Jeff Brackett - Half Past Midnight

“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!”

She stepped back and spun to face the rest of us. “We had to do something!”

Ken spoke gently, and I heard a touch of admiration in his voice. “You were going after him, weren’t you? That’s what you and Eric were planning.”

Megan nodded. “It was just going to be me and Eric. We weren’t going to involve anyone else. We were going to track Larry down, sneak into his camp at night, and kill him.”

“You would never have gotten away with it. They would’ve killed you both.” As soon as I said it, I saw that she had accepted that long ago.

“Not until after we’d gotten Larry.”

It was a brassy solution. A suicide mission by two of our best fighters with only one thought on their minds-get Larry at all costs. Never mind what it would take, or what might come after, just get Larry. I was numb with the knowledge that, had they succeeded, I would have likely lost my daughter.

“How did you think you were going to get close enough?”

Her shoulders slumped as she turned away. “That was why we hadn’t already left. We couldn’t figure it out.”

Ken spoke softly in the quiet room. “Eric did.”

I nodded. “Yeah, I guess he did.” My thoughts raced ahead, trying to get a handle on this new information, this new perspective. We were heading toward something that was likely to get very confusing, and there was no time for confusion. “Okay. Megan, there’s something here that has to be said, and you’re not going to like it.” She didn’t look at me.

“Look,” I started, “I need to know… I mean, Eric’s been a friend. He’s been a good friend. But this is…”

Debra surprised me then, both by butting in and by what she said when she did. “Eric just found a way to do what you wanted to do, Lee. What we wanted to do.”

“He took Zachary!” How could she say such a thing? “He took him to Larry!”

“When Jim and the rest of the council decided to let Larry go,” she continued, “you and Eric argued loudest against it. You didn’t want to leave things alone either, did you?”

“Of course not!” I snapped. “But I didn’t kidnap anyone! I didn’t say ’Hey, Eric, let’s go kidnap someone and take them to Larry so Rejas’ll have to come after him!’ And I sure as hell didn’t tell him to take my own son!”

Megan spoke then. “Andrew was Eric’s son. Eric couldn’t just sit by while everyone let his son’s killer walk away!”

Ken stepped in. “So that gives him the right to set your brother up to be killed too?”

Megan looked at him for a second. “What would you have done if Larry had killed Cindy and everyone had let him go?” She turned to me. “I don’t even have to ask you. You taught me. I already know your answer. If Larry had killed Mom, you wouldn’t have rested until you’d caught him and made him wish he’d never been born.” She was right. She knew it, and I knew it.

“Well guess what? Eric loved his son.” Tears were running down her cheeks, but her voice was eerily calm. “So did I, and Larry took him away from me.

“I was going to find him. I was going to use every trick I ever learned from any of you, and I was going to make sure he never killed anyone’s husband or wife or child ever again!”

She stopped and took a deep breath before turning back to me. “But now you want to know what I’m going to do when we get to Larry? Am I going to help you get Zach, or will I be so caught up with getting Larry that I’ll be useless to you? Right?”

“Yeah, basically. This is hard for all of us, Megan. And there’s more to it than that. What are you going to do if it turns out that we have to kill Eric?”

Everyone started talking at once. No one else had even considered that.

“I can’t believe you even brought that up.” Megan shook her head, her expression shifting from disbelief to disappointment, and finally resolving into sudden anger. “I’m sorry I ever told you any of this.” She turned away and headed for the door.

“Megan, wait!”

She stopped, but didn’t turn back. “I’ve got nothing more to say to any of you.”

“Megan, I understand this is painful for you, but you have to know that if Eric harms Zachary, he’s no better than Larry. And to keep that from happening, I’ll do whatever I have to.”

Her shoulders slumped a bit, but she nodded. “I know. And if it comes to that, so will I. Just don’t expect me to like it. And don’t ever expect me to like you asking me to choose like this.”