She’d moved out of her downtown condo years ago. Now she had a newer townhouse just outside the city limits. Lower maintenance as she approached the downsizing phase of life. She’d retired from her corporate-lawyer gig years ago. Instead, she worked thirty hours a week for a nonprofit that specialized in promoting better rights, funding, and legislation for abused and at-risk kids. She liked the work, she said, precisely because it was a one-eighty from her previous career. She’d gone from protecting the fat cats to fighting for children’s rights.
You’d think this would give us more in common, easy conversation for the few nights a month we shared dinner. Instead, neither of us ever talked about work. Maybe we had those kinds of jobs; you had to leave them at the office, or you’d go nuts.
“Coffee?” she asked, leading me into the small but expensively appointed kitchen.
“Whiskey,” I replied.
Sadly, she thought I was joking. She poured us both glasses of water. I didn’t think that was strong enough for what I needed to do next.
She carried the glasses to another small but beautifully decorated room. The sitting area featured gleaming hardwood floors, a white-painted fireplace mantel, and a vaulted ceiling. Off the family room was a screened-in porch that overlooked a stretch of wetlands. Earlier in the summer, we’d sat on that porch and watched for herons. This late in August, however, it was too hot and sticky.
We perched on the L-shaped sofa. I sipped my water and felt the ceiling fan brush freshly chilled air across my cheeks. Aunt Helen didn’t speak right away. Her hands were trembling on her glass. She wouldn’t meet my eyes, but gazed at the floor.
This time of year always hit her harder than it did me. Maybe because she gave herself the permission to grieve, to release the floodgates one week out of every year. She cried, raged, blew off steam. Then she picked up the pieces and returned to the business of living.
I couldn’t do it. Never could. I didn’t want to release the floodgates; I was afraid I’d never get them closed again. Plus, all these years later, I remained mostly angry. Deeply, deeply enraged. Which was why I rarely visited my aunt around the anniversary. It was too hard for me to watch her weep, when I wanted to shatter everything in her house.
My visit today had probably surprised her. She twisted her water glass between her fingers, waiting for me to speak.
“Doing okay?” I asked at last. Stupid question.
“You know,” she replied with a small shrug. Better answer. I did know.
I cleared my throat, looked out the sunny bank of windows. Unexpectedly, my eyes stung and I fought through the choke hold of strangling emotion.
“Something’s happened,” I managed at last.
She stopped fiddling with her water glass and studied me. And
suddenly, I was staring at my mother’s blue eyes. I was standing in the doorway of my mother’s bedroom, holding my father’s gun behind my back, while I tried to muster the courage for what I needed to say next.
“He hurt me,” I heard myself whisper.
“Danielle?” My aunt’s voice, my mother’s voice. They ran together, two women, both who’d claimed to love me.
I licked my lips, forced myself to keep talking. “My father. On the nights when he drank a lot … sometimes he came to my room in the middle of the night.”
“Oh Danielle.”
“He said if I did what he wanted, he wouldn’t have to drink so much. He’d be happy. Our family would be happy.”
“Oh Danielle.”
“I tried, in the beginning. I thought, if I just made him happy, I wouldn’t have to hear my mom cry at night. Things would get better. Everything would be all right.”
My aunt didn’t speak, just regarded me with my mother’s sorrowful blue eyes.
“But it got worse. And he drank more, came in more often. I couldn’t do it. Couldn’t take it. I went to Mom’s room that night. To tell her what he was doing. And I brought his gun with me.”
“You threatened Jenny?” my aunt asked in confusion. “You were going to shoot your mother?”
“No, I threatened my father. I told my mom that if she didn’t make him stop, I was going to shoot him. That was my plan. Not bad for a kid, huh?”
“Oh Danielle. What happened?”
“He came home while we were talking. He was drunk, calling our names. We listened to him come up the stairs. Mom demanded that I give her the gun. She said she’d take care of everything. She’d help me. She promised. I just had to give her the gun.”
“What did you do?”
“I handed her his gun. Then I bolted down the hall and hid under the covers in my bedroom. I didn’t come out until … afterward.”
My aunt took a shaky breath, released it. She set her water glass
on the coffee table, then stood, walking a few steps toward the window. My aunt wasn’t a restless person. Her actions now distracted me, made me study her intently. She wouldn’t look at me. She stared out at the sun-bleached wetlands, where the birds had to be more comforting than our current conversation.
