“Pick one, Leah. Do it before I count to ten, or I get both of them.”
I couldn’t even see straight, Walter, let alone think. I was afraid he’d just shoot us all, he was so crazy in that moment.
He started counting, his voice bludgeoning my brain, my emotions, my heart. Every number leading up to the absolute disaster. I was paralyzed.
But then he got to eight. Nine.
“Maisey,” I said. “I choose Maisey.” She wasn’t as strong as Marley. That was what did it in the end. She was sick a lot. She was sensitive. I guess I figured that if one of them was likely to survive life with Boots, it would be Marley.
I also told myself I’d come back for her. It wasn’t forever. Only just right now. Today. I’d go to the police. I’d find money somewhere and get a lawyer. I’d get her back.
“Perfect,” he says. “So like you. You get the runt, I get the strong one. Marley, come here.”
I’d managed to sit up by then. She didn’t want to go to him. She locked her arms around my neck and half strangled me, holding on. Marley never was much of a crier, but she started wailing at the top of her lungs. I thought he might hit her to shut her up, but it seemed like maybe he liked to hear her cry, or at least enjoyed the effect it was having on me.
He came over to us and grabbed her around the middle. She screamed and kicked and held on, but he yanked her off me.
I’ll never forget that moment when her little hands let go, the sudden coolness on my neck, my face, the sound of her screaming. He held her tight, and then he put that gun against the side of her head.
People talk about slow motion, but I’m telling you this: In that moment, all the world went still. Nothing moved. Everything was a series of snapshots.
Boots holding Marley. Her tear-streaked face. The gun pressed to her head. Maisey sitting on the sidewalk, wailing.
“If you come looking for her, I’ll kill her,” Boots said. “If you talk to the cops or hire an attorney, I’ll kill her. You will not make contact with her or me or your parents or anybody in this town. If you do, after I kill Marley, I’ll come looking for you and Maisey. Do you understand?”
I couldn’t even begin to breathe. It still feels like a nightmare, writing this. Every day since it happened I’ve tried to wake up, to change the way the dream ends. Back then, kneeling in the street, I thought maybe I could appeal to his better self somehow.
“You don’t mean that,” I said. “You’re her father.”
“Do I look like a man who doesn’t mean it?”
He looked like the devil himself. There was a grin on his face. The sun came out just then and turned his hair gold. He was beautiful and evil and all the reason had been burned out of him by the drugs and alcohol.
I wanted to kill him. I think I would have, if I’d been the one holding a gun.
But the gun was aimed at my baby. I was sick with pain and terror, and I believed him. I believed he had the power to know if I was following his instructions. I believed he would do what he said.
And so I managed to get up onto my feet, the world spinning, every breath an agony because of my ribs. I picked up the suitcase. I picked up Maisey. And I walked away from him and from my beautiful Marley still screaming in his arms.
Chapter Thirty-One
Dad’s voice falters into silence as he chokes on his own emotions.
Even Boots looks subdued, smaller. He’s not one to give up easily, though. “It’s not true,” he says. “Don’t you listen to him, Marley. Don’t you believe a word he says. These people are trying to poison you against me.”
Marley doesn’t seem to hear him. She stands like a statue in the middle of the room. And then, “I remember,” she whispers.
“Oh, that’s just ridiculous,” Boots scoffs. “You were barely more than a baby.”
She turns, slowly, as if just waking from a trance, to face him. “I’ve always remembered. I just thought it must be a dream. A nightmare. I still dream it sometimes, but I only remember flashes. A woman on the ground. A boot kicking her in the head. A gun. Me screaming, screaming, screaming, trying to hold on to something that is torn away. It all happened, didn’t it? It’s real.”
Elle buries her face in Mia’s shoulder and starts to sob. Tony gets up and turns his back to us, staring out the window. Dad looks exhausted.
