Ava woke. She heard voices from the back of the house, Lane talking to someone, a man. At first, sleepy and disoriented, she thought it was Oliver. But the man didn’t sound like Oliver. A break-in, like Lane was always afraid of. Ava went for her phone first, but it wasn’t there. She’d left it in the living room, connected to a power cord. A thump came from the hallway, and the sound of Lane arguing with the man. She sounded scared, though Ava couldn’t discern the words.
Ava knelt in the bed and reached in the pocket of the pioneer girl costume for the pistol, drew it out, opened the chamber. The bullets were still there, too, where she’d put them months ago. She loaded the gun, unsure what to do next. Stay put? Hide? Go for the phone? But when she heard Lane cry out she reacted, already holding the gun steady, cocked, moving toward the sound of her grandmother’s voice. She stepped into the dining room and saw, in the hall, a man holding Lane. Before Ava could do a thing, he shot Lane and pushed her down the basement steps.
Ava shrieked. The man turned, startled, faced her.
“It was an accident,” he said. He held his hands out to her, his right hand still holding the gun. He gawked at it, bewildered.
“Lane,” Ava said.
The man registered the gun in Ava’s hand and took a step closer. She tightened her grip, steadied her aim.
“No,” the man said, coming toward her now. “She should never have—why was she—?”
“Is Lane okay?” She asked the question, even though she’d seen.
“I didn’t mean to,” he said. His hands were out, he was reaching for Ava. Getting too close.
Ava closed her eyes, saw her grandmother in his arms before him and then in a blink just gone, disappeared through the basement door. The thump of her body down the steps and then the silence.
She fired once, twice. Her father’s training kicked in, she’d done it right, exhaled and held her arm steady, aimed for the broadest target, the center of his chest. The man went down. Ava held still, watching him. He wasn’t moving or making a sound but she kept the gun on him. She didn’t know how long she stood there. She took a breath in, she had forgotten to inhale. She had to check on Lane.
Ava descended the basement steps, where she could see her grandmother crumpled below. She sank to the bottom step and gathered Lane into her arms. She knew Lane was dead but she held her and held her, just the same. No sound came from upstairs. Ava would have to go back up, find the phone and call someone, Oliver or the police. A remote part of her brain mapped it out: she would lay Lane’s head on the basement floor, climb the steps, go to the living room, pick up the phone and call Oliver’s number, and hope he picked up. She would keep calling him until he did. She would have to think about the man upstairs, she would have to walk past him, think about what she had done to him, explain it to someone else.
She understood she would need to do these things, but that was in the future. Now she held her grandmother, she smoothed Lane’s hair away from her face. Gravity held them to the basement floor. Ava’s arms assumed a sole purpose: to hold Lane. Hold her and not let her go.