Paul Curtin - Gray Snow

He sat down in the dining room, put his head into his hands, and pressed his thumbs against his eyes until his eyelids splashed with color. The image he had concocted of the woman dying outside popped into his mind. He opened his eyes. He watched Elise rub Aidan’s back as he threw seasonings into the cast iron pot over the fire. Aidan smiled at her, and she smiled back. It even looked genuine.

He lowered his head and didn’t raise it until someone sat next to him. Molly adjusted herself. “Uncle Mike.”

He bowed his head, whispered, “I overheard you with your dad.”

“Uncle Mike—”

“What were you thinking?”

“I don’t know. I thought maybe he would be okay with it.”

He said, “Now can’t be the time. With everything happening.”

“Andrew said the same thing.”

“Because he’s not going to be okay with this. He just won’t.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I do. Trust me. I don’t have any doubt he loves you. That isn’t what we’re talking about here. We’re not talking about whether he’ll love you no matter what. But we’re talking about a man who’s not in a stable place right now.”

“I know.”

Michael waved his hand and nudged his chair closer to her. “You don’t. Molly, it’s easy to see the people we love as better than they are. Do you know how many people I saw in my work—parents who could not conceive that their children could do wrong? I had one mom sit and listen to the details of how her son had driven drunk and plowed into a church van filled with kids—killed all of them—and still refused to acknowledge that it was her son that did it. That he was a little shit.”

“I know my dad’s not perfect.”

“Maybe. But you aren’t seeing the whole picture. You don’t see what’s behind his actions. Trust me. Your dad needs to be let down easily or he will go off.”

The sound of the garage door latching. Sean coming back inside. Michael took his niece’s hands. “One day, your father will be so happy to hear he’s going to be a grandfather.”

She smiled, and a tear sank down her cheek.

“You just need to wait for the right moment,” he said.

A loud voice shouted from behind them, “You’re pregnant?”

Kelly. His gut lurched. Elise froze. Her eyes widened and rose to meet Michael’s. He hadn’t seen Kelly behind them. He hadn’t known she would hear.

Oh, shit.

Molly looked up at her aunt like a deer about to be smacked by a Mac truck. Kelly, even more excited, squealed so loud that it hurt Michael’s ears. After Kelly’s prolonged sulking, he thought any happiness would be welcome. Now he just wanted her to stop.

“You’re pregnant!” she shouted.

She burst ahead and threw her arms around the terrified teenage girl who stared back at him over her aunt’s shoulder, asking him with her eyes to do something. Anything. Michael grabbed his wife by the shoulders and tried to pull her off as gently as possible. “Please, Kelly, stop,” he whispered.

She didn’t respond. “This is such great news. Oh my God,” Kelly said, holding Molly tighter and beaming.

Elise was already on her feet, one hand gripping at her chest and the other holding onto Aidan’s shoulder. “Kelly, please stop,” Michael said.

She seemed to be in a different world, touching Molly’s stomach. “Oh, Molly. I thought you were just being comfy putting on extra layers. You must be five months along by now,” she said, caressing the curve of her baby bump.

Michael yanked at Kelly’s shoulder. She rolled to avoid the pull, turning around, fuming with anger, her palms raised upward. “What?”

“Please, stop,” he said.

“Or what?” a deep voice said from the living room.

Michael tilted his head to see Sean standing there, his brow damp with sweat and his dirty axe resting on the ground. He gripped the handle in his left hand as if choking it, his other hand resting near the pistol holstered on his hip.

The entire room froze. Molly rose from the chair and faced her dad.

“Sean, please just listen for a moment,” Elise said behind him.

“How long’ve you known?” he asked, not looking back at her.

The question seemed to hit her like a punch across the jaw. “Sean, just please listen—”

“I asked, How long’ve you known?”

Her voice trembled, and she stammered, looking back to Michael as if he could give her something to say.

“Dad, I—” Molly began.

He extended his hand out to her. “Molls, don’t. I asked your mother a question.”

Elise said, “About a month.”

The expression on Sean’s face didn’t change, but his eyebrow flinched. A rage boiled deep inside him behind the stoic expression on his face. Even his eyes were cool puddles, reflecting nothing. He laid the axe against the coffee table and put his hands on his hips. Hands near that pistol.

He turned to his daughter. “How far along are you?” Molly looked back at her uncle, but Sean said, “I didn’t ask your Uncle Mike.”

She looked down at the floor. “We think about twenty weeks.”

Sean allowed the first expression of his emotions when he wiped his face from his forehead down to his mouth. “You said you wouldn’t do this.”

“I don’t know—”

“What don’t you know?” he said. “That I specifically told you this would happen? That I told you not to trust that little son of a bitch?”

Michael said, “Andrew’s a good kid.”

“A good kid who I let stay here—to live here because of my good graces—and has been sneaking around with my daughter behind my back. In my home .”

A chill vibrated up Michael’s spine. “They’re teenagers, man. Hormones.”

Sean’s neck tightened, and his face flushed red like a flash fire tearing through dry woods. “In my home,” he screamed, and a wad of spit flung off his lips.

The cold room heated, no one knowing what to say and too afraid to move. Sean was the first to budge. He angled his head toward the ground and shook it over and over. Michael watched like he was witnessing two chemicals reacting with each other violently, waiting for an explosion. And, finally, it happened.

Sean’s fingers searched for his gun. He squeezed the handle, not removing it, and then wiped his face with the same hand. “He’s a dead man,” he said and turned to the stairs.

The room erupted into yelling. Molly rushed forward, but Michael grabbed her shoulder and pulled her back, Molly stumbling into her chair, Michael rushing ahead of her. He sprinted toward Sean, who was stomping toward the first stair step. Sean realized it too late. Michael drove his shoulder into Sean’s side and peddled, drilling him into the wall.

Elise screamed. Michael didn’t know what to do once he had Sean pinned against the wall. With his head just below Sean’s armpit, Sean pounded his elbows into Michael’s back, and Michael’s guts rattled around his ribcage with each blow. Sean shifted his foot and tripped Michael, shoving him down. Before Michael could react, Sean was over top of him, raising his foot, bringing it down like a hammer onto his temple. Then again.

Michael’s head filled with a hazy fire, and his vision burst with flashes of light. He rested his ear against the step and viewed everything as if in slow motion, hearing Elise’s shouting and Molly’s crying and the ground rumbling like extended bouts of thunder, elongated and terrifying, as Sean stepped past him and marched up the stairs.

He looked up. The world had only a vague sense of reality. The sound from Sean’s steps seemed on delay, like it was reaching Michael’s ears a second too late. His vision blurred a few times. He saw Molly step over him and run up the stairs, tripping and scrambling on all fours. His hearing was a speck of its full potential, but he heard Molly. Heard her cries. And then he saw Andrew step into view at the top of the stairs. Oh, God. Run, kid.