His good hand was shaking hard as he opened the trunk and removed the crowbar. He saw Erin and her lover racing to the porch. He staggered and limped toward the house, unwilling and unable to stop, because Erin was his wife and he loved her and the gray-haired man had to die.
*
Alex skidded to a stop in front of the house and both of them jumped out simultaneously, running for the door, calling the kids' names. Katie still held the gun. They reached the door just as Josh opened it, and as soon as he saw his son, Alex swept him up in his arms. Kristen came out from behind the couch and rushed toward them. Alex opened his arms to her as well, catching her easily as she jumped.
Katie stood just inside the doorway, watching with tears of relief in her eyes. Kristen reached out for her, too, and Katie moved closer, accepting Kristen's hug with a blind rush of happiness.
Lost in the tidal wave of emotion, none of them noticed Kevin appear in the doorway, crowbar raised high. He swung hard, sending Alex crashing to the floor and the kids stumbling and falling backward in horror and shock.
Kevin heard the satisfying thud of the crowbar, felt the vibration up his arm. The gray-haired man lay crumpled on the floor and Erin screamed.
In that instant, Alex and the kids were all that mattered to her, and Katie instinctively rushed toward Kevin, driving him back out the door. There were only two porch steps, but it was enough, and Kevin toppled backward into the dirt.
Katie spun around. "Lock the door!" she screamed, and this time it was Kristen who moved first, even as she screamed.
The crowbar had fallen to the side and Kevin struggled to roll over and stand. Katie raised the gun, pointing it as Kevin finally made it to his feet. He swayed, almost losing his balance, his face a skeletal white. He seemed unable to focus and Katie could feel the tears in her eyes.
"I used to love you," she said. "I married you because I loved you."
He thought it was Erin, but her hair was short and dark, and Erin was a blond. A foot lurched forward as he almost fell again. Why was she telling him this?
"Why did you start to hit me?" she cried. "I never knew why you couldn't stop even when you promised." Her hand was shaking and the gun felt so, so heavy. "You hit me on our honeymoon because I left my sunglasses by the pool..."
The voice was Erin's and he wondered if he was dreaming.
"I love you," he mumbled. "I've always loved you. I don't know why you left me."
She could feel the sobs building in her chest, choking her. Her words flooded out in a torrent, unstoppable and nonsensical, years' worth of sorrow. "You wouldn't let me drive or have any friends and you kept the money and made me beg you for it. I want to know why you thought you could do that to me. I was your wife and I loved you!"
Kevin could barely stay upright. Blood dripped from his fingers and arm to the ground, slippery and distracting. He wanted to talk to Erin, wanted to find her, but this wasn't real. He was sleeping, Erin was beside him in bed, and they were in Dorchester. Then his thoughts leapfrogged, and he was standing in a dingy apartment and a woman was crying.
"There was pizza sauce on his forehead," he muttered, stumbling forward. "On the boy who was shot, but the mom fell down the stairs and we arrested the Greek."
She couldn't make sense of what he was saying, couldn't understand what he wanted from her. She hated him with a rage that had been building up for years. "I cooked for you and cleaned for you and none of it mattered! All you did was drink and hit me!"
Kevin was swaying, like he was about to fall. His words were slurred, unintelligible. "There were no footprints in the snow. But the flowerpots are broken."
"You should have let me go! You shouldn't have followed me! You shouldn't have come here! Why couldn't you just let me go? You never loved me!"
Kevin lurched toward her, but this time he reached for the gun, trying to knock it away. He was weak now, though, and she managed to hold on. He tried to grab her, but he screamed in agony when his damaged hand connected with her arm. Acting on instinct, he threw his shoulder into her, driving her against the side of the house. He needed to take the gun away from her and press it into her temple. He stared at her with wide, hate-filled eyes, pulling her close, reaching for the gun with his good hand, using his weight against her.
