Whisper Me This(97)

“Now, Marley,” Boots protests. “Don’t you listen to this pack of lies. Not a word of it is true. If Leah had broken bones, then he’s the one who gave them to her.”

“The journal,” I say, the lights coming on all at once. “You read the journal. I thought you burned it.”

“God help me, I had to read it first,” Dad says. “I know she trusted me to destroy it, but I wondered, too. How could the strong woman I knew have left a baby behind? I couldn’t reconcile it in my head. And so I read everything she wrote.”

“Do you still have it?” I lean forward, hoping. I want to read it for myself. Maybe it would help Marley in some way.

Dad shakes his head. “I burned it. After the shredder jammed, I threw it on the fire.”

For the first time since I’ve met her, Marley’s control cracks. “So she chose Maisey.” Tears flow down her cheeks, and she scrubs them away, roughly. “I can see why she left. But you’re not helping. How could a mother leave her child with a . . . a . . . monster?”

“She didn’t have a choice,” Dad says, and his voice has gone so cold, a shiver skates up my spine and settles at the base of my skull.





Leah’s Journal

“You can go,” Boots said, “but you have to leave one of the girls.”

Horror crawled all over me. Like ants, it felt. Ants in my belly and my heart and crawling in and out of my lungs.

“You’re crazy. What would you do with a child?”

“That’s my business, isn’t it?” he said. “You were leaving. Anything that happens here is of no concern to you.”

“I can’t—how could I do that?”

“Should have thought about that a little sooner. Pick one.”

“No. Please.” I actually clasped my hands to him. I let go of the girls and crawled to him on my knees. “Don’t do this, Boots. I’ll do anything you want. Just let me come back.”

He loved that. Made him feel powerful and godlike. I could see it on his face. But he was not a benevolent god.

A kick to the side of my head knocked me over onto the sidewalk. I lay there, the world spinning, pain blazing, and I couldn’t think. His words kept hammering at me.

“Pick one, Leah. Do it before I count to ten, or I get both of them.”

I couldn’t even see straight, Walter, let alone think. I was afraid he’d just shoot us all, he was so crazy in that moment.

He started counting, his voice bludgeoning my brain, my emotions, my heart. Every number leading up to the absolute disaster. I was paralyzed.

But then he got to eight. Nine.

“Maisey,” I said. “I choose Maisey.” She wasn’t as strong as Marley. That was what did it in the end. She was sick a lot. She was sensitive. I guess I figured that if one of them was likely to survive life with Boots, it would be Marley.

I also told myself I’d come back for her. It wasn’t forever. Only just right now. Today. I’d go to the police. I’d find money somewhere and get a lawyer. I’d get her back.

“Perfect,” he says. “So like you. You get the runt, I get the strong one. Marley, come here.”

I’d managed to sit up by then. She didn’t want to go to him. She locked her arms around my neck and half strangled me, holding on. Marley never was much of a crier, but she started wailing at the top of her lungs. I thought he might hit her to shut her up, but it seemed like maybe he liked to hear her cry, or at least enjoyed the effect it was having on me.

He came over to us and grabbed her around the middle. She screamed and kicked and held on, but he yanked her off me.

I’ll never forget that moment when her little hands let go, the sudden coolness on my neck, my face, the sound of her screaming. He held her tight, and then he put that gun against the side of her head.

People talk about slow motion, but I’m telling you this: In that moment, all the world went still. Nothing moved. Everything was a series of snapshots.

Boots holding Marley. Her tear-streaked face. The gun pressed to her head. Maisey sitting on the sidewalk, wailing.

“If you come looking for her, I’ll kill her,” Boots said. “If you talk to the cops or hire an attorney, I’ll kill her. You will not make contact with her or me or your parents or anybody in this town. If you do, after I kill Marley, I’ll come looking for you and Maisey. Do you understand?”

I couldn’t even begin to breathe. It still feels like a nightmare, writing this. Every day since it happened I’ve tried to wake up, to change the way the dream ends. Back then, kneeling in the street, I thought maybe I could appeal to his better self somehow.

“You don’t mean that,” I said. “You’re her father.”

“Do I look like a man who doesn’t mean it?”

He looked like the devil himself. There was a grin on his face. The sun came out just then and turned his hair gold. He was beautiful and evil and all the reason had been burned out of him by the drugs and alcohol.

I wanted to kill him. I think I would have, if I’d been the one holding a gun.

But the gun was aimed at my baby. I was sick with pain and terror, and I believed him. I believed he had the power to know if I was following his instructions. I believed he would do what he said.

And so I managed to get up onto my feet, the world spinning, every breath an agony because of my ribs. I picked up the suitcase. I picked up Maisey. And I walked away from him and from my beautiful Marley still screaming in his arms.