Gun Shy(42)

“Have you spoken to Cassie since you’ve been back?” Amanda asks, her tone tentative, almost like she’s afraid. I shove my hands in my pockets, suddenly feeling about two feet tall.

“Nope,” I say. “Well, that first day with the spilled milk, but not since then.”

“You never answered my question before. Have you been drinking since you got out?” she asks me.

“No,” I reply evenly, wanting to be angry but knowing that it’s a perfectly legitimate question. I kick at the floor with the tip of my sneaker. “No, I haven’t had a drop.”

We watch Hannah order with the waitress.

“Your sister needs to go to see a real doctor at a medical center,” Amanda says, as Hannah approaches us. I shake my head, putting my finger to my lips. “She hates hospitals. We’ll have to trick her. Don’t let her hear you.”

Amanda nods, smiling broadly as Hannah gets within earshot. She takes her back to her booth and gives her an iPhone to play with. We don’t have one, don’t have anything like that at our place, so she’s instantly enthralled by a YouTube video of people unwrapping various toys and figurines. She’s completely captivated, some annoying high-pitched voice narrating all of the videos, and Amanda comes back to join me.

“Have you asked her who the father of the baby is?”

I shake my head. “I already know. It’s that Derek Jackson, the one who used to do janitorial stuff at the hospital until he got fired. Remember?”

Amanda frowns. “Are you sure?”

“Pretty sure. I mean, I walked in on them in the bedroom—”

“How long have you been home, Leo.”

I count the days. “A week, today.”

“Well, I’m sorry to break it to you, but judging by your sister’s measurements, she’s anywhere from five to seven months pregnant.”

“And?”

“And, Derek Jackson wasn’t fired. He was arrested. Outstanding warrant for unpaid fines. That was… Christmas. He only got back to Gun Creek a few weeks before you did. If he was the father, Hannah would be about eleven months pregnant right now.”

I feel fucking stupid all of a sudden. “How do you know all this?” I ask, alarm bells ringing in my head. Because if Derek isn’t the father of Hannah’s baby, who is? I mean, it could literally be anyone. She’s so damn trusting, and all she wants is attention, and she can’t tell good attention from bad.

“I work weekend shifts at the hospital,” she says. “Derek broke into the drug store and stole a heap of pharmaceutical grade morphine.” Probably shared it with my mom, I think wryly. “I saw them arrest him. That’s how I know what happened.”

“Shit,” I say. I don’t know what to think. Just that now I have to kill two people for laying their hands on my baby sister. Derek, because I know he’s one of them, and whoever else it was who did this to her.

I’m going to run out of places to bury all these bodies.

I hope to God it’s a kid Hannah’s age. Somehow, that would make it less bad. I’d still smash the little punk’s face in, and she’s still mentally not old enough to be having sex with anybody, but at least if it were another fourteen-year-old kid, I could begin to understand how this happened.

“I need to know who the father is,” I say.

Amanda gives me a look. “Let me guess — so you can kill them?”

“Something like that,” I mumble. Yeah, something very fucking similar to that.

“Let’s see if we can talk to her, get any information,” Amanda says. “If you promise me you won’t do anything bad with the information.”

I think about that for a moment. “Then what’s the point of having the information?”

This woman is so patient, she must be a fucking saint. “We tell the authorities if we need to, and we let them deal with it. If he’s an adult, we make sure it’s reported to child services.”

“What if they try to take her away?” I snap, my whole body going rigid. “No. NO.”

“Okay, then, we don’t tell anyone. Unless we both agree. Okay?”

I nod. “Yeah. Okay. Yeah.”

Amanda goes over to the booth and talks with Hannah for a moment. I edge closer, just within earshot, but I have to focus very carefully, and I’m missing every second or third word that Hannah says.

“— Sent him away. Now I’m sad,” Hannah says, pushing something on the iPhone. Derek. She must be talking about Derek.

I smile to myself when I hear Amanda tell Hannah how special God made her, and how important it is to find the special father of her special baby. I don’t know how, or why, but my sister starts talking, and I wish to hell that I hadn’t asked.

“Mom’s friend says I’m special, too,” I hear Hannah say. “He used to bring me presents until I started getting fat. Now he just comes and picks up Mom and he won’t talk to me.”

I look at Amanda, and I can see the alarm bells on her expression. “What friend, sweetie?”

Now he just comes and picks up Mom. Jesus. Don’t let it be him. Anyone but him.

“Mr. Carter,” Hannah chirps up. Fuck, no. “He’d bring me presents, and then we’d have special time. I’m not supposed to tell anyone.”