“They’re going to be harsher to you where you’re going.” I keep my gaze straight ahead, soaking in the white sky, not a trace of the hue my father has robed himself in.
Monica sucks in an auditory breath. “Look, you can’t prove anything. I didn’t do anything wrong. Your father—he needed me. Your mother shut him out and he needed the feel of a woman in his life.”
I glance over at the thickly embedded worry lines tunneled into her forehead. Monica has aged thirty years in these last few days.
“He loved me.” A silent tear runs down her cheek. “When you abandoned me and the baby, he stepped in. He was doing the right thing by me.”
“You never had my baby, Monica. It wasn’t possible. The math is wrong. And”—I glance to Allison as an icy lone tear makes its way down my own face—“I’m not able to have a baby.” There. It’s as if a boulder has lifted from my shoulders. When Allison and I were trying and it didn’t happen, I wondered if it was her. But before I asked Allison to get herself checked out, I thought I’d take myself off the infertility shelf. Sure enough, my sperm had low motility. It would be a miracle for me to have another baby again. Or at least that’s what I believed when I thought I had already miraculously conceived Reagan. That’s how I was certain that Hailey’s baby wasn’t mine. Rich ran the DNA, and I was right. Faulk Oden’s wife, had yet another man to heat the sheets with. Of course, I still bear the guilt. I’ve turned into another Price monster who takes down families. It’s a painful truth that I’ll have to live with for the rest of my life.
“I had your baby.” Monica shakes her head in disbelief. “I had a beautiful baby girl, my Angel—our Angel. She had your eyes, your mouth, that beautiful, beautiful nose.” Her fingers trace over my features. Monica is fraying around the edges, her twisted wires have crossed as her eyes set over me, dazed and catatonic.
“No, Mon.” I gently pull her hand away from me. “You had my father’s child. You had an affair with the corpse in that casket, and then you aided him in kidnapping my daughter. You brought my mother pain, and then you brought my wife and me both irreparable agony. And you can shovel all the crazy you want out in court. Hell, I don’t care. I just need you locked up and far away from my family and me. You had no right.”
Her eyes widen, red pools of blood, of murder, and for the first time in a week, I see my father’s reflection in them, old and haggard, out for revenge. And just like that, I soften.
“Get a good attorney. Plead insanity. I’m sure they’ll go easy on you.”
I head over to where Rich stands with my wife, my daughter, and I take my place among the small circle of family I have left on the planet. But it’s more than enough. It always will be.
* * *
In the months that follow, life slows to a beautiful crawl. Allison takes it upon herself to track down both of Heather Evan’s daughters, and we register as foster parents so that we can take them in. Allison felt as if they were innocent victims in all of this. She wanted to repay them. She felt as if they deserved better—she was right. And just like that, we become a house full of Allisons. At one point in life that would have been a very dark scenario, but today it’s a blessing. Neither of the girls’ fathers is truly known. They are orphans essentially and have even begun calling Allison—senior—Mom, and I have become Dad. The GoFundMe money was carefully subdivided amongst the Terrific Three as we’ve begun to collectively call the girls. When the time comes for college they will be more than ready. In that respect, Heather performed a miracle.
Allison and I settle the girls in bed, Ally, A, and Reagan. The two sisters down the hall, and Reagan, their sister at heart, in the room closest to ours. We always make sure to tuck Reagan in last, spending just a few extra moments in her bedroom. It’s still surreal to have her back—to have had her gone to begin with. We read a quick bedtime story, turn out the lights, and say a heartfelt prayer before we leave.
Allison and I lean against the door smiling at one another, already drunk off our own affections. We set the sheets on fire on a regular basis now. We are husband and wife in every single way. What those dark forces meant to destroy has fortified us, written our love story over our hearts like fire over stone. We are united. So achingly close, another human being could never come between us again.
“You ready to hit the sack, Mrs. Price?” I wince into my own name, our shared dark moniker.
A mischievous smile curves up the side of her face. “You, Mr. Price, are a very naughty, naughty boy.”
“I can only hope you’ll treat me accordingly.” Somehow, someway we’ve managed to sidestep the pile of shit my father landed us in and we’ve come away clean, unscathed, dare I say, better.
A laugh gets caught in my throat, and I stop cold as the sound of murmuring breaks out from behind Reagan’s door.
Allison brings her finger to her lips as her eyes grow wide. The sound of voices grows louder, the sound of giggling, the rumbled of something far more intense.
I don’t hesitate bursting my way inside to find Reagan tucked in bed, the quilt pulled tight around her sleeping frame, the nightstand light off.
Allison flies to the bed and pulls Reagan onto her lap. “Are you okay? Oh God—were you having a bad dream?” She wipes Reagan’s hair back from her forehead.
Reagan laughs a disconcertingly long chortle and my blood turns to ice. “Ota always comes by to say goodnight to me. She came by every single night during my great adventure. She says I won’t ever really be alone. Isn’t that nice?”
Both Allison and I pant through the silence as Reagan’s words slice through the nexus of our beings.
Reagan’s features darken right along with ours. “You’re still angry with her, aren’t you?” Her voice grows sharp. “She said you would be. She said you were angry with Grandpa too. But you shouldn’t be. Ota says Grandpa saved me. The night he took me away on our great adventure would have been my last.” Her tiny frame curls under the covers. “Ota says they can’t hurt me when I’m in trouble. Why was I in trouble?”
Allison and I look at one another, good and long. My mind tries its best to put the fractured pieces together. Could it be that Ota was going to kill Reagan that night I let them wander out the door—and my father, of all people, inadvertently put a hedge of protection over her with the disaster he brought into our lives? The article Allison and I read together comes to mind. Something about the tribe sealing their honor, each death was to come purely from vengeance—unadulterated by worldly disorder. If my father could do anything right it was bring worldly disorder upon his family.
“Why can’t you love her like I do?” Reagan whines. “She’s my very best friend in the whole wide world.”
Allison shudders.
“She can come over.” I hear myself say in one of those surreal out-of-body moments. “But she’ll have to use the front door like any other friend, and it will have to be after school.”
“Just the way we used to?” Reagan’s little face lights up as if Ota were the equivalent of Santa Claus—an ax-wielding jolly old Saint Fucking Nick.
“Yes.” I force a smile to come and go. “Just the way we used to.”
And I’m going to kill her, over and over, and over again until I get it right.
I have to.
Allison looks to me with those sorrowful sad eyes and gives a slight nod. We are on the same murderous page.
* * *
In the spring, one sweet honeysuckle-scented day, there’s a light knock on the door, so small, so very fragile that it stops both Allison and me in our dancing in the kitchen, making dinner together tracks.
Allison’s chest palpitates visibly from beneath the flimsy fabric of her sundress, one she hasn’t put on since our move from California. “Who do you think it is?”