Bound by Blood and Brimstone (31 page)

drawn in the sand, and one of us would pay for having crossed it.

“Okay,” he murmured. I noticed a subtle shift in his muddy eyes, a tightening around the

mouth. “And haven’t I just been explaining to you that I understand you miss your daddy? And

I’m here to make things better for you all?”

For reasons I couldn’t understand, those words triggered pure animal instinct within me,

bolting me off that couch, inches from his face. Adrenaline sang through my veins, rendering me

unstoppable, reckless. The dam had been breached.

“You’ll never make things better! We were fine without you! You’re not my daddy, and

you’ll never take his place! You wormed your way in here before Daddy was even cold in his

grave, and nobody cared one whit how I would feel about you sitting in his chair or eating at his

place or SLEEPING WITH HIS WIFE!”

He backhanded me. I didn’t even see it coming. One second I was screaming in his teeth,

the next I was sailing over the sofa arm into the wall, where the back of my head connected hard

enough to shower stars into my eyes, stars on a red field.

I tasted blood while my stomach did a slow lurch and roll. My knees started to buckle,

the red field of stars going black around the edges.
How am I still standing? What’s holding me

up?

Reese had me pinned to the wall, his hands gripping both my shoulders. I blinked to keep

the darkness away and suppressed a shudder at his face so close to mine, mottled and beaded

with sweat. His breath, a hot, foul vapor, wafted over me.

“Evil child. Don’t you ever speak to me like that again,” he said, his jaw clenching, “or

so help me, I’ll make you wish you were never born. I, the Lord thy God, am a jealous God,

visiting the iniquities of the fathers upon the children. That’s right, Ember Mae. Sins of the

fathers. It was probably born and bred right in you.”

I wet my lips, attempted to fire back a hot retort, but all that came out was a rusty croak.

“You think your precious daddy was some kind of saint? Well, guess what? He was far

from it, nothing but lowlife white trash. But what else could you expect with that devil-serving

mother of his?”

Murderous, impotent fury rendered me wordless, gasping, clawing, kicking for all I was

worth, wanting nothing more than to sink my fingers into the soft liquid of his eyeballs. He only

smirked and held me there on that wall like an insect trapped on a strip of flypaper.

“That’s where you’ve been today, isn’t it? To that witch’s house! Did you think I

wouldn’t know? Well, make no mistake, Missy, I know all about the two of you and your bloody

sorcery.”

Finally managing to find my tongue, and discovering my anger was too great for speech,

I sucked in and spat his eyes full. In the second it took for the shock to register, he relaxed his

grip on me to wipe his face, and I jerked free. Panic fluttered up in my throat like clotted feathers

as I careened away from him, my only thought to escape this madness.

Two steps, three at the most, was as far as I made it before I was wrenched backward by

a fistful of my own hair. A hollow scream punched out of my lungs, my feet treading air, and the

next thing I knew I was puddled in the floor in a boneless heap. Reese loomed over me, bathed in

shadow. I hitched in a shuddery breath and railed at him for all I was worth.

“I hate you!” I screeched. “You’re not fit to tie my Daddy’s shoes! Don’t you dare call

my Wonnie a witch! She knows more about God than you’ll ever dream of! I wish she was a

witch, so she could curse you to hell!” I was sobbing now, beyond caring if I lived or died in this

room. “I hate you, hate you! You think you can come in here and take over! You talk about how

much you love Momma, and just look at you, beating up on a kid! What would Momma think of

you now?”

There was more I hurled at him, but at one point I heard the thud and felt the floor jar

beneath me. It was Reese, on his knees, his face buried in his hands, weeping like a lost and

brokenhearted child, praying, begging my forgiveness.

As stunned as I was to see Reese Watkins humbled, I didn’t linger to see more. With

every beat of my heart, some invisible sledgehammer kept whacking the back of my head, so all

I could do was crawl, then stagger a bleary path to my bedroom. That was it, until the rattle of

Momma’s milk buckets jolted me from sweet nothingness. It was still dark out. I wanted to sink

back into oblivion. I wanted to forget.

