Creek. There’d been no need for it here, and it had remained in the back corner of the closet. Tomorrow she would take it out and have it at her side when he came again.
The hour grew late, and she could finally rest easy knowing the younger ones had been fed and put to bed. Eliza leaned back into the pillows and fell fast asleep. It was a troubled sleep with pain picking at her side and dreams thundering through her head.
A door slammed, and she heard the thud of heavy boots.
“Get the hell out of my way!”
“No,” she heard Virgil say, his reedy voice thin but defiant. “We don’t want you here no more.”
A high-pitched scream followed and then a crash. Oliver’s voice came next, angry, shouting something she couldn’t make out. Footsteps on the staircase, the thud of flesh against flesh, the crack of bone.
She pushed herself up and climbed from the bed, hanging onto the table and then leaning against the wall. She moved slowly; too slowly. Pushing through the pain, she staggered into the hallway.
Just then, a shot rang out.
“No!” she screamed and crumpled to the floor.
Oliver ran back up the stairs and lifted his mama to her feet. “Are you okay?”
When she nodded, he turned to Ben Roland and took the rifle away from him.
“I told you not to use this unless it was necessary,” he said.
Ben Roland didn’t step back or flinch. “After seeing what he did to Virgil, it looked pretty necessary to me,” he answered.
On the downstairs landing, Virgil looked up with a grin. “We did it! We saved Mama, didn’t we?”
Oliver nodded, his face grim, as he looked at Martin’s lifeless body lying on the staircase.
“Yeah, Virgil, we did it,” he said. His words were heavy with the sound of sorrow.
Louella and Margaret Rose came from their room to see what was going on, and Eliza shooed them back to bed. A horrifying thing had happened, and it was tragic enough to have three of her boys be part of it. She would not permit the other children to bear witness.
Once she assured herself the younger ones wouldn’t come out of their rooms, Eliza checked Martin. Just as she feared, he was dead.
“Dear God,” she murmured, “how on earth did this happen?”
Ben Roland ducked his head. “I’m sorry, Mama, I didn’t mean it to come to this, but when I heard Virgil scream…”
“That rifle was in the downstairs closet. How’d you get hold of it?”
“We took it out earlier today. You told Oliver you hurt yourself when you fell, but we knew better. We figured mean as Daddy can be, he might come back, so we set up a watch. Ollie was downstairs, and I was up here listening.”
She glanced at Oliver. “Is this true? You set a trap for your daddy?”
“It wasn’t a trap, Mama, just a plan to keep you and the little kids safe.”
“And you included Virgil?”
“He wasn’t supposed to be here,” Ben Roland said defensively. “He got out of bed and came looking for me.”
“How’d your daddy get in the house?”
Oliver shrugged. “I think he had a key. I didn’t hear nothing until the door slammed and we heard him stomping up the stairs. Virgil grabbed onto him and started screaming. When I started up the stairs after Daddy, he threw Virgil down on the landing and came after me. That’s when Ben Roland shot him.”
“It’s my fault,” Ben Roland said. “I’m the one what shot him, and I’ll take the blame.”
“You’re not taking the blame for this,” Oliver said. “It was both of us.”
Panic swelled in Eliza’s chest. Perhaps if it were another time or different circumstances she might have reacted differently, but still angered by the way Martin had shamed her the decision came easily.
“Your daddy has caused this family grief enough,” she said. “Neither of you boys are going to take the blame for anything. We’ll clean up this mess and pretend it never happened.”
Oliver furrowed his brow in thought. “If we’re gonna pretend it never happened, we’ve got to get rid of Daddy’s body.”
Each of her children had their own gift. Ben Roland was stronger and a dead-on shot, but Oliver was the more practical one, the one to reason things through and search for a sensible solution.
Eliza grimaced, partly because of her pain, more so because of the hard truth Oliver had spoken. “And put it where?” she asked.
“I’ll worry about that Mama.” Oliver took hold of her arm and helped her