Wilder’s voice was soft. “Mom, please.”
“Sometimes he’d bring this one along.” Here she gestured to Wilder. “Like I’d stand for that? It gave me a chance to get in a few good licks, though. You see his arms?” Feeling sick, I nodded. “I guess that made me feel a little better. But nothing was ever enough for my husband. After all I’d done for him, for us, he just went ahead and shoved me onto somebody else.”
“That’s not true,” Wilder said. “Dad loves you. He just didn’t know how to take care of you himself, so he hired a private nurse.”
“Loves me? Ha,” she laughed. “Jim was just worried about his reputation. Can’t have people thinking he’s less than perfect, can’t let ‘em see the wife who went off the deep end. Appearances matter, Pearl, he’d always say.”
Wilder recoiled like he’d heard the words before, but they were taking on a new, uglier meaning. “No, that…that can’t be. He was afraid they’d mistreat you in one of those facilities for the...”
“Clinically insane?” she finished, leveling the gun once again. “Well, I assure you. At the moment, I am perfectly lucid.”
“Mrs. Wilder,” I said, leaning toward the boy on my left. Our shoulders barely touched. “Look again. Look at his eyes.” I paused to make sure she really was looking. “This is your son. You have to see that.”
Her head was moving from side to side. “No.”
“Yes,” I said. “It is. This is your Ethan. Dave Diamond died in a car crash a few months—”
“No.”
“—after your daughter’s death. His car stalled on some train tracks, and he died instantly. So this can’t possibly be—”
“NO!” she shouted, raising the Smith and Wesson once more, leveling it at Wilder’s heart. “No, you’re both liars. I refuse to listen to any more of these lies. I don’t have a son!”
I looked at Wilder, but he was paralyzed, didn’t even seem to be aware of the gun. He was staring straight ahead at his Mom as if he’d never seen her before.
She cocked her head to the side and said, “Goodbye, Dave.”
And then the gun went off.
I knew what was coming a moment before it happened. I don’t know how. But a mere half of an instant before she pulled the trigger, I saw the whole thing in my mind: Her saying exactly those words, Wilder standing there frozen, the gun going off, Wilder shot and on the floor, bleeding to death. Perhaps, there was a little more of Aunt B in me than I’d thought.
It was that foresight which allowed me to act as quickly as I did.
Pushing Wilder aside, using my body as a shield, I launched myself in front of him.
The bullet hit me in the chest, and for such a tiny piece of metal, the impact was surprisingly powerful.
I tried to stay upright, grabbed the counter with both hands, but my legs gave way. Because of my scrabbling, cookies went everywhere. I was almost to the floor when I realized someone was supporting me.
Wilder, his arms looped around my waist, was steadily easing us both to the tile. His knees didn’t seem to be working so well either. His eyes, so like his mother’s, looked sad and worried. They were what grounded me, distracted me from the wetness I felt beginning to spread over my shirt, the pain of breathing.
He didn’t say anything...but what was there to say? Wilder just kept looking at me, holding me, and it was enough.
I heard someone calling my name and gradually turned my head to the right.
Garrison had Pearl Wilder flat on the ground, cuffing her hands behind her back, but he was looking at me. She didn’t seem to be putting up much of a struggle.
“You hang in there, Delilah.” His voice was insistent. “You just hang on. The ambulance will be here any second.”
I tried to give Garrison a reassuring smile. Noticing what was scattered across the floor, the smile turned real.
Aunt B had been right again.
All around Wilder and I, scattered every which way, were large circles with bright yellow and orange blooms. I hadn’t looked twice at the sunflower cookies when I’d taken them out, wasn’t the slightest bit concerned. But there they were. Some had broken on their way to the ground. Others were turning red around the edges.
Absorbing my blood, I realized.
She’d been right about that part, too. There was blood and plenty of it.
The ambulance showed up sometime later, but as long as I had Wilder’s eyes to focus on I was fine.
