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“Sarah, get off the stage right now, you ungrateful little brat! Be quiet, if you know what’s good for you.”
“No, I won't, Dad. I’ve been quiet for too long. I’m also confessing today for myself, because I knew this all was happening.”
“What was happening?” I hear the drawl of Sheriff Rogers yell. She’s got her arms crossed and her foot tapping.
“At least for the past ten years, likely more, my father has been responsible for countless crimes around this town.”
“Sarah, shut the hell up!” Max shouts, still not caring that there are children present.
“My father, out of desire for petty revenge, has done the following...” She pulls out a sheath of papers. She had prepared for this. “He’s the one responsible for setting fire to Mr. Darby’s tavern on Christmas Eve nine years ago. He said it was because he refused to open on Christmas for him.”
“Sarah, why are you spreading lies?” Max shouts. He starts to move to the stage, but I step in front of him. I want Sarah to keep talking. I’m not sure where she’s going with this, but if it is pissing off Max, it’s at the very least, accomplishing that.
“He let all of Ms. Reynolds’ pigs out of their pen, for, I have written here, ‘turning him down like the frigid bitch she is.’ I’ll remind everyone that losing all those pigs almost left Ms. Reynolds homeless.”
Ms. Reynolds is in the audience, and she glares at Max with homicidal intent.
“Lies, lies, this you trying to become a novelist, isn’t it, Sarah? With all this fiction you’re writing?” Max screams, trying to reason it all away.
“Say whatever you want, Dad. I’m going to keep going.” She flips a page. “This one I’m ashamed I kept quiet so long for. He killed Mr. Hill’s dog, Marilyn.”
Mr. Hill is also here, and I can see rage building within him.
“Mr. Hill’s slight against my father? Dad just thought he charged too much to fix his truck.”
“Sarah, what are you trying to prove? And where’s your proof of this?” Max says, looking guilty of everything he’s being accused of.
“I’ll tell you the latter first,” she states, and holds up the book she was reading from. “This is my personal diary. Where I wrote how much it pained me that my dad did something so heartless and cruel. But I’m supposed to love him, so I kept my mouth shut. Even as he ranted at me, and I kept silent there, too, because if I tried to do anything but agree with him, he’d take his anger out on me.”
“I never laid a hand on you!”
“You didn’t need to hit me to make my life miserable, Dad. Just make me afraid to speak up. To make me count the days until I could be free of you for good.”
“So you made up a bunch of lies and wrote them down?! Is that how you repay me for raising you?”
“If my diary isn’t enough, I have backups.” She holds up her phone. “For some of these rants, I recorded them. I’ve waffled many times on whether I should do something about you, Dad. So I kept them. I built my own case. But I can’t stay quiet any longer. Not if you’re threatening to take human lives.”
More murmuring in the crowd. Max is shaking with rage, but he isn’t talking anymore. He clearly remembers all those nights he yelled at his daughter, her being the only person who had to listen to him and his nonsense.
“All of this isn’t just to shame my father for crimes I don’t even know if he can be charged with anymore, no, I want to publicly display a pattern of behavior. That my father is a petty, vindictive, cruel man who you could easily believe could turn to something more vile. Maybe even something like murder. All of this should be enough to launch a full investigation of Jack Thomas’s and Lily Bennett’s accusations against him, that they shouldn’t be disregarded as petty, in some stupid family feud.”
People are backing away from Max, staring at him. I’m the only person still near him, ready to stop him from going after his daughter if he gains the balls to do such a thing.
“This... this is your doing!” he yells at me.
He takes a swing. But all that anger doesn’t change that he’s already a full bottle of whiskey drunk, and I easily dodge it, and send my own right hook across his face. For Lily. Hell, for Sarah too. Even if I don’t love the woman, it doesn’t mean she deserved anything that Max did to her.
Max crumples to the ground into the sorry heap that he is.
“All right, that’s enough. I’ve seen enough,” Sheriff Rogers says, dispersing the crowd further. “Maxwell Perry, you are under arrest.”
“For what?” he says, pitifully, trying to get up and away from the sheriff.
“Do I need your daughter to repeat herself? It’s pretty dang clear what you’re under arrest for.”
He tries to squirm away, but I step in front of him. He’s got no choice but to be cuffed, and several of the other men are right behind the sheriff, ready to give her a helping hand if he wants to go and try something.
“Again,” Sarah says into the mic, “I want to apologize for my silence. I should have said something sooner. But I was blinded by blood. By the idea that my father was a man who deserved any sort of loyalty from me. I’m sorry you all had to wait for this closure.”
