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She sat up, groaned, and tried to uncuff her ankle.
“You have to stay here and stay quiet. I’ll help you, okay? I promise.” I headed for the stairs. I’d get ahead of her and lock her down here. My father would have a plan.
“No.” She frantically undid the last strap as I ran up the stairs. Then she raced up behind me, right on my heels, and shoved me aside. For a second, I teetered on the step, about to fall, and I frantically grabbed at the railing.
Instead, I just slipped, banging my knee on the wooden step. Pain raced up my leg, and I got up awkwardly. The skin across my knee had split open, and blood trickled down my leg.
She’d almost pushed me down the stairs. She hadn’t cared if she hurt me.
I ran after her. She stopped in the brightly lit kitchen, turning around; there was no back door out from here. “The door!” she whispered in a desperate rasp, clearly thinking my father might be in the house. “Where’s the door?”
She was wild-eyed. She could barely think in her panic when she was so close to escape.
“That way!” I told her, pointing to the door to the garage.
As soon as her back was to me, I pulled a knife from the knife block.
She frantically threw the door open and flew through it.
I was right behind her.
The garage door was closed. Disappointment sank through me like a weight. I was on my own.
“How do I open it, how do I open it?” she asked frantically, her eyes moving so quickly around the room they skipped right over the button to open the garage door. She finally saw it and raced for it, reaching out her hand to slap the button by the steps, where I stood.
But I got there first.
I drove the knife into her side. She turned on me, letting out a bloodcurdling scream.
The garage door rumbled to life. She must have hit the button after all. Light spilled in at the base of the door.
She raced for the crack of light, stumbling, her hand clutching the bloody wound in her side.
I couldn’t let her escape. She was lurching away, so I grabbed the heavy flashlight that stood on my dad’s worktable and raced after her. My fingers were slick with blood, but that didn’t stop me. I wasn’t tall enough to hit her head, but she stumbled, trying to duck under the garage door.
So I hit her as hard as I could across the back of the head. She went to one knee, and I hit her again.
She grabbed for the flashlight, trying to get it from me. Because it was slippery, she was able to wrest it from my fingers. She tried to hit me with it, but she was wild, and I was able to duck her.
Rage boiled through my veins, burning away the fear. No one was ever going to hit me again.
My father’s car was nosing into the garage. He stopped abruptly. Then he was running to my side.
“Hi, Daddy,” I said.
She raced away, toward the house. She was stumbling, but she made it up the stairs and through the door.
He was on her in a second, grabbing the flashlight and clubbing her with it, over and over. She collapsed to the ground with a heavy thud, blood freckling the white hallway that led to our garage.
Dad glanced up at me. He sounded amused when he asked, “You didn’t stay out of trouble, did you, Delilah?”
“The power went out.” I pointed down the hall to the basement door. “I had to stop her.”
He nodded. “You did. She was a bad person, Delilah. And you stopped her from hurting any other kids.”
“She looked like Mom. I thought she was Mom…”
“She’s not your mother,” he said. “Your mother was an awful person too, the way she abandoned you. But I would never hurt her. She’s your mom. You get to decide what happens to her. Alright?”