As for me, I feel like my heart has swollen so big that it’s occupying all my insides. I want to hug the child that Marley was and the woman that she is now. I want to hug my father—not the devil father, Boots, but the man who raised me as his own, the man who helped to heal my mother.
I want, more than anything, for my mother to be alive so that I can tell her that I understand now. I can see why she pushed me so hard to be better, to do more, why nothing I did was ever enough for her. She needed me to make up for Marley, to be enough for two girls even though I was only one.
For me, it’s too big for tears.
I get out of my chair and cross the room to Marley. “I have the same dream,” I tell her. “The woman on the ground. The flash of a gun. Me, screaming. Only in my dream, it’s you I’m being torn away from.”
We stand there, face-to-face, looking at each other, and then the barrier between us shatters. We both move at the same time, arms around each other, cheeks pressed together, holding on for dear life to what feels like the missing half of what I’ve always needed to be whole.
“I hate to interrupt this fairy tale,” Boots says, his voice dripping sarcasm, “but would you all mind clearing out of my house?”
Marley’s body stiffens at the sound of his voice. She moves out of our embrace, but her hand finds mine, and our fingers clasp, joining us together as we both turn to face him.
“That’s all you have to say for yourself?”
“I see no point. You’ve judged me. Anything I can say that will change that?”
His gaze moves from my face to hers and back again. “I thought not. Get me another beer before you go, will you? And be sure to close the door behind you.”
“You can get your own beer,” Marley says. “You’re on your own. You might think about getting up off your ass and finding somebody to buy your groceries. I won’t be back.”
She tugs at my hand and leads me out of that smoke-filled cesspit and into the light of a beautiful spring afternoon.
Chapter Thirty-Two
It’s three days shy of a month after Mom’s funeral when a teenager walks up the sidewalk to the front door. I open the door with a smile, expecting some sort of pitch for a school fund-raiser.
“Maisey Addington?” she asks.
“That’s me,” I say, before I can wonder how she knows my name. She holds out a manila envelope, and I take it before I register that there is no catalogue full of chocolate or popcorn. As soon as it’s in my hand, she trots down the driveway and takes off on her bicycle without looking back.
I know what’s going to be inside that envelope before I tear it open.
Greg has drawn the case up himself. He is suing for full custody of Elle. He takes several pages to lay out my unfitness to be a parent. By the time I’m done reading the accusations against me, I’m inclined to put Elle on a bus and refrain from even visiting.
But Greg hasn’t counted on my family. Or his timing. The revelation of what Boots did to my mother, and to Marley, and to me, is still fresh, and we’re all full of fight in need of an outlet.
“What happened?”
Marley comes out onto the porch and plops down beside me. She’s got this sixth sense that tells her when I’m upset about something. I’ve got the same thing about her. It’s fascinating how this works, given how we didn’t cultivate some special twin radar growing up. But it’s there anyway.
I hand her the papers, and she starts reading through them, cursing all the way.
“What an absolute piece-of-shit asshole,” she says.
“Who is a piece-of-shit asshole?” Elle asks, behind us.
Marley and I exchange a glan
ce made up of chagrin on her part and panic on mine. The language isn’t the issue. I don’t want Elle to know about this. She can’t know.
But Marley turns around and says, quite calmly, “Your father, honey.”
Elle drops onto the step below me, where she can look up at both of us. “What’s he done now?” she asks, with deceptive calm.
“She’s going to have to know sooner or later,” Marley says. “Might as well get it over with.”
This is the problem with logical, decision-making people. I would have run off with the papers, made up a lie. Protected my daughter as long as I could. But it’s too late for any of that now, so I let her read the papers.
Meanwhile, Marley is busy laying out battle strategy. “Of course we’ll fight this. Doesn’t Walter have an attorney? Maybe that Tony guy has some connections. He’s a firefighter, right? They’re tight with the cops. We need a judge we can corrupt. Or—”
“Don’t I get any say in this?”
