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Tonya
“You don’t know anything!” Roy hollered. “None of this is true! I am under spiritual attack here, and I need you to defend me, not join with the darkness!”
Tonya thought she was going to be sick. Maybe she shouldn’t have spent all those years pretending this couldn’t happen. Pretending this wasn’t happening. Maybe then it wouldn’t be right in her face snarling at her. “Let’s not do this in front of Emma.”
“Do what in front of Emma? I can’t defend myself in front of my daughter? You know what?” His voice grew louder, suddenly sounding more like his pulpit voice. “I think I need to defend myself to my daughter! Emma, explain yourself! Why are the Puddys calling me in the middle of the night and then showing up at my door with these accusations?”
Emma finally looked at her father, and the utter disappointment on her face broke Tonya’s heart.
“Mom,” Emma said softly, “I think we should leave.”
Her father stepped closer. “No one is going anywhere!” his voice boomed. “Sit down!” He pointed at their couch.
“Mom?” Emma said, her voice trembling. “Please.”
“Go ahead and sit, honey. Let’s talk this through.”
“Can I just go to bed?”
“Sit down!” Roy hollered.
“Roy, please. Keep your voice down. The neighbors ...”
Emma walked away then, probably to go to her room, but Roy grabbed her by the left arm and spun her around. She cried out in pain and wobbled on her feet.
“Roy!” Tonya cried in horror. “Her arm is hurt!”
He grabbed Emma by her right arm and started dragging her. Emma screamed at the top of her lungs and braced her feet against his pulling, but he overpowered her and threw her onto the couch. She wasn’t breathing. She looked terrified.
Tonya didn’t know what to do. She was terrified too. Roy had never laid a hand on either of them.
“You sit down too!” he boomed.
She went to her daughter and put her arm around her shoulders. Maybe Emma was right. Maybe they should go somewhere. But where?
He sat down on the coffee table, so close to Emma that their knees were almost touching. “Start at the beginning.”
Tonya could tell that he was trying to force himself to act calm, but he was failing. He was anything but calm. His fists and his jaw were clenched. His house of cards was falling all around him, and he was still trying to figure out how to stop it.
Emma’s spine straightened, and she looked into his eyes. “Isabelle Martin, the meanest girl I’ve ever known, has been bullying me since Kindergarten—”
“I don’t want to hear about Isabelle! Tell me where the accusations about Mrs. DeGrave are coming—”
“You told her to start at the beginning,” Tonya said. Her voice had grown stronger. Was Emma’s strength rubbing off on her? “So let her tell it.”
Roy grimaced. This was the closest she’d come to talking back to him in years. “Fine.” He looked at Emma.
“So even though you’ve refused to believe me that the Martins are evil, they are. And I got to hear ...” Emma’s voice cracked. “Isabelle is a demon, so I got to hear from a demon that my daddy is a lying, cheating, gross pervert.” She leaned forward, and her voice got louder. “I got to hear from the meanest girl alive that my father the pastor is nothing but a fake, nothing but a fraud, which means my whole life is one big lie, which means God is one big lie! And I want to thank you so much for letting me hear it from her, because, you know, it wouldn’t have been painful enough to hear it from someone who doesn’t hate me.” Emma’s face twisted up in anger. “And you know what? Mary Sue wasn’t even surprised to hear it. So that means that everyone in the church knows, because Mary Sue is the last person to know anything, so if she knows something, that means everyone knows.”
Roy’s face fell. She knew him well enough to know that in that second, he knew he’d lost the fight. This was out now. He wouldn’t be able to reel it back in.
“And so I stole a bike. Your good little pastor’s kid stole a bike and then I crashed it because I was trying to kill myself, because I would rather be dead than be your daughter. But then I had a better idea. I drove to Mrs. DeGrave’s house.”
Roy reeled back from his daughter.
“And I pounded on their front door, and I woke their whole family up, and then I told Mr. DeGrave what you and his wife have been up to, and then I called Mrs. DeGrave a slut because that’s what she is!”
The crack rang out before Tonya had even realized what was coming. As her daughter’s head snapped to the side, she still had trouble processing what had just happened. Her husband had backhanded her daughter across the face. Her whole body shook. Surely that hadn’t just happened. But it had because her daughter was running out the front door. She stood to go after her, but Roy grabbed her by the arm. She tried to yank her arm away, but he wouldn’t let go.
“I’ll go get her in a minute,” he said. “We need to talk.”
