“Read the note.”
I looked down at the paper I held in my hand. It was one of Larry’s old “turn over the war criminal” fliers. Eric’s note was scrawled on the back.
I’m truly sorry about this, Leeland. I’m taking Zachary to Larry. I made arrangements to meet with him in Bixby. I told him I’d be bringing your son to him to prove to him that I’ve turned against you. I guess in a way, I have.
The way I see it, there are only a few ways this can play out. Either I fool Larry enough to get close to him and kill him, or I don’t, he kills me, and you come after him to get Zachary.
Either way, I get to kill the motherfucker.
If you want Zachary back, you’ll have to come take him from Larry.
Consider this my veto of the council’s vote,
Eric
I read again before I turned to Jim in disbelief. I couldn’t believe what I had read. “Eric? Eric did this?”
“Looks like it.”
I’m not sure how long I stood there before I became aware of Ken standing beside me. For the first time in months, I felt truly lost. “He took my boy, Ken. He got Zach.”
He nodded, then handed me the bundle he carried. I regarded the bundle dumbly for a moment before recognizing my machetes and knives, the same blades I’d been so eager to put away a few short days before.
Ken’s reply was simple. “Let’s go get him back.”
There was no discussion about who would go and who would stay. I was going. It was as simple as that. Anyone who wanted could go with me. Anyone who didn’t could stay. I didn’t care.
I could see Debra felt the same way, and it was with a mixture of sadness and pride that I watched her set personal feelings aside and arm herself. In all the years we’d been together, I had only seen her armed twice, and both of those times since D-day. Even during the long months spent battling Larry’s troops, she had elected to stay and help with the management of the exodus, tending the wounded, gathering food.
She was very much in tune with life. I recalled the day she had come to me and told me she was pregnant with Zachary. She had known from the first that she carried a boy, just as she had known with Megan that it would be a girl.
Always calm, never judgmental, she tried her best to walk apart from the conflict that engulfed us, though she never gave any indication she thought any less of those who had fought, or even of those who had killed. It was just that, no matter how much she knew intellectually that the fight had been necessary, her peaceful nature simply wouldn’t allow her to contemplate the idea of taking another life.
But now Larry had our son, and she didn’t hesitate. That was as extreme as it got for her. I helped her strap on some of my extra blades and gave her the shotgun and shells we had retrieved from one of the hidden caches. All the while, I couldn’t help praying she wouldn’t have to use them. For though the look in her eye forbore any thought of trying to keep her from coming, I feared she hadn’t the skill to last long in a fight.
It took us less than half an hour to gather what we thought we might need and, as we prepared to leave, I looked around Amber’s empty house.
Megan walked in the front door without knocking. “I just heard.”
I slung the machete over my shoulder. “We’re just about to leave.”
Megan seemed hesitant, as if something bothered her.
“Megan?”
She shook her head a few times, her mouth working of its own accord, but no words came.
Debra went to her and pulled her close. “It’s okay. We’ll get him back.”
Megan pushed away. “I should have known what he was up to. We had been planning…” She seemed unable to continue.
At first, I thought I’d heard wrong. But I saw her face and knew I hadn’t. My chest suddenly tightened. “Planning?” My voice began to rise without my intending it to. “Planning what?”
Megan started to turn away, but I grabbed her arm and spun her around to face me. “You’re telling us you knew about this? And you didn’t say anything?”
“No!” she sobbed. “Taking Zachary wasn’t part of it! We never discussed that! We just wanted-”
“What?” It was only with considerable restraint that I was able to lower my voice again. “You just wanted what?”
We were interrupted by a tentative knock at the door. Ken stepped back defensively when I snatched it open. I started to tell him that it was a bad time when I glanced over his shoulder. A small group waited just behind him, Cindy, Rene, Sarah, Billy, Edwin, and several others, all looking surprised at my apparent ferocity.
“Um, did we come at a bad time?” Ken asked.
“Yeah.” I ran my hand through my hair. “Sorry. You might say that. Family business.”
He and Cindy started to turn away.
“Ken?” They turned back.
“You two are family.” I sighed. “Now would you please get in here before I do something I’ll regret later?”
Cindy smiled, and Ken gripped my shoulder as they slipped past me into the house.
I turned back to the rest of the people in the front yard. “Sorry, guys, this shouldn’t take too long.” I went inside, closing the door behind me.
Ken and Cindy looked a little disconcerted to see Megan sobbing into Debra’s shoulder. No doubt they were wondering what they had walked in on.
As soon as I saw Megan, my anger flared again. I couldn’t help it. “Megan was just explaining how she had known Eric was up to something. How she had even been making plans with him!”
To Ken’s credit, he approached the whole thing a lot calmer than I had. “Megan? What’s this all about?”
Cindy went over to Debra and Megan and began stroking Megan’s back. “It’s okay, baby. Nobody’s mad at you.”
At first Megan didn’t say anything. She just huddled against her mother. Then, so gradually that I couldn’t tell where the transition occurred, Megan was laughing. “That right, Dad? Nobody’s mad at me?” Her laughter had an eerie edge that bordered on hysteria. “Hey, Ken? Ask Dad if anyone’s mad at me, would you?”
I raised my finger, pointing it in her face, and opened my mouth to shout at her, to release some of the pent-up anger from where it wormed around in my gut and let it fly at my daughter. I was past reason for a second or two, and something of that must have shown in my face.
“Leeland, stop it!” Debra never shouted. Never. When she got upset or angry, she got quiet-calmly, glacially quiet. Her shout was all it took. As quickly as that, my anger was gone, replaced by embarrassment. Megan was hurting and, no matter what she had done, she deserved better from me than accusations before I heard her out.
“I’m sorry,” I mumbled. “It’s been kind of a rough day.” For lack of anything more constructive to say, I repeated, “I’m sorry.”
“Rough?” She pulled away from Cindy and Debra and started toward me. “Try losing the person you’re planning to marry!” Debra grabbed her arm, but Megan twisted away and within three steps, stood nose-to-nose with me. “You think you’ve had a rough day? I’ve had a rough day for four damned months!” She turned to walk away. Then, apparently deciding otherwise, she spun back to face me. Her slap was slow and deliberate, daring me to stop it.
Maybe I felt I deserved it, or maybe I felt she deserved some act of penance for my apparent insensitivity. Maybe I was just too shocked at the idea that she would actually do it. Somehow though, I sensed that if I stopped my daughter from making this gesture, this token of defiance, it would open an irrevocable rift between us that would be immeasurably difficult, if not impossible, to repair.
She stood there for a second, daring me to respond, daring me to reprimand her, to chide her or somehow treat her like a child. When I didn’t, it seemed to infuriate her even more.
“Damn you! Don’t you understand? Larry is the one responsible for Andrew’s death, and you were all going to sit back and let him get away with it!”