Killman Creek (Stillhouse Lake #2)(63)

“Sam!” Mom comes to her feet as he walks for the front door. “Sam, please don’t!”

“Leave him alone,” I tell her. “You’ve hurt him enough.”

I don’t know if she even hears me, but she stops trying to talk to him. She watches as Sam leaves. The door shuts behind him.

She looks helpless now, and lost, and afraid. “You can’t believe this. I understand why Sam would. But not you, Lanny, you know better. You know who I am.”

She reaches out to me, and I don’t come toward her. I pull back.

“I never want to see you again. You’re not my mother. I don’t have a mother.” I mean it. I mean every word, and I can hear the rage shaking my voice. I want to slap her so hard that just thinking about it makes my hand feel hot. I want to punish her. I want her to feel like I do. Beaten and wrecked.

And I think she does now, because the shock and horror I see in her face is almost enough. Almost.

“I never helped your father!”

It comes out as a strangled sort of cry, and I don’t believe her. I don’t even think she believes herself.

Connor says, “You did. We saw. Stop saying you didn’t. We’re never going to believe you again.” That’s it. That’s all. It’s the most he’s said since he saw the video.

It hits Mom hard, and she gasps like she’s been punched in the stomach. She looks at Javier. At Kezia. Nobody has anything more to say to her. I see something break inside her, and she sits down again. My mother looks like she wants to die.

It hurts me to see that, but it’s the weak part of me, the one that still, stupidly, always wants to believe things will be all right, and they never will. They never were right from the start. Maybe, finally, this is the last time I’ll believe stupid, childish bullshit.

“What do you want me to do?” Mom finally asks. She sounds defeated now. She’s given up. I wait to feel good about it, because I should, but I just feel empty. The anger that’s been driving me is starting to drain away. All that’s left is silence and ruin, and I’ve never felt so alone in my entire life.

“I need you to go, Gwen,” Javier says. “Don’t come back until this is over and you’ve got real proof of what you’re claiming. You shouldn’t be around your kids right now. It’s not healthy.” That surprises me, somehow. I didn’t think he’d be on our side. Or that Kezia would, really. But they’re standing with us, against Mom.

It helps.

Mom can’t believe it, either. “Javi—”

“If you can prove what you say, that Absalom is behind this, then we can talk,” Kezia says. “I’ll be the first to say I was wrong. But right now, I’d be a fool not to believe what’s right in front of my face, and what I see is you helping Melvin Royal carry some poor girl in to cut up. If that’s true, any part of true, you don’t deserve to ever see these kids again.”

Mom puts a hand to her mouth, like she might scream, or vomit. The look on her face—shock, panic, I don’t know. But she’s in pain. I don’t care, I tell myself fiercely. Good. I hope it hurts.

“If I’m really what it shows on that video, why am I out hunting for him now?” Mom asks. Her voice is shaking so badly it sounds like it might fall apart. “How does that even make sense?”

“Makes sense if you’re trying to get back to him and join up,” Kezia replies, and that stops my mom cold. It also makes me feel sick to my stomach, because maybe it’s true. Maybe Mom and Dad have always been working together. Maybe whatever sick thing they had is still there.

“I’m not,” Mom says. It sounds weak. It sounds like a lie, and I start to hate her all over again.

“Yeah, you say. Maybe all this innocent-victim act was a lie from the start, and Absalom had you right all along. Which is another reason to keep these kids away from all that mess.”

One image suddenly comes through to me, and it stops the flood of anger inside me. Mom, coming down the steps in Lancel Graham’s basement. The horror on her face when she realized what she was looking at.

The joy when she saw me and Connor, unharmed.

It doesn’t make sense with everything else, and it’s the truest moment I know, the moment where I saw, really saw, how much she loved us both. Mom came for us in that dark place when I thought we were going to die alone. She was bleeding and wounded, and she’d fought her way back to save us.

That isn’t something a liar and a killer does. Is it?

Maybe she does love us, I think. And then, But maybe she just loves Dad more. That’s an awful thought, one that makes my stomach drop, and I put my arm around Connor. I can’t take any chances. I have to protect him. And that means I have to make Mom go away.

I’m tired all of a sudden. I just want to curl up in a ball on my bed and cry.

Mom’s scarf slips enough that it reveals a whole universe of bruises—dark red spots, threads of broken blood vessels connecting them. Somebody’s hurt her, and for a second I’m scared, and I’m worried for her, and I have to stop myself from feeling that because she’s a liar and she probably deserved it.

My head hurts, and I hate this—I hate all of it. So I say, “Just get out, Mom. We don’t want you.” I meant to say, We don’t want you here, but it came out the way I really felt it. We don’t want you. It’s the worst thing I could say to her, and I know that. I really do.