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Victoria waves her hand. “I’m not worried about that right now, and you shouldn’t be either. Your father—”
“What about my father?” Bishop says, taking a step forward.
Victoria catches my eyes over Bishop’s shoulder. “Both your fathers.”
“What about them?” I ask.
“You need to go,” Victoria says. “Right now. To your house,” she says to Bishop. “See if you can stop it. I’ll deal with this.” She cocks her head back toward the courthouse.
“I thought President Lattimer’s house burned down,” I say. Nothing is making any sense to me. I just want to lie down in the snow-sprinkled grass and wake up to a world where today never happened.
“Just partially,” Victoria says, voice impatient. “Bishop’s parents went back to see if anything could be salvaged.” She makes a shooing motion with both hands. “You need to go!”
Bishop is already moving, and even as I follow him a voice inside my head is screaming at me to turn and run the other direction. Find the fence and clamber over it. The voice is telling me that hands torn to shreds on razor wire will be less painful that whatever Bishop and I are going to find waiting for us. But Bishop holds his hand out to me and instead of pulling him back my direction, I run alongside him.
There are more people out on the streets than earlier, and they are all headed the same direction we are. Although a few people shout our names as we streak past, no one tries to stop us. Apparently whatever is happening with our fathers is more urgent than discovering I am back inside Westfall, which does nothing to ease my anxiety.
“Do you think this is where Caleb and Ash went?” I ask. “Maybe they heard something and went to see what was going on?”
“Maybe,” Bishop says, face grim.
Bishop’s parents’ house is still standing, although one half of it is only a charred ruin, uneven remains of brick catching the snow against their bloodred surface. People are lined up outside the wrought iron fence surrounding the lawn. I see a few policemen, but they seem confused, milling around and looking at each other with no one making a move, everyone waiting for someone else to tell them what to do.
Bishop and I shove our way through a small gap in the crowd, and I hear Bishop’s quick inhale before my eyes register what they’re seeing. My father is standing on the still-intact front porch, the gun in his hand pressed against President Lattimer’s temple, his other hand clutching the back of President Lattimer’s neck. Erin Lattimer is kneeling on the steps. I can hear the pleading sound of her voice, but not her exact words.
“Daddy!” I scream, before I think about it, the word torn from my throat.
My father’s head whips up, scans the fence line until it lands on me. “Ivy?” he calls.
“It’s me,” I call back. “Please stop, Dad. Whatever you’re thinking. Please stop.”
“They have Callie,” my father yells. “They’re going to kill her.”
“No,” Bishop says, loud, and my father’s eyes swing to him. “We got her out.” His hand squeezes my forearm. “We’re going to come up there. Just Ivy and me. Is that all right?”
My father hesitates, and President Lattimer flinches.
“I’ll leave my gun on the driveway,” Bishops yells. “We’re coming up. Go, Ivy,” he urges me. “Go!”
Just as we reach the gate, two policemen rush forward. But Bishop swings his rifle off his back and aims it at them. “No,” he says, voice firm. “Back off. Now!”
If they were better trained or had more experience with firearms, Bishop alone might not be enough to stop them, but the ease with which he holds the rifle, the strength of his voice, causes both of them to obey his command, and they skid to a halt.
I slip inside the gate and race up the driveway toward my father. I can hear Bishop’s footsteps behind me. A quick glance over my shoulder shows Bishop setting his rifle down on the driveway just as he promised. We reach the base of the steps at almost the same time and Erin stumbles down into Bishop’s arms. “Bishop,” she cries. Her face is ragged from weeping, her hair tangled. One of her feet is bare, and that’s the thing my mind snags on, wondering where she lost her shoe and thinking how cold her foot must be.
“Don’t come any closer!” my father barks, and his voice snaps the world back into focus.
I stop on the bottom step, the cold iron railing biting into my skin. “Dad,” I say. “Let him go.”
“Ivy.” My father’s face softens. “You’re alive. You’re here.” He has dark circles under his eyes and a growth of beard that makes him look like a stranger.
“I’m here, Dad. I came back. But you need to let him go.”
“I can’t,” my father says. His face twists up, but not in rage, in a kind of exhausted sorrow that cuts right through me, rips my heart in two. In a flash, all the anger I’ve harbored toward him is gone. There is no room for it here, no way it can help me.
“Dad, please…”
“He’s been having people killed. People who spoke out after Callie was arrested, did you know that?” my father asks.