“Em, time to get up, Honey! Rise and shine, girl! I got some news I think you’re going to

want to hear!” Momma’s clear, singsong voice dashed any hope I had of even a temporary

respite. I’d always thought there should be a law against anyone sounding so chipper at 5:00 a.m.

Gingerly, I heaved myself onto my back and instantly regretted having done so. My head,

weighing in at roughly 1,000 pounds, began a lazy, rhythmic throb, and a cautious inspection

with my fingertips found the culprit in no time flat. A huge, rock-hard lump jutted beneath my

crown. My lips, having somehow sprouted while I slept, ballooned beneath my nose, and my

entire face felt as though it had been used in a rousing game of kickball.

I had to survey the damage, bad as it was, though God knows I dreaded seeing it. I

dragged myself to the ancient cracked mirror over my dresser and took inventory:
a goose
egg, a

fat lip, and one puffed eye, a lovely shad
e
of magenta.
Nice. Good work, Reese. It takes a real

man to work over a kid’s face like this.

Fleetingly, I flashed back to the shocking picture he’d made the night before, kneeling in

abject despair, pleading with me to forgive him.
Probably figured if he put on a good enough

show, I wouldn’t tell Momma. He has to know this would shake her up plenty. Might even be

afraid she’d leave him if she believed he was dangerous enough to hurt her children.

Had I not been in possession of enough lip for three people, I could’ve smiled at that

thought. Even floating such a rapturous fantasy, I knew I wouldn’t tell Momma the truth about

my injuries. I’d known it from the second I’d been nailed to that wall by Reese’s meaty hands.

Fact is, Momma wouldn’t have permitted herself to believe the truth, and I would’ve hated her

for that. I just couldn’t risk it.

Momma was frying ham, her back to me, when I entered the kitchen. “Start some coffee,

will you, Honey? I’m letting Lorrie Beth sleep a little. That hip of hers is tearing up thunder,

poor thing. Guess it was too much for her, standing on her feet so long last night, but Lord, did

we have a good turn out! Those Jacobs kids have more clothes now than any child in this

county.” She chuckled, flipping a ham steak, and picked up her wooden spoon to stir the gravy.

I responded with a muffled “uh-huh,” not trusting my swollen lips with anything more

complicated. Hoping to remain invisible for as long as possible, I spooned coffee into the basket

and filled the pot with cold spring water. Warily, I eyed Momma’s narrow back as she bent over

to open the oven door and peer at the biscuits. The coffee pot had to be set on the stove. It was

now or never.

I gulped a breath, mentally rehearsing my prepared story as I covered the few steps to the

stove’s rear burner. I tried to keep my face averted, even letting my hair fall forward a little to

cover my puffed eye. It worked for all of two seconds.

She nearly dropped an entire pan of hot biscuits. “Ember,” she said, gasping, her eyes

sweeping my distorted features. Biscuits forgotten, tossed to the counter, she reached a tentative

hand to my lumpy face. “What in the world?”

Tenderly, she fingered the bruise around my eye, her own welling up. “How?” she asked,

then swallowed. “Sweetie, did you fall or something?” I’d practiced my lie, knew it would be

bought, even planned to make light of the whole incident, but before I could utter a word,

Momma got an unexpected answer.

“No, Mona, she didn’t fall.” Startled, we jerked at the voice coming from the doorway,

nearly getting a gravy burn in the process. Reese stood there, looking like a man who’d just been

chased and caught by the hounds of hell.

His hair stuck out in wild tufts about his head, his skin pasty and slick with sweat. His

face was etched in stark lines, his eyes bloodshot and underscored with baggy smudges, his

hands unsteady as they reached for a chair. He collapsed into the seat, burying his head in both

hands, his fingers raking greasy strands of hair off his forehead.

