Gushed onto the floor. Hot, ropey red tendrils splashed across the top of Charlotte’s head and splattered onto the side of Samantha’s neck and face.
Gamma fell to the floor.
Charlotte screamed.
Samantha felt her own mouth open, but the sound was trapped inside of her chest. She was frozen now. Charlotte’s screams turned into a distant echo. Everything drained of color. They were suspended in black and white, like the bachelor farmer’s picture. Black blood had aerosoled onto the grille of the white air conditioner. Tiny flecks of black mottled the glass in the window. Outside, the night sky was a charcoal gray with a lone pinlight of a tiny, distant star.
Samantha reached up with her fingers to touch her neck. Grit. Bone. More blood because everything was stained with blood. She felt a pulse in her throat. Was it her own heart or pieces of her mother’s heart beating underneath her trembling fingers?
Charlotte’s screams amplified into a piercing siren. The black blood turned crimson on Samantha’s fingers. The gray room blossomed back into vivid, blinding, furious color.
Dead. Gamma was dead. She was never again going to tell Samantha to get away from Pikeville, to yell at her for missing an obvious question on a test, for not pushing herself harder in track, for not being patient with Charlotte, for not being useful in her life.
Samantha rubbed together her fingers. She held a shard of Gamma’s tooth in her hand. Vomit rushed into her mouth. She was blinded by tears. Grief vibrated like a harp string inside her body.
In the blink of an eye, the world had turned upside down.
“Shut up!” Black Shirt slapped Charlotte so hard that she nearly fell out of the chair. Samantha caught her, clinging to her. They were both sobbing, shaking, screaming. This couldn’t be happening. Their mother couldn’t be dead. She was going to open her eyes. She was going to explain to them the workings of the cardiovascular system as she slowly put her body back together.
Did you know that the average heart pumps five liters of blood per minute?
“Gamma,” Samantha whispered. The shotgun blast had opened up her chest, her neck, her face. The left side of her jaw was gone. Part of her skull. Her beautiful, complicated brain. Her arched, aloof eyebrow. No one would explain things to Samantha anymore. No one would care whether or not she understood. “Gamma.”
“Jesus!” Hightop furiously slapped at his chest, trying to brush off the chunks of bone and tissue. “Jesus Christ, Zach!”
Samantha’s head snapped around.
Zachariah Culpepper.
The two words flashed neon in her mind. Then: Grand theft auto. Animal cruelty. Public indecency. Inappropriate contact with a minor.
Charlotte wasn’t the only one who read their father’s case files. For years, Rusty Quinn had saved Zach Culpepper from doing serious time. The man’s unpaid legal bills were a constant source of tension between Gamma and Rusty, especially since the house had burned down. Over twenty thousand dollars was owed, but Rusty refused to go after him.
“Fuck!” Zach had clearly seen Samantha’s flash of recognition. “Fuck!”
“Mama …” Charlotte hadn’t realized that everything had changed. She could only stare at Gamma, her body shaking so hard that her teeth chattered. “Mama, Mama, Mama …”
“It’s all right.” Samantha tried to stroke her sister’s hair but her fingers snagged in the braids of blood and bone.
“It ain’t all right.” Zach wrenched off his mask. He was a hard-looking man. Acne scars pocked his skin. A spray of red circled his mouth and eyes where the blowback from the shotgun had painted his face. “God dammit! What’d you have to use my name for, boy?”
“I d-didn’t—” Hightop stammered. “I’m sorry.”
“We won’t tell.” Samantha looked down, as if she could pretend she hadn’t seen his face. “We won’t say anything. I promise.”
“Girl, I just blew your mama to bits. You really think you’re walking out of here alive?”
“No,” Hightop said. “That’s not what we came for.”
“I came here to erase some bills, boy.” Zach’s steely gray eyes turreted around the room like a machine gun. “Now I’m thinking it’s me that Rusty Quinn’s gotta pay.”
“No,” Hightop said. “I told you—”
Zach shut him up by jamming the shotgun into his face. “You ain’t seein’ the big picture here. We gotta get outta town, and that takes a hell of a lot of money. Everybody knows Rusty Quinn keeps cash in his house.”
“The house burned down.” Samantha heard the words before she registered that they were coming from her own mouth. “Everything burned down.”
“Fuck!” Zach screamed. “Fuck!”