Mother May I(100)

Marshall was still talking. Trey was answering. Their words devolved into a mishmash. I closed my eyes. Marshall must be right; she was dead. I stared into a million colors swirling on the backs of my lids. Real Lexie, if alive, would be close to fifty, would look more like sixty. Marshall must be right.

I opened my eyes, and still she came. I glanced at the bar. Mills was saying something to his partner. They were drinking Cokes, alert, watching the perimeter. They did not seem to see anything amiss. She was not the danger they were looking for. Or perhaps only I could see her.

As the ghost of Lexie Pine stepped off the path, her white shoes pressing down the grass, as Marshall’s and Trey’s voices swirled nonsensically around me, I fell strangely calm. This felt fair. This felt right, that I should be so haunted. I had not fought hard enough for her. I’d earned this. I wondered if Trey would see her, too. I wondered if he’d see her face and tell the truth.

“Look,” I said, soft. Too soft. “It’s Lexie.” The buzz of male voices continued. Neither of them heard me.

She was only steps away now, coming directly to our table, not the hostess stand. Her face was set in lines both beautiful and terrible.

“Hey,” Mills called. “Hey!”

He saw her, approaching. He saw her, and so she was real; it was as if a gauze were stripped from my eyes.

This was not Lexie Pine. Lexie was dead. But oh, I knew this broken girl. I knew her face.

The white rectangle that she held, it was not a clutch purse. It was a flat white envelope. Exactly like the one Coral sent me. It was even now falling to the ground as she dropped it, the gun she had hidden behind it aimed and ready.

Her shadow hit us. At the bar Mills was already in motion. Trey started to glance behind him.

“Kelly, wait!” It was all I had time to say before the boom of gunfire filled the courtyard.

Her bullets hit Trey like punches to his back—one, two, three—knocking him forward into the table. Trey looked so surprised. At almost the same moment, red bloomed between Kelly’s breasts, knocking her back, and her arms jerked her gun off target. Her next bullet kicked up a tuft of grass.

There was now a steady rhythm of unendurable sound, Mills and then Maxwell firing in short, controlled bursts. Her white dress bloomed with more red poppies as she fell backward, dropping her gun as Trey grabbed the tablecloth and slid sideways out of his chair, pulling our drinks and the little dish of olives as he went.

He lay on his back on the green grass. I stared at my husband, frozen. He looked perfect, his white shirt pristine, tie still knotted. Unharmed. Her bullets must have stopped somewhere inside him.

“Kelly!” I said again. Now I was rising, but in such slow motion. I felt my legs knocking my own chair over. In my peripheral vision, I saw our fancy-haired waiter moving so much faster than I could, blanching, screaming, turning to run, dropping the cheese plate he was bringing us.

“We’re security! Security!” I heard Mills yelling.

I was trying to untangle my feet from my fallen chair. I had to get to Trey. He stared up, blue eyes meeting mine. He was not afraid. He looked, if anything, surprised.

I dropped to all fours behind the table, but by the time I landed, the gunfire had already stopped. I heard people running and screaming, a cacophony of panic all around me.

Maxwell yelled, “Hold your fire, you fucking moron!”

I saw my purse beside me, a huge leather bag, its wide mouth gaping open. I had to get to Trey. And yet my purse mattered. It mattered because I had daughters. Trey had daughters. Why these two thoughts came together, I had no idea, but my wise hand understood. My hand reached out, and then Coral’s white envelope was in it. I saw Kelly’s name and her address in Gadsden written in Coral’s crabbed, dark hand. The envelope felt thick with photos. My wise hand folded it away into my bag.

Then I crawled toward my husband.

To my left a chalk-faced citizen had pulled his own gun out of his jacket and was swiveling it from Kelly Wilkerson’s body to our ex-soldiers, its wobbling black gaze passing over Trey, then me as he turned.

“Holster your goddamn gun before I put you down!” Maxwell yelled, Mills chiming in, “We’re security! It’s safe now!”

I crawled to Trey. Leaned over him. His eyes were wide, still meeting mine. His mouth jerked open, sucking at the air. Just past him Kelly Wilkerson lay in a twisted heap of crimson, the blood still spreading, staining more and more of her white dress. Her eyes met mine as well, no longer holding anger. No longer holding anything.

“Trey,” I said.

“I’m cold,” he told me. He choked, and red blood, the first of his I’d seen, came trickling out the corner of his mouth.

I grasped his shoulders, leaned down close, my hair tumbling around his face. His breath pulled in and out, raspy and desperate. Should I turn him over? I could put my hands over the holes, try to keep the wet, red life from pumping out of him. But his hands clutched feebly at my arms.

“Bree?” he said. “I’m sorry.”

“I know, baby. It’s okay. I’m here with you. I’m with you, do you understand?” I said, and God, I meant it. I leaned down to kiss his dear, dear face. “Hold on.”

His grasp failed. His fingers fell away. He said, “I’m so, so sorry.”

“We’ll work it out. I love you,” I said. Again I meant it. Both of these things were true. Then I told him, “You’re going to be all right.”