by Ann Minnett
Lark patted his knee. Have a good day was out of the question.
Her son kissed her cheek. "Love you, Mom."
If she could remember one moment for the rest of her life… this.
* * *
Four hours later and freshly medicated, Rob settled uncomfortably in Axel's passenger seat. His hand dropped down the side of the seat finding no lever there to release it backward for more leg room. Axel’s truck, barebones just like its owner, had a mechanical seat release located under his knees. No way could Rob bend over and exert the necessary force to move the seat.
Rob said, “Did you get any sleep last night?”
“Not much.” Axel drove away from the hospital’s automatic doors.
"I appreciate you coming to get me and bringing these clothes." Axel’s plaid flannels fit Rob like high water cropped pants. The zipped hoodie allowed little room for Rob to keep his left arm immobilized, but Axel’s cast-offs were better than the bloody shirt and pants he had worn the night before.
"Not a problem," Axel said. "I'm surprised they released you so soon."
"They'd have let me go earlier, but I had to wait for Flathead County deputy to grill me about the gunshot." Rob winced with the lies.
Axel snorted. "How'd you get shot?"
In the light of day, Rob wondered if accidentally shooting himself seemed plausible. It pained him to pretend to be the dumbass for hospital staff and the deputy, but such admissions to Axel really hurt his pride. Still. He’d take the blame and let those three bitches think he’d died. For now. He couldn’t afford to press charges, but the fact didn’t tamp down his anger. He’d retaliate when they least expected it, but not now.
So, blah blah blah, somehow Rob was cleaning his gun and accidently shot himself in the side and when he stood, 9mm rounds rolled everywhere and must have exploded, setting off a fire.
"And the closet?" Axel asked.
"What about the closet?"
"How did the fire reach your closet?" Axel wheeled past Whitefish city limits, headed west on Highway 93, twenty miles to home. "Your closet was more burned than anywhere." Axel had a wad of tobacco tucked in his lip, and it gave him a gleeful expression.
"I have no idea." Rob had heard Lark moving around in the back of his house but hadn’t dared to move. He sprawled on the couch where they left him, allowing her to think he had died. He did flinch when she fired a gun into the cushions—who wouldn’t! The blast deafened him, and his eyes had popped open. Luckily, she had screwed her eyelids tightly shut and missed his body jolt from head to foot. That’s when he realized she planned to burn him alive. Playing dead was his only hope for survival.
"An odd fire," Axel said, noncommittally.
Axel was no fool.
Rob sighed, "Here's the truth."
Axel cut his eyes sideways at Rob. "Maybe I don't want to know the truth." When Rob kept quiet, Axel added, "All I know is you were shot and the house was on fire when I arrived." Axel spat into a plastic bottle.
The two pain pills Rob took before leaving the clinic loosened his tongue. "Here's the deal, Axel. I'm a good guy. I’ve done nothing wrong."
Axel shot him another glance.
"All true. But I have to leave."
"You selling your place?"
"Maybe later, but I can't live there anymore."
"All your cabin needs is clean-up and minor repairs…"
Rob shook his head. "It doesn't matter. I came here for peace and quiet, but that's impossible now."
Axel drove without comment.
"Can I hire you to board up the place for me? Shut everything off and help me load up my truck?"
Axel nodded. "When?"
"As soon as we get home."
Axel reared back and eyed Rob's bandaged midsection protruding under the too-small t-shirt. "You’re leaving in that condition?"
"I don't have a choice." Rob grimaced. "Then again, you might be right. I'll rest up today, but I need your help with something… kind of sketchy… before I go."
"Is it illegal?"
"I don't think it's illegal to burn up your own property, is it?"
"You need a permit."
Rob chuckled. He liked good old Axel.
Axel turned onto Star Meadow Road toward home. Rob would miss this place. If only he'd kept his big mouth shut, those three women might never have known who he was.
"Just so you know, you start a fire, and I'm calling the sheriff and fire departments." Axel’s eyes remained on the road straight ahead.
"Oh, I'm kidding." Rob ran a hand through his dirty hair.
“Fire’s nothing to laugh at around here.”
