I feel like the world has exploded around me.
Wind and rain pour in the broken window, and I hear glass crunching as August makes his way to Lo, watch through squinting eyes as she stumbles on the edge of her nightgown, inadvertently kicking the hammer farther away from her.
That’s good, I think, dazed.She won’t hit August with the hammer, that’s a good thing, but for some reason, I’m crouching down, wrapping my own fingers around the handle and holding the hammer close to my chest, its weight weirdly comforting as August grabs Lo, shoving her backward toward the window.
“You took everything from me!” he screams, but Lo only laughs.
“You never had anything, baby boy,” she says, and he reaches for her again.
“Stop!” I hear myself yell, but am I talking to August or to Lo? To both of them?
I don’t know, but I’m moving toward them even as water stings my eyes.
Lo is near the busted window now, her bare feet moving over the broken glass. Blood mingles with water, but she doesn’t seem to notice, her shoulders thrown back, her eyes blazing as she smiles at August. “Is this what you pictured?” she asks him. “Is this what you saw when you imagined your daddy dying?”
“Shut up!” he yells, and this time, he shoves her hard enough to send her sprawling to the floor.
She looks small in her wet nightgown, her bedraggled hair covering her face, her feet covered in blood, and then August is on her, over her, yanking her up by one arm and moving her toward the broken window, jagged shards of glass sticking up from the frame like teeth.
To my horror, Lo grabs one of those shards as she tries to steady herself, and we both cry out when the glass tears a gash across her palm, thick droplets of blood splashing to the floor.
“August, stop!” I scream, but he only grabs both of her arms, hauling her to her feet.
“She killed our father, Geneva. She attacked Edie. Tell me she doesn’t have this coming.”
The hammer is suddenly heavier in my hand as I think about all those pictures of Landon my mom saved for years, of Edie bleeding. I look at the water currently pouring into the inn thanks to her and consider all the damage this one woman seems to have wrought in every aspect of my life.
“Bullshit!” Lo spits, struggling against him even though she has to be in pain. “I killed your daddy, you’re damn right about that, but I didn’t touch Frieda.”
She looks at me then, tossing her hair out of her face with a flick of her head, her eyes boring into me. “I hurt her enough in 1977. I’d never hurt her again. You believe me, Geneva.”
It’s not a question. It’s a demand.
Or maybe it’s a plea.
I don’t know.
I don’t know anything anymore except that the storm is here, and the inn won’t survive it, and maybe that means none of us are going to survive it, either.
Maybe none of us should.
That’s all I’m thinking as August pushes Lo steadily back against the broken window, as she slips in her own blood, as I find myself walking toward them like a sleepwalker, the hammer still in my hands, now gripped in a fist, now raised.
Lo sees me over August’s shoulder, and the fight seems to go out of her all of a sudden, her body slumping into his hold, unbalancing him, and he grips her harder, making her cry out again.
“Hit her, Geneva!” August yells, seeing me and the hammer now. “Hit her!”
I swing.
It’s an inelegant, clumsy thing, nowhere near hard enough to kill or even knock someone out.
But it clearly hurts if the shocked grunt of pain that August makes is any indication.
I catch him on the shoulder blade, and he immediately lets go of Lo, whirling around on me with wide eyes, his mouth twisted with fury.
“You need to stop!” I say, because that had been the only thought in my head as I swung at him, that he was hurting her and he needed to stop because no matter what she’d done, she didn’t deserve this, and what does it matter when the storm is going to kill us all anyway?
But then August grabs the hammer from my hand, sending me staggering back, and he turns back to Lo, who is trying to hobble away from the window.
