Matt didn’t move, fear all over his face. “Heath, wait. Don’t do anything stupid, okay?”
Heath was sobbing behind him. “You took her from me.”
“Put the gun down. Let’s talk about this.”
Heath removed the gun from the back of Matt’s neck.
Matt got up. “That’s right. We’ll just calm down.” He turned.
Heath jammed the barrel into Matt’s face. “Shut up.”
Matt gulped. “Heath—”
“I said shut up!” Heath raged, his whole body shaking.
Matt clamped his mouth down.
Heath scrabbled on the desk, handing Matt a pen. “Take this.”
Matt took it.
“Where’s the deed to the farmhouse? It’s in here, right? It’s in this desk. Floyd kept that stuff in the desk.”
Matt shook his head. “I-I don’t know. I can’t think with that gun in my face. Why don’t you put it down, and then we’ll—”
“Fine,” said Heath. “I’ll find it myself.” He tugged open a drawer.
Matt tried to move away while Heath wasn’t looking at him.
Heath clubbed him across the face with the gun.
Matt went down, knocking over the whiskey bottle.
Heath dug through the drawer. Then he made a triumphant sound.
Matt got to his feet. “That’s not the deed. I don’t keep it—”
“Better,” said Heath. “It’s your will.”
Matt tried to swallow, but his throat was dry. “What are you doing?”
Heath gestured with the gun. “Sit down.”
Matt sat down. “Don’t do this, Heath. You’re not yourself. You’re out of your mind with grief—”
“I’m myself,” said Heath. “This is what I am. Now you’re going to add a little addendum, and you’re going to leave everything to me. And trust me, Matt, I am going to do a much better job with this farm than you ever did.”
Matt’s hand was sweating so hard that he couldn’t grip the pen. His throat felt thick. “Please, Heath. Stop it.”
Heath put the gun against Matt’s temple. “Do it.”
Matt started to cry. “Why should I? You’re going to shoot me anyway, aren’t you?” His voice came out high pitched.
Heath leaned close. “Well, you don’t know what I’m going to do, now do you? But if you don’t sign everything over to me, the lights go out right now.”
Matt sobbed. He began to write at the end of the will, doing as Heath said. “Please don’t kill me.”
“Sign it,” said Heath. If he was moved by Matt’s tears, it couldn’t be seen on his face.
Matt signed it.
Heath snatched the will away from Matt. “Good. Now get on your knees.”
Matt fell apart. “Please, Heath. We were like brothers growing up. You can’t do this to me.”
Heath kicked him out of the chair. “You took her from me. You treated me like trash. I don’t owe you anything.”
Matt thudded against the floor, falling into a heap. Tears streaked down his face. “Please don’t.”
Heath knelt next to him, and his voice was soft. “I’m not going to.”
Matt stopped crying for a second, hope in his eyes. “You’re not?”
“No,” said Heath, picking up Matt’s hand and wrapping his fingers around the trigger.
Matt looked at him with confused eyes.
Heath pushed the gun against Matt’s head, and using Matt’s finger, pulled the trigger.
The gun went off.
Blood sprayed all over the hard wood floor. Over the desk.
Heath let go, and Matt’s body hit the floor with a smack.
“You’re going to do it,” said Heath. He stood up.
Without giving the body another look, he left the room.
Only to come face to face with the little boy. Gage was standing at the bottom of the steps. His eyes were wide.
Heath swore under his breath. “I forgot about you.”
Gage took several steps forward, as if he was going to go into the den.
Heath stepped into the little boy’s path and picked him up. “You’re not going in there.”
He took Gage out onto the porch. He sat down, holding the boy on his lap, and stared out as the sun struggled into the sky, staining everything bright red.
“He was a drunk, and you’re better off without him,” said Heath. “He wasn’t even your father.”
Gage looked up at him with solemn eyes.
