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“Pris called the cops,” Jet whispers tucking his phone in his pocket. “They are all caught up with this brush fire, but someone is on their way out.”
Dad yells and Leslie steps into view, the baseball bat crashing down on his shoulder. I scream and rush the porch. I’m not thinking, only moving. It’s a blur of sound and sensation. Touching metal, slamming doors, the breeze in my hair, the guttural sound of my anger. The slice of pain as wood makes contact with my hip, my body slamming into hers and knocking us both to the ground in a pile.
I have no control of myself, filled up and over with rage I rain unpracticed fists down on Leslie who tries to protect herself, the slice of fingernails across my skin stings but it only drives me forward harder. I’m screaming at her, clawing at her, cursing the vilest words as an entire year of fear and anger pours from my body.
Suddenly I’m yanked backward, Jet lifting me off Leslie like we were a couple of toddlers wrestling in a sandbox. He plops me down on my feet in front of my father.
Dad grabs me around the waist as I try to pounce on Leslie again. He wraps me in his arms hushes me, stroking my hair and talking calm in my ear until I slowly return to myself.
“It’s over, sweetheart. It’s over. You’re okay. You’re okay.”
There’s blood on my hands, and I touch my cheek, more blood.
The room comes back into focus and I focus in on Jet, holding Leslie with her arm pinned behind her back.
“If I let you go will you be calm?” Dad asks me and I nod pushing my tangled hair from my face. Dad hobbles across the room, pain visible in his face from his leg and Leslie’s strike. He unlocks the cabinet by the front door and grabs a pair of handcuffs from where he keeps his extra gear. He tosses them to Jet who quickly puts them on Leslie’s wrists. My dad has arrested all three of the Ryker boys at some point in their lives and I can’t help but notice this twisted turn of events.
Jet forces Leslie to sit. “The police are on the way. You might as well tell us what the fuck you were planning on doing here tonight?”
Leslie stares at Jet and turns a death glare to me. “You deserved every bit of this.” She hisses at me.
“Why? Because you got caught cheating your customers? I didn’t ruin your business, Leslie.”
“You humiliated me!” She lunges forward and Jet stops her easily, her red hair is tangled in front of her face. “One post destroyed my entire life.”
“What are you talking about?” I ask, this is absurd. It’s an Instagram business. Who in their right mind would react this way?
“My daughter was my business partner. We lost a lot of money when our business went under. She stopped speaking to me. Said I’d used up my last chance.”
“How did you find me? How did you figure out who I was?”
Leslie set her jaw defiantly, so I repeated the question.
“I’ve been checking your emails for you long before you hired me,” she said. “I used to work in IT for the Ontario government. I know how to get anywhere on the internet. I know how to find anyone. I found out who you were, but I couldn’t figure out where you were. You never told me anything. You have so many secrets. So, I found your dad, made sure you would have a reason to come home.” She sneers at my dad it’s as good a confession as any. She’s the one who hit him.
“But you were getting a little too comfortable with your new life,” Leslie says and glances at Jet.
Jason.
“You’re the reason Jason came back,” I say.
“I’m trained to see weakness. To see the breaks in the chain, the vulnerable spots. You’re all so pathetically predictable.”
The red and blue lights cut through the window flashing eerie shadows across Leslie.
“Why would you do this though?” I wanted to get as many answers as I could before the cops took her.
“You took away the only thing in this world that ever meant anything to me. I wanted to do the same to you. And I almost did.”
“By running us off the road?”
“No. I would never kill anyone. The goal was only ever to drive you to paranoia, and you made it so easy. You are so weak when it comes to her. You hold her so tight. But on the field earlier the way she looked at you. Like you’d lost your fucking mind. She was embarrassed of you. Now you know what it feels like for your own child to hate you.”
Dad squeezes my shoulders as the cops burst through the door, I’m stunned silent and gaping as I watch them take her away and realize with rushing clarity how in her sick and demented way she’s right.
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