Nevada Barr - 13 1/2

His compliance reassured them, allowed them to move from scared to angry.

“You’re damn right we’ll cuff you. You’re goddamn right,” the shooter growled as he walked crabwise up, his pistol still held on Marshall.

“Could you radio for an ambulance? My brother’s hurt, he’s on the backstairs. I think I broke his back.”

“Proud motherfucker, aren’t you?”

Son of Mack the Giant.

Cuffed and pushed face down on the hall floor, Marshall turned his head to watch them open the bedroom door. It was good to be manacled. Prison would be good, too. No, not good, Marshall thought. Not good or bad. Nothing, really. Just one long unbroken nothing. Without Polly, life was his prison.

He wished they had put him where he wouldn’t be able to see in. Because he could, he had to.

“God damn,” the cop huffed as the door refused to budge. Son of Mack pulled out his sidearm again, readying to shoot the lock like they did in police shows.

“Oh, stop, would you stop with the gun?” the other policeman said. “It’s not locked. Something’s wedged against it.”

Both of them put their shoulders into it, and the door opened a foot or so. Another shove and whatever was blocking the way toppled with a crash that reverberated through the floorboards and quivered in Marshall ’s bones. The door swung wide. The policemen stood to the sides, guns drawn, backs to the wall. Marshall could see in.

Polly was there. And Emma and Gracie. The girls were on the king-sized bed and looked no bigger than fairies. Polly, her face white as wax and hard as granite, was at the foot, standing, facing the door. She had a cell phone in one hand and a carving knife in the other.

Ready to die for her children.

But she hadn’t, and Marshall began to cry with relief. In the past weeks, he’d cried more than he had since he’d been little. These tears came easily from joy; they neither blinded him nor choked but flowed warm and comforting.

Polly and the girls were alive. The nothing he’d looked toward would always be peopled. Wherever he served his time, even if he got the death penalty, in his mind he would see them. He would never be alone. Marshall closed his eyes so he would not have to see his wife’s hatred, the fear in his children’s faces. That way he could remember only that which would allow him to live.

“Put it down. Drop the knife,” he heard a cop yell, and there was a clatter.

Marshall ’s brain shut down, and he welcomed unconsciousness.

It was spring, and it was raining. Marshall felt the first warm drop hit his face. He didn’t know where he was, and he didn’t want to know. Here in this place where it rained so gently was where he wanted to stay. Another reality, the one outside this cocoon, pushed at the back of his wakening mind, but he ignored it.

Then he felt a hand on his shoulder and knew he was about to be dragged back. “No,” he murmured. “Let me go.”

“Shh. Shh. It’s going to be okay now.” Polly’s voice gave Marshall the courage to open his eyes. She sat beside him, brushing the hair from his forehead. “You’re in the hospital,” she said. “We are all okay, and so are you.” He tried to lift his hand to touch her face but hadn’t the strength. He closed his eyes because he could no longer keep them open.

“You believed me,” Marshall said softly. After a lifetime of living Richard’s lies, he didn’t know what he believed. “Talk to me,” he whispered. “So I’ll know you are really here.”

Polly’s genteel drawl drifted through whatever drugs they’d given him. “No darlin’, I didn’t believe you. I am truly sorry, but I did not know what to believe. Emma saved us. She saw the lipstick.”

“Lipstick,” he repeated. The word made no sense, but the sound of his wife’s voice was a balm, and he wanted to hear it forever. “Tell me.” His voice was mostly air, but she heard him, and he knew she was leaning close. The smell of her hair touched him even through the stink of hospital sterility.

“Yes, lipstick. The story is too long to tell without a glass of wine and a comfortable chair. Suffice to say, I was attacked-not hurt, my love-but I didn’t know my assailant. It was at Vondra’s apartment, and there was a great deal of red lipstick lying about. Emma saw a streak of red down the back of Danny’s shirt, then I knew it was him at Vondra’s.

“Emma saw it when the five of us were in Danny’s bedroom. We were all caught in that terrible tableau.” Polly laughed. “I felt like I was on stage in the last act of Hamlet. Once I realized Danny was dangerous, I thought if I could get him to move, to let Gracie come upstairs… I thought if he didn’t think I knew… I don’t know exactly what I thought.” She finished by kissing him, lightly and sweetly.

“You are a wonder. A night like you must have had, and you still made Danny believe you.” Marshall opened his eyes again. The sight of his wife melted away the haze of drugs and horror.

“Darlin’, the day I cannot fool one more man one more time, you may put me out on an ice floe for the polar bears.”

She moved away. Marshall felt the cold come between them.

“I came across a carton of papers in the basement. They were notes and articles justifying the most awful killings.”

“You found them,” Marshall said hollowly.

“With a little help from your brother. They were in your handwriting.”

“Homework,” Marshall said, and years of poring over the butchery of the human race, of writing justifications for unjustifiable actions, threatened his fragile hope.

Polly waited.

“At least at first it was homework; then, I guess it became habit. When I was at Drummond… ”

Polly looked confused and Marshall realized with a pang how much of his life he’d kept secret from her, how much of himself he had kept secret from everyone. The need to tell her everything, every small challenge and terror and delight, share with her the boy who’d been so scared, the boy who’d seen the butterflies and held tightly to his mother’s kiss, the teenager who had so little hope he’d let the other boys ink 13½ on his forearm so he couldn’t ever forget he had but half a chance in life-less, no chance at all-hit him so hard he laughed. Without warning, the laughter turned to tears. When she knew, she might no longer love him.

“Do I need to slap you, sugar?” Polly asked solicitously.

“No,” he said as the tears morphed back into laughter at the touch of her voice on his mind. “I’m not hysterical. At least not too hysterical. Drummond was where I grew up, a juvenile detention center in Minnesota. I was sent there when I was eleven years old.

“It’s a long, long story,” Marshall said, suddenly weary of his past.

“I have read Coriolanus seven times and Bleak House twice.”

God, but he loved her.

“When I was eleven my family was killed: Mom, Dad, Lena -my baby sister-even the cat. They didn’t die in a car accident. They were murdered. I was convicted of killing them.”

“You were a little boy!” Polly exclaimed in disbelief.

“Yes. The papers dubbed me “Butcher Boy.” I was the youngest person ever convicted of murder in Minnesota.” Marshall couldn’t bear to look at his wife’s face, but he couldn’t look away either. He was waiting for the moment of horror that closed people off from Butcher Boy as surely as if they slammed an iron cell door and shot the bolt. Polly’s face showed nothing but concern, and he realized that she was as certain of the end of this story as she was of the last scene in Coriolanus. She knew he didn’t do it; she was just waiting to hear how the act played out.

“I love you,” he said.

“I know, sugar.”