“He stole Cathy from me, and he deserved it. They all stole her from me. They’ll all pay.” He ruffled the boy’s hair. “But not you, Gage. Not you. I won’t let anything hurt you.”
* * *
Heath found Isabella wandering along the side of the road, nearly five miles from the Linton house. Her clothes had barely dried from the storm, and she looked as if she’d been walking all night. He pulled the car over. “Get in.”
She peered in the window, looking at Gage in the car seat in the back.
“He’s here because his stepfather committed suicide this morning,” said Heath. “He didn’t have anyone else. You don’t have anyone else either. Get in the car.”
She shook her head. “I’m not doing anything you say.”
He parked the car and got out.
She ran from him.
He ran after her and tackled her.
She scratched at his face.
He grabbed her hands and stopped her. He hauled her to her feet and stuffed her inside the car.
She started to cry. “The house. It was on fire. Do you know if my parents—”
“Dead,” said Heath, starting the car.
“Where’s Cathy? You were with her.”
“She’s dead too,” said Heath, his voice breaking. “Something with the baby. I don’t know. I think she bled to death.”
“Oh god.” Isabella shook. “And Eli?”
“He doesn’t want to see you,” said Heath. “I’m all you’ve got.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“You hate me,” she said. “I don’t want to be near you.”
He smiled tightly. “I feel responsible for you. And besides, I’m afraid if I don’t keep you close, you’d keep me from ever seeing my child.”
Isabella let out a disbelieving laugh. “You don’t care about the baby.”
“Maybe I will,” said Heath. “You can’t make me hate it just because you want me to.”
* * *
Eli paced. “I can’t believe Isabella didn’t want to come to the funeral.”
Heath smiled. “Are we here to talk about Isabella, or to do business, Eli? I would think this is a very simple transaction. I give you money, you give me all of your family’s land. You agreed to it earlier.”
“I’ve got no problem with selling it all to you,” said Eli. “I don’t ever want to come back here. I’m taking baby Thera to Baltimore. Cathy loved the city.”
“I couldn’t care less where you go, as long as it’s away,” said Heath. “Let’s get this over with, so that we no longer have to be in each other’s company.”
Eli sighed. “Well, it does seem we mutually despise each other.”
They were quiet. Papers were signed. Money changed hands.
Heath appeared satisfied. “You worry about Isabella, don’t you?”
“She’s my sister,” said Eli. “Of course I worry about her. And I haven’t seen her since this all started. I’ve only got your word that she even wants to be with you. Is she happy?”
Heath tucked the deeds into his pocket. “She’s miserable.”
“What?”
“I think it broke her heart when she found out that you’d turned against her.”
“I didn’t turn against her. What are you talking about?”
“Well, she seems convinced you hate her.”
“Why would she think that?”
Heath shrugged mildly. “Probably because that’s what I told her.”
Eli clenched his teeth. “You bastard.”
Heath grinned. “I’ve taken her from you, you see. The same way you took Cathy from me. And I swear, Eli, that I will take everything you care about. Just wait. You’ll know what it’s like to hurt the way I do.”
* * *
Heath didn’t let Isabella out of the house for any reason. He set up a room for her, made sure she was comfortable and healthy. He fed her, got prenatal vitamins, gave her books about pregnancy. She couldn’t go to a doctor, so he hired one of those hippie midwives to come and see to her. The woman assured him that everything was going okay.
The baby seemed healthy. Isabella seemed healthy.
“Only,” the midwife said once, “she seems a little listless. Maybe you could do something to cheer her up.”
Heath wasn’t about to do that. Isabella was only here to hurt Eli.
Well.
Maybe he was curious about his child as well. Sort of.
He didn’t try to cheer Isabella up. Whenever she spoke to him, something in her voice set his teeth on edge, and it was all he could do to keep from hauling off and hitting her. Shutting her the fuck up.
Mostly, he kept clear of her.
The more pregnant she got, the less she even resembled something human.