"You’re right. Must be these pain meds talking."
Ten minutes later, Axel let Rob out at his closed farm gate and asked if he needed help getting to the house. Rob waved him off with another thank you, skirted the posts, and limped painfully around trampled snow drifts toward his charred home.
Exhausted from the hundred-yard walk down his driveway, he noted two splintered holes in his solid wood door. Inside, the stale odor of soot permeated the frozen air. Footprinted paths arced across flooring planks. He stared without emotion at the blackened and yes even blood-spotted couch where they tried to kill him. His lips pulled into a tight grin, despite the pain. He’d get even.
But first, sleep.
He stumbled into his bedroom where the stench of smoke hung heavy. Axel had mentioned the fire being worse on this side of the house, but Rob couldn’t focus on it. He had to sleep. He pulled back the covers and eased onto the mattress. He burrowed under blankets and fell asleep, wishing he’d had the strength to build a fire in the stove.
But he did not.
Pain woke him hours later, freezing and in the dark. He fumbled for the watch he kept in his bedside table. Six-thirty. Morning or night? Long winter nights made it hard to differentiate, but he thought it was night, if only because of the pain. He scrounged in the blackened bathroom for anything to dull the burning in his side. Tears flooded his eyes, laying hands on old hydrocodone tablets left over from dental surgery. He took two with a beer he found in the darkened refrigerator. The electricity was off.
With luck, the bitches believed he was dead and silenced. Still, so much to accomplish before he dealt with them.
They had no idea who they had tried to kill.
CHAPTER 22
Lark had awakened around two o'clock Thursday afternoon. Shocked that she had slept at all, her throat burned and she had a mild fever—not exactly sick but it was only a matter of time. She drank orange juice and logged into the local television websites for news of Rob's death or fire or whatever news there was.
Nothing so far.
Bloody clothing in her cramped closet demanded attention. She could almost hear it grumbling. Maybe the imagined stench of burning hair and melting skin had her hallucinating.
She texted Dee, Nora, and Zane.
Meet here at 7:00. Zane tell M
No one responded to her text
She waited all afternoon for the news to explode, practically holding her breath with mounting tension. House fires always made the news, and local deaths, without question. She had maintained the vigil for nothing.
When Zane stumbled home after six o’clock, she said, “No word yet.”
He threw his backpack over the table and against the wall. The tremor shook the meager chandelier and knocked a chair over. She said nothing. Quietly, robotically he unpacked his homework and sat down.
“Hungry?”
He shook his head, no, but got up, retrieved a bag of Doritos, a handful of cheese sticks, and two Dr. Peppers.
Pick my battles, she thought. “The local news is starting.”
Zane threw his pen across the room in frustration as soon as the newscast began. "I can't concentrate." His books spread out in front of him with a blank page of a notebook ripped in two. He pounded the table, and got up to retrieve the pen. He scribbled on a page while standing, bent over and shifting from
foot to foot.
Lark had no words of comfort for him. They’d promised to wait for the others before talking about what happened. Neither she nor he spoke throughout the newscast.
A sharp knock at the door broke their tension during a high school sports report. Nora trudged into the condo. Kirk followed. They both looked like hell.
"Did you sleep at all?" Lark took Nora's jacket that had covered stained and frumpy sweats.
"Hardly." Nora's breath smelled awful. Lark's probably did, too. "The twins woke up when we got home and fussed all morning. Finally got them to take a nap at noon. Kirk’s daughter is watching them again, but we’re really pushing our luck with her lately. Dee's parking down the street so her boss doesn't see her when she's supposed to be sick."
"She is sick. Besides, the salon closed at six.” Lark pulled back the curtain to see her friend in a ski cap, stumbling up the walkway.
Zane's phone blared four bars of bad music. He answered, "Hey. Everyone's here."
Dee slunk inside carrying a wad of tissues the size of a softball. Her fever had broken, but her wary eyes appeared glassy and sunken. She moved slowly and kept her coat buttoned.
They shouldn't have left Dee alone.
