A Grant County Collection (79 page)

'I don't care,' Paul barked. 'Move away.'

'Mama loves you,' Terri whispered over and over, oblivious to Paul's threat as she clung to Tim's foot. 'Mama loves you so much –'

'Shut up,' Paul hissed. He tried to pull away, but Terri held on tight, wrapping her hand around Tim's leg to get a better grip. Paul raised the revolver, slamming the butt of it down on her head.

Jeffrey grabbed up his gun in one fluid motion, pointing it at Paul's chest. 'Stop right there.'

'Baby,' Terri said. She had staggered, but remained on her knees, holding on to Tim's leg. 'Mama's here, baby. Mama's here.'

Tim was turning blue, his teeth chattering as if he was cold. Paul tried to pull him away from his mother, but she held on, telling her son, '". . . my grace is sufficient for thee . . ."'

'Let go.' Paul tried to jerk him back, but still she would not release her son. 'Terri –' Paul looked panicked, as if some kind of rabid animal had clamped on to him. 'Terri, I mean it.'

'". . . my strength is made perfect in weakness . . ."'

'Let go, goddamnit!' Again, Paul raised the gun, striking her even more savagely. Terri fell back, but she reached out with her other hand, grabbing on to Paul's shirt, pulling it as she struggled to stay upright.

Jeffrey had his gun on Paul, but even this close, he couldn't risk a shot. The boy was in the way. His problem was the same as Lena's. An inch too far and he'd end up killing him.

'Terri,' Lena tried, as if she could somehow help. She had reached the bottom stair, but all she could do was watch as Terri held on to Tim, her bleeding forehead pressed to his leg. The boy's eyelids flickered. His lips were blue, his face a ghostly white as his lungs strained for air.

Jeffrey warned, 'Stop right there, Paul.'

'"When I am weak,"' Terri whispered, '"then am I strong."'

Paul struggled to pull away, but Terri maintained her hold, clutching on to the waist of his pants. Paul raised the gun higher and brought it down, but Terri tilted her head up at the last minute. The gun glanced off her cheek, hitting her collarbone, slipping in Paul's hand. A single bullet fired straight up into Terri's face. The woman staggered again, somehow keeping herself upright as she held on to Paul and her boy. There was a gaping hole in her jaw, fragmented bone hanging down. Blood poured out of the open wound, splattering onto the tiled floor, and the injured woman reflexively tightened her grip on Paul's shirt, bloody handprints streaking the white.

'No,' Paul said, stumbling back, trying to get away from her. He was horrified at what he was seeing, his expression showing a mixture of fear and revulsion. In shock, he let go of the gun and almost dropped Tim as he fell against the porch railing.

Terri kept her tight grip on Paul, using all her remaining strength to hold on. Blood wicked into his shirt as she pulled him down to the ground, falling on top of him. She kept pulling at his shirt, pulling herself up toward her son. Tim's skin was deadly white, his eyes closed. Terri put her head on Tim's back, the pulverized side of her face turned away from her son.

Jeffrey kicked the revolver away from Paul's hand, then slid the child out from under his mother. He laid Tim flat on the ground and started to give him CPR. 'Lena,' he said, then yelled, 'Lena!'

She startled out of her trance, her body working on autopilot as she snapped open her phone and called an ambulance. She knelt beside Terri, putting her fingers to the woman's neck. There was a faint pulse, and Lena smoothed back her hair from her shattered face, saying, 'You're going to be okay.'

Paul tried to move out from under her, but Lena snarled, 'If you so much as breathe, I'll kill you.'

Paul nodded, his lips trembling as he looked down in horror at Terri's head in his lap. He had never killed this close before, had always shielded himself from the dirty reality of his deeds. The bullet had torn through the side of Terri's face, exiting out of the base of her neck. Black dots burned into the skin from the powder burns. Her left cheek was shredded, her tongue visible through the damage. Fractured bone mingled with blood and gray matter. Fragments of her back molars were stuck in her hair.

Lena put her face close to Terri's, saying, 'Terri? Terri, just hang on.'

Terri's eyes fluttered open. She took shallow breaths, struggling to speak.

'Terri?'

Lena could see her tongue moving inside her mouth, the white bone shaking from the effort.

'It's okay,' Lena soothed. 'Help is on the way. Just hang on.'

Her jaw worked slowly, labored with the desperate effort of speaking. She couldn't enunciate, her mouth would not cooperate. It seemed to take everything out of her to say, 'I . . . did it.'

