Dead Spell (22 page)

She went through the house room by room and found him passed out in Harmony’s bed. She threw off the covers and he was alone. “What the fuck did you do? Tom, wake up.” She punched and slapped him. “Tom, answer me!”

“What, why are you screaming? Harmony had a stomach ache, she threw up. I rinsed everything out in the sink and I climbed in bed with her. I fell asleep.”

“Where’s the baby? Where’s Harmony?”

“She must’ve heard you screaming again and got scared.”

“I don’t believe you.” Charity heard crying coming from the cabinet of the built-in. She opened the door and Harmony was curled up inside. “How could you? You don’t think I see how you’re always hugging her and kissing her?” Charity wailed. “No, no…no…”

“She’s my daughter, Charity. What the hell are you accusing me of here? Are you off your pills again? I didn’t…”

Charity smashed a pink, ceramic piggy bank over Tom’s head and knocked him unconscious. “I won’t let you do to her what they did to me.” Full of rage, she dragged him to the top of the basement stairs and shoved him down. “Did you think I wouldn’t know?”

She pulled the string of the single bulb light hanging from the basement ceiling and the room filled with a pale yellow light.

Tom grunted when she rolled him over.

She hooked her arms under his and propped him up in a metal legged kitchen chair, binding his hands and feet. “Wake up,” she said. “Wake up, you sick fucking pervert.”

Tom’s eyes fluttered open and then closed again.

“I said, wake up.”

He tried to talk, but his words slurred.

She opened a small, wooden lock box and his eyes went wide. It was his handgun.

When he tried to protest, she tied a knotted gag into his mouth. She was crazed, wide-eyed, and manic.

Tom struggled to get free and Harmony appeared at the top of the stairs.

“Come here, baby,” Charity said letting down the gun.

Harmony’s footie pajamas scuffed on the stair tread as she slid down on her butt. She looked at her mother and at her father tied up in the chair. “Daddy?”

“Come here and sit with Mommy, Harmony.”

Tom started to cry, blood and tears running down his face.

“Give me your hand, honey.” Harmony’s tiny hand barely fit around the trigger. “Daddy’s been bad and we can’t let him get away with it.”

Charity squeezed Harmony’s hand and the gun discharged twice, spraying blood everywhere; tearing the right side of Tom’s jaw away and scattering teeth and brain matter.

Harmony screamed as the empty half of her father’s face moved like he was trying to say something and then went utterly still.

38
.

Brea opened her eyes and then quickly closed them. The box light over the head of her hospital bed was bright and it burned to look at it. She opened her mouth to talk, but her throat was raw, nearly swollen shut. “How did I get here?” she asked, vaguely remembering an ambulance ride that she couldn’t discern was real or the dream. Maybe they used the GPS on her phone, or maybe her mother played a hunch. Either way, she was glad someone found her.

“Don’t talk, honey.” Joan adjusted her pillows and blanket. “It’s from surgery. They had to put a tube in your throat.”

A cast with pins sticking out of it immobilized Brea’s left arm and she tried to wiggle her fingers. The pain, even as drugged as she felt, made it impossible. “Adam,” she whispered her voice foreign and gravelly. She smacked her lips together.

“Are you thirsty?” Joan slid a couple of flat ice chips between her severely chapped lips and they quickly dissolved. “The surgeon said you’d be dry when you woke up.”

Brea tried not to remember what she saw. “What happened?”

 “You broke your arm in three places, but the doctor says you’ll be fine.”

 “Mom, where’s Adam?”

“You need to rest your voice, honey.” Joan clicked off the overhead light. “That’s better, right?”

Brea looked out her hospital room door at the nurse in blue scrubs talking to her Uncle Jim. Both Pat and Mike were in uniform behind him and she knew something was wrong. She grabbed her mother’s hand. “Mom, is Adam here? Is he all right?”

“Hey, look who’s here to see you.”

“Dad?” For a minute, Brea wasn’t sure she recognized him. His once brown hair was almost completely gray and the lines on his face had deepened despite his increased weight.

Joan lowered her head as he walked in to the room.

He roughed Brea’s hair like she was five again. “Good to see you, kiddo. You gave us a hell of a scare.”

The others followed him in.

Pat’s face was easiest to read of all. “How are you feeling, Brea?”

 “I’m okay. Can I talk to Dad alone, please?”

Joan held a half a cup of ice water in front of her and bent the straw for her to sip. The water swirling around in her empty stomach made her nauseous.

“I’m too tired to ask again.” She winced and Joan pushed the button on the pump that delivered another straight shot of morphine.

Brea fought hard to keep her eyes open.

“Why don’t you give us a minute?” Her father gestured toward the door. “I don’t think she’s going to be awake long.”

