The Weight of Blood (90)

“Why couldn’t you leave me alone?” Maddy wailed, petting her father’s waxy face. “He was all I had.”

Wendy glanced at the gun, replaying memories of Jules’s dad teaching them how to shoot on camping trips. Would she remember what to do when it counted?

“Kendrick’s dead. Now Papa,” she sniffed, squeezing her father tighter. “I have no one now. No one cares about me.”

Wendy straightened at the mention of Kenny, the tips of her fingers touching the cold steel. Maddy had killed so many people. She would be doing everyone a favor, could easily claim self-defense. Someone had to stop Maddy. Someone had to end it all. The town’s hero—she could write op-eds, appear on morning talk shows, maybe even land herself a book deal. Kenny would eventually forget all about Maddy once the checks started rolling in. They could still have the future she’d dreamed of.

All her problems . . . solved.

“They should have killed me,” Maddy sniffled, arms shaking. “Papa was right; you’re not nice to my kind. I thought it was going to be different. You all made me think it would be different . . .”

The sight of Maddy so broken and despondent made Wendy’s heart sink into a pool of shame.

“I . . . I didn’t do it,” Wendy mumbled.

Maddy cuddled her father’s head to her chest, sobbing into his hair. “Please. Just go.”

Wendy opened her mouth and shut it, guilt stunning her to silence. She hadn’t set up the bucket of paint, but she’d assisted in every other way. If it hadn’t been for Wendy, Maddy would never have gone to prom.

“Can you for once in your life do something for someone else that isn’t motivated by your own gain?”

Wendy’s eyes roamed around the room, seeing Mr. Washington baked into every nook of it. In his own warped, obsessive way, he’d loved Maddy. Wendy had no clue what that was like, having a parent who cared, who hovered, but she did know how it felt to have hope in a future, to pray that it would all be different on the other side of a dream. She blinked back tears, hand sliding away from the pistol.

“Kenny’s alive,” Wendy mumbled, her shoulders sagging.

Maddy stopped rocking, her neck snapping up. “What?”

“He’s alive. He’s with his sister. He asked me to come find you.”

Maddy considered this, her face forming a deep V. “He’s alive? Is he okay?”

Wendy leaned forward, noticing the blood leaking out of Maddy’s shoulder, and sat up on her knees.

“Jesus, Maddy, you’re bleeding!”

She looked down at her wound and sniffed. “Oh.”

Sirens blared in the distance. Wendy absorbed the scene—a bloody Maddy, a dead Mr. Washington, a gun—and rose to her feet, wiping her face clean.

“Come on, Maddy. We gotta get you out of here.”

Maddy gaped at her, baffled. “And go where?”

“I don’t know. But you know if they catch you, they’ll likely kill you for what you did.”

Maddy shivered, gazing down at her father, stroking his face. “The lynching tree . . .”

“You got anywhere to go?” Wendy asked. “Any family you can hide out with?”

Maddy sat with the thought for a few moments.

“Papa . . . said my mama left me.”

“Why?”

“Because of him. But . . . I don’t know where she is. Or who she is.”

Wendy paused to stare at the body of Mr. Washington, her stomach turning. A man like him, who loved old junk and kept Maddy such a secret . . . no way he wouldn’t keep anything on the woman who made her.

“Where does your dad keep his papers and stuff? Like birth certificates.”

She froze. “I think . . . maybe . . . in his office.”

Wendy grabbed the hurricane lamp and headed for the door. “Come on!”

Maddy limped down the stairs after her and pointed to a door. Wendy burst into the office and scrutinized the old desk, boxes, papers, and books stacked almost to the ceiling.

“Shit,” she mumbled, and snatched a folder off the desk, flipped through it, then tossed it aside.

Maddy watched from the threshold, threading her fingers, seeming too nervous to step inside.

“Wh-what are you doing?”

Wendy dug through a bin on the shelf. “There has to be something in here. Something that has her name on it. Help me!”

Wendy shuffled through papers, knocking over boxes, ripping books off the shelf. She yanked open each drawer, dumping the contents on the floor. Maddy flinched at the sound. Searching on the top of the bookcase, Wendy knocked over a tin lunch box. It crashed, pennies scattering, and a stack of letters, written in delicate blue script, fanned across the desk.

Wendy grabbed one of the letters, studying it close.

“Maddy,” she breathed.

Maddy hesitated before taking a tentative step inside, papers scattering away from her feet as if by a strong breeze. She took the narrow, thin sheet and read the opening line—My dearest moon child . . .

Maddy’s breath hitched as she stared at the letter in awe before mumbling, “‘I will fly to you, whenever I can.’”

Wendy frowned. “What?”

“It’s her,” she choked. “Mama. She said she’d write to me. Letters . . . they fly.”