“Keep talking to me, Maggie Lee.”
“He’ll hear.” She’s whimpering, or maybe that’s Caroline. “Joshy, just come.”
“Almost home.”
“Not home. Daddy’s.”
I glance at Chatham. “You’re at your dad’s place?”
“Just come.”
The line goes dead.
I pull a U-turn, and let out a roar of frustration and pound on the steering wheel as I drive in the opposite direction. In a matter of seconds, I piece together what must have happened. Rosie had to go into work tonight after all, probably because she called in sick last week. When she couldn’t reach me because I kept ignoring her, she called Damien and dropped the girls at his place.
But . . .
“Why would Maggie Lee have Mom’s phone?” I wonder aloud.
“This isn’t your fault.”
“The hell it isn’t! God dammit! I should’ve answered the phone! I should’ve—”
“You’re scaring me.”
“We have to get there.”
“We can’t help them if we don’t get there alive.”
I hadn’t wanted to forfeit this night, the night that began so perfectly and turned itself upside down in the space of a few blocks. But now, Chatham’s pissed for some stupid fucking reason about her hair, for God’s sake, and she wants to go home, and doesn’t want to invite me in, and my sisters . . . let’s just hope they’re okay.
“Should I call the cops?” I glance at the girl who, up until two minutes ago, I saw as my salvation.
Her eyes are rimmed with tears. Like she’s really scared.
I ease up a little on the gas, and drop a hand on her thigh. She doesn’t flinch away, but to my surprise, grips my hand.
“Say I call them,” I say. “It’s null and void, then. The order of protection. The judge can revoke it because my mother voluntarily violated it. Right?”
“I don’t know.” She gives my hand a squeeze. “Probably.”
We need that court order of protection. I can’t risk canceling it out.
We just have to get there.
Stones spin out beneath my tires on the rocky lane that leads to Damien’s place, which is way off the beaten path. Memories flood back to me; I remember the last time I traveled this road, two years ago, when I thought I wouldn’t ever have to travel it again. The feeling of liberty, the hope that at last we had a chance to live a normal life . . . I knew then that that chance required a certain measure of self-sacrifice on my part. I remember feeling as if I’d do anything—anything—not to be there, falling prey to him, anymore.
Skip school when the girls are sick?
Okay. Even though Chatham handled the most recent occurrence, it was me staying home all last year.
Stand guard throughout the night when the dirt bag threatens to come over?
Who needs sleep, anyway?
God, how could I have forgotten?
No matter what Chatham says, I’m here tonight because I forgot how important it was to put my sisters first.
Damien’s shack of a house sits right along the creek for which this town is named, and it’s far enough out of the way that no one can hear the turmoil erupting within it.
As I approach it now, it looks just as run-down as ever. An old, 1940s fishing cabin, with gray paint peeling from the clapboard siding, and a faded red door. One bedroom. The smallest bathroom you’ll ever see, with a shower you can barely turn around in. A tiny kitchen and living area, where Damien hung on the wall the collar of our departed dog. And a loft, where the girls and I slept.
Another memory flashes in my mind: Damien, drunk and belligerent, holding two-month-old Caroline over the railing, threatening to drop her onto the floor below if we didn’t all just shut the fuck up.
It all blares in my memory like a siren: Rosie’s scream. The babies’ uncontrollable wailing . . .
I pull into the gravel horseshoe driveway.
Chatham’s holding my arm now. “Wait. I don’t feel good about this.”
“I have to go get them.” If she were in my head, watching events of the past play out, she’d understand. I toss her my phone. “If I’m not out in two minutes, call the police.”
I leave the car running, and approach the door. It’s locked, so I pound on it.
The door opens, and the first thing I see is my mother’s hair in Damien’s fist.
My gut tumbles when I see her face. Her left eye is swollen shut.
God, if only I’d answered the phone five minutes earlier . . . maybe she wouldn’t have taken those blows.
He’s dragging her by her hair and shoving her out the door. “Take this fucking cunt home!”
My mother falls into my arms, and it’s not that I don’t want to hold her up, but I have to get the girls. She slips to the porch, sobbing, when I lunge through the door. I hope she has the sense to get herself safe, to go to the car, and let me get my sisters.
“Maggie Lee! Miss Lina!”
Damien has me by the throat now that I’m in his house, and he slams me into the closest wall. “All I have to do is squeeze.”
I swallow over the pit of fear accumulating in my throat. “Just let me get my sisters, and—”
“They’re my daughters.”
“You don’t want them here tonight. I’ll take them.”
“You couldn’t let well enough alone, could you? You had to tell your fucking mother about what you saw.”
“Seems you taught her a lesson. She knows her place now. I just want my sisters.”
He tightens his grip a bit, I can barely breathe, and now I’m really starting to get scared.
“The police are on their way,” I manage to get out, even though it’s a lie. “Just let me go, and . . . they don’t trust my reports anyway. Damien, please. They’ll get here. We’ll be gone. Please.”
“Big man now, aren’t you? Begging me.”
“Please.”
“You want I can do to you what I did to your fucking dog? Huh?”
“Please!”
“You ever take a swing at me again, your mother won’t get up. You hear me?”
“Yeah.”
“I’ll teach your ass!”
“Yeah. Yeah, I got it.”
He screams in my face: “Get out!” Strings of saliva hang from his teeth, his eyes are bloodshot and yellow, the vein in his forehead bulges. But ultimately, he shoves off me and lets go of my neck. “Get the brats and get out.”
I cough and gasp when I draw in a full breath. And as soon as I’m able, I call their names. “Come on, girls. It’s okay.”
They appear a split second later, both bawling and running at me.
“Cops come around here, and I’ll put your mother—better yet, I’ll put your sisters—in traction!”
I catch both my sisters by a hand, and we’re almost out the door when I feel a size twelve work boot in my back. I stumble, but manage to regain my footing and prevent a fall.
I hike Margaret up in my arms, and a second later, I go to grab Caroline, but Chatham’s there, and she’s already pulling her into the car. We don’t bother to strap the girls in before I peel away.
“We should get your mom to the hospital.” Chatham pulls the seatbelt around her and Caroline, and Rosie’s working on securing Margaret in the back.
“No,” Rosie says. “No hospital.”
I glance at her in the rearview mirror. This isn’t the worst I’ve seen her. There were days both her eyes were swollen.
“I’m sorry, babies,” my mother is saying. “Mommy’s sorry.”
I swear, I’m holding my breath all the way down the rocky road. I don’t breathe until we hit the first stoplight, and this is when I finally take it all in:
My mother has taken a few blows.
Margaret is still gripping my mother’s phone.
Caroline looks so small and helpless in Chatham’s lap. I reach over and wipe a tear off the tip of her nose. “It’s okay now, Miss Lina.”
She extends a hand toward me.
I go to take it, but instead of little-sister-hand, I find something else. “What is this?” It’s an old photograph. The light turns green, but I glance at it.
It’s brittle and yellowing.
Old.
I’ve seen one like it before. It’s a picture of the same girl in the Polaroid tucked into Savannah’s journal: the little blonde girl. “Chatham.” I show it to her.
She gasps.
Our glances meet. She nods in confirmation.
“Where’d you get this?” I ask Caroline. “Did you get this from Chatham’s bag?”
“Uh-uh. Daddy had it. In the closet.”