Her dad was outside hollering incoherently.
I pulled a shirt and some sweatpants and shoes on and passed Miss Alice in the living room. “Better to ignore him, honey,” she said, like this wasn’t the first time it had happened.
I glanced out the window as he threw a beer bottle at the house, causing broken glass to explode on the porch. A woman got out of the truck and tried to pull him back, but he shoved her off and she fell on the ground.
This was getting out of hand. Maia came out of the bedroom and hugged Miss Alice. “I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have come.”
Miss Alice was having none of it. “Don’t you dare say that. You aren’t responsible for that man’s behavior. Sherriff will be here any minute.”
Her dad started to pound on the front door so hard it rocked on its hinges. Maia flinched every time and I couldn’t just stand there and let him terrorize her.
I went out the back door and ran around to the front. “Sir, step away from the house please.”
He turned and pointed at me. “You should stay away from her. She’s nothing but trouble, son.”
He hammered on the door again and I approached the steps carefully, trying to stay true to my word, but I wasn’t about to let him put his fist through the glass of the door.
“Stop!” I yelled, and he whipped around to face me again, looking angrier now.
“That bitch killed her brother and ain’t atoned for it.”
I didn’t have to see Maia to know he was hurting her. “It wasn’t her fault. It was an accident.”
“That what she told you? She tell you why he was out that night? What she was doing? She might not have been behind the wheel, but she killed him all the same. Should’ve been her that died.”
The woman behind us was sobbing. I wanted to block the words from reaching Maia, but couldn’t.
“You’ve all been through a lot,” I said as calmly as I could. “This won’t help anything. Let me drive you home.”
He almost face planted coming down the steps, but then charged at me with alarming speed. He was so hammered all I had to do was sidestep and he fell when his body didn’t meet mine. He got right back up and took a swing at me, but again, it was easy enough to dodge.
The telltale flashing lights of the sheriff came down the drive and I relaxed a little.
As the deputy got out of the car, I turned and put my hands up to make sure he could see I wasn’t engaging with Maia’s dad…who chose that moment to sucker punch me in the face.
I landed on my ass in the dirt and took a few seconds to process the chaos. The deputy put Maia’s dad in the back of his car.
Maia ran to me, tenderly cupping my face. “Are you okay? I’m so sorry, baby. I’m so fucking sorry.”
“This is your fault,” her mom screamed at her. “Your daddy hasn’t touched a drink in years until you showed up. Don’t know why you can’t just stay gone!”
Maia’s expression broke my fucking heart.
I sat on the porch steps with a bag of frozen peas on my face as they decided Maia’s mom would drive their truck home and the sheriff would give her dad a ride back to make sure he stayed there. I didn’t press charges. Maia didn’t need an ongoing reminder of it.
When everyone left, Maia cleaned up the glass, and Miss Alice went inside to give us space. We sat next to each other in silence until I pulled her close to me.
She was dry eyed, but her whole body was shaking.
“Come on,” I said, pulling her up. “We’re going for a walk.”
Neither of us had any chance of sleeping in the state we were in. We wandered across Miss Alice’s property hand in hand.
“He’s right, you know…what happened to Matt was my fault.”
“It was an accident,” I said, not knowing the specifics, but knowing she felt guilty about something she couldn’t really be to blame for.
She took a deep breath and let it out. “He was serious about football, so he didn’t drink that often and always told me not to drive drunk. Said he’d come and get me if I ever needed him. I usually just stayed at a friend or a boyfriend’s place if I’d been drinking, but there was this one night…I was at my boyfriend’s house and he was playing video games with his friends instead of paying attention to me…a grievous offense to teenage Maia…so I was taking shots of whatever cheap liquor we’d managed to get our hands on. It was storming and the power went out, so they couldn’t play their games anymore. They’d been drinking too and they decided I should be the entertainment instead.”
