and spun, then saw who it was.
Beth stared into Dana’s outraged eyes.
“No! I wasn’t lying. I…It was just today!” cried Jeannie. Her voice shook.
Jesus, Jesus—she sounds just the same.
Dana pulled out of Beth’s hands, spinning back toward her grandparents.
“She’s our granddaughter!” pleaded Jeannie. “I just wanted to talk to her, and you wouldn’t…what was I supposed to do? I swear I didn’t ever want to lie to you, but I had to—”
Todd hit her.
It was like lightning—the blur of motion, the sick, familiar sound of fist against bone and a sudden scream. In an eyeblink, Jeannie was on her back. Her skull cracked hard against the sidewalk.
Dana screamed and dropped to her knees beside her grandmother. More people on the sidewalk stopped. More phones came out—people held them up to record the event, or held them to their ears to call 911.
Todd saw the phones, and his face went dead white. He looked across his wife’s body at Beth. “Swear to God, Star. I had no idea what she was doing. Everything I said to you was the truth.”
“Fuck you!” screamed Dana. Todd stared at her, disgusted, exhausted.
Jeannie struggled to push herself upright. A thin thread of blood trickled down the side of her face. Dana wrapped her arms around Jeannie’s shoulders, trying to support her or maybe hold her in place. Beth couldn’t tell.
“Get up,” Todd said to Jeannie. “We’re outta here.”
But it was Dana who moved. She rose slowly from her crouch. Green and brown eyes both glittered. There was no more time. Beth needed to move now. Because Dana didn’t know how these two had staged public fights before. They used them the same way they used the stories of illness, poverty, and death. Because Beth had no time to explain that now.
Because Dana’s expression promised there’d be no forgiveness if Beth didn’t intervene.
Todd sighed, exasperated. He grabbed Jeannie’s arm. Jeannie shrieked as he yanked her to her feet. All the phone people gasped.
“Stop it!” Beth barged forward, getting right up into Todd’s face. “Let her go! Right now!”
Beth pulled Jeannie back and away so that now she was between her parents. Inside, the little girl she used to be screamed, Stop it! Stop it now!
“Cops are on their way!” shouted somebody.
“You gonna wait for them?” Beth asked Todd. “Maybe hit me too?”
Dana moved past Beth to stand right beside Jeannie. Beth felt what was left of her heart crumble into dust.
“You leave her alone,” Dana croaked at Todd.
Chelsea loomed at Dana’s back. She had her hand in her pocket, gripping something. Dana grabbed hold of her friend’s wrist, reassuring and warning.
Todd took in the gaggle of women trying to stand up to him, the crowds and the phones, all bearing witness to what he did next. Witness that could most definitely be used against him.
All at once, he grinned—sly and knowing.
“Okay, I get it, Star.” He nodded. “This is your idea of payback for all that aw-poor-baby stuff when you were a kid. You think”—he snickered—“you really think you’re going to take my wife away from me.”
“I’m not taking her anywhere,” said Beth. “But I’m not letting you beat on her while I’m watching. Not again.” She glanced at Jeannie. “If you want to go with him, Mom, fine. That’s your choice.”
“Don’t do it!” shouted someone from the crowd.
Jeannie’s hand strayed to the blood trickling down her cheek. She turned her shadowed, exhausted gaze toward her husband. “I can’t do this anymore.”
Todd threw up both hands. “This is what I get!” he said to the crowd, to God in heaven, and to anybody else who might be listening. “When all I’ve ever done is take care of you! What happened to ‘till death do us part’?”
Jeannie looked at her husband. She looked at Beth, Dana, and Chelsea.
“I’m not telling you again. We’re going.”
Jeannie shook her head.
“Fuck yeah!” a woman shouted. “Get the fuck outta here, douchebag! You’re done!”
Todd ignored her. He stalked forward until he was so close Beth could feel his breath against her face, and then he leaned even closer. “I know what you’re up to.”
She could get both hands around his neck right now. She could strangle him. She could dig her nails into his lower lip, or his ear, or the loose flesh under his chin and yank and twist. She could make him scream. Make him beg.
It was this understanding that allowed Beth to keep still while he leaned over her, blowing his stale breath into her face. He smelled like