Allison shuttles Reagan into the house and I fish Ota out of the back seat and boldly carry her in as if she were my own.
As soon as the lights flick on, Reagan kicks her way to the floor and begins running around in circles with her arms stretched wide like wings. She’s craved the space, the freedom to move around without fear. It’s only then I notice how paper white she is, the dark circles underneath her eyes laying over her skin like bruises.
“She wasn’t afraid,” my father offers up. “I took good care of her.”
Allison grunts an angry feral pig snort and I put Ota down and both she and Reagan embrace as if they hadn’t seen one another in so very long.
Reagan hops up and down. “Can we go outside?”
“No,” both Allison and I bark at once.
I take in a quick breath. “We missed you. Stay in here where we can see you.”
I look to my father. “You’ll be staying here as well.” That is, until I can get Rich to show up and haul him out to a place a little less cushy with a few more bars. I can’t wait until he hauls him out of my life for good.
A knock vibrates over the door and both Reagan and Ota attach themselves to my legs.
“Hold on, girls!” I walk them over, taking exaggerated steps that cause them to rise and fall in turn and the sounds of their laughter is irresistible. Another set of frantic knocks. “Let’s get that.” I fully expect to find a boatload of reporters licking at their chance to get the very first scoop. Missing children found! Concordia’s own Judge Price charged with felony kidnapping and murder.
Crap. I swing the door open, and to my surprise there’s not a mob itching for their next get.
“It’s you,” I say, lackluster.
Hailey Oden stands with her arms wrapped around her belly, the belly I very well may have given her.
Her mouth falls open as she looks to the girls. “The kid’s back.” She gives Ota a pat on the head.
“Wrong kid.” Allison wraps her arms around Reagan like a seat belt. “Does Faulk know where you are?” I can tell by the tone in her voice, that as much as she doesn’t want her around, she has a modicum of concern for her well-being.
“Faulk can go fuck himself.”
“Whoa,” I bark out the reprimand. “Not in front of my kid.” It’s hard not to come across overly protective seeing that I haven’t had Reagan home for five minutes. “Look, tonight’s a bad night. You have my number. Why don’t you go home? We can work something out.” Work something out. It felt awkward coming from my lips. Here she is—the woman who started it all, with her swollen belly, glaring at me as if I just threatened to land her downtown in Rich’s office right alongside my father.
“You promise?” Her lips twitch downward, and her eyes are white with rage.
“He promises.” Allison pushes us back from the doorway. “If you’re still around, come by next week. I think the sooner we look into paternity tests, the better.”
“What? What the hell are you talking about?” Hailey flips back her long dark tresses, ever the supermodel. But she’s not what I’m looking for or what I need. I need Allison. Allison has always been the answer.
She glares up at my wife with an uncalled for level of disbelief. “You’re not staying with her, are you?”
“Yes.” I don’t hesitate with the answer. “I’m staying with her.” There’s a softness in my voice this time. “I love her. She’s my family. I can never leave.”
Hailey takes in a breath and shakes her head in disbelief.
Allison grunts as she begins to close the door. “Goodnight. It will be a good one in this house between my husband and me.” The door shuts with a marked finality, officially sealing Hailey out of our lives at least for a few short hours.
“Thank you.” I press a soft kiss over her lips, first time I’ve kissed them since the day Reagan went missing. I haven’t been with my wife in so very long. “Unfortunately, we may never get to close the door on that chapter of our lives.”
Allison shakes her head. “If we can survive this”—she scoops Reagan up into her arms and plants a kiss on her forehead—“we can survive anything.”
Ota pokes her head from behind my leg and her features darken. “Is that a bad lady?” Her demeanor is curt and angry, and a part of me wants to give a jovial, dad-like laugh as if I hadn’t bound her up in duct tape just this evening.
“Yes and no.”
Allison swats me. “She’s an immature lady who did some bad things.”
I wince a moment. “You are far too generous.”
The girls get back to running around the room, and I can tell by the dozens of yawns Reagan is giving off that she doesn’t have the stamina to last too much longer.
Dad slaps me over the shoulder, and it’s all I can do to keep from shoving him out the window. “I’ll be in my room if you need me.”
“I do need you.” I nod for him to follow me as I lead him out of the kitchen and onto the back patio. No sooner do we hit the frigid night air than I land my first punch, square over that beak in the center of his face.
“You broke it!” He doubles over and I knee him hard in the face until he springs back up. My adrenaline has hit its zenith for the night. It had crested when I held Reagan for the first time in weeks, but I was saving my powerhouse enthusiasm just for him.
I land punch after punch in his ears, his chest, his stomach, his big fat fucking mouth, those horrific judgmental eyes until he flattens out on the concrete like a ragdoll, and then I gift him a swift kick in the dick until he rolls over with a horrific groan.
“Get up,” I howl, but he’s too busy rolling around in pain, trying to crawl away like the coward he is. I reach down and pull him to a sitting position. “What the hell were you thinking?” I riot in his face. “All of your life you pretended that you were perfect! Above everybody else!” I give his limp frame a sturdy shake. “You murdered your family in cold blood.” The words grit through my clenched teeth. “You put people away for a living, for doing far less greater infractions! Tell me to my face why you killed them. Was Wilson really that irredeemable?”
“Wilson.” He leans forward and moans, his back bucks as he begins to whimper. “God, Wilson. My Wilson.”
“You poisoned him.” I fall down next to my father, physically exhausted, emotionally spent.
“He was so good.” He bemoans Wilson with an agonizing cry. “But the sin. The devil ate your brother. I put him to peace.”
I bang the back of my head silently against the wall of the house. For shit’s sake, death does not equal peace. “And what about Rachel?”
“Rachel.” He pants with his eyes skyward, a shard of blood trickling from his lip. “My angel. My sweet baby girl.” A teardrop falls, then another. Finally. He is christening my dead siblings with his remorse, and it feels like the letting of a wound—so necessary, so long in the making.
“What the hell did she do?” I growl against the wind. Tonight is a night for answers, and I’m sopping them up like bread with wine.
“It was that damn boyfriend of hers. Thought they could have a baby out of wedlock. She was so young, for God’s sake. Her future was ruined. She was ruined…” His voice trails off. “She did it to herself.”
“Shit.” I give my eyes a quick squeeze, daring myself to go on. “And Mom? She wanted to leave you and you weren’t having it. Did it look better to have your family die off?”
“It felt better.” His eyes close as he struggles to keep from falling over.
“And then there was me. The bullet. You left it in the chamber, didn’t you?”
He raises an eyelid, looking almost amused that I had pieced it together. “You fucked that up, too, didn’t you?” He moans as his chest bucks once again, but this time with a laugh. “Aston. My beautiful baby boy.” He snorts out a cry. “He would have set the world on fire. What a fine young man.”