“I…”

“Jo, she’ll be fine. Let him handle this.” Jim put his hand on Joan’s shoulder and ushered her away. Mike closed the door.

“He’s dead isn’t he, Dad? Adam is dead.”

Her father handed her a tissue and dropped the side rail of the bed to sit down next to her.

 “They did what they could, but a piece of wood pierced his heart. He was too far gone by the time they got to him.”

“I shouldn’t have gone back there. It’s my fault. This is entirely
my
fault.”

“Not entirely.” His expression was one of guilt. “How did you know about that house? Did Harmony tell you?”

Brea shook her head and saw trails from the pain medication. “Harmony didn’t know anything.”

Her father took her uninjured hand in his. “She knew, but maybe she didn’t remember. I think it’s time I told you why I left.” His eyes filled up.

“Dad, I saw what happened there. I know what Charity thought and I know that Tom didn’t do it.”

“How did you…?”

“I don’t know. The story came to me in flashes, when I was in that house and before. I think Tom was trying to tell Harmony the truth, but she was sick and wouldn’t get help and…she got it all wrong. She was confused.”

“Following in Charity’s footsteps.”

Brea nodded, fighting the effects of the morphine.

“We didn’t know that Charity was sick, Brea. We thought…she told us…she convinced us that Tom might have hurt you.”

“That’s why Mom took me to Dr. Frankel. It wasn’t because you left, it was because she was trying to find out if Tom hurt me.”

“Dr. Frankel said there was no sign that anything happened to you. We tried to convince Charity to take Harmony, too, to find out for sure, but she wouldn’t. She said we wanted her to go to jail. She said we were all going to jail.”

“All?”

“That was why I left. I kept seeing her at the grocery store, at preschool, and every time she saw me she freaked. It was like seeing me brought her back to that night. We were at that party, your mother and I. Everyone else had left, but your mom and I stayed to clean up. There was a mess: cups everywhere, half-eaten food, and the fire pit burning. We were going to clean up a bit and then go home. We heard the shots and Harmony screaming. We found her covered in blood, hiding in a cabinet in her room. Your mother cleaned her up and Charity told us her version of what happened.  I went downstairs and Tom was half falling out of the chair. His face was…”

“I know.”

“Charity convinced us to help her stage it to look like a suicide and God help me, when I thought Tom might have hurt you, I agreed to do it. Your uncle, Pat, and Mike, they all knew. They came and we destroyed the evidence.”

“You what?”

“It was for you and Harmony.”

“And that’s why Mom wanted me away from her? Why she acted the way she did when Harmony died?”

“Your mother was sorry and sad. I know you don’t believe that, but she was and she was also a little relieved until you mentioned that house.”

“Why didn’t she tell me? Why didn’t
you
tell me?”

“I wanted to. I tried to. But you never wanted to come out to Arizona and every time I came back here, all I could see was that night. I was afraid if I ran into Charity that it would start all over.”

 “Do you think Harmony knew all along? That she remembered and that’s why she killed herself?”

Her father wiped the tears rolling down her cheeks. “I hope not. I wouldn’t want to think of her carrying that around, but I really don’t know.”

She felt herself fading, the morphine asserting its control.

“I only wanted to protect you.”

Brea closed her eyes, squeezing out a last tear. She felt the weight of another blanket on top of her and gave herself over to sleep.

39
.

James Taylor’s Fire and Rain played low in Brea’s hospital room. She was sick of television and too sad for much else. The blinds were wide open and the full moon was a beacon in an otherwise pitch black, starless sky.

The ward was quiet. Most of the patients were settling in for sleep, if they weren’t asleep already.

Jaxon appeared in the doorway, holding a bouquet of flowers. “How are you feeling?”

Brea rolled over, careful not to put weight on her arm. “Visiting hours are over.”

“I heard what happened to Adam. I’m really sorry.”

“You hated him.”

“I hated the competition.”

“Just stop it, okay? Stop pretending like you care about me.”

“Brea, listen.” He sat in the chair next to her bed and set the flowers on her blanket, filling the air with the smell of pink roses and baby’s breath. “I admit that I said what Harmony said I did. Pete and Rachael were giving me such a hard time that I had to come up with something. My father, your mother, neither of them had anything to do with this. I swear. I was with you for you.”

“What about Rachael? That day at the deed’s office?”

“I was only there because Becky called me for a ride. I didn’t even know Rachael was with her. The rest was Rachael putting on a show. Please, Brea. I miss you.”

Brea held up her hand for him to stop talking and pulled the necklace from beneath her hospital gown. “I haven’t taken this off, you know. Well, except for surgery.” She rolled her eyes when she said it.

Jaxon smiled. “So you’ll give me another chance?”