The Marsh King's Daughter(63)

“Are you thirsty?” An obvious question, but I didn’t know what else to say.

The man cracked open one eye. The other was swollen shut. My father often told me that if I was ever in a situation where I had to take someone captive, no matter how badly I had to beat them, I should always make sure they had one good eye so they could see me coming and anticipate what I might do so I wouldn’t lose my psychological edge. When the man saw me standing in the doorway, he scrambled as far away as the handcuffs would let him, so I could see that what my father said was true.

“I brought you something to drink.” I knelt in the sawdust and held the cup to his lips, then took out the biscuit I’d hidden in my coat pocket and broke it into pieces and fed it to him. The feel of his whiskers on my fingers and his breath against my skin made me shiver. I’d never been this close to a man who was not my father. I thought again about adultery and brushed away the crumbs that fell on the man’s chest.

The man looked better when he finished, though not by much. A cut over his eye was bleeding, and the left side of his face was swollen and purple from where my father had hit him. The broken arm stretched over his head was going to be a problem. I’d seen animals die from less.

“Is your mother all right?” he asked.

“She’s okay.” I didn’t tell him that my mother’s left arm was similarly broken. “A matched pair,” my father said that morning when he told me how last night he’d twisted my mother’s arm behind her back the same as he did to the man.

“Your father is crazy.” The man jutted out his chin to indicate the woodshed, the handcuffs, his lack of clothing.

I didn’t like when he said this. This man didn’t know my father. He had no right to say bad things about him.

“You shouldn’t have come,” I said coldly. “You should have left us alone.” Suddenly, I had to know. “How did you find us?” The question didn’t come out the way I meant it. It sounded like I thought we were lost.

“I was riding trail with a couple of my buddies and took a wrong turn. We’d been drinking,” he said, as if this was some kind of explanation. “Whiskey. Beer. Never mind. I drove a long time looking for a trail marker. Then I saw the smoke from your cabin. I didn’t know that this cabin . . . that your mother . . .”

“What about my mother?” I didn’t care how badly this man was hurt. If he said he came here because he was in love with my mother, I was going to hit him on his broken arm.

“I didn’t know that your mother has been here all along. That after all these years, someone had finally found her, and that your father . . .” He stopped and looked strangely at me. “My God. You don’t know.”

“Know what?”

“That your mother . . . your father—”

“What about me?” my father demanded.

The man shrank back as my father’s shadow filled the doorway. He closed his good eye and started to whimper.

“Go inside, Helena,” my father said. “Your mother needs you.”

I grabbed the empty mug and jumped to my feet and ran past my father to the cabin. I rinsed the cup and put it in our dry sink, then stood at the kitchen window for a long time, watching through the slats in the woodshed as my father punched and kicked the man while the man screamed and yelled. I wondered what the man was going to tell me.





23





My shoulder throbs. I have no idea how badly I’m wounded. It’s possible the bullet only grazed my shoulder and a couple of stitches will put me to rights. It’s just as possible the wound is much worse. If the bullet hit an artery, I’m going to bleed out. If it hit one of the major nerves, I could lose the use of my arm. For now, all I know is that it hurts. A lot.

If this was your typical accidental shooting, I’d be riding in the back of an ambulance on the way to the hospital while medics worked to stabilize me instead of sitting on the ground with my back against a tree. Doors would fly open when we arrived, orderlies would rush out and roll me inside. Doctors would treat the wound, give me something to stop the pain.

But this shooting was no accident.

After my father shot and handcuffed me, he dragged me by my shoulders to a large red pine and pulled me up and propped me against it. I don’t even want to try to describe how that felt.

Rambo is gone. I think I yelled “Home!” when my father charged up the hill to disarm me, but it’s hard to know if I actually shouted the command or only thought it. Those first few seconds after my father shot me are a blur.

I blink. Force my thoughts away from the pain. Try to stay focused. What a fool I was to think that my father would surrender. I should have killed him when I had the chance. Next time, I will.

My father is sitting on the ground with his back against a log. My Magnum is in his hand. My knife hangs from my belt at his waist. My cell phone is dead, and I’m not talking about the battery. After my father found the iPhone Stephen gave me for our last anniversary, he tossed it into the air and shot it.

My father is relaxed, completely at ease—and why shouldn’t he be? He has every advantage, and I have none.

“I didn’t want to hurt you,” he says. “You made me do it.”

Typical narcissist. No matter what happens, it’s always the other person’s fault.