Raising tortured eyes to Momma’s blue ones, he gestured to the chair beside his. “I have

to talk to you, Mona. Please sit down. You, too, Ember Mae.” Dizzily, I swayed on my feet,

ready to bolt, ready to run to Wonnie’s, to town, to the army, the French Foreign Legion,

anywhere but this room.
Please don’t
make me stay for this, Momma. I don’t want to hear this
.

She was already gently nudging me toward the chair across from Reese, her small hand

warm on my lower back. Without a word, she slid the skillet of gravy off the heat and sat next to

me, reaching across the table to enfold Reese’s hands in her own.

“What is it, Reese? What’s wrong? Haven’t you slept at all?” Her quiet words hung

suspended in the humid, still air. Silence, weighty and expectant, draped us like an unwanted

blanket.

“Ember’s face didn’t get that way from any fall,” he announced, then, taking a deep

breath and releasing it, he spoke haltingly. “I did it. I hit her. I grabbed her, roughed her up,

threw her on the floor--pulled her hair. I think I would’ve done more, but she stopped me. She

made me think about what I was doing. I don’t think I could go on living if you can’t forgive me,

Mona.” His voice, raw, anguished, seemed to nearly strangle him, and he gripped Momma’s

hands with such violence, she winced.

He lowered his eyes, and suddenly realizing he might be hurting her, released her hands

so quickly I would’ve thought she’d burned him somehow.

The utter amazement of Reese playing true confession had me out in the ozone. I snapped

out of it with the realization that my mouth had been hanging open.

“The thing is, I can hardly believe it myself--me knocking around a kid like that. I’ve

never, in all my life, struck a child. Never.”

Momma’s eyes darted to mine, glassy with unshed tears. She sat rigidly in her chair, her

mouth quivering.
She believes
him. The next thing you know, she’ll blame me for this
.

Abruptly, she reached across the table again to cover his trembling hands with hers, then,

as if plucking the thought clean out of my brain, she demanded, “What happened, Reese? What

happened to make you so mad?”

His answer jolted me more than her traitorous question. “Nothing, Mona. It doesn’t even

matter. Nothing she could’ve done made it okay to do what I did. She can’t be blamed in any

way for this. It was all me.”

Dumfounded beyond all reason at having Reese defend me to my own mother, I began to

suspect I was still asleep, unable to escape some eerie dream brought on by a concussion.

He was looking at me now, his droopy eyes unwavering. “Ember Mae, Honey, you had

every right to get fighting mad at me for what I said to you. I had no call to talk to you like that. I

don’t even deserve this family, don’t deserve a home with such good people. God knows I never

learned what to do with kids. Never had the chance to be one myself.”

It was in that very second, following those words, when my “window” shuttered open

inside my head. It was the one and only time it ever happened in all the years I spent around

Reese. I had a brief flash of a small, dirty, blond-haired boy. He was barefoot. It was over so

quickly it may’ve gotten past me, unnoticed, except for the sheer, bone-grinding terror. The boy

was drowning in it.

Inclined to trust my instincts, I pounced on this. “Were you scared a lot as a kid?” I

blurted. “Somebody make you afraid of something?”

His eyebrows shot up. “You might say that. “But, how could you know that?”

I wet my overgrown lips. “Well, it’s just that, uh, sometimes, when a kid is scared all the

time, he, uh, grows up not knowing what to do when he has kids of his own.” I was stammering,

sweating, sure I’d overstepped my bounds. Behind me, on the stove, the coffee pot was boiling,

shooting fragrant steam over our heads. I fidgeted.

“You’re right,” he said. “It was exactly like that.” Shifting his attention to Momma, then

back to me, he cleared his throat before continuing. “All I knew as a kid was being scared.” His

voice cracked. His Adam’s apple bobbed as his throat convulsed. “You see, I didn’t have a

family, growing up. Don’t even know where I came from. Nobody did. I don’t recollect a

Momma, daddy, nothing.”

“Everybody has a Momma and daddy, Reese,” Momma interjected softly.”