Down River Part 43

A voice came from the open door. "That's not true, Miriam." It was my father. I'd not heard his approach. He filled the door, wearing muddy snake-boots and thornproof pants. He held the rifle low, but pointed at Miriam. His face was gray under the tan, his finger inside the trigger guard. When Miriam saw him, she jerked, pointed the gun at Grace again. The tears welled harder.

"Daddy..." she said.

"It's not true," my father repeated. "I've always loved you."

"But not like her," Miriam said. "Never like her."

My father stepped into the room. He looked at Grace, then at Miriam. He did not deny it again.

"I hear the things you say," she said. "You and Dolf, talking at night. You never notice me. You wouldn't see me if I sat down next to you. Oh. But not Grace. Perfect, darling Grace! It's like a light comes off her.... That's what you like to say, isn't it? She's so pure. So different from everybody else. Different from me." She beat the gun against her head again. "Better than me." Her voice dropped, and when she looked up, she could have shared a bloodline with any of those wild dogs. "I know your secret," she said.

"Miriam-"

"Your filthy, disgusting secret!"

My father stepped closer. The rifle did not waver.

"You ruined me," she said. Then she screamed again. "Look how you ruined me!" She tore at the front of her dress, b.u.t.tons flying until she ripped it open. She held the pieces spread, showing us her pale body.

Her pale, cut body.

Every inch. Every curve. The scars shone like all the hurt the world had ever known. Her stomach. Her thighs. Her arms. Every place that clothing could cover had been cut and cut again.

The word pain carved over her heart; deny cut into her stomach.

I heard my father, like he was choking. "Dear G.o.d," he said, and looking at her, I knew that the cutting was not something she'd done for five years. Not since the death of Gray Wilson. No chance. This had gone on for a long, long time.

Miriam looked at me, and her face was an open wound. "She's his daughter," she said.

"Stop, Miriam."

But she would not. Pain twisted her face. Loss. Anguish. She looked at Grace, and I saw jealousy and hatred. Dark emotions. So very dark.

"All these years." Her voice broke. "He always loved her more."

The pistol started up.

"Don't," my father said.

The pistol wavered. Miriam looked from Grace to my father, and her face crumpled. Tears. Rage. Those same sparks of crazy light. The barrel moved, tracked across the floor toward Grace.

My father spoke, and desolation was in his voice. "For G.o.d's sake, Miriam. Don't make me choose."

She ignored him, turned to me. "Do the math," she said. "He ruined you, too."

Then she brought the gun up, and my father pulled the trigger. The barrel leapt, shot out fire and noise enough to end the world. The bullet struck Miriam high on the right side of her chest. It spun her twice, like a dancer, and flung her across the room. She went down, boneless, and I knew, at a glance, that there would be no getting up.

Not now.

Not ever.

Smoke hung in the room. Grace cried out.

And my father wept for the fourth time in his life.

CHAPTER 32.

Grace was still alive when the paramedics arrived. Alive, but barely. They worked on her as if she could die any second. At some point, she winked out. The eyes rolled white, red fingers opened. I didn't know that I was banging the back of my head against the wall until Robin put a hand on me. Her eyes were calm and very brown. I looked at Grace. One of her legs twitched, fine shoe clicking on the wood floor as they forced air down her throat and beat unmercifully on her chest. I barely heard the sound of her breath when they got her back, but somebody said, "She's good," and they bundled her out of there.

I met my father's eyes across the floor. He sat against one wall. I was propped against the other. As badly as I hurt, and as near as Grace was to death, my father, I think, suffered the most. I watched him as a paramedic bent over my leg. He'd checked Miriam's body once, then held onto Grace as if he was strong enough to hold her soul in place. The paramedics had to pull him away to work on her. He was soaked with her blood, in plain, open anguish, and I knew that part of it came from what he'd done, and part of it was born from the truth of what Miriam had said with her last breath. He knew what it meant, and I did, too.

Grace was his daughter. Fine. Fair. Happens all the time. Looking back, it made sense. His love for her had never been an understated thing. But she didn't come to the farm until two years after my mother's death. I'd never done the math. It had never occurred to me. But I knew Grace's birthday, and I saw it now, Miriam's gift.

Truth in a dark box.

Grace was born two days before my mother killed herself, and that could not be coincidence.

Miriam was right.

He'd ruined me, too.

My father lifted his arm and opened his mouth as if he might speak, but I couldn't have that. I put a hand on the paramedic's shoulder. "Can you get me out of here?" I asked.

I glanced once more at my father, and when he saw my face, he closed his mouth.

I woke in hospital sheets: dim lights, drugged, no memory of the surgery they'd done on my leg. But I remembered the dream of young Sarah Yates. It was the same one that I'd had several nights before. Almost the same. She walked in the moonlit yard, dress loose around her legs. When she turned, she raised her hand as if a penny lay flat upon it. In the past, that's where the dream ended. Not this time. This time I saw it all.

The hand rose up and she touched her fingers to her lips. She smiled and blew a kiss, but not to me.

