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“They want to talk to him, too,” I heard Grant say from the foyer, his voice distorted by the space between me and the group standing in the foyer. “I said over my dead body, but the sheriff is adamant.”
“Why do they want to talk to me?” Day asked before saying, “I want to go see her!”
“She’s upstairs, kid. Go on,” Grant replied, then his voice dropped into a near whisper until I couldn’t hear what else he was saying to George, most likely.
A few seconds later, Day came through the door. I opened my eyes and reached out from under the sheets to wave him over. He took a few reluctant steps before running toward me, his lower lip trembling as he crawled into the bed.
I held him against my chest as he cried. I’d never felt more helpless as a mother, even after years of doing it on my own.
I hadn’t had a choice in the way I had to raise him. Maybe I could’ve put my foot down and stopped running, but even if I had, Kirk would’ve laughed in my face and tried to kill me anyway.
And honestly, the fact that Grant had hired private security was the only reason we were alive right now.
But now I had a mess to clean up. It’d been a blessing that Day didn’t remember Kirk and everything he’d put us through when Day was a baby. He didn’t have any memories of the man and had known nothing about him, save for what my own mother let slip.
But now?
How could I even begin to explain this kind of trauma to a child of eight?
We fell asleep in Grant’s bed, and I woke to the sunset drifting through the windows over the headboard. The bed sheets were dusted with deep gold as I opened my eyes, finding myself alone.
“Do you feel like you can eat anything?” Grant asked sometime later, long after the sun went down.
I shook my head, my head lolling against the headboard as I sat up in bed, watching Grant undress. Day was fast asleep on the floor on a blow-up mattress. He’d refused to sleep in the fort, and I didn’t blame him. Grant had even carried Jenny upstairs, and Hammy was in his critter carrier on the floor next to Day.
We were all sleeping here tonight, together. None of us would be alone.
So, when Grant crawled into bed beside me, I let the tears fall.
In near whispers, I told him everything on my mind, and heart. I talked about Day, how I felt like the world’s worst mother, how I couldn’t protect him in the end. I talked about the hold Kirk had on me for almost a decade of my life, how I’d been hunted, preyed upon, and let an inmate dictate my every move from within the walls of a prison cell.
In a way, I’d been living in my own prison, and now that I was free?
I had no idea what to do.
Grant held me close, admitting his own regrets. He told me he should’ve been there to protect us and hadn’t.
I held him close then, the two of us melting into each other as moonlight drifted through the window as the hours ticked by.
We were broken, but one thing was clear.
I wasn’t doing this on my own anymore, and never would again.
* * *
The two FBI agents in the kitchen were dressed in suits and ties, their badges hanging from their necks as they lingered near the back door. The screen had been fixed, but the door itself was slightly ajar, the metal frame bent by Jenny’s abrupt departure, as she’d heeded my orders to look for Grant.
Two days had passed since what Grant and I were calling “the incident.” Day was almost back to his normal self, but I credited Grant with that. He’d been keeping Day busy with the new calves who were now seemingly permanent residents of our backyard, and sometimes the living room if Day left the back door open.
But I’d still spent the last two days in bed, recovering, mentally and physically. I was just learning the details of that night, especially from Grant’s point of view. I learned that Jenny hadn’t made it to him, that she’d waited for Day to catch up and then guided him through the dark.
I wanted to keep that crooked screen door as it was forever, if only to remember her heroism.
The agents looked at the door and asked me about it, but I stayed silent, unwilling to give voice to my thoughts.
The sutures on the back of my head burned as I shifted in my seat, looking down at documents resting on the kitchen table before me.
I knew this day was coming. The FBI wanted to talk to me, to clear the air. Grant was livid and had sworn up and down that they wouldn’t hear the end of this, and I believed him.