'You did it,' Lena assured her, grabbing her hand, careful not to jostle her. Spinal injuries were tricky, the higher up the more damage. She didn't even know if Terri could feel her, but she had to hold on to something.

Lena said, 'I've got your hand, Terri. Don't let go.'

Jeffrey muttered, 'Come on, Tim,' and she heard him counting, pressing the boy's chest, trying to make his heart beat.

Terri's breathing slowed. Her eyelids flickered again. 'I . . . did . . . it.'

'Terri?' Lena asked. 'Terri?'

'Breathe, Tim,' Jeffrey urged. He took a breath of his own and forced it into the boy's slackened mouth.

Bubbles of bright red blood popped on Terri's wet lips. There was a gurgling sound in her chest, a fluid look to her features.

'Terri?' Lena begged, holding on to her hand, trying to press life back into her. She heard a siren in the distance, calling like a beacon. Lena knew it was backup; the ambulance couldn't get there this quickly. Still, she lied.

'Hear that?' Lena asked, gripping Terri's hand as tightly as she could. 'The ambulance is on the way, Terri.'

'Come on, Tim,' Jeffrey coaxed. 'Come on.'

Terri blinked, and Lena knew she could hear the wail of the siren, knew help was coming. She exhaled sharply. 'I . . . did . . .'

'One-one-thousand, two-one-thousand,' Jeffrey said, counting the compressions.

'I . . . di . . .'

'Terri, talk to me,' Lena pleaded. 'Come on, girl. What did you do? Tell me what you did.'

She struggled to speak, giving a weak cough, spraying a fine mist of blood into Lena's face. Lena stayed there, stayed close to her, tried to keep eye contact so that she would not go.

'Tell me,' Lena said, searching her eyes for something, some sign that she would be okay. She just needed to keep her talking, keep her holding on. 'Tell me what you did.'

'I –'

'You what?'

'I –'

'Come on, Terri. Don't let go. Don't give up now.' Lena heard the cruiser screech to a halt in the drive. 'Tell me what you did.'

'I . . .' Terri began. 'I . . . got . . .'

'What did you get?' Lena felt hot tears on her cheeks as Terri's grip slackened around her own. 'Don't let go, Terri. Tell me what you got.'

Her lip curled, a spasm; almost, as if she wanted to smile but no longer knew how.

'What did you get, Terri? What did you get?'

'I . . . got . . .' She coughed out another spray of blood. '. . . away.'

'That's it,' Jeffrey said as Tim gasped, taking his first breath of air. 'That's great, Tim. Just breathe.'

A stream of blood flowed from the corner of Terri's mouth, forming a solid line down her cheek like a child's bright crayon trailing across a page. What was left of her jaw went slack. Her eyes were glassy.

She was gone.

Lena left the police station around nine that evening, feeling like she hadn't been home in weeks. Her body felt weak, every muscle sore as if she'd run a thousand miles. Her ear was still numb from the shot they had given her at the hospital so they could suture up the damage Paul's bullet had done. Her hair would cover the missing bit, but Lena knew that every time she looked in a mirror, every time she touched the scar, she would remember Terri Stanley, the look on her face, that almost-smile as she slipped away.

Even though there wasn't a visible sign of it, Lena felt like she still had some of Terri's blood on her – in her hair, under her fingernails. No matter what she did, she could still smell it, taste it, feel it. It was heavy, like guilt, and tasted of bitter defeat. She had not helped the woman. She had done nothing to protect her. Terri had been right – they were both drowning in the same ocean.

Her cell phone rang as she turned into her neighborhood, and Lena checked the caller ID, praying like hell Jeffrey didn't need her back at the station. She squinted at the number, not recognizing it. Lena let the phone ring a few more times before it suddenly came to her. Lu Mitchell's number. She had almost forgotten it after all these years.

She nearly dropped the phone trying to open it, then cursed as she put it up to her injured ear. Lena switched it around, saying, 'Hello?' There was no response, and her heart dropped, thinking the call had gone to her voice mail.

She was about to end the connection when Greg said, 'Lee?'

'Yeah,' she said, trying not to sound breathless. 'Hey. How's it going?'

'I heard on the news about the woman,' he said. 'Were you there?'

'Yeah,' she told him, wondering how long it had been since someone asked her about work. Ethan was too self-centered and Nan was too squeamish.

