When It's Right(4)
“Did they arrest and charge her with murder?”
Bud took a sip of the whiskey and continued to stare into nothing. “They’re still investigating, but it looks like a clear case of self-defense. The neighbors in the building confirmed this wasn’t the first time he’d hit her.”
Bud downed the last of his drink. “I changed my flight and went to San Francisco last night. She refused to see me. I never even got a look at her. I tried again this morning, but she didn’t change her mind. The doctor said she needed her rest. She’d be there several more days, so I came home. What the hell could I do?” He slammed his fist on the desk. “He nearly killed her.”
“What did the doctor say?”
“Nothing specific. Her injuries are extensive, but she’ll survive. I wonder, Blake—how much has she survived already that she had to shoot her own father to stop him from killing her?”
Blake wondered the same thing. “The point is, Bud, she did survive. What are you going to do now?”
“Anything I have to in order to get her here. Since she refused to talk to me, the doctor will speak to her on my behalf. I’m waiting for him to call me back.” Bud fell silent again, staring at the wall, waiting for the phone to ring.
Blake eventually left to find Dee in the kitchen. She turned the pieces of fried chicken in a cast-iron skillet. Cooking to cope. She and Bud married long after Erin left with Ron and several years after Bud’s first wife passed. Dee’s sympathy was for Bud, not the man who spent the last years making Bud’s life a misery of worry, regret, and hope that one day the guy would clean up his act and bring his granddaughter home. “How long’s it been since Bud heard from Ron?”
“Years. He hasn’t seen Gillian since she was a toddler. Since I married Bud, long before then, actually, Ron’s never called or come back to town.” Dee set the metal tongs on the counter and turned to face him. “He blames himself.”
“Bud had nothing to do with this. Erin and Ron made their choices.”
“Yes, and that poor girl paid the price.” Sadness infused Dee’s words and filled her eyes with concern.
“We don’t know everything that happened. The article is very brief. Yes, he hit her, and she shot him, but beyond that we don’t know anything about what her life with him has been like,” Blake pointed out.
“Bud tried to find her years ago now. He never felt right leaving her with Ron. What if she doesn’t want to come? What if he never gets a chance to make this right?”
“She shot her father. Maybe she needs time to recover and come to terms with what she’s done.”
“Do you think she did it on purpose?” Dee’s eyes filled with worry and uncertainty.
“If someone hit me in the past and hit me again, and I had a gun in my hand, I’d sure as hell shoot the bastard.” The anger roiled in Blake’s gut for the man who pushed his daughter too far.
Dee pressed her lips together and nodded, silently agreeing with him.
Blake didn’t feel bad for speaking his mind. Ron turned out to be the worst sort of man. You do not hit girls. You certainly never beat your child. The drugs had warped Ron’s mind, or maybe he was just rotten to the core. Either way, Blake hated him for treating Gillian so poorly.
“Well, I guess we’ll get the whole story when she gets here.”
Blake headed back out to the stables and his beloved horses, haunted by thoughts of the woman with the tiny feet lying atop the car’s smashed roof. He hoped she was okay, because he knew after a fall, whether from a window or a horse, everything changes.
Chapter 3
Gillian shifted in the bed, trying to get comfortable. Nothing worked. Everything ached, from her pounding head to her throbbing ankles. She could barely move, with her leg in a brace, one arm in a cast, the other wrapped in a bandage, and nearly her entire back and part of her head stitched. No high-tech safety glass in her eighty-year-old building. The brittle window broke into sharp pieces and sliced her to ribbons.
Last night, she’d stood in the bathroom with her back to the mirror and tried to count how many cuts crisscrossed her back. She’d closed her eyes, unable to bear the sight of all those cuts sewn together over the hours the doctors had worked on her. The overwhelming fear she’d felt the night she’d shot her father choked her. She tried to breathe but ended up hyperventilating. She’d never had a panic attack, but she imagined that’s what it felt like.
This morning, she surfed the channels, trying to find something to distract her from the fact that Justin had been placed in protective custody with CPS. Damnit, she needed to get him out of that foster home and back in her arms.