He felt the barrel graze his fingertips and instinctively scrambled for the trigger. He tried to push the gun toward her, but it was moving in the wrong direction, pointing down now.
"I loved you!" she sobbed, fighting him with every ounce of rage and strength left in her, and he felt something give way, momentary clarity returning.
"Then you never should have left me," he whispered, his breath heavy with alcohol. He pulled the trigger and the gun sounded with a loud crack and then he knew it was almost over. She was going to die because he'd told her that he'd find her and kill her if she ever ran away again. He would kill any man who loved her.
But strangely, Erin didn't fall, didn't even flinch. Instead, she stared at him with fierce green eyes, holding his gaze without blinking.
He felt something then, burning in his stomach, fire. His left leg gave way and he tried to stay upright, but his body was no longer his own. He collapsed on the porch, reaching for his stomach.
"Come back with me," he whispered. "Please."
Blood pulsed through the wound, passing between his fingers. Above him, Erin was going in and out of focus. Blond hair and then brown again. He saw her on their honeymoon, wearing a bikini, before she'd forgotten her sunglasses, and she was so beautiful that he couldn't understand why she'd wanted to marry him.
Beautiful. She was always so beautiful, he thought, and then he was tired again. His breaths became ragged and then he started to feel cold, so cold, and he began to shake. He exhaled once more, the sound like air being released from a tire. His chest stopped moving. His eyes were wide open, uncomprehending.
Katie stood over him, shaking as she stared down at him. No, she thought. I'll never go with you. I never wanted to go back.
But Kevin didn't know what she was thinking, because Kevin was gone, and she realized then that it was finally, truly, over.
41
The hospital kept Katie under observation for most of the night before finally releasing her. Afterward, Katie remained in the hospital waiting room, unwilling to leave until she knew Alex would be okay.
Kevin's blow had nearly cracked Alex's skull, and he was still unconscious. Morning light illuminated the narrow rectangular windows of the waiting room. Nurses and doctors changed shifts, and the room began to fill with people: a child with a fever, a man having trouble breathing. A pregnant woman and her panicked husband pushed through the swinging doors. Every time she heard a doctor's voice, she looked up, hoping she would be allowed to see Alex.
Bruises mottled her face and arms, and her knee was swollen to almost twice its usual size, but after the requisite X-rays and exams, the doctor on call had merely given her ice packs for her bruises and Tylenol for the pain. He was the same doctor who was treating Alex, but he couldn't tell her when Alex would wake and said that the CAT scans were inconclusive. "Head wounds can be serious," he'd told her. "Hopefully, we'll know more in a few hours."
She couldn't think, couldn't eat, couldn't sleep, couldn't stop worrying. Joyce had taken the kids home from the hospital and Katie hoped they hadn't had nightmares. Hoped they wouldn't have nightmares forever. Hoped Alex was going to recover fully. Prayed for that.
She was afraid to close her eyes because every time she did, Kevin reappeared. She saw the smears of blood on his face and shirt, his wild eyes. Somehow, he'd tracked her down; somehow, he'd found her. He'd come to Southport to take her home or kill her, and he'd almost succeeded. In one night, he had destroyed the fragile illusion of security she had managed to construct since she'd arrived in town.
The terrifying visions of Kevin kept coming back, recurring endlessly with variations, sometimes changing entirely; there were moments she saw herself bleeding and dyi
ng on the porch, staring up at the man she hated. When that happened, she instinctively groped at her stomach, searching for wounds that didn't exist, but then she was back in the hospital, sitting and waiting under fluorescent lights.
She worried about Kristen and Josh. They'd be here soon; Joyce would bring them in to see their father. She wondered if they would hate her because of everything that happened, and the thought made tears sting her eyes. She covered her face with her hands, wishing she could burrow into a hole so deep that no one would ever find her. So that Kevin would never find her, she thought, and then remembered again that she'd watched him die on the porch. The words He's dead echoed like a mantra she couldn't escape.
"Katie?"
She looked up and saw the doctor who was now treating Alex.
