Jeff Abbott: Promises of Home

“If Trey wants you so bad, you can just go to him now!” Scott shrieked, and I rushed forward, yelling at Scott. The cold eye of the . 38’s barrel swung at me and a strong arm shoved me to one side, diving for the gun.

Light exploded in the night. Nola screamed, Bradley screeched, birds burst from the trees in a spinning wheel of caws. I pulled my face from the mud, scrabbling madly toward Scott. He was on the ground, wrestling with Mark for the gun. Both had their hands on the weapon and I reached between them, yanking it away.

“You killed him! You killed my daddy!” Mark screamed into Scott’s sobbing face, pounding him with his fists. Adrenaline powered me hard and I jerked Mark away with one arm, getting myself between him and Scott. Nola collapsed to her son’s side, cradling his sobbing form in her arms.

“Oh, my baby, oh, my baby,” she cried. “Why did you have to do this?”

I swung around, holding Mark tight to me. Bradley knelt by Hart, lying flat on the ground. I hurried to him and saw the blood gurgling out of the horrible wound in his chest.

He looked at me, life ebbing in his eyes. I shoved Mark toward the house. “Call 911! Run, hurry!” Mark turned, wordless, and sprinted away.

“Hart! Hold on! Help is coming!” I begged him.

“No… Mark…”

“Mark’s okay. He’s okay, you saved him.”

“Mark… tell him sorry… his daddy… all these years… my fault…”

“No, it wasn’t.” I squeezed his hand tight. “It wasn’t your fault. Now you have to hold on, you have to-”

He pressed my fingers in answer. The darkness of the night became the darkness of his eyes. The breath ceased. I stayed kneeling in the mud by his side.

Nola held Scott tight, knowing he would soon be pulled from her arms. He did not try to run. But he stared at me with eyes of ice.

The January wind blew cold as I stood on the porch, staring out across the pasture and down to the river. Hart’s family had really planned right all those years ago, turning the house just the right angle so that on a gloriously clear day you had a panorama of shapeless woods and squared meadows and a ribbon of river. I leaned against the cold wood of the porch. The wind, gusting, moved the dry grass in the fields and carried the lonesome cry of a migrating bird far in the sky. They were familiar sounds, and I could nearly imagine that the wind also sustained the whinnying of excited horses, the thunder of hooves, the laughter of a young Trey Slocum and Jordan Poteet as they rode across the pastures of Hart’s farm.

Mark’s farm, I corrected myself. The words sounded odd to me. I turned back to the door to see just what was taking the young squire so long.

Through the door I could see him talking quietly on the cordless phone. I tapped and he held up a finger, just a minute.

I turned back and watched the bare branches of the tree’s sway in the wind. That night six weeks ago seemed horribly close, the cutting wind feeling like death’s finger on my face. The ambulance and police cars roared up the road-I’d sent Bradley to open the gate for them. But for Hart, it was minutes too late. The bullet had been too cruel.

Scott had surrendered without struggle. He was in a nearby juvenile detention facility since he was only fourteen. Scott would be tried as a juvenile, since he was under fifteen and obviously a child who’d suffered terribly due to a lack of role models. I spat in the grass. He’d killed two men and nearly killed a third. Scott seemed hardly childlike to me. I’d gotten to where I could hardly stand to watch his grandstanding attorneys on the nightly news.

Other adjustments weren’t easy either. Thomasina Clifton finally learned the truth about Rennie’s death. I’d sat with her while Junebug and I relayed Hart’s confession. Her eyes slowly had filled with tears and I wondered if it was the first time in many years that she’d wept for her lost daughter. Her other children had closed around Thomasina like human armor, and I’d stayed away, leaving her to her rediscovered grief. Knowing that her daughter didn’t have to die, that Rennie’s toying with Louis and Hart’s life had gotten her murdered, was a fresh agony. It’s a hard thing to hear that about your child.

It was much worse telling Truda Shivers about her son. Davis, Ed, Junebug, and I had talked about it and we went over together to tell her what would come out at the inquest of Hart’s death. Junebug did most of the talking, and it was possibly the most horrible conversation I’d ever heard in my life as he detailed the moral and legal crimes of her son.

“You aren’t talking about my boy,” Truda had finally said, her voice a faint whisper. “My boy wouldn’t do such things.”

Her denial of Clevey’s rottenness was thickly impenetrable. After a while we gave up. She’s a woman I still care about, but I know better than to bang my head against a wall. In her mind, Truda’s constructed a heroic end for her boy as the dedicated reporter and none of us are allowed to edit it.

I felt bad for both those mothers, losing their children. We sometimes forget that everyone was once somebody’s little baby, cooing up at a smiling parent from the warmth of a crib.

One person not cooing at me, at least for a week, was Candace. She didn’t appreciate me runmng off to confront Hart or my face-off with Scott. After she chewed me out thoroughly, I got a long hug where she made sure I was okay. I’m forgiven for the moment-and we’re heading out on a Caribbean cruise to patch up any existing wounds in our relationship. Part of my penance is letting her pay the way.

Mark came out onto the porch, carrying one of the wreaths. “Sony, that was Bradley. He wants me to come over for dinner this week.”

“How’s he doing?” Davis and Bradley had finally moved back into their home. Cayla was deep in treatment for her anger over Bradley’s condition and her tendency to beat the stuffing out of her husband. Davis claimed he wanted to make the marriage work, but I thought the statement rang hollow. A few weeks not walking on tiptoes around his wife had been nirvana. He’d seen there was a life outside of abuse.

“Bradley’s fine,” Mark shrugged. “He says he’s supposed to go talk with Steven Teague this afternoon. He’s embarrassed, though. Some kid was teasing him about seeing a shrink.”

Male pride never ends. It had kept Hart a slave to blackmail and turned him killer; made Clevey an avaricious criminal who fumblingly attempted to make amends for his own self-esteem; driven Trey away from a family that loved him; kept Davis in bondage to a sick woman; and made Scott believe murder was a solution. I didn’t have much male pride left, but I’d vowed not to let it shape my life.

“I’m sure Steven will be able to make him feel better.” I pointed at the wreath. “I got the others here. Let’s go.”

Mark followed me off the porch and I saw that, as always, he had to turn and look back at the house, “I still can’t believe it. That this is mine.”

It had been the final shock after several days of catastrophes. Hart’s will was short and to the point: all his worldly possessions were left solely to Mark Slocum, grandson of his longtime friend Louis Slocum. Despite Hart’s claims that Clevey Shivers had bled him dry, Quadlander pockets still went deep. The land, the house, the horses, the equipment, stocks and bonds, and enough cash squirreled away in a Houston bank to make you choke. Mark was now, quite possibly, the wealthiest boy in Bonaparte County. Of course, my name was in Hart’s will as well. He named Sister and me cotrustees for Mark’s money, until Mark attained the age of twenty-one, when good sense would allegedly prevail.