for the night.”
“Why can’t you drive me?”
He hesitated, looking not at me but at something beyond me. “There aren’t many hours of light left. I’m going to see if I can bag that deer.” He focused his gaze on me and added, “I do love you, Kira. I’ll always love you.”
Then he turned his back on me and walked slowly away, expecting me to do as he asked, to phone Teresa and catch a ride to her place, knowing I would be excited to see Nathan. But I was still stunned, terrified by what I had just done. I couldn’t face Teresa or Nathan. I remained where I was, knees vibrating, watching as he climbed over the log at the edge of the bush and headed back into the woods the way he had come. He had walked away from my mother like that time and time again when they argued, as, frustrated or defeated, he reached his limit. In return, my mother had pointed a finger at the back of his head, thumb up, a pretend gun, and “fired.” Bang. Bang. Bang.
The Almost Wife Page 21