Elle’s voice stops us cold. She lays the envelope on the step and the papers on top of it, squaring them all precisely before she looks up at me.
Her face looks remote, her eyes cold, and my heart freezes. What if I’ve been delusional all this time? What if the things Greg says about me as a parent are true, and Elle would rather live with him?
“You might,” I tell her, tuned to her reaction. “I’m sure the judge will ask. But that’s probably not the deciding factor.”
“Well that’s just stupid,” she says. “This whole thing is stupid.”
“Elle. He’s your father.”
She stares at me. “What the hell? You’re going to give me the respect-your-father lecture now, when he’s pulled this shit? Then you’re just stupid, too.”
I freeze, mouth hanging open, not sure whether I should begin with the swearing or the disrespect to her father or her disrespect to me.
Marley, on the other hand, applauds her. “Attagirl,” she says. “No abusive asshole is ever going to hoodwink you.” Before I can remonstrate, she puts her hand on my shoulder. “Maisey, go easy. You think the girl doesn’t know any swear words? If there was ever a time to say them, this is it. Also, if you believe one word of that trash he wrote about you, then Elle is right. You are stupid.”
Between the two of them, on top of what I’ve just read, I’m pretty much incapacitated. Elle comes to sit beside me. “I’m sorry,” she says. “I shouldn’t have called you stupid.”
I put an arm around her, and she leans her head on my shoulder. “I love him,” she says. “But I don’t understand him. And I want to stay with you.”
Her words thaw the frozen place inside me. I plant a kiss on top of her sun-warm hair, breathe in the smell of her—shampoo and soap and cotton. In that moment, all my rationalizations flee. To hell with the notion that a girl needs her father. If he’s going to behave himself, sure. But she doesn’t need to grow up believing it’s okay to be discounted, belittled, slapped for having opinions.
I’ll run away with her, if I have to.
Dad, as it happens, has an attorney and invites him over for battle planning. Geoff Jenkins is about my father’s age, but there’s nothing of softness in his eyes or his face. He carries himself erect and with confidence and declines the slice of pizza Elle offers him.
“This is not a social call,” he says. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to get right to business.”
“Hang on a sec,” I say. “Marley?” She understands what I’m asking without me saying the words.
“Come on, Elle. Pizza is better outside.”
Elle looks torn. “Maybe I should stay here.”
“You need to go,” I tell her. “Please, Elle.” I say please, but she knows I mean it and will insist. To my relief she doesn’t push the issue. Maybe she doesn’t want to be caught in the middle any more than I want her to be there.
“All right,” she says, finally. “But don’t try to pretend you’re not just getting rid of me. You sure you don’t want any, Mr. Jenkins?”
“I’m sure. Thank you.”
As soon as the door closes, Dad turns to him. “Well? What do you think, Geoff?”
“I think we have a good case. Custody tends to favor the mother, and Maisey has been the custodial parent from the beginning. The parents are not and never have been married. In addition, I took the liberty of pulling the original parenting plan. It was filed here. So we’ll start with the request that the venue be here in Colville.”
“Is that likely?” I ask. “Greg is an attorney and has connections.”
“And I am an attorney and also have connections,” Geoff says drily. “I also have the advantage of older and deeper connections than his. I suspect the judge will not be interested in a change of venue.”
I absorb this information with the first real glimmer of hope I’ve felt since being served the court order.
Geoff continues. “Your job is to collect written statements from teachers and friends who are likely to feel you’ve done a good job parenting your daughter. Is his name on the birth certificate?”
“No.”
“Good,” he says, scribbling. “Any chance she might be someone else’s child?” He peers up at me over his glasses.
“What? No. God, no. Greg is her father.”
“This is not about morality,” he says. “In this case, we could wish you had been promiscuous. However, he will have to prove paternity. Anything else?”
“Violence,” Dad says. “Tell him, Maisey.”
Geoff’s face lights up. “He hits you? Domestic violence can play in the mother’s favor, at least if you have protected the child.”