The dream was no dream. It was memory. Standing at my window, a boy, I saw it all. The windblown kiss, the secret smile; and then my father, shoeless in the pale, damp gra.s.s. How he scooped her up and kissed her for real. The raw, naked pa.s.sion that I recognized even then.

I'd seen it, and I'd buried it, tucked it away in some small place in that boy's mind. But I remembered it now, felt it like a tear in my soul. Sarah Yates was not familiar to me because she looked like Grace.

I knew her.

I thought of what the preacher had said to me about the nature of my mother's death. "There's no one to blame," he'd said, and in the shadow of the church I'd always known, those words made some kind of sense. But not now.

I'd been angry for twenty years, unsettled, restless. It was like I had a shard of gla.s.s in my mind, a red blade that twisted through the soft parts of me, traveled the dark roads, cutting. I'd always blamed my mother, but now I understood. She'd pulled the trigger, yes, done it in front of me, her only child. But what I'd said to my father was true. She'd wanted him to see it, and now I understood why. Eight years of miscarriages. Constant failure until it wore her down to nothing.

Then, somehow, she knew.

And pulled the trigger.

The anger, I finally realized, was not at my mother, whose soul had simply withered beyond her capacity to restore. Being angry at her was unfair, and in that, I'd failed her. She deserved better. Deserved more. I wanted to weep for her, but could not.

There was no place in me for gentle emotion.

I pressed the call b.u.t.ton for the nurse, a large woman with brown skin and indifferent eyes. "People are going to want to talk to me," I said. "I don't want to speak to anyone until nine thirty. Can you make that happen?"

She leaned back, a twist of smile on her face. "Why nine thirty?"

"I need to make some calls."

She turned for the door. "I'll see what I can do."

"Nurse," I said. "If Detective Alexander comes, I'll speak with her."

I looked at the clock. Five forty-eight. I called Robin at home. She was awake. "Did you mean what you said about choice?"

"I think I was pretty plain."

"Words are easy, Robin; life is hard. I need to know if you really mean it? All of it. The good and the bad. The consequences."

"This is the last time I'm going to say it, Adam, so don't ask me again. I made my choice. You're the one holding back. If you want to talk about choice, then we need to talk about you. It can't be a one-way street. What's the point?"

I gave myself a second, and then I committed, for better or worse. "I need you to do something for me. It means putting what matters to me over what matters to the cops."

"Are you testing me?" She sounded angry.

"No."

"It sounds serious."

"Like you would not believe."

"What do you need?" No hesitation.

"I need you to bring me something."

She was in the room an hour later, the postcard from my glove compartment in her hand. "You okay?" she asked.

"Angry. Messed up. Mostly angry."

She kissed me, and when she straightened, she left the card on the bed. I looked at the blue water, the white sand. "Where did you get that?" she asked.

"Faith's motel."

She sat, slid the chair close. "It's postmarked after Danny died. Whoever mailed that is complicit in his murder, at least after the fact."

"I know."

"Will I get it back?"

"I don't know."

"Are you serious?"

I looked at the clock. "We should know in a few hours."

"What do you plan to do?"

"Tell me about Grace," I said.

"You're not making this easy."

"I can't talk about what I'm going to do. I just need to do it. It's not about you. It's about me. Can you understand that?"

"Okay, Adam. I understand."

"You were going to tell me about Grace."

"It was close. A few more minutes and she'd have died. Probably a good thing you didn't wait for me."

"How did it happen?"

"She came back from the funeral and went inside. Half an hour later, somebody knocked on the door. She opened it and Miriam shot her. Never said a word. Just pulled the trigger and watched as Grace dragged herself back inside."

"Where'd she get the gun?" I asked.

"Registered to Danny Faith. A little peashooter. He probably kept it in his glove compartment."

"Why do you say that?"

"Charlotte P.D. found his truck in long-term parking at Douglas Airport. I saw the inventory yesterday. He had a box of .25 caliber sh.e.l.ls in the glove compartment, but no gun."

"Miriam killed him," I said. "She used Dolf's gun to do it, then put it back in the gun cabinet. She must have found the .25 when she ditched the truck."

I saw the wheels turn, small lines at the corners of her eyes.

"There are a lot of gaps in that theory, Adam. It's a big jump. How do you figure?"

I relayed the things that Miriam had said about her and Danny. I paused, then told her the rest of it: Grace, my mother. I kept my face neutral, even when I spoke of my father's long deception.

Robin kept her own mask up and nodded only as I finished. "That lines up with your father's statement."

"He told you? All of it?"

"He told Grantham. It wasn't easy for him, but he wanted Grantham to understand why Miriam snapped. Even though she was dead, he wanted the blame for it." She leaned forward. "It's killing him, Adam. He's eaten up over this, like it's all his fault."

"It is his fault."

"I don't know. Miriam's father ran out on her when she was very young. That's a tough thing for a little girl. When your father stepped in, she put him on a pretty high pedestal. A long way to fall."