“So, what does killing the wrong person take?” I ask, and every word feels like I’m speaking around the edge of a razor.
He lets go of the breath he’s holding, then turns his eyes on me.
He’s about to speak when I cut him off, “How am I supposed to live knowing that the bullet that was meant for him…” I jerk my chin toward the malignant corpse across the room, then back in front of me. “Landed in my mother? And I was the fucking one to put it there?”
Heavy silence fills the space.
“I should be fucking dead.” I temper a cry, push the tears away, do it all again.
It made me feel weak. I fucking hated feeling weak.
When my cries fall silent, my body no longer jolting, I wipe my arm beneath my nose, and Skinner's voice croaks from beside me.
“Yeah, need you at the Keller’s. Bring someone with you, gotta grab his truck.” A pause, then, “Now.”
I turn my head, watch him calmly shove his phone back into his front pocket. He adjusts his leather cut on his shoulders and returns his wrists to his drawn knees.
“I’m sorry, man. If I hadn’t?—”
“He deserved it,” I mumble, and they’re some of the truest words I’d ever spoken.
Skinner nods toward my mother. “But she didn’t.”
At that, I swallow around the brick cemented in my throat. “You’re right…she didn’t.”
My spine turns hot and sweaty.
Skinner says, “Harlen’s on his way. When he gets here, gonna need you to leave. Gonna need you to walk out that front door and not look back.”
“Wh-what does that me-mean?” My words are spoken through a void of emptiness, a chosen disconnect.
Not a beat passes when Skinner says, “It means I’m gonna take care of this.” He doesn’t look at me when he speaks, and my heart slips into my throat. “There are gonna be questions, but I’ll make sure Rusty gets Wynston to put them to bed, you hear me?” His eyes are black with promise.
Silence presses again.
I can hardly whisper, “I killed my mom.”
“No, you didn’t. That bullet was meant for your father.”
“It doesn’t matter?—”
He barrels over me, “It fucking does.” Skinner loops his hand around the back of my neck, grabs it, yanks me forward until my forehead presses to his. “Now, get your ass up, and go see your mother.”
I nod and I keep nodding and in slow motion, I do what he says. I rise to my feet, and when I almost fall Skinner grabs my arm, helps me find balance in the eye of the storm.
I take one step forward, only for Skinner to put his hand to my shoulder, to stop me.
“When you’re done, grab anything you want to keep.” His voice is a low rasp and all I can do is swallow, nod again when he turns and leaves the room.
And when silence presses again, I travel through my mother’s blood until I’m on my knees at her side, reaching for her hand, curling my fingers gently around her thin and long fingers as if she can feel me, as if I don’t want to hurt her any more than I already have.
I’m shaking, and now, so is she.
Her thin body is weightless and limp and I pull her up to me and cry into her bruised neck and when I’m done, when there’s nothing left but the debris of our past and violence and too much blood, I get to my feet. I’m not shaking anymore when I walk out of the room, toward mine, snatching up my notebook that lay on top of my beat up keyboard.
I leave everything else behind and head for the front door, the way Skinner told me to.
Ipush my palm to my abdomen when it swirls, reaching toward the handle of Rusty’s truck.