"You have to come over." Zane's voice got louder, and all eyes turned to him. "What did he do?" He listened. "Oh man, I'm—" Zane peered at the blank phone screen. Mason had disconnected the call. "Mason can't come. His old man beat the shit out of him for staying out all night. He finally admitted sleeping over here and got smacked around some more."
Lark took back every negative thought she'd had about Mason in the past twenty-four hours. If that kid grew up to be normal, it would be a miracle. She scanned the people in the room, shaking her head in disbelief. Like any one of us is normal, she thought. We’ve killed a man, covered it up, and drawn two teenagers into this mess.
"Now it's the five of us." Kirk man-spread his legs to make way for his heavy gut and sat down at Lark's table. The others joined him, with Nora and Dee bookending Zane. Lark sat across from them. They instinctively protected him. Dee removed her ski cap and patted her hair into place. Her make-up did not disguise a raw nose and upper lip, but she had made the effort and looked less miserable than the night before. Nora, plain as a fencepost, radiated fierce love for them all. Lark hoped she did, too.
Zane sensed the looming secret. "What?" He stacked his homework papers and laptop onto the kitchen pass-through. "Did Aunt DeeDee kill my dad, Mom?" He turned to Dee. "Did you?"
His bravery took Lark's breath away. "I don't know. None of us know for sure."
"Tell me the truth, Mom." Zane voice was controlled, but his face flushed. "Did he rape you?"
Lark leaned across the table and took his hands. She was surprised he allowed it. She, no they, never imagined telling him the whole story.
"I was raped by three men," Dee said. She straightened her shoulders and breathed deeply. "You’re my biological son."
Zane pushed Lark's hands away but questioned her with his eyes. His inability to speak conveyed a thousand words.
Lark simply nodded, It's true.
Dee put her arm around his back and Nora snaked her arm over Dee's. He shook them off with surprising force.
"I was drugged and raped, and I don't remember a damn moment of it." Dee wiped her nose, then her eyes.
Where to start? How much to explain? Lark remembered Zane's kindergarten teacher's advice: Just answer his questions about sex and where he came from—no more. And to think she had been challenged by a five-year-old’s curiosity. They'd have to forge ahead.
"Dee, Nora, and I were roommates in college—you knew that," Lark said. "We became inseparable."
"Except for the night it happened." Nora glanced over at her husband, and that big old man reached out for Dee's shoulder and Lark's, too. He cleared his throat but stayed out of the story.
The guilt, so accessible to the ten-year-old Lark who witnessed her little brother swallow a nail, scratched the scab of abandoning Dee at the gallery. "Yes. Nora and I left to go to a party." The two friends shared a glance. Neither mentioned forgetting about Dee that night.
"And the next thing we knew, DeeDee was in the hospital," Nora said. Such a gentle tone from a woman so coarse on the outside.
Zane said to Dee, "You're my mother?" Tracks of silent tears etched his cheeks, catching on sparse hairs there. "I don't get it."
Lark said, "How could you understand this mess?"
Dee interrupted. "Do you remember me always calling myself a good Catholic girl—?"
"—but never went to church," Zane finished her sentence, nodding.
Dee smiled up at him. "I did get pregnant but wouldn't consider an abortion because of my religion at the time."
"Thank God," Nora said. "We couldn't imagine life without you, Zane."
"We loved you. All of us loved you." Lark fought to contain her emotions as her composure crackled into tiny pieces.
"My parents threw me out when they learned I was pregnant,” Dee said. “They never found out about the attack or you."
"Your mom… Lark… and I bummed around Colorado that summer." Nora quietly checked in with Lark and continued. "Dee caught up with us later, and we all stuck together."
"The three of us were joined spiritually." Lark went to the sliding doors to smoke. From across the small living room she added, "We had a rough patch, though."
Silence. None of the women spoke. Kirk left for the bathroom and closed the door gently.
"Don't stop there, Mom.” Zane shivered. “Or should I say, Lark?"
She anticipated his anger, but his tone intended to wound.
Both Dee and Nora simultaneously stated, "She's your mother."
Dee finally continued. "I should tell this part. I went crazy after you were born. Refused to nurse you. Can you imagine? I couldn't look at your little face without remembering..."