When they took me to the hospital was when it became hard. No one was allowed in the surgery room. The doctors worked on me for what seemed like forever. I was conscious through the whole thing. They were afraid to give me anesthesia because of all the blood I’d lost. It was the toughest two and half hours of my life, but I pulled through.
The doctors told Mom and Aunt B it was touch and go there for a while, but I was a fighter. Then Mom went on a crying jag that lasted fifteen minutes straight.
I spent seven days there, in the hospital bed.
Wilder came to visit me during every one of them.
#
“You’re not going to believe this.” George plopped down next to me on my bed. She’d been bringing me all the news from the outside.
“What now?” I asked. I hadn’t been to school in a while, doctor’s orders—also, Mom and Aunt B’s orders. I was healing, but they weren’t taking any chances. Tomorrow would be my first day back. “Are you and Ronnie dating?”
“Very funny, D.”
“I thought so.”
“Whatever,” she said, “I’ve got something even juicier than that. Pics of the attic in Mae’s house. Apparently, they were keeping Pearl in this medical room that looks like—”
“A padded cell,” I finished, looking at the photos.
“Exactly,” George nodded. “That’s where they kept her. You know how Mae was a nurse, right? Well, apparently, Jim hired her to keep tabs on his dirty little secret, locked up his wife and threw away the key. The man is seriously messed up, D. I’m glad he’s losing his job.”
“Yeah.” I scrolled through the pictures. Gray walls, no windows, a full-sized bed but no covers. “Pearl said Mae took care of her, and Jim Wilder didn’t want people to know his wife’d gone crazy. I’m thinking she may have been onto something. You can’t really blame her for wanting to get out of there.”
The story broke yesterday all over the local news. Long story short, Mae had looked after Pearl until her death, at which point Pearl escaped, stole Jessica Stubbs’s gun, shot the reverend, and came back to finish off Ethan, who her crazed mind had convinced her was Dave Diamond. This would go down in Bowie history as one of the most notorious pieces of gossip ever floated.
“That room would make anyone insane,” George agreed.
“You think she’ll get off?” I asked.
“Don’t know,” she said. “She’s going up for your shooting as well as Jim’s and Anne’s.”
“But she’s clearly crazy.”
“No doubt, but that doesn’t mean she’ll get away with it.”
We’d have to wait and see how it all played out in the courts. For Wilder’s sake, I hoped it wouldn’t be a long, drawn-out process.
“Hey, look.” George flashed me her new screensaver.
“Is that…Rapier?” I asked incredulous.
“Yeah,” she laughed. “Priceless, right? He goes camping and gets his face eaten by fire ants. Karma’ll get you every time.”
His face was so bloated I hardly recognized him. George must’ve taken it in class.
“Almost makes me feel sorry for him,” I said.
“He got bit by a few ants, D. You got shot,” she said, as if I needed reminding. “And you know he would’ve laughed if it was us.”
I had to admit; she had a point.
George left a few hours later, and Wilder knocked on the door just as the sun was setting.
“You didn’t have to come,” I said, coming out to meet him on the porch. We sat on the steps, but it did
n’t feel awkward. It felt natural to sit next to him, for him to be here, next to me.
“I know,” he said. “I wanted to.”
My heart melted a little at that, but I tried to ignore it.
“So…how are you feeling?”
“Better than yesterday,” I said. He’d asked that same question every day I was in the hospital, and my answer was always the same. “How about you?”
He shrugged, eyes fixed on the horizon. “Not too bad considering I bought all my dad’s lies. Even the big one where he said keeping his mentally ill wife locked up with a private nurse instead of getting her the help she needed was ‘what was best for her.’“ I winced as he continued, tone bitter. “I still can’t believe I bought that.”
“You were trying to protect your mom,” I said, nudging his shoulder with mine. “Who knows? Maybe your dad was, too.”
