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Way to make an impression on the lady, he internally scoffed, but her touch was oddly comforting, calming him down.
Pixie hesitated only another moment before plunging on. “But I was under the impression you lived with your aunt and uncle. If you did, how and when did that happen?”
He kept his tone, measured.
“I was with my mother for four years.” Doug needed to tiptoe around this one. He swallowed. “Four years before it came to the attention of a teacher of mine at school, that I was not only failing his class, but coming in wearing dirty clothes. I was also, apparently, far too thin and lanky for even a growing adolescent. What he didn’t know, was that I had run away a few weeks before, and was living by myself in the woods.”
Pixie nodded, but her face showed horror. “That’s awful, Doug. But thank God your teacher finally noticed something wasn’t right. I have to occasionally intervene when it doesn’t look like things are going right in a child’s household.”
Understatement, Doug hissed to himself while Pixie commiserated.
“So social services removed you from her custody and placed you with Chief Ildavorg and his family.”
“Something like that,” Doug admitted. He wasn’t ready to tell her the gory details or let her in on theexactagency that had done his extraction.
He stopped talking because…what else was there to say? He’d offered Pixie the salient facts.
She picked up the conversation after silence descended, filling in the blanks for herself. “So, you had four years of neglect at the hands of the woman who was supposed to love and care for you above all others, and it gave you a mistrust of all females. I understand, Doug.” Her warm digits hadn’t moved from his. “It’s kind of the same reason I never date. Even if I think someone’s motives might not be morbid curiosity or pity, I don’t trust that the next man won’t freak out and try to kill me if I break things off. Or he might think I need to be put in my place if I act outside of his expectations.”
Doug immediately bristled on her behalf. “Put in your place? Wait. I know about the shooting part of things with your ex-boyfriend, obviously,” he told her. “But are you saying the prick abused you before you told him to take a hike?” It was Doug’s turn to flip his hand so it held Pixie’s in sympathetic solidarity. And wasn’t that a first? He’d made the move without thinking it to death.
Pixie hung her head and let her soft, fine hair sweep across her face so he couldn’t quite see her expression. “What you don’t know is that I was, well, a handful. If you ask my parents, they’ll say I was rebellious. It was probably the reason I went out with Skeeter in the first place. To test my boundaries with them.”
“Skeeter? That’s his name?”
Doug neededmoreinfo. He could have gone back and pulled records for the entire incident that had happened, but he’d felt that might be too intrusive. He had waited to hear more details from Pixie herself, or from what the LT occasionally dropped. But now, faced with Pixie’s insecurities, he wanted to look thisSkeeter bastard up in the penal system, and make sure the man was never getting out on parole.
Pixie snorted. “Skeeter Depree; his first name is short for Mesquite. His mother was apparently from a town by that name in Texas, and wanted a reminder. Not that she needed one for life. She only stuck around long enough to see Skeeter’s little brother, Harlan, enter high school, then she hightailed it back to Texas. Good riddance was what Skeeter used to say, but I suspect the woman was saving herself from what I saw as a pretty ugly situation.”
“She’d probably had it with her husband, if the old man was anything like Skeeter. But back to that asshole’s treatment of you…” Doug reminded her.
“Right.” Pixie blew out a long breath. “At first, he liked that I was a wild-child, but after a while, he didn’t want me pulling any of my “independent-bullshit”—as he called it—with him. I suppose you could say that he verbally abused me to try and make me more pliable; yelling a lot and attempting all the time to undermine my confidence, but he didn’t have much luck. Then he started knocking me around to get his point across, saying it was my fault; that I was making him lose control with my sass. And I guess I sort of believed him.” She gave a wry laugh. “One day, however, his ‘patience’ ran thin.”
Doug could easily hear the air-quotes around the word “patience” and bit back a growl; settling down only because Pixie’s story was still unwinding.
“That day was the one and only time hereallyhit me. He actually back-handed me across the face so hard my teeth cut into my cheek and drew blood. I landed in a heap on the ground, shocked.” She gave a self-deprecating laugh. “As far as I was concerned, that was it. I pretended meekness so he wouldn’t escalate, and the first chance I got, I high-tailed it out of there. When I got home, of course, my dad went ballistic. He’s not abig man, but he drove over to the Depree’s cabin and stood up to Skeeter. He told him he’d press charges if Skeeter ever tried to get near me again.”
Doug ground his teeth. “And you thought that was the end of it, but it wasn’t.”
“I did, but it wasn’t.” She nodded, taking her hand out of Doug’s so she could continue to eat. It seemed like rehashing these old memories no longer had the power to derail her appetite. Good for her. But he oddly missed her hand.
“Later, Skeeter’s father found out what had happened,” she continued, “and beat the crap out of his son. Not because he thought Skeeter’s behavior was wrong. But because Skeeter had done it in such a way as to get caught.”
“And then Skeeter snapped.”
“You could say that. Apparently, he got ahold of his father’s gun that night, and killed him with one bullet to the heart. He then turned on his brother Harlan who had tried, but failed, to wrestle the weapon away from him. Harlan was also shot. In the head. Everyone thought he had died until just recently.” She shook her head as if she could barely believe what she was about to say. “A few months ago, he showed up back in town. It seems he’d actually recovered, and had been sent to live with his mother until she passed from cancer a few months ago. He then decided to come back to his one time home, cleaning up and rehabbing the old homestead. He shows up in town every now and then for supplies, which is how the locals know his story. But sadly, Harlan is what people call ‘simple’ now, from whatever part of his brain was affected by the bullet. He can function on his own; drive, say hello, but everyone says he’s mentally impeded.”
“So he survived, but Skeeter didn’t know that at the time. He thought he’d killed his father and his brother, with nothing leftto lose by going on a tear and heading to your house for more revenge,” Doug gritted.
“Yeah. He was all righteous anger, apparently. I heard the screech of his tires as he pulled up, then he burst through our front door before I was able to get it locked, figuring he’d kill everybody, then himself.” A proud gleam came to Pixie’s eyes. “Tallie screwed up those plans. I had told my sister to hide and call the cops, which she did. But when she heard Skeeter shoot me, she came out of hiding like an avenging angel. Tallie also got shot for trying to intervene, and Skeeter, thinking he’d killed us both, turned his attention to the police outside. He was hunched in the doorway, shooting wildly at them when Tallie dragged herself off the floor and tackled him from behind.”
Doug could see the satisfaction in Pixie’s eyes as she recalled the ending to a horrible night.
“She sent both herself and Skeeter tumbling down our front steps, but her actions were enough that the officers were finally able to subdue him.”
“And…” Doug felt she hadn’t quite finished with her story.
“And the rest is pretty obvious. He went to jail. I became a recluse. And Talia went on to become a cop, helping save people from the Skeeter’s of the world. Just like you do. I admire that. A lot.”