"The rape," Nora said. Her voice trailed off so completely that Lark almost missed what she said.
Zane covered his face with his hands and bent forward.
Lark mashed her cigarette into a flower pot and approached him, wanting to comfort him but knowing he’d reject any show of affection. "Don't blame Dee for being human. It lasted for a few weeks, but in the meantime, we fell in love with you."
"What Lark won't say," Nora said, "is she became responsible for you. Lark became your mother without a word being spoken."
"I flipped out, and your mom took over." Dee wiped her eyes. "If she hadn't stepped in, my only option was to give you up for adoption."
"That was never an option." Lark smiled with all the love in her heart. "I adopted you, kiddo. You were stuck with me." He loved her, too. She saw it in his eyes, beyond the hurt and anger.
Kirk returned. "I must have missed the lovefest." No one laughed. "I'm going for take-out." He grabbed his coat and left.
"I knew I couldn't raise you on my own. I needed family to help, so I brought you back to Montana."
Zane’s dark eyes wildly searched for escape. "Do they know? Patty and Lulu and Uncle Sky?"
"Nope." Lark hadn't betrayed him completely. "I told them that you were mine. They still believe it."
Dee wiped her nose and coughed. "And no way were you growing up without your Aunt DeeDee."
"Or me." Nora wiped her eyes as well. "We all wanted a hand in your life."
Zane shook his head. "This is so fucked up."
"Too true," Lark said, "but stop saying the F-word."
"Were you ever going to tell me?" he asked Lark, but Dee answered.
"I asked her not to."
"Why?" His eyes rested on each individual woman before it dawned on him. "Oh. Because my father was a rapist."
Dee snapped. "Your sperm donor was a rapist. Your father figure was a lot of good men. And women."
Zane got up and sidestepped out of the corner. "I'm the product of rape." His mechanical movements hinted at a loss of physical control Lark had never seen. His confusion, r
age and despair threatened to explode before their eyes. "That's why you shot your rapist and my dad." He pointed at Dee.
Nora reached for Dee. "Not exactly."
Lark began. "You see, Rob sent me money because he recognized my tattoo from college. He didn’t know Nora and I got our tattoos to match the one Dee already had, and then we all left Columbia. That night, he’d seen Dee’s tattoo. Not mine."
"I thought he wanted to hook up with you." Zane slumped in the rocker by the door.
"We all thought that at first." Nora and Lark stood by the patio doors, smoking.
Zane's hand covered his eyes. "You mean Mason and I tied up a dude who might not have attacked anyone, and then Aunt DeeDee…" He stopped and asked her, "What should I call you now?"
"Aunt DeeDee."
He shook his head and stretched his eyelids open. "Okay. Then Aunt DeeDee shot a dude who might have raped her and might have been my sperm donor, and then he died. And then you, Mom, burned him and his house down." He hugged his long arms to his sides and bent in half. "This is so fucked."
No one in the room contradicted him.
Zane stood up slowly to his full height. "Let me out of here." When Lark stepped forward, he said, “Don't. You've had fifteen years to live with this story. It's brand new to me." They silently watched Zane pull on a jacket and the ski cap that hooded his eyes. He left without speaking.
The door slammed, and everyone talked at once.
Kirk entered the condo a few minutes later, laden with Chinese takeout and a six-pack of Blue Moon. He set out all the containers, chopsticks, and napkins.
"You'd better get some forks, babe," Nora said. "My fat fingers are too shaky to control chopsticks." He returned with forks for all.
"Poor kid." Kirk forked Kung Pao Beef into his mouth. "Come sit, Nora. You didn't have dinner."
"I don't want to sit. I want to scream." Nora straightened couch pillows and refolded the red-speckled throw.
"That was awful," Dee said and wiped her runny nose. Her cough had descended into her chest, wracking her body.
Lark flipped on the porch light and parted limp curtains to catch a glimpse of her son, but he had disappeared into the night. Her life's goal to be the best possible mother for this child had shattered. So many choices along the way led to one disastrous decision after another. Zane had it right. Fucked up. She was fucked up.
