Whisper Me This(84)

“See? You’re even good at tissue basketball. Perfect in every way.”

“You’re kinda biased,” she says. She laughs, just the tiniest bit, which makes my heart ache even more when she asks, with a little quaver, “Do I have to go back with him tonight?”

“You are staying right here with me.”

As I say the words, a shadow Greg looms up over me, all-knowing, all-powerful. Are you sure you want to play that game with me, Maisey?

My answer? The thing I didn’t have the guts to say? No. No, Greg, I don’t want to play. But I will. For the sake of this strong, beautiful child, I will do anything. Give anything. Confront any challenge, any obstacle, you set in my path.

I’m just afraid that all I have will never be enough.





Leah’s Journal

Pain is what I remember first. White lights in my head. A deep ache in my eye socket that made me need to vomit, only I was lying on my back and couldn’t move.

Pinned, I thought, remembering Boots straddling me, only he wasn’t there anymore. The weight was gone. My body didn’t want to respond to my brain.

I managed to roll to the side, and the blaze of agony from moving set me to heaving. Not much in my stomach—I think I’d missed dinner—but just enough to foul my pillowcase.

Another task. That was my first conscious thought. Now I would have to do laundry.

The babies were still crying.

Boots was nowhere to be seen. His truck was not out front.

Somehow I managed to get through that night. To feed the twins. To strip the stinking pillowcase and throw it in the laundry.

The next few days were a blazing hell beyond any conscious thought. His mother, when she came over, didn’t look shocked, just sad. She didn’t even ask what happened to me. She fixed me an ice pack to put over my eye and my cheek. Changed the babies, held them.

“Steak is good for bruises,” she said, but we both knew neither one of us could afford the luxury of steak, even for eating.





Chapter Twenty-Five

Despite all my best intentions, I’m not much of a warrior woman. I’ll fight it out face-to-face with Greg if I must, but phase one in the plan to keep Elle from flying back with him is to be elsewhere when he shows up to get her. Dad and Elle both being complicit, we vacate the house in the early afternoon, in case Greg comes early.

Elle and I turn our phones off to minimize the ping of guilt that will arrive with each unanswered text message or voicemail. Dad has never carried a cell phone.

Staying occupied in Colville isn’t as easy as it would be in the city, but we hit the early movie at Colville’s one and only theater, which fortunately is rated PG, not R. We go for hamburgers at Ronnie D’s. We pick up new socks and T-shirts for Dad at Walmart. And we go to get groceries.

We’re in the cereal aisle at the Safeway—Dad, me, and Elle—having an argument about what would be acceptable for consumption, when Dad drops the bombshell.

Elle has gravitated toward the brightly colored, sugar-coated varieties. Dad mutters something about the good old days and oatmeal, and I’m really just staring at boxes and wishing there was a Make a Decision button so I wouldn’t have to think.

It’s 6:45 p.m., and my mind is thoroughly occupied with film clips of Greg showing up at Dad’s house to find it locked up tight. Ringing the doorbell. Talking to Edna. Maybe he’ll come looking for us and recognize Dad’s car in the parking lot. My eyes are in constant motion, up and down the aisle.

“This one,” Elle says, thrusting a garish box into my hands. “Look. Whole grain.”

“And sugar is the first ingredient.”

“No, it’s the second ingredient. Why can’t sugar be a grain?”

“Because—”

“I was wrong. I think we need to go see Marley.” Dad says this as if he’s read the words on the box of Raisin Bran he’s peering at through his bifocals.

I take a steadying breath. “Is the Raisin Bran sending out telepathic signals now?”

Dad ignores me. “We should skip town tonight. Drive to TriCities. Get a hotel. And then we’ll go talk to her in the morning.”

“All three of us. Just like that.”

“It would solve the Dad problem,” Elle says.

The box of cereal in my hands feels extraordinarily heavy. I set it back on the shelf.

“I need to get out of the house,” Dad says. “What do they call it—a grief holiday?”

“A what?”

“I heard it on TV. Oprah. Or something. Your mother was watching it.”

Elle throws her cereal box into the cart, followed by Dad’s Raisin Bran, and something middle-of-the-road and boring-looking. “We need milk. And plastic bowls. We can eat cereal in the hotel room. But we need road-trip snacks. Come on.”

She starts pushing the cart down the aisle.

“Elle . . .”

She keeps walking. Dad and I roll into motion like a couple of robot toys programmed to stay with the shopping cart.

Dad has totally perked up. His eyes are clearer than I’ve seen them since I got here, his steps steadier.

Still.

Me going to see Marley is one thing. Exposing Dad and Elle—especially Elle—to all that hostility is another.

“What if it’s not safe?” I ask him. “Mom got a gun after you contacted Marley. We can’t take Elle if it’s dangerous.”