trying to bandage himself with blood everywhere?
“What...what happened?” I strain out about two seconds before I fly into the bathroom next to him, trying to decipher why he’s streaked with rusty red smudges, thick as paint.
“Gracie, no. Leave me be. I just need to sit for a little and...and...” He collapses on the toilet, holding his head.
At first, I thought it was some kind of freak accident. The freshly cut smell of grass outside tells me maybe he’d cut himself with the mower, but he’s not missing any fingers.
Then I see the raw, ugly hole in his shoulder.
He’s been shot.
Oh my God.
I can’t guess how much blood he’s lost to save my life. But I know we don’t have much time, not with that wound he can’t even keep a stained towel against, still cradling his head in one hand like he’s about to pass out.
“Dad, come on, this way! If...if you can walk. No, don’t fight me!”
For once in his life, Dad listens.
He leans against me, grunting and cursing up a blue streak under his breath as I guide him clumsily down the hall to his room.
Somehow, I get him on the bed, race to the linen closet, and pull out half the towels to try to stop the bleeding.
It helps slow it down, I guess. Thank God.
But the thing that makes my blood run ice-cold is the fact that I don’t need a background in medicine to see this could’ve been so much worse.
A few more inches, and it would’ve been right through his heart.
He doesn’t fight me as I reach for the phone, bawling so frantically to 9-1-1 I’m amazed they can get the gist of what I’m saying.
“Who did this?” I ask, nostrils flaring, shaking with fury as we wait for the ambulance. “I swear to God, if I find out, I’ll—”
“Gracie, no,” he hisses weakly. “You can’t.”
I don’t know why I bothered to ask.
I knew who did it the second he tried to shrug it off as nothing. Still do.
The same asshole who’d always called him ‘Slick.’
The same brutish, bear-faced man who leered at me with every smile, who handwrote give my best to Gracie in a note fixed to the blood red roses he’d sent for Mom’s funeral.
The monster.
The man I wish—yes, wish—to utterly destroy.
But I’ll settle for having him gone.
Present
Dad fought tooth and nail that day in the hospital room when I could see him again.
He begged me to keep my mouth shut, don’t say anything, didn’t I understand it’d be the end of us?
The way he said it with tears in his dark eyes was scary persuasive.
But I’d won that day, to a point.
I did go along with his story that he’d been cleaning his gun and it accidentally discharged. The doctors doubted it, but eventually let it go, because I’d corroborated Dad’s tale.
I told the police where they could find Dad’s .45, the same caliber as the bullet they dug out of him.
Thank God they never followed up or asked to see the gun.
It hadn’t been recently fired.
I knew that for sure.
It was on my nightstand. I’d taken permit classes over the past year and kept it in my bedroom because I knew Clay was far from done.
He still isn’t.
Never will be.
It makes me sick.
Angry-sick at myself, mostly, as I spin around, leaving my cup in the kitchen. I grab my coat and throw the door open.
The sun is out today in force. God, I wish I could enjoy the warmth.
Relish an ounce of hope that I can end all of this, some way.
But Clay has men, loyal guns who’ll keep hunting us down for as long as he says.
I head for the barn. Despite the anger, the grief, the disgust living inside me, I have to grin at a shrieking crow that greets me.
I’d like to think that’s how Cornelius Pecker says hello.
The rooster flaps his wings, sitting on the top rail of Stern’s stall.
He belts out another heavy metal cock-a-doodle-doo! Just like he’s not sure that I’d heard him the first time.
Stern snorts and lays his ears back as he twists his long neck to shoot a dirty look at Cornelius.
“He’s just saying good morning, I think,” I tell Stern and then nod at the chicken. “Good morning to you, too, Cornelius.”
The rooster flaps his wings loudly and then struts along the rail. I’ve never seen a muscular chicken before, but this one looks like he could beat up every other bird in town.
Stern snorts again, thoroughly done with