'Are you okay?'

'I watched her die,' Lena told him. 'I just held her hand and watched her die.'

She heard his breathing over the line and thought about Terri, the way her last breaths had sounded.

He told her, 'It's good that she had you there.'

'I don't know about that.'

'No,' he disagreed. 'It's good that she had someone with her.'

Before she could stop herself, she said, 'I'm not a very good person, Greg.'

Again, all she could hear was his breathing.

'I've made some really bad mistakes.'

'Everybody has.'

'Not like me,' she said. 'Not the ones I have.'

'Do you want to talk about it?'

She wanted more than anything else to talk about it, to tell him everything that had happened, to shock him with the ugly details. She couldn't, though. She needed him too badly, needed to know he was just down the street, holding his mama's yarn while Lu knitted him another ugly scarf.

'So,' Greg said, and Lena strained to fill the silence.

'I'm enjoying the CD.'

His tone went up. 'You got it?'

'Yeah,' she told him, forcing some cheer into her voice. 'I really like that second song.'

'It's called "Oldest Story in the World."'

'I'd know that if you'd written down the titles.'

'That's why you go out and buy the CD for yourself, you goof.' She had forgotten what it was like to be teased, and Lena felt some of the weight that had been on her chest start to lighten.

He continued, 'The liner notes are great. Lots of pictures of the girls. Ann looks so damn hot.' He gave a self-deprecating chuckle. 'I wouldn't kick Nancy out of bed, either, but you know I like dark-haired women.'

'Yeah.' She felt herself smiling, too, and wished that they could talk like this forever, that she wouldn't have to think about Terri dying in front of her, or of Terri's children being abandoned by the one person in the world who could protect them. Now, all they would have was Dale – Dale and the fear of being killed like their mama.

She forced this out of her brain, saying, 'The twelfth song is good, too.'

'That's "Down the Nile,"' he told her. 'Since when do you like ballads?'

'Since . . .' She didn't know since when. 'I don't know. I just like it.' She had pulled into the driveway behind Nan's Toyota.

'"Move On" is cool,' Greg was saying, but she didn't really follow. The porch light had turned on. Ethan's bike was leaned against the front stairs.

'Lee?'

Her smile was gone. 'Yeah?'

'You okay?'

'Yeah,' she breathed, her mind reeling. What was Ethan doing in the house? What was he doing with Nan?

'Lee?'

She swallowed hard, making herself speak. 'I need to go, Greg. Okay?'

'Is something wrong?'

'No,' she lied, feeling like her heart might explode in her chest. 'Everything's fine. I just can't talk now.' She hung up before he could respond, dropping the phone in the seat beside her, opening the door with a hand that refused to be steady.

Lena wasn't sure how she made it up the steps, but she found herself with her hand on the doorknob, her palms slick and sweaty. She took a breath, opening the door.

'Hi!' Nan popped up from the chair where she had been sitting, moving behind it as if she needed a shield. Her eyes were wide, her voice unnaturally high. 'We were just waiting for you. Oh, my God! Your ear!' She put her hand to her mouth.

'It's better than it looks.'

Ethan was on the couch, his arm across the back, his legs open in a hostile stance that managed to take up the entire room. He didn't speak, but he didn't have to. The threat of him seeped out of every pore.

'Are you okay?' Nan insisted. 'Lena? What happened?'

Lena said, 'There was a situation,' keeping her eyes on Ethan.

'They didn't say much of anything on the news,' Nan said. She was edging toward the kitchen, almost giddy from stress. Ethan stayed where he was, his jaw in a tight line, his muscles flexed. Lena saw his book bag beside his feet and wondered what he had in there. Something heavy, probably. Something to beat her with.

Nan offered, 'Would you like some tea?'

'That's okay,' Lena told her, then said to Ethan, 'Let's go to my room.'

'We could play some cards, Lee.' Nan's voice wavered. She was obviously alarmed, and she stood her ground. 'Why don't we all play some cards?'

'That's okay,' Lena answered, knowing she had to do everything in her power to keep Nan out of harm's way. Lena had brought this on herself, but Nan would not be hurt because of it. She owed that to Sibyl. She owed that to herself.

Nan tried, 'Lee?'

'It's okay, Nan.' Again, she told Ethan, 'Let's go to my room.'

He didn't move at first, letting her know he was in charge of the situation. When he got up, he took his time, stretching his arms in front of him, faking a yawn.