Vee’s waiting at the curb when I pull the SUV in, and Sam gets out to let her in to sit between him and Lanny. She climbs in encumbered with a battered old black satchel, and she seems wired, as usual. “Cool, cool, cool,” she says, and wiggles in the seat as she gets comfortable. “This is going to be fun! Hey, Lantagirl.”
“Hey,” Lanny says. She’s relaxed a little in Vee’s presence, at least. “What’s in the bag?”
Vee reaches in and pulls out a far-too-large-for-her semiautomatic. I feel a kick start of urgent, wild adrenaline. A nightmare lurches into motion in my brain. I imagine Vee’s finger tightening on that trigger, a bullet firing through the seat, my son bleeding.
“Drop it!” Sam’s shout is sudden and shocking in the confines of the SUV, and she puts the gun down on top of the satchel and raises her hands high. “Jesus, Vee. Never do that.” He takes the gun, carefully pointing it toward the SUV’s floor, and checks it over. “Loaded,” he says. “One in the chamber. Vera—” His tone is grim and angry. He methodically ejects the cartridge that’s under the hammer, then takes out the magazine.
“What? It’s in case that asshole letter guy comes creepin’ up!” We’re all staring at her, even Lanny. Vee hunches in on herself, and grabs the made-safe gun back from Sam when he offers it. She shoves it into the satchel along with the magazine and loose bullet. “I’m just tryin’ to protect myself is all.” Her rural Tennessee accent has come back thick. “Wouldn’ta shot y’all or nothin’.”
“Accidents happen,” I say. “And you need trigger discipline. We’ll go over all that once we get to the range.” My heart’s still hammering, my hands unsteady, but I take a couple of deep breaths and glance over at Connor before I put the vehicle in gear. “We’re going to get you a gun case.”
She mutters something under her breath, and I doubt it’s complimentary, but I’m focused on my son. He’s staring straight ahead, and I see the hard shine of his eyes. “Connor,” I say gently. “You all right?”
“Sure,” he says, in a voice utterly devoid of emotion. “Fine, Mom.” He isn’t, but I see him taking slow, regular breaths, and he blinks and smiles. It isn’t totally convincing, but it’s better. “I’ll be fine.”
It hurts. I want to wrap him in cotton and tuck him in bed and never, never let anything hurt him again. But that’s my screaming instincts, not my rational brain. My son has overcome a lot in his young life; he copes with what he can’t control far better than I have. I have to trust him, and trust his therapy process. He chose it. I have to respect that, even if it makes me weep inside.
So we go to the gun range.
It isn’t the comfortable, familiar place Javier operates back at Stillhouse Lake; that one is small and extremely well run, even though it’s a backwoods haven. Former military like Javi don’t tolerate sloppiness.
I don’t love this one nearly as much. It’s large, it’s loud, and in my opinion it’s slipshod on safety processes. But it’s close to us, and if the instructors aren’t the best, Sam and I can teach the kids properly ourselves. After we kit Vee out with the right things to have—a transport case, a small quick-access safe for home, a holster—we go back to the car and get all the weapons we’re going to use: my Sig 9mm, Vee’s gun, Sam’s revolver. All packed into cases the way they should be.
We’re just locking the car when Vee says, “Do you know that guy?” There’s something odd about the way she says it, and I turn to glance over my shoulder at her. She’s staring off to the right, and I follow her gaze.
There’s a man in a car parked across the street, but even as I see him, he puts the car in gear and drives away. I don’t get more than a glance at him, but I can see he’s white and is wearing a dark-colored ball cap. That’s the extent of my impression. The car’s a completely anonymous dark-blue sedan, a Toyota, and I see the rental car sticker in the window. It’s too late, and the angle’s too bad, to get a license plate. He turns the corner and is gone.
“Why?” I ask Vee. She’s still staring after the car, but she shifts her attention back to me. I see something odd in her gaze, something I’ve rarely seen in her. Vee’s all steel and smoked-glass strong until she breaks. She rarely shows weakness.
Right now, she looks afraid. And that wakes something deeply primal in me. We’re exposed out here. Far, far too exposed. My mouth goes dry. My pulse speeds up. And I find myself watching the street, waiting for something to happen.
Hypervigilance. It’s dangerous. I back it down, breathe deep. Panic is contagious.
“It’s okay, Vee,” I tell her. “We’re fine. Right?”
“If you say so,” she mutters, and grabs the case that holds her gun from me. “This one’s mine, right?” There’s no mistaking it. She chose a shiny paisley-patterned case in neon colors. Before I can ask her anything else, she’s moving for the gun range door, as if she doesn’t want to spend another moment out in the open.
I desperately, desperately want to be inside, in a windowless concrete room. Safe.
But I stay. I feel the cool wind on my face. I watch the traffic on the street, a river of metal and lights. I’m facing it down, the beast that comes for me out of the back of my mind. And it always, always has Melvin’s face.
Behind me, Sam says, “Gwen? You coming?” He says it gently, as if he understands, though I don’t know how he could.
“Yes,” I say, and I turn my back on my instincts and go to teach my kids—even Vee—how to properly handle a weapon that I pray they never need.
Connor does better than I could have imagined. He barely flinches at the sound of the shots. He’s steady and deliberate when I teach him proper arm position and stance. When he finally fires his first shot, he hits the target. Not dead center, of course, but in the ballpark. Most kids would celebrate that, but not my son. He looks at the target critically, makes the gun safe, and puts it down as if he’s been doing this his whole life. “I missed,” he says.
“You didn’t. It’s on the outline.”
“It wouldn’t stop him,” Connor says. Just that, and it tells me everything about my son and what his attitude will be toward guns. He’s not in this for sport, or fun, or excitement like the teens who are squealing and clapping in other lanes as they even come close to a good shot. Like it is for me, this is survival for him. Pure, simple survival.
I hate it. I mourn for what it says about how bleak his world seems to him. How inevitable it is that he’s going to need this skill, a thing he doesn’t want but will not flinch at learning.
My son is so brave it steals my breath.
I put my hand on his shoulder, and while he doesn’t pull away, I still feel the muscles tighten. Guarding. That’s another heartbreak for me as his mom, the knowledge that my touch can’t soothe away the pain anymore. That it might, in fact, add to it. I have to let that strike me and fade before I can master my voice to something like normal. “You’ll get better,” I tell him. “But let’s stop there for tonight, okay?” I check my watch; it’s been an hour and a half. Lanny looks incandescent with victory over her accuracy, and she and Vee share a high five while Sam looks on, shaking his head. I show Connor how to stow the gun properly in the case, then have him sit with the girls on a bench in the back as Sam and I take a quick turn in adjoining lanes.