MARY CLARK - Piece of My Heart

He tried to lift his ankle, but the metal trap was larger than the width of the deck boards that had been removed. Whether the booby trap had been intended for unwanted visitors or for Johnny if he tried to escape, it was now keeping her father from entering the house.

She reached down to see if she could figure out how to open the jaws. “Nothing’s budging.”

“He must have monkeyed with the release,” Leo whispered. “It’s the only way this makes sense as a trap.”

She reached for the door, but he grabbed her hand. “Not alone.”

“Dad, we don’t have time. We need to find them.”

He extended his right hand, offering her his gun. It had been a while since she’d gone to the range with him, but she knew how to fire this weapon if it came down to it.

“Don’t worry about me, Laurie. Just go!”

Laurie slipped the key in the French door and turned it slowly, leaving the key in the lock as she stepped inside.

The French door opened into a breakfast nook off the adjacent kitchen. The nook provided a clear view of the home’s dining area. Past the dining room, she saw a man standing at the open front door. A handgun was visible at the back of his waistband.

“Really, Charlie. I’ve got to go. I’ve been under the weather. Don’t want to get you sick by having you in.”

Daniel Turner didn’t even wait for his brother to say good-bye before closing the front door and bolting it shut. Seeing a door ajar on the opposite side of the kitchen, Laurie dashed toward it and stepped inside to hide. From her vantage point of what turned out to be a large pantry, she now had a partial view of the living room, where Marcy and Johnny were huddled together on the sofa.

Turner entered the room, his gun now in his hand. “You didn’t make a peep, but I better not find out you hatched some kind of plan while I was gone, or it will be the last decision you’ll ever make.”

Tears rolled down Johnny’s face, and Marcy’s eyes darted wildly between her son and the heavyset man pointing a gun in their direction. Blood was smeared across the right side of Marcy’s neck, and the yellow sweater balled in her hands was streaked brick-red.

“Please don’t hurt my mama,” Johnny wailed. “I’ll be good. I’ll stay with you.”

“But she’s not your mother, Danny. I told you that. Don’t you understand that yet? I’m your real father. I’m the one who was supposed to raise you, and she stole you from me.”

“That’s not true,” Johnny yelled. “You’re a liar. And you talk to yourself because you’re crazy.”

“You shut your mouth, little boy!”

When Johnny began to sob uncontrollably, Marcy jumped to her feet and stood defiantly in front of him, guarding him from the shots that could be fired at any second. Laurie thought she heard the sound of a door opening to her left, but she could not see far enough into the kitchen to know whether someone else had entered the house.

“He didn’t mean that,” Marcy said. “He’s seven years old, and he’s scared. Please, I am begging you… with my life . Do whatever you want to me, but please don’t hurt him. I’m the one you’re mad at. I’m the one who took your baby away from you. I had no idea, I promise.”

“Because Michelle lied—to me, to you, to everyone. How many lives did she ruin? I didn’t want to do what I did to her, but it was the only way I could get my son back. I had to make sure that no one would come looking for me when Danny disappeared. So we could get a fresh start… together.”

“And you still can. I lied when I said my husband was on his way here. No one else knows about you. It was supposed to be a closed adoption, but Michelle told me your name in complete confidence. I never told another person. Do you understand? Please. Just send Johnny upstairs, and you can do what you need to do. You don’t need to hurt this sweet little boy.”

“Mama, no!”

Johnny tried to push his mother out of the way. They were each trying to save the other from harm. Laurie knew she couldn’t wait here much longer. The situation was escalating too quickly.

She was about to crack the pantry door open farther when Charlie Turner stepped from a narrow hallway into the living room, his weapon drawn.

“Dan. You don’t want to do this.”

Laurie dropped to a crouch, pushed open the pantry door slowly, and got into position behind the kitchen island, where she’d have a direct shot at Daniel Turner if it came to that.

Dan. You don’t want to do this.

Daniel Turner blinked his eyes three times, wondering if he was having another hallucination. When did Charlie come inside the house? Hadn’t he been out on the porch?

“Is that really you?” He could hear the confusion in his own voice.

“Dan, you don’t want to hurt anyone else. I know you.”

“You don’t know me. Not anymore. You don’t know the things I’ve done.”

“I helped you after that trouble with Roseanne, and I’ll help you again,” Charlie promised.

“This is a lot worse,” Daniel said. “The two of them here. And Michelle. You don’t even know about Michelle.”

His head darted toward the sound of a voice from the kitchen. “Drop it!” A woman sprang upright from behind the kitchen island, pointing a gun directly at him.

Daniel had done his homework on the Buckleys and their entire family. He recognized the woman as Laurie Moran, the future sister-in-law with the TV show. Charlie apparently had not come here alone.

“We know about Michelle, too,” the woman said. “It’s over.”

“We’ll get you a good lawyer,” Charlie said pleadingly. That was his brother, always trying to help him. “You’re not responsible in the eyes of the law, Dan. It’s the head injury. The frontal lobe damage. You don’t have control over your own actions, don’t you see? The doctors will lay it all out. We’ll get you help.”

Charlie loved him, but Daniel knew that their relationship had changed ever since that incident with Roseanne. Charlie now treated him less like a brother and more like a child who needed to be watched over or pitied.

You don’t have control over your own actions. He simply wasn’t the same man he used to be. He had days when he couldn’t tell the difference between fantasy and reality. And now it was clear he couldn’t even control his impulses. He certainly couldn’t take care of a child, but was he even a full human being anymore? What had he become?

Even though he had two guns pointed at him, Daniel could not take his eyes from Marcy Buckley. It was as if she had found a way to grow three sizes larger, trying to place herself between him and little Danny. And everything she had said about being the only one to know his identity was obviously a lie, but what a strange kind of lie it was. She had been trying to convince him to kill her and spare this boy who wasn’t even hers.

He thought about the last time he ever saw Roseanne, when he found out where she was living after the divorce and broke into the house to beg her to come home. The determination in her eyes and the desperation in her voice as she pleaded with him not to hurt Bella—Marcy Buckley, right now, was just the same.

He also thought about Michelle Carpenter’s expression when she realized that he was set on finding the baby she had given up. She had begged him not to go looking for him. Like Roseanne four years ago. Like Marcy Buckley now.

These were mothers willing to die for the children they loved.

She might not be related to him by blood, but this woman loved his son as much as any child could hope to be loved.

“Get up, Danny!” he ordered.

“No, no, no, no.” Marcy threw herself frantically across the boy’s body on the sofa. “Please, no!”