She was bloated everywhere. Her face swelled, obscuring her features. She moved slowly, a shuffling waddle that reminded him of the living dead. When she looked at him, all he saw in her eyes was emptiness.
He hated her.
When she went into labor, she was strangely silent. She hardly screamed. Mostly, she just grunted.
The midwife told Heath he could stay in the room to help. To watch.
But Isabella kept looking at him, and he wanted to cover up her face. He didn’t like the way it made him feel. He felt almost… guilty. He’d never meant to do this to her.
The baby came, a little boy. It screamed a lot.
He let Isabella name it, and she got a gleam in her eyes when she called it Linton, enjoying Heath’s grimace. But he didn’t really care what it was called, he discovered.
He was amazed at how little he felt for the thing. It put him in mind of larva or of the tiny hairless offspring of rodents. It was pink and squirming and ugly.
And from the beginning, it didn’t look a thing like him.
He was disappointed. He hadn’t realized how much he’d been looking forward to his own child. After all, he found that he got along pretty famously with little Gage, who was eager and obedient. Heath had thought that he’d feel something stronger for his own son. But…
He didn’t.
The worst of it was that Isabella didn’t either.
She refused to nurse the baby right after he was born. “Feed it from a bottle,” she said. “You’ve used my body enough, Heath.”
He tried to explain to her that breastfeeding was better for the baby, but she didn’t care. So Linton was bottle fed and not often at that.
Honestly, Heath tended to forget about it if it wasn’t crying.
So until it cried, it lay in its crib. Alone.
Then it would let out a tremendous wail.
At first, he didn’t go to the baby right away, because he had this idea that Isabella should shoulder some of the burden of taking care of the child. He went to her, knocking on her locked door. “It’s crying.”
“I hear it,” she said from inside the room.
“You should feed it,” he said.
“I don’t want to touch it,” she said.
“It’s your baby, Isabella. You’re its mother. You should feel something towards it.”
She opened the door. “You’re its father. Do you feel anything toward it?”
He looked away. “You have every right to hate me, you know, but I don’t think the baby did anything to you. Don’t you have some sort of instinctual—”
“No,” she said. “That thing invaded my body. You put it there, so it’s your problem.”
Heath glared at her. “Doesn’t look a thing like me.”
She snorted. “Don’t even try that, Heath. You are my one and only. It’s your problem.”
He felt it again. The stab of guilt. He thought about taking her virginity, how horrible it had been. He reached for her. “You know, Isabella, I really am sorry that—”
She slapped his hand away. “Forget it, Heath.”
And rage swelled up in him. He grabbed her by the throat and shook her.
The baby was still crying.
“You need to watch it,” he said, flinging her away. “Some time, I’m really going to murder you.”
But in the end, she beat him to it.
Linton was only four months old. Heath didn’t bother trying to talk to her anymore. He didn’t try to convince her that she needed to pay attention to the baby. He just fed it and cleaned it and left it to its own devices. It seemed to be growing fine.
He was in the kitchen of the farmhouse with Gage, who was coloring a picture in one of his books, and telling Heath some story about how he wanted to be a cowboy and ride horses, when Heath heard Isabella scream.
It had come from outside the house.
He ran for her.
She’d jumped from a window, face first.
Even so, she wasn’t dead when he got to her.
She was broken and bleeding, but she wasn’t dead.
He felt something he didn’t think he’d feel, seeing her like that. A kind of wrenching loss. He dropped to his knees next to her and pulled her into his arms.
“Why?” he whispered.
“It was the only way to be free of you,” she said.
Her saying that should have made him angry, but it didn’t. It only made him sad. He held her, and he cried. She didn’t last very long.
And holding her there, Heath thought about the fact that he’d only made love to two women in his life. And that both of them had died in his arms. Bleeding.
2013
“Dug her up,” Heath was saying. “It was amazing how well preserved she was. I suppose embalming really works. She hardly looked different.” He was standing in the kitchen, gesturing with the pistol, gazing over Gage’s and Thera’s heads.