"I can bring you back now," he said. "He woke up about ten minutes ago. He's still in ICU, so you can't stay long, but he wants to see you."
"Is he okay?"
"Right now, he's about as good as can be expected. He took a nasty blow."
Limping slightly, she followed the doctor as they made their way to Alex's room. She took a deep breath and straightened her posture before she entered, telling herself that she wasn't going to cry.
The ICU was filled with machines and blinking lights. Alex was in a bed in the corner, a bandage wrapped around his head. He turned toward her, his eyes only half open. A monitor beeped steadily beside him. She moved to his bedside and reached for his hand.
"How are the kids?" he whispered. The words came out slowly. Labored.
"They're fine. They're with Joyce. She took them home."
A faint, almost imperceptible smile crossed his lips.
"You?"
"I'm okay." She nodded.
"Love you," he said.
It was all she could do not to break down again. "I love you, too, Alex."
His eyelids drooped, his gaze unfocused. "What happened?"
She gave him an abbreviated account of the past twelve hours, but midstory she saw his eyes close. When he woke again later that morning, he'd forgotten parts of what she had recounted, so she told him again, trying to sound calm and matter-of-fact.
Joyce brought Josh and Kristen by, and though children weren't ordinarily allowed in the ICU, the doctor let them visit with their dad for a couple of minutes. Kristen had drawn him a picture of a man lying in a hospital bed, complete with a crayon-scrawled GET WELL, DADDY; Josh gave him a fishing magazine.
As the day wore on, Alex became more coherent. By the afternoon, he was no longer nodding in and out, and although he complained of a monstrous headache, his memory had more or less returned. His voice was stronger and when he told the nurse he was hungry, Katie gave a smile of relief, finally sure that he was going to be okay.
Alex was released the next day, and the sheriff visited them at Joyce's to get their formal statements. He told them that the alcohol content in Kevin's blood was so high that he'd effectively poisoned himself. Combined with the blood loss he'd suffered, it was a wonder he had been conscious, much less coherent to any degree. Katie said nothing, but all she could think was that they didn't know Kevin or understand the demons that drove him.
After the sheriff left, Katie went outside and stood in the sunlight, trying to make sense of her feelings. Though she'd told the sheriff about the events of that night, she hadn't told him everything. Nor had she told Alex everything--how could she, when it barely made sense to her? She didn't tell them that in the moments after Kevin had died and she'd rushed to Alex's side, she'd wept for them both. It seemed impossible that even as she relived the terror of those last hours with Kevin, she also remembered their rare happy moments together--how they'd laughed at private jokes or lounged peacefully on the couch together.
She didn't know how to reconcile these conflicting pieces of her past and the horror of what she'd just lived through. But there was something more, too, something else she didn't understand: she'd stayed at Joyce's because she was afraid to go back home.
Later that day, Alex and Katie stood in the parking lot, staring at the charred remains of what had once been the store. Here and there she could see items she recognized: the couch, half burned, tilted on the rubble; a shelf that once housed groceries; a bathtub scorched black.
A couple of firemen were rooting through the remains. Alex had asked them to look for the safe he'd kept in his closet. He'd removed the bandage and Katie could see the spot where they'd shaved his head to apply stitches, the area black and blue and swollen.
"I'm sorry," Katie murmured. "For everything."
Alex shook his head. "It's not your fault. You didn't do it."
"But Kevin came for me..."
"I know," he said. He was quiet for a moment. "Kristen and Josh told me how you helped them get out of the house. Josh said that after you grabbed Kevin, you told them to run. He said you distracted him. I just wanted to say thank you."
Katie closed her eyes. "You can't thank me for that. If anything had happened to them, I don't know that I could have lived with myself."
He nodded but couldn't seem to look at her. Katie kicked at a small pile of ash that had blown into the parking lot. "What are you going to do? About the store?"
"Rebuild, I guess."
"Where will you live?"
