My hands started to shake. I tried to ignore it as I continued to back up toward the door.
Mother looked past me at the door and smiled. “What are you going to do when you get to the door, daughter? You only have one hand to open it with and that one hand is holding the gun.”
She was right.
I took a deep breath of gasoline-filled air and paused.
Mother laughed. “Smell that, don’t you?”
I glanced away from her for only a second to see that there were puddles on the floor, starting at the front of her desk, and the furniture and walls were wet.
Then I saw Mother lunge for me out of the corner of my eye. For a split second, I didn’t care about what might happen. I pulled the trigger.
The room didn’t explode or catch fire, which was a relief. Instead, Mother hit the drenched floor screaming as she clutched her side just above her hip. “You fucking shot me!”
“You told me to!”
She let out this frustrated, hurt yell as she writhed on the floor.
Watching her, I realized she was the pathetic one. Not me.
I reached the door and got it open. Once I was in the foyer and the front door was in sight, I nearly cried at being so close to freedom. I beelined for it while dragging the chair loudly behind me across the tile floor.
Screaming like a madwoman, Mother came running out of her study. I was so stupidly focused on the front door that I didn’t turn around fast enough. Mother tackled me. Both of us and the chair fell over and hit the floor.
She climbed on top of me and wrapped her hands around my throat. “You don’t get to walk out of here with everything that should have been mine!”
I didn’t need to see the look in her eyes to know that she was going to kill me. I could hear it in her voice, feel it in her reckless abandon.
I reached up to try to stop her and I realized I still had the gun in my hand. Just as the pressure in my ears became too much to hear what she was saying and my vision started to spot, I pointed the gun at her face. I pulled the trigger as I began to slip into unconsciousness.
Her hands fell from my neck as her body flew backward. For a moment as I fought to stay awake, I couldn’t remember how to breathe. Then the moment passed and it came back to me. I gasped, sucking in as much air as my lungs could hold. I rolled onto my side as I just breathed. With the next few breaths, I smelled smoke. So much that I ended up coughing.
I forced myself to sit up. Black clouds of smoke were pouring out of Mother’s study. I wondered if she’d lit up the room before coming after me. Thinking of her, I made the mistake of glancing her way. I quickly closed my eyes. There was blood all over her face and pooling around her head.
I coughed again and knew I needed to get out of here. I got to my feet and rushed toward the front door, still dragging a fucking chair behind me.
Once I got outside and a good way down the driveway, I didn’t know what to do. My pockets were empty. That meant I didn’t have a phone. I wasn’t about to drag this chair all the way to the neighbors.
Coming to terms with what I had to do, I flipped the chair upright and took a seat. I watched as my childhood home burned. I was probably in shock, because I just sat there in a daze, even when I heard sirens going off in the distance.
What took me out of my shock was the loud sound of motorcycles getting closer and closer.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Eight weeks later.
Mac set the pregnancy test face up on my bathroom counter. Lemon and I stood on either side of her as we waited for the results. Lemon grabbed the box and reread the side of it again. “One line is negative. Two is positive.”
It wasn’t even my test and I was nervous. The three of us went silent as we watched one pink line appear. Then another one.
Lemon inhaled sharply and I blinked a bunch of times to make sure I wasn’t seeing things. Mac didn’t utter a word. I didn’t think she was even breathing.
“Maybe it’s a false positive,” Lemon said.
“I’ve missed two periods,” Mac said, her voice sounding empty.
“It was only one night?” I asked in disbelief.