“Jim Wilder was protecting himself and his reputation. You know it, and so do I.”
I did know that. But seeing how much it hurt him, I kind of wished Wilder didn’t.
“Well, I hope she can finally get the help she needs,” I said gently.
“Me, too.” He sighed. “God, me, too.”
Moments passed, a light, cool breeze ruffling his hair and mine, before he broke the silence.
“Okay, enough of that,” he said. “There’s something I’ve been meaning to give you.”
“What?” I watched as he reached into his pocket, pulled out something small and fragile looking.
“I wanted to give this back a long time ago. But I didn’t know you then.”
Taking my hand, he turned my palm over, placed something inside.
I opened my fingers and held up the gift he’d given me. The sight of it nearly brought tears to my eyes. It’d been a very long time.
“Where did you find it?” I asked, running my fingers along the small links of chain, around the charms. My mema’s bracelet was one of a kind, the tiny ornaments, each a small treasure she’d collected throughout her life. I’d lost it almost as soon as it was given to me—and cried for a week over my own carelessness. “I thought it was lost forever.”
“No, not forever.” He helped me with the clasp.
“But where did you find it?”
“I need to tell you something, Doherty.”
“Okay,” I said slowly.
“Do you remember when I said I’d been in love with same girl since I was eight years old?”
I nodded. Of course, I remembered. My heart gave a little thud of discomfort whenever I thought about it.
“I wasn’t lying.” His stare didn’t waver. “Doherty...Delilah, that girl was you.”
I frowned. What was he talking about? “That doesn’t make any sense.”
“I know,” he said. “We never officially met until this year. But you have to believe me. I’ve loved you much longer than that.”
“Wilder, I don’t understand.”
“I was there,” he said, taking my hand in his. “I should’ve stopped McCreary, but I didn’t. Maybe if I’d run faster, you wouldn’t have this now.” He trailed his fingers along the white line scarring my forearm. “I’ll never forget seeing you fall. I tried to call out, to warn you about the glass, but by then it was too late.” He paused, searching my expression. “You honestly don’t remember? You were a little out of it, but I was with you until the ambulance came. The street was pretty empty that day. You were wearing a shirt that said—”
“Kiss me, I’m Irish,” I said, because suddenly I did remember, every detail.
I guess I’d blocked it out for so long. McCreary’s words, the results of his anger, they’d overshadowed everything else. But now, in my mind, I returned to that day, the events playing out behind my eyes in high definition.
“It was that shirt,” I said, remembering. “That was why he’d started picking on me in the first place.”
I envisioned myself back then, a freckled young thing, wearing that bright green shirt with the shamrocks, having just received my mema’s present. Mom and Aunt B had saved it for me, waiting until just the right time, the day I was finally old enough to take care of such a priceless possession. I was walking home from the library, watching the light reflect off all those charms, when Grant McCreary blocked my path.
“‘Who’d want to kiss an ugly girl like you?’ he said.” I rolled my eyes. McCreary was horrible even back then. “He said his father told him my mother was a slut and that made me one, too.”
“And?” Wilder said.
I smiled. “I called him a lowlife, no-brain toesucker who needed his toesucker daddy to think for him.”
“That was creative.”
“Thanks,” I said. “He didn’t like that too much—especially the part about his dad. When he tried to grab my bracelet, we had our own little game of tug of war.” I gestured to my wrist. “He won, pushed me down so hard I felt the impact in my teeth.” When the bracelet had finally broken, McCreary lost his balance, ended up falling sideways. He’d hit the pavement at just the right angle to dislocate his jaw, ran away like a coward after he saw my arm. I’d tried to catch myself, unaware of the shards of broken bottle behind me. They’d cut through my flesh like it was paper. “I thought I was going to die.”
“I know.” Wilder looked up. “When I got to you, you’d just managed to sit upright. You took one look at your arm, looked back up at me, and said, ‘I’m going to die.’“
“I did not.”
