Rex sits on the floor directly opposite, gun resting on his thigh. Just behind him, Nhung is lying prone and still.
“She’s in a better place,” he says, not turning around.
There’s a bloody half-crescent under his eye from where I gouged him that’s beginning to bruise.
“I’m proud of you, Amelia, really proud. You survived out there when most wouldn’t have stood a chance. I underestimated you.”
I squint at him through the gauze of pain. How can any of this be real? How can Nhung be dead? How can Rex be here?
“Please, I can’t take anymore.”
“Don’t be weak,” he says, sharply. “That’s not you.”
“Why don’t you just shoot me?”
He shrugs. “Maybe I want you to stick around for a while.” He leans close. “Maybe I’m beginning to respect you.”
He takes a breath and runs a hand over his face.
“You know I once saved a car full of kids? Their white trash mother pushed the minivan right into the lake. She was standing on the bank watching it sink when I drove past. When I got out of my truck, I saw three kids slapping the windows and hollering for help, and she was just standing there like it was any other day. I dove in, smashed the glass, pulled them out one by one, even gave the smallest boy mouth-to-mouth until the ambulance got there.” He blinks at me. “What kind of mother would do that to her own kin?”
I close my eyes. Everything hurts. Every muscle and joint. Every fiber of my being. The sound of his voice.
“I’m not all bad, Amelia.”
I think of the wolf.
“Open your eyes, Amelia.”
I think of how close I was to making it home.
“Look at me.”
I pry open my lids.
“Tell me about the day he left.”
“Who?”
“Your pop.”
Did his cruelty know no bounds? Did he have to take everything from me?
“Easy guess, Amelia. You have that little girl lost quality. There’s a loneliness in you. I have it, too. I know what it’s like when people let you down. It leaves you with a hole that can’t be filled.”
“I won’t talk about that.”
“It must have hurt to know he didn’t want you. Did you cry yourself to sleep?”
“Please be quiet.”
“Did you see his likeness in every suburban mall? Curl up with his favorite shirt? Miss him at the Christmas table?”
“Stop it.”
“Amelia, tell me about the pain.”
“It nearly destroyed me—is that what you want to hear?”
“Keep going.”
“Go to hell,” I say.
He smiles. “You and me, we’re a lot alike.”
“You’ve got to be joking.”
“Most women are as dull as dishwater, but not you, Amelia. Your daddy didn’t deserve such a smart and beautiful daughter.” He cocks the gun and points. “Tell me more.”
“I don’t know what else you want me to say.”
“Did you ever see him again?”
“When I was thirteen I caught a glimpse of him in a Target store, but by the time I made it to the aisle he was gone. Then I saw him at the intersection in a gray late-model Nissan. I begged my mom to stop but the car had already driven off.”
Rex looks sad. “Like I say, he didn’t deserve you.”
“It’s in the past.”
He pauses and stares at me. “There’s something else.”
“No.”
“You’re holding back. I know you better than you think, Amelia.”
“I told you, he left. I never saw him again.”
“Did he abuse you?”
“Of course not,” I stammer, but I feel something, the black heart of that long ago time rising up from the depths of my soul.
“You’re crying,” says Rex.
“Am I?”
“Yes.”
Oh, and it hurts, this feeling, like I’m right back there again, the day I climbed the stairs to his study.
“And shaking.”
“Please,” I say. “Please stop.”
“Tell me what happened, Amelia.”
And I see me, nine years old, carrying the tray with his lunch, leftover pasta bake, a packet of saltine crackers, tumbler of blackcurrant juice, and the little card I made for him that said “Time for lunch” in pink felt-tipped pen. I’m turning left on the landing, taking the stairs one at a time, hearing the cutlery rattle and being careful not to splash the juice over the side of the glass and onto the white paper napkin, and reaching the closed study door and balancing the tray on my knee with one hand and using the other to turn the knob, and pushing open the door and the tray slipping from my hands when I see my father’s sock-covered feet swinging right in front of me.
“I found him,” I whisper in disbelief. “I thought he must be playing a trick. Then I saw the chair, kicked away, heard the sound of rope rasping against the wooden rafter.”
“Oh, Amelia.”
I’m sobbing now and I bury my face in my hands and it all becomes clear, those hazy images on the edge of my dreams, my loathing for blackcurrant juice, the scar just below my left knee from running out of the room and tumbling down the stairs and landing on a nail on the second to last step.
Rex lays his hand on my shoulder. I look up and he’s frowning.
“You didn’t deserve that,” he says. “Let me take care of you, Amelia. We’ll go away, just the two of us, live a simple life.”
Behind him, Nhung moves. At first I think I’m imagining it—that she’s still alive—but then Nhung opens her eyes and stretches for the shotgun.
“You know how I got rich, Amelia?” says Rex. “It was my uncle’s land. My bitch of a mother sent me to live with him when I was five. A little kid didn’t fit with her objectives in life, which were to sleep with every man who paid her even the slightest bit of attention. Uncle Ron worked me like a slave. He beat me and whooped my ass just for fun. I slept on the barn floor with the pigs until I was fifteen years old, until the day I got in that wheat thrasher and drove right over him and tore that bastard limb from limb, the same day the sludge bubbled up from the well at the back of the property and erupted like a god damn geyser. That dumb son of a bitch had been sitting on millions and didn’t even know it. By then my mother was dead from God knows what venereal disease so as his only living relative, I got it all.” He looks at me. “But I’m prepared to leave it all behind. The money. Everything. I would do that for you.”
I steady my breath and wipe my tears and try not to let on to what’s happening behind his back.
“You would?” I say.
Nhung picks up the shotgun and nods at me. I look at Rex, pulse racing, thinking this is my and Nhung’s only chance, so I push the image of my father’s swinging body to the back of my mind and take a deep breath.
I roll onto my side and a shot rings out. Rex yells in pain and looks over his shoulder at Nhung. She fires again, but he ducks, and the shotgun blast gets me. A dozen hot pokers slam into the tenderest parts of my flesh.
Rex is moving now, grabbing a log, charging at Nhung, and smashing it down on top of her head. There’s an ungodly crack as she crashes to the floor in a heap. He pivots and we both see his gun on the ground.