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“Things just weren’t making sense so we thought we could try and be useful and checked out her room.” I can tell by her voice that she’s nervous about how I’ll react.
“And what did you find?” I ask, already knowing it must be something for them to be callin’.
“We found something that explains the way Maisie’s been feeling. We found liquid benzodiazepine,” she tells me.
“Wait, you think Mom has been drugging Maisie?” I check I’m hearing her right.
“She had some weird medicine in the baby's room. And after all that’s happened today, does it sound so crazy?”
“No. Sadly it fucking doesn’t.”
“We just thought you might wanna know and I… I wanted to know that you were okay,” she adds softly
“Savannah.” I catch her before she hangs up.
“Yes?” she whispers.
“I’m not okay,” I admit, feeling the weight of everything that’s happened dragging me into the ground.
“I’ll be here when you need me,” she promises, and I quickly hang up and rejoin my brother on the porch before I show her any more weakness.
“That was the girls, they’ve been going through Mom’s room. They think she’s been drugging Maisie,” I inform him of what I just heard and wonder how much more shit we can learn today.
“Fuckin’ hell.” Wade scrubs his hand over his face. “You know Garrett’s gonna want her dead for this, right?”
“Wade, I want her dead for this,” I admit.
“Maybe she needs help, she lost a daughter. This could be some kind of mental break.” He looks up at me hopefully.
“She shot our brother in his fuckin’ head,” I remind him, thinking about the fact he’s laid out on the table at the bunkhouse.
“Cole, I hate her for it, I can’t get it out of my head, but…”
“There ain’t no buts, Wade. She’s a cold-blooded fuckin’ killer. Dalton would have been protecting his niece and she shot him for it.” I kick the porch rafter and make the roof shake, turning him silent again.
It’s another hour before Garrett’s truck pulls up, and when he gets out and slams the door, he marches toward the cabin door with hate in his eyes and tension in his fists.
“Whoa, Garrett.” Wade stands in front of him. “We need to think about how we’re gonna approach this.” He tries to get him to make eye contact, but something has snapped in Garrett’s head. For so long he’s had to hold back on shit. He’s taken blow after blow and dealt with it as subtly as he can, but this. This has pushed him too far.
“She took my daughter, she killed our brother, and now I find out she’s been drugging my wife. I know how to approach this.” He barges his shoulder into Wade and steps past him, opening the door into the cabin and stopping dead when he sees our mom tied to the chair.
All this time we’ve been outside, I’ve assumed Wade had her gagged because she’s been silent but she ain’t. She sits in silence, with blood crusted under her nose and a fearless look on her face.
“Boys.” She nods her head at us, and surprisingly, it’s me that reaches out and grabs Garrett when he launches for her.
“How can you be so calm, you sick bitch?” He struggles against my hold and I’m grateful when Wade steps up to help me.
“No one ever did anything good while panicking.” She shrugs, showing no remorse or empathy for what she’s done.
“Garrett, you want answers,” Wade reminds him, and we both loosen our hold when we feel the strain he’s pushing against us slacken.
“Why?” he asks her, his voice coming out weak and all the anger in his eyes leaking into tears.
“Because I deserve another chance,” she tells him. “Your father took everything away from me. My family, my home. Hank.” She shakes her head. “I had to whore myself to survive. I had to suck drunk men’s dicks, all while that asshole was here, having this town give him all that attention he craved. The poor abandoned rancher whose wife left him with four kids to raise.”
“So you’re making us pay for what he did?” I look at her in disgust. “Let’s not forget you were fuckin’ his father. The same man who he took from us too,” I remind her, but she doesn’t react.
“You were gonna take my little girl.” Garrett steps closer to her. “You were gonna take her from her mother and her brothers. You were gonna make her suffer too.”