“You think it’s your fault, what your father did,” she said, softly.
“I was a kid. Can’t be my fault.”
She turned, smiling wanly at me. The first tear trickled down her cheek. She wiped it away, crossing her arms over her chest. “Dr. Frank taught you well.”
“He should’ve; you paid him enough.”
“Do you hate me, too, Danielle? Are my sister’s failings my own?”
“Did you
know?
You’ve been so adamant about therapy all these years. Did my Mom tell you what he was doing?”
Slowly, Aunt Helen shook her head. Then she caught herself, a second tear trickling down, a second tear wiped away. “I didn’t know about the abuse. I suspected. Dr. Frank suspected. But, Danielle, not everything going on in your family had something to do with you.”
“I told on him. I tried to make it stop and everyone died. My mom, Johnny, Natalie. If I hadn’t said anything … if I’d just kept trying to make him happy…”
“Your father was a self-centered son of a bitch. No one could make him happy. Not Jenny, not his kids, not all the second chances Sheriff Wayne gave him. Don’t pin this on yourself.”
“It wasn’t fair, especially for Natalie and Johnny. I can hate my mom. Some nights I do. She stayed with him. Worse, she took the gun from me. If she’d let me keep it and go with plan A … So during my bad moments, I tell myself mom got what she deserved. But Natalie and Johnny—” My voice broke. I got up and paced. “They died because they poked their heads out of their rooms. And I lived because I was too scared to get out of bed. It’s not fair, and no number of passing years changes that.”
“Danielle, I don’t know exactly what happened that night. I can’t tell you who did what to whom and I won’t tell you any of it was fair. But you’re wrong about your mother. She’d had enough. The day before your father … did what he did, Jenny called me. She wanted the
name of a good divorce lawyer. She planned on kicking your father out. She’d had enough.”
“What?”
My aunt hesitated, then seemed to reach some kind of decision. “She’d met someone. A good man, she told me. A good man who was willing to help her. She just needed to get her ducks in a row. Then she was going to ask your father for a divorce.”
I didn’t say anything, just stared at my aunt, stunned.
“It might be,” she continued now, “that your mother never confronted your father with your accusations. Maybe, after hearing what you had to say, she was angry enough to kick him out that night. Told him she wanted a divorce. And he …”
I could see it in my mind’s eye. The gun, which I’d carried to the bedroom, now lying on my mother’s nightstand. My mother, yelling at my drunken father to get the hell out. My father, caught off guard, enraged by my mother’s sudden defiance, seeing his own handgun, reaching for it …
Natalie, wondering about the noise. Johnny, curious about the loud pop down the hall.
I loved them. All these years later, I still loved them. If I’d known back then that I had to make the choice between my father’s abuse and my family’s love, I would’ve chosen my family. I would’ve chosen them.
“Danielle,” my aunt tried now, “it’s not your fault.”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake. It’s been twenty-five years. Will everyone stop telling me that?”
“Will you ever start believing it?”
“We were a family. Everyone’s action is someone else’s reaction. If he hadn’t started drinking, if she hadn’t tried to leave him, if I hadn’t found his damn gun. We might as well have been a row of dominoes. I carried the gun to my parents’ bedroom. I told my mom what he was doing. I tipped the first domino, then we all started to fall.”
“Your
father
is to blame!” my aunt said sharply.
“Because he killed your sister?” I retorted just as sharply. “Or because he saddled you with his kid?”
My aunt crossed the tiny space in three strides and slapped me. The sting of the blow shocked me. I stared at her, startled by her fury.
“Don’t you
dare
talk about yourself that way! Goddammit, Danielle. I have loved you since the day you were born. Just as I loved Jenny, and Natalie and Johnny. I would’ve taken you all in. I would’ve stuffed my silly condo to the ceiling with all of you if I’d been given the option. But Jenny had a plan. And being a good older sister, I listened to her plan and trusted her to manage her own life. That’s what family does. Her failings aren’t my failings, nor are they your failings. Life sucks. Your father was a bastard. Now cry, dammit. Let yourself bawl it all out, Danielle. Then let yourself heal. Your mother would’ve wanted that. And Natalie and Johnny would’ve wanted it, too.”