"I don't know yet. We'll stay at Joyce's for a bit, but I'll try to find someplace quiet, someplace with a view. Since I can't work, I might as well try to enjoy the free time."
She felt sick to her stomach. "I can't even imagine how you feel right now."
"Numb. Sad for the kids. Shocked."
"And angry?"
"No," he said. "I'm not angry."
"But you lost everything."
"Not everything," he said. "Not the important things. My kids are safe. You're safe. That's all I really care about. This"--he said motioning--"is just stuff. Most of it can be replaced. It just takes time." When he finished, he squinted at something in the rubble. "Hold on for a second," he said.
He walked toward a pile of charred debris and pulled out a fishing pole that had been wedged between blackened planks of wood. It was grimy, but otherwise looked undamaged. For the first time since they'd arrived, he smiled.
"Josh will be happy about this," he said. "I just wish I could find one of Kristen's dolls."
Katie crossed her arms over her stomach, feeling tears in her eyes. "I'll buy her a new one."
"You don't have to. I'm insured."
"But I want to. None of this would have happened if it hadn't been for me."
He looked at her. "I knew what I was getting into when I first asked you out."
"But you couldn't have expected this."
"No," he admitted. "Not this. But it's going to be okay."
"How can you say that?"
"Because it's true. We survived and that's all that matters." He reached for her hand and she felt his fingers intertwine with hers. "I haven't had a chance to say that I'm sorry."
"Why would you be sorry?"
"For your loss."
She knew he was talking about Kevin and she wasn't sure what to say. He seemed to understand that she'd both loved and hated her husband. "I never wanted him to die," she began. "I just wanted to be left alone."
"I know."
She turned tentatively toward him. "Are we going to be okay? I mean, after all this?"
"I suppose that depends on you."
"Me?"
"My feelings haven't changed. I still love you, but you need to figure out whether your feelings have changed."
"They haven't."
"Then we'll find a way to work through all this together because I know I want to spend the rest of my life with you."
Before she could respond, one of the firemen called out to them and they turned in his direction. He was working to free something, and when he stood he was holding a small safe.
"Do you think it was damaged?" Katie said.
"It shouldn't be," Alex answered. "It's fireproof. That
's why I bought it."
"What's in it?"
"Mainly records, but I'm going to need them. Some photo disks and negatives. Things I wanted to protect."
"I'm glad they found it."
"So am I," he said. He paused. "Because there's something in there for you, too."
42
After dropping Alex off at Joyce's, Katie finally drove back home, not wanting to return but knowing she couldn't put off the inevitable forever. Even if she didn't intend to stay there, she needed to pack up some of her belongings.
Dust rose from the gravel and she bounced through the potholes before pulling to a stop out front. She sat in the jeep--dented and scraped, but still running fine--and stared at the door, remembering how Kevin had bled to death on her porch, his gaze fixed on her face.
She didn't want to see the bloodstains. She was afraid that opening the door would remind her of the way Alex had looked after Kevin struck him. She could practically hear the sounds of Kristen and Josh crying hysterically as they clung to their father. She wasn't prepared to relive all of that.
Instead, she started toward Jo's. In her hand was the letter that Alex had given her. When she'd asked him why he'd written to her, he'd shaken his head. "It's not from me," he'd said. She'd stared at him, confused. "You'll understand once you read it," he'd told her.
As she approached Jo's, she felt the trace of a memory stir to life. Something that happened on the night of the fire. Something she'd seen but she couldn't quite place. Just as she felt her mind closing in on it, the memory slipped away. She slowed as she drew nearer to Jo's house, a frown of confusion creasing her face.
There were cobwebs on the window, and a shutter had fallen to the ground where it lay shattered in the grass. The porch railing was broken and she could see weeds sprouting between the planks. Her eyes took in everything, but she was unable to process the scene before her: a rusted doorknob, half dangling from the door, grime on the windows as if they hadn't been cleaned in years.
No curtains...
No entry mat...