Drawn Into Darkness(96)

The concussion smothered the sound of his scream.

Stoat’s chest exploded, spraying the room with red.

With the shotgun still hanging in his hands, Justin stood dazed by the din of the gunshot ringing and echoing in his mind, by the spectacle of his all-powerful captor splayed like roadkill before him, by a sense of all solid footing falling away from underneath his sore, sneakered feet. He balanced on a knife-edge of time. His future uncertain, fearsome, the specter of prison bars looming. His recent past gone in a burst of red. He had killed—

Killed Stoat?

“Is he dead?” Justin whispered to the shifting cosmos, shifting between man and boy, the man declaring, Yes. Yes, it had to be done, and the boy begging, No, no, please, I didn’t mean it, not Uncle Steve—

Lee’s voice said inside his head, He is SO not your uncle.

“He was going to throw the knife,” Justin said a little bit louder. And what Stoat had done to Lee—would she be all right?

With a sense of tension stretching, then snapping, a bond breaking, Justin shifted his stare from Stoat to Lee and her sons. Forrest knelt beside his mother holding her hand and whispering to her, although she appeared not to hear him. Quinn stood at a window talking rapid-fire on his cell phone. “. . . already on their way? Good, but we need an ambulance also. My mother. Yes, she has a pulse and she’s breathing but she’s unconscious. No, I can’t stay on the line. There are things I have to do.” He snapped his phone shut.

Justin heard this without much comprehension, as if it were background noise, because his ears were still ringing and his mind clamoring. He watched without really seeing as Quinn lifted his mother’s feet to place a sofa pillow underneath them, then ran to the bedroom and returned with a blanket, which he spread over her. “Trying to keep her from going into shock,” he told his brother, his voice stretched thin.

Forrest turned on him, shrill. “Kind of late, aren’t we? She moves down here all alone and we act like we don’t care and now—” He choked, trying to control tears.

“Forrie, we can’t help it that we’re a pair of jerks too much like our father.”

“But Mom!”

“I know. I wish—I want—I hope to God she’ll be all right.”

“She will. She’s got to.”

“Mom, stay with us, okay, please?” Quinn crouched by Lee Anna’s head, stroked her hair, and said tenderly to her still, silent face, “Mom, we’re idiots, we—” His voice hitched. “We need you.”

“We love you,” said Forrie, very low. “Hang in, Mom.”

Mom. Justin heard the word profoundly, and something free-floating within him began to connect, react, and magnify like yeast rising in homemade bread until its warm swelling filled him and displaced all else. He had no room in him for hesitation, none for shame or fear, and no need for a weapon. He let the shotgun drop to the floor with a thud. Startled by the noise, Quinn and Forrest looked at him.

“Could I borrow a phone, please?” asked Justin.





TWENTY-EIGHT





Supper, London broil with potatoes and asparagus, had been a strain for Amy, who had gotten out of the habit of cooking. But she had done her best not to let Chad know how stressed-out she felt, because she had made up her mind that Chad’s reconciliation with his father could only be good for him and Kyle and Kayla. And maybe even for him and her—but, loading the dishwasher, she did not yet dare to hope, or even think about his idea of going away together—

The phone rang.

“I’ll get it,” Amy yelled, heading toward the kitchen. Kyle and Kayla knew better than to answer the phone when it might be about Justin, but Amy didn’t want Chad and his dad, who were chatting in the living room, to be interrupted. “I’ll get it,” she repeated as she plucked the wireless from its cradle on the kitchen counter. “Hello?”

A youthful, husky male voice with a hint of burr in it said, “Mom?”

Amy’s body knew that voice, responded to it, as vibrant as a tuning fork: My child. Yet her quibbling mind could not believe, only question. She whispered, “Justin?”

“Yeah, Mom, it’s me.”

Amy screamed, a lovely, musical scream of sheerest soul-piercing joy. “Justin!”

The conversation in the living room abruptly stopped.

Amy heard Justin say, “Listen, Mom, are you listening?”

At the same time she cried, “Justin, are you all right?”

Chad came running into the kitchen with his father lagging a bit behind. Ned stopped at a polite distance. Chad grabbed Amy, putting an arm around her. This seemed so natural to her that she barely noticed, even though it had not happened for months.