Whisper Me This(98)

Chapter Thirty-One

Dad’s voice falters into silence as he chokes on his own emotions.

Even Boots looks subdued, smaller. He’s not one to give up easily, though. “It’s not true,” he says. “Don’t you listen to him, Marley. Don’t you believe a word he says. These people are trying to poison you against me.”

Marley doesn’t seem to hear him. She stands like a statue in the middle of the room. And then, “I remember,” she whispers.

“Oh, that’s just ridiculous,” Boots scoffs. “You were barely more than a baby.”

She turns, slowly, as if just waking from a trance, to face him. “I’ve always remembered. I just thought it must be a dream. A nightmare. I still dream it sometimes, but I only remember flashes. A woman on the ground. A boot kicking her in the head. A gun. Me screaming, screaming, screaming, trying to hold on to something that is torn away. It all happened, didn’t it? It’s real.”

Elle buries her face in Mia’s shoulder and starts to sob. Tony gets up and turns his back to us, staring out the window. Dad looks exhausted.

As for me, I feel like my heart has swollen so big that it’s occupying all my insides. I want to hug the child that Marley was and the woman that she is now. I want to hug my father—not the devil father, Boots, but the man who raised me as his own, the man who helped to heal my mother.

I want, more than anything, for my mother to be alive so that I can tell her that I understand now. I can see why she pushed me so hard to be better, to do more, why nothing I did was ever enough for her. She needed me to make up for Marley, to be enough for two girls even though I was only one.

For me, it’s too big for tears.

I get out of my chair and cross the room to Marley. “I have the same dream,” I tell her. “The woman on the ground. The flash of a gun. Me, screaming. Only in my dream, it’s you I’m being torn away from.”

We stand there, face-to-face, looking at each other, and then the barrier between us shatters. We both move at the same time, arms around each other, cheeks pressed together, holding on for dear life to what feels like the missing half of what I’ve always needed to be whole.

“I hate to interrupt this fairy tale,” Boots says, his voice dripping sarcasm, “but would you all mind clearing out of my house?”

Marley’s body stiffens at the sound of his voice. She moves out of our embrace, but her hand finds mine, and our fingers clasp, joining us together as we both turn to face him.

“That’s all you have to say for yourself?”

“I see no point. You’ve judged me. Anything I can say that will change that?”

His gaze moves from my face to hers and back again. “I thought not. Get me another beer before you go, will you? And be sure to close the door behind you.”

“You can get your own beer,” Marley says. “You’re on your own. You might think about getting up off your ass and finding somebody to buy your groceries. I won’t be back.”

She tugs at my hand and leads me out of that smoke-filled cesspit and into the light of a beautiful spring afternoon.





Chapter Thirty-Two

It’s three days shy of a month after Mom’s funeral when a teenager walks up the sidewalk to the front door. I open the door with a smile, expecting some sort of pitch for a school fund-raiser.

“Maisey Addington?” she asks.

“That’s me,” I say, before I can wonder how she knows my name. She holds out a manila envelope, and I take it before I register that there is no catalogue full of chocolate or popcorn. As soon as it’s in my hand, she trots down the driveway and takes off on her bicycle without looking back.

I know what’s going to be inside that envelope before I tear it open.

Greg has drawn the case up himself. He is suing for full custody of Elle. He takes several pages to lay out my unfitness to be a parent. By the time I’m done reading the accusations against me, I’m inclined to put Elle on a bus and refrain from even visiting.

But Greg hasn’t counted on my family. Or his timing. The revelation of what Boots did to my mother, and to Marley, and to me, is still fresh, and we’re all full of fight in need of an outlet.

“What happened?”

Marley comes out onto the porch and plops down beside me. She’s got this sixth sense that tells her when I’m upset about something. I’ve got the same thing about her. It’s fascinating how this works, given how we didn’t cultivate some special twin radar growing up. But it’s there anyway.

I hand her the papers, and she starts reading through them, cursing all the way.

“What an absolute piece-of-shit asshole,” she says.

“Who is a piece-of-shit asshole?” Elle asks, behind us.

Marley and I exchange a glance made up of chagrin on her part and panic on mine. The language isn’t the issue. I don’t want Elle to know about this. She can’t know.

But Marley turns around and says, quite calmly, “Your father, honey.”

Elle drops onto the step below me, where she can look up at both of us. “What’s he done now?” she asks, with deceptive calm.

“She’s going to have to know sooner or later,” Marley says. “Might as well get it over with.”