Then, just as quickly as my aunt had slapped me, she wrapped her arms around me and hugged me tight. I didn’t pull away. I could only surrender to her, my aunt, my mother. Things got so blurred with the passage of time.
“I love you,” my aunt whispered against my cheek. “Dear God, Danielle, you are the best thing that ever happened to me, even when you break my heart.”
“I want them back.”
“I know, sweetheart.”
“I can’t picture them anymore. I see only you.”
“You don’t have to see them, Danielle. Just feel them in your heart.”
“I can’t,” I protested. “It hurts too much. Twenty-five years later, it
aches.”
“Then feel the pain. No one ever said family didn’t hurt.”
But I couldn’t. Wouldn’t. Instead I was in the bedroom again, handing the gun over to my mother. Trusting the woman with my aunt’s eyes to make everything all right.
“Go to bed, sweetheart,”
she’d whispered.
“Quick. Before he sees you. I’ll take care of everything. I promise.”
My mother taking the gun. My mother setting it carefully on the nightstand. Where the clock read …
I froze. Caught the scene in my head, forced it to rewind. My mother, placing the gun in front of her digital clock, red numbers glowing 10:23 p.m. Myself, scurrying down the hall toward bed, where I pulled the covers over my head and blocked out the rest.
10:23 p.m. I’d talked to my mother at 10:23 p.m.
But according to the police report, my family didn’t die until after one a.m., at least two and half hours later.
I pulled away from my aunt. “I need to go.”
“Danielle—”
“It’s okay. I mean, it’s not, but you’re right. Someday, it will be. I love you, Aunt Helen. Even when I’m a bitch, I know how lucky I am to have you.”
“Tomorrow,” she said, still holding my hands, “we’ll go together.”
“Tomorrow,” I agreed. Now I pulled my hands free and made my way toward the door, frantic to get out of her house.
I hit the driveway, already punching numbers on my cell phone as I ran for my car. All these years later, I didn’t know his number, so I did the sensible thing and dialed the sheriff’s office. Then, the second I got someone on the phone: “I’m looking for Sheriff Wayne. My name is Danielle Burton and I need to speak with him immediately.”
CHAPTER
THIRTY
Blood. D.D. noticed it first in the common area. It splattered across one table, dotted a nearby wall, then trailed down the carpeted hall.
“Jesus Christ,” D.D. breathed. She’d been wrong. They didn’t have until six p.m. The evildoer had already struck, while she’d been chattering away in Admin. Shit.
“The kids,” Karen exclaimed immediately. “Where are the kids?”
Just then, another rage-filled scream, high and piercing from down the hall:
“No, no, no. Get away. I will kill you. I will EAT YOUR EYEBALLS!”
D.D. and Karen bolted toward the sound, making it partly down the hall before drawing up short. A bathroom loomed to the right. The door was open and an older girl with huge dark eyes and lank brown hair stood in front of the sink, holding a pair of scissors and dripping blood. Outside the bathroom, an older MC was positioned with his hands outstretched, as if to block the girl’s escape.
“Don’t fucking
touch
me! I’ll punch you in the nuts. I’ll rip off your penis!”
The shrieks continued farther down the hall. D.D. shook her head in confusion. So far, she heard one extremely pissed-off young boy, and she saw one very bloody young girl. What the hell?
“Come on, Aimee,” the MC was crooning as D.D. and Karen approached. “Time to hand over the scissors. Everything’s all right. Just take a deep breath and put the scissors down. Nothing we can’t handle here, right? You and me, a few of your favorite coloring books—”
“I WILL DRINK YOUR BLOOD!”
the distant boy roared.
Aimee held up her left arm and, deliberately, dragged the blade of the scissors down her forearm. A thin line of red bloomed across her skin. She stared at it with rapt fascination. More lines covered both arms, her cheeks, the exposed column of her throat. Her skin looked like a crazy quilt, seamed with stitches of blood.
A violent crash from the end of the hallway. Something heavy and wooden smashing against a wall.
“DON’T TOUCH ME DON’T TOUCH ME DON’T TOUCH ME.”
Aimee jerked toward the sound, then promptly sliced open her collarbone.
“Jesus Christ, get the damn scissors,” D.D. commanded. “What are you waiting for?”