“You did,” he said. “I told you it was going to be alright, that the police would come, but you just kept saying, ‘I’m going to die. I’m going to die.’“ He eyed me, trying to gauge my reaction I suppose. “Then you stopped. I was scared you were going to pass out, but instead you said, ‘Please.’“
I blushed, knowing where this was going. How had I forgotten?
“‘Please mister, kiss me just once. I don’t want to die having never been kissed.’“ Wilder smiled. “I was mystified. I’d never been called ‘mister’ before. And to have a girl I didn’t know begging me to kiss her? It was unbelievable.”
I scoffed. “I thought I was going to die. What’d you expect?”
“But I did it,” Wilder went on. “You were the first girl I ever kissed, and I haven’t wanted to kiss anyone else since.”
His words left me speechless for a moment.
“Sorry I didn’t tell you sooner.”
“How long have you known?” I asked curious.
“Not at the lake, but shortly after. When you told McCreary off for ganging up on Ronnie.”
That long, I thought. He’d recognized me almost from the beginning. But really what other explanation was there? The story was too impossible not to be true.
“And the bracelet?”
“I found it in the street, picked it up before going to the hospital. I thought you might want it back.” His gaze darkened. “They wouldn’t let me see you, refused to tell me anything. The nurse said only family was allowed in. So I went home, fixed the links on the bracelet, rode my bike back the next day, determined to make them let me in. But you were already gone.”
Alright, that did it. I was completely head over heels for this guy.
“Thanks, Wilder,” I said and meant it.
“You’re welcome,” he said, eyes playful. “You know it kind of hurt my feelings when you didn’t remember.”
“Oh really?”
He nodded. “We’ll have to work on that.”
“What?” I breathed as he leaned closer.
“Making next time more memorable.” He stopped inches away from my lips and met my eyes. “Just so you know, this time definitely counts.”
He kissed me then, and I knew I would never forget.
We sat talking for hours until Aunt B finally told Wilder he had to go home. She’d said he was welcome to come back tomorrow. But he didn’t wait that long. He called me that night, and we talked some more. It was like all the barriers between us had broken down. I couldn’t get enough
of him. And, amazingly, he couldn’t seem to get enough of me.
The following day I went back to school and found Wilder leaning against my locker. Seeing me, he straightened, walked right over and cupped my cheek. The hall was, as usual, chockfull of people. Students, faculty, everyone under the sun seemed to be right there at Bowie High, watching every move Wilder made. It appeared the shock of his family’s deep dark secret hadn’t worn off yet.
Seeing the tender look he gave me was probably just as astonishing.
“Hey, there.” After a quick glance around, he said, “What do you say we give these people something to talk about?”
Instead of answering, I rose up to my tiptoes and kissed him with all the fiery passion we Doherty’s were known for.
That kiss was the talk of the town for years afterward. Who’d have thought it, the wild child’s daughter and the preacher’s son? Not in a million years. Some got it wrong and said he kissed me, but I didn’t correct them. That kiss was ours and ours alone. The single most sensational kiss of my life.
The first from me to Ethan Wilder.
But far from the last.
###
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Though it was published third, I wrote this story before my other published books. Bowie is a lot like the town I grew up in (with more mystery/scandals/hot guys in leather jackets). I’ve tasted the sweet tea, went to the football games, sat through service where the pastor did indeed remove his belt and threaten kids for sleeping in church. Yep, that really happened. Bowie is a fictional place with fictional characters, but if you’ve ever lived in the south, it should feel familiar. Of the small town I’m from, I used to say: It’s small, hot and quick to judge, but no place could be closer to my heart.
I think that still about sums it up.
This is another book that almost didn’t get published. But I love this story, these characters, and I’d like to say thank you to everyone who helped Delilah and Ethan along the way.
The Unbelievable, Inconceivable, Unforeseeable Truth About Ethan Wilder Page 24