“He only hit me once. Before Elle was even born.”
“Still,” he says, making notes. “Now, what about the child?”
“He’s slapped her. He’ll say it’s discipline.”
The old man’s eyes soften. “I was wondering what she would want to do and whether she will testify. But if he’s been violent with her, then that makes our job easier.”
All my beliefs about Greg go swirling through my head. A child needs a father. He’s been a good father to her. Discipline is a good thing. When she was little, he spanked her. Now he slaps her face. It’s not that big a deal, if she gets lots of love the rest of the time.
Is it?
I remember that moment. It wasn’t the blow that did the damage. It was the way he dismissed her, demeaned her, discounted her. Maybe an occasional dose of that on weekends won’t do too much harm, but I cringe at the thought of her subjected to him full time.
Still.
“He’s her father and she loves him. I don’t want her put in the middle. It’s not fair to pit a child against her parents like that.”
Geoff looks up at me over his reading glasses and nods. “That may not help your case, but I approve of the parenting decision, young lady. Noted. I would like to have a chat with her in private though, if that’s all right. Just to see what she would like to do.”
“All right.”
“My office, then.” He scrolls through the calendar on his phone. “I have an opening at three p.m. on Monday. Will that do?”
“That will do fine.”
“Well, then. It was a pleasure to meet you.” He gets up from his chair and shakes hands with my father. “You take care, Walter.”
“Thanks for coming over, Geoff. Especially on short notice.”
“Oh, I’ll send you a bill.”
“How about I buy you a drink?”
“Make it three.”
They walk out of the room together, two old friends, Geoff’s hand on Dad’s shoulder. I sit in the chair where my mother used to sit, sometimes, while Dad worked. She was always busy. Writing letters, knitting blankets for unwanted babies, giving Dad advice about a business he knew and understood perfectly well.
My hands are empty and still. I close my eyes and try to put myself inside my mother’s body, to feel that force, that drive, that allowed her to re-create an entirely n
ew life out of the ashes of something that would have destroyed me. I need her now, after all the years of tuning her out and avoiding her.
What would she do about Greg?
Whatever it takes. And that’s what I, too, am prepared to do.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Tony’s nightmares are out of control. Every night now, not just once a month or once a week, he wakes up in a sweat-drenched bed, breathing hard, pulse pounding. Half the time he doesn’t even remember what he dreamed, but the sound of gunshots is in his head, in his ears, vibrating through his body. Sometimes he can smell gunpowder.
The last few nights, it has been so real, he’s had to get out of bed and walk through the house, turning on lights, checking doors and windows.
Playing Whisper Me This with Maisey triggered a new intensity in his flashbacks. The visit to the evil old man who fathered her completely unhinged him.
On that day, in that dingy, smoke-filled room, listening to Walter tell the story of exactly what Boots had done, Tony had wanted to kill. He’d stared out the window, breathing, working his system of getting calm but the whole time all he wanted was a gun in his hand. The smooth glide of the trigger. The recoil.
The old bastard’s blood.
For Leah. For Marley. But mostly for Maisey.
He hasn’t seen her since that day, but his avoidance tactic is getting increasingly difficult to maintain, thanks to Mia. And his mother. The two of them have adopted the entire Addington family. Elle runs in a pack with Tony’s nieces and nephews and is in and out of his house with them on a regular basis. Tony has worked extra shifts to avoid dinners at his mother’s house when he knows Maisey will be present.
If he wasn’t a coward, he could handle this situation better. But he’s afraid that when he takes one look at Maisey’s face, he’ll kiss her again. He can’t do this. Won’t do this.
She’s called him and left voicemail, once to say thank you, once to ask him if everything is okay. He hasn’t called her back. She doesn’t need a man like him in her life. She doesn’t even need a bodyguard anymore. Maybe Boots was dangerous once, but he’s toothless now.
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