Once Upon a River Page 0,72

the gun.

“You were there,” he said. “He already shot Dad once, and he was pointing it at me, pointing it at Dad. You saw him, Nympho. You told the police the same thing.”

“He wasn’t going to kill your dad. There wasn’t even a bullet in that rifle. He was just trying to save me. I’m the one who shot your dad.” Margo heard some blue jays fussing, and one made a sound like a crow. She smelled wood smoke from the Murray house. She wondered if Joanna were calming the baby. She reminded herself to stay focused on Billy.

“You’re lying, Nympho. Your dad came over and shot my dad’s tires out. He was crazy. We all saw him do that from upstairs. All of us were too scared to come down ’cause he might kill us.”

“He only shot the tires, though. Not any people.” Margo wanted to convince Billy how wrong he was, how they all were wrong about her dad, but the energy was going out of her. It occurred to her that she might have been wrong, too, about what Paul had been doing to Michael.

“He shot dad’s dick,” Billy said, and his voice took on an angry urgency. “What kind of man does that, Nympho? A crazy man, that’s who. I didn’t want to kill anybody. I had to.”

Margo began to feel tired, too tired to lift her rifle. Billy was a jerk, had always been a jerk, and was no doubt a criminal, but he was not a cold-blooded killer. She thought back to the day her father was shot. Crane had been holding the rifle as he’d helped her to her feet, and then he’d lunged toward Billy. Billy should have known Crane wasn’t trying to shoot anybody, that the gun wasn’t even loaded, but everything had happened so fast. Billy had fired, thinking he was saving himself and his dad, just as Margo had been thinking she was saving Michael from Paul. Billy was a lousy punk, but he didn’t deserve to die for doing what he thought he had to do. And Margo did not want to kill her cousin. When she had shot Cal beside the shed, she had felt calm and confident in every cell of her body that she was doing what was right and necessary. Before she had fired at Paul, she had felt that certainty again. She did not feel any such calm or certainty now.

“You can go ahead and shoot me if you want. I’ll stand right here. In the juvey, I bet guys money to burn my skin with cigarettes, and I never moved. The smell of it made them gag before I’d make a sound.”

She held down the hammer and slowly pressed the trigger to put the Marlin into safety position, and then she let the rifle hang half cocked at her side. She thought of Cal and Joanna, how sad they would have been if she had killed Billy, how miserable Toby or Tommy would have been if either had come upon their brother’s body while digging night crawlers or fishing in a snag. She felt plain relief at Billy’s not being dead. The whole world would have changed, as profoundly as it had changed when her own father died or when she shot Paul. And if she had shot Billy for what he had done, then maybe somebody would have had to shoot her for what she’d done to Billy. She took another deep breath and let it out.

“I’m taking this boat,” Billy said. He had always wanted The River Rose. Not long after Grandpa Murray died, Billy had taken the boat from her, and Cal had made him return it.

“Grandpa gave it to me,” Margo said.

“Grandpa was out of his mind and you tricked him. If you want to stop me, you’ll have to kill me, and if you kill me, you’ll go to prison because you’re seventeen now. Ma probably already heard you shooting. She’d be out here except for the retard is probably crying.” Margo thought she saw those Murray ghosts again, standing beside Billy, supporting him, whatever he decided to do.

“Please don’t take it, Billy.”

“Too late, Nympho. It’s mine now.” He pushed off from shore and jumped into the boat as it was moving away. Margo laid her rifle in the grass and ran down the bank and into the water. She grabbed hold of the back of the boat and got dragged into deeper water by the force