But this wasn’t about Marie.It wasn’t about getting Gerald to the hospital, thinking the doctors would save him only to watch him fade away.
It was about the deal with the devil—Daryl.
He’d never tell anyone about Gerald’smental strugglesif they didn’t mention his involvement with the police.If she kept it a secret, for the rest of her life, he would also keep it a secret.
Gerald had been dead.What did the truth matter if her son never had to know that his father’s PTSD had led him to threatening his own friend to the point the only option had been for Daryl to fight back?
The coroner would determine it was self-inflicted, and in a way it had been.If no one talked about it, their son never had to know.
She’d stopped speaking, more or less, then.Because if she didn’t speak, no one ever had to know what had happened.
What had the truth mattered anyway when the silence meant she could remember Gerald as the man he’d been in the good times?
She looked down at a bleeding-out Daryl Everly and felt no remorse.Maybe there’d been no other way for Daryl but self-defense, but she still blamed him.Blamed him for riling Gerald up.For planning those hunting trips that had only ever caused damage and harm.
They’d made their deal, but she’d never done it forhim.She’d done it for her boy.
“Fitting you’d die this way,” she told him.Maybe.Was her voice loud enough to carry to him the way he writhed and carried on?
Daryl’s laugh was gargled, pained, but it was a nasty, horrible laugh.She’d always seen that side of Daryl, but Gerald had said it was nice.
Nice to be around someone who seemed more bitter, more angry, moremeanthan him at his worst moments.He’d feltbetterbecause Daryl wasworse, and Glenda had always known that wasn’t healthy, had tried to convince Gerald of it for so long.
“Even now, you think it was him.I can’t decide if it’s better that way, or better to know the truth.”Again, he laughed, all gurgled and pained.
He must be in some kind of terrible shock.His words didn’t make sense.
Truth?What truth?
She thought vaguely that someone was saying her name.Cal probably.But she kept her finger around that trigger, pointed at Daryl’s head.
She could put him out of his misery.She could avenge her husband.Maybe he’d been trying to hurt Daryl, but it hadn’t had to end that way.And Daryl was trying to hurthernow.Her and Cal, who was an innocent bystander.
Didn’t he deserve to die by someone else’s hand?
“Better to know the truth, I think,” Daryl said, sneering at her.“I shot him because he was going to tell everyoneIkilled Charles.”He tried to sit up but fell back on a groan of pain.“I don’t regret it.I don’t regretanyof it.”He was staring up at the sky now, still wriggling in pained, horrible movements.
And Glenda… didn’t fully understand the words.
No accident.
No self-defense to Gerald’s PTSD outburst.
On purpose.Because…
She made some kind of noise, felt a tremor of denial and despair roar through her.“No.”
“Oh, yes.I killed them both because Iwantedto.”Daryl coughed, groaned, moaned.
Still no one moved forward to help him.But his eyes met hers.Dark and mean and soulless.
Dead.They should be dead.
“Come on, Glenda.”He sneered at her.“Always so right.Always so tough.Do it.Pull the trigger.”He coughed, a gurgling dribble of blood flowing over his mouth.“I fucking dare you.”
She would have.Her finger was curled around the trigger.She felt that rage, that grief, thatlossso big, so overwhelming, pulling the trigger seemed the only possible end to this.
Until she heard, “Grandma.”