Thera hugged herself in horror. That was why he was covered in dirt? He’d dug up her mother’s grave? He really was insane.
“I lay there with her. I thought maybe if I went there, I’d just… naturally fade back into her again. She and I were always part of each other. And that’s what’s been wrong all these years. She’s been gone, and I haven’t been whole. With her out of the world, I can’t…” Heath scratched the top of his head with the gun. “But I didn’t die. I couldn’t do it by force of will. I thought maybe being close to her… but…”
Gage stood up. His voice was soft. “Heath, maybe you should give me the gun.”
“No,” said Heath. “I can’t do that.” He waved it at Gage. “Sit down, I’m not done. There are things I have to say, and you have to hear them.”
“And then you’re going to kill us?” said Thera.
Heath chuckled. “I’m not going to kill you. You think I’m some kind of monster or something, don’t you?”
Thera froze. What was the right answer? If she said something that angered him, would he shoot her?
But Heath only shook his head. “I guess I’ve made myself worse than a monster to you.” He cocked his head. “Cathy’s daughter… You really do look so much like her.” He looked at the ceiling.
Thera realized that he was close to tears.
He sniffed, squaring his shoulders. “I’m sorry about your stepfather, Gage. I was angry. I’ve been angry at all of them. For everything they did.”
Heath shook himself. “No, maybe I was born angry. Or maybe I got angry that night, that night when Floyd strangled my mother in front of me.”
Thera didn’t even know who Floyd was.
Heath looked at Gage. “I’m not asking you to forgive me. I want you to be angry too. It will make it all easier.”
“Yes. A worthless drunk,” said Heath. “It’s true. But I killed him.” He pointed at himself. “I just did it. Made him shoot himself. He was sobbing. Begging me not to. I did it anyway.”
It was quiet.
“Are you angry with me, Gage?” asked Heath.
Gage shook his head. “No.”
“Why not?” said Heath. “I killed Floyd too. I got him back. It seemed like things were always being taken from me. People were taken from me. And I felt so helpless. And the only I thing I could do…” He broke off, his voice choked with feeling.
“Give me the gun, Heath,” said Gage. “We’ll figure all this out.”
Heath pointed the gun at Thera. “It was when you saved her that I saw it.”
Thera cringed.
Gage put out a shaky hand. “Don’t—”
Heath moved the gun. “I’m not going to hurt her. Calm down.” He rubbed at his forehead with the back of the hand holding the pistol. “You pushed Linton down the stairs to save her. That’s what I did to Floyd. To save Cathy. Because he hurt her. I had to watch it, and one day, I just couldn’t anymore. So, I pushed him. I killed him. It was for her.”
Gage swallowed.
Heath kept talking. “I thought my son would be this extension of me. But he wasn’t anything. I would have had to put something of myself into him, and I couldn’t.” He looked down at his hands, which were shaking. “I couldn’t give him anything. I gave it all to you, Gage. So, it was never about Linton. It was about you.
“And Catherine.” He turned to look at Thera. “You even have her name. You two.” He pointed at them. “You’re the ones who fix it. You complete the circle. You end it.”
Then Heath was quiet. He looked at them expectantly.
If he really wasn’t going to kill her, Thera wondered if now would be a good time to make a break for it. She looked at the door.
Gage saw her. He grabbed her hand under the table.
She looked at him, and he barely shook his head. He didn’t want her to move.
Gage turned back to Heath. “I don’t understand.”
“I’m raving, aren’t I?” said Heath. He took a deep breath. “Let me see. I went to Cathy’s grave, and I held her, and I realized that I don’t want to be away from her anymore. I thought I had to seek out all the people who hurt me and make them pay. But… when Linton… when you saved her, Gage, it seemed wrong, somehow. I felt like I had become all the people that I hated.
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