'I don't know for sure,' her mom said. 'But I can see some kind of light in the backyard.'
Sheridan couldn't speak. She looked around her mother and could see it, too. Yellow light came in through the kitchen window and swept across the ceiling. Then it flashed the other way.
Sheridan's mom guided Sheridan to the couch and sat her down. 'Just stay here for a second. I'm going to go see what it is.'
Sheridan sat, clutching her backpack. She watched her mom walk through the front room and into the kitchen. Her mother's silhouette was framed by the window.
'Mom ...'
Her mother turned. 'There is a man out there by the woodpile with a flashlight. He's kicking it apart.' Her voice was a tense whisper.
'I think he intends to steal our firewood.'
Sheridan was jolted the instant she heard that someone, a man, was in the woodpile. It came to her in a brilliant flash of panic: the truck parked outside, the fact that Mom didn't know about it, the friend of her dad's.
What was his name?
'Mom!' Sheridan screamed, hurtling off of the couch toward the kitchen, even as her mother reached over and clicked on the floodlights that illuminated the backyard.
'Get away from that wood!' her mother yelled, smacking the window with the palm of her hand as if the man were a stray dog rooting through the garbage.
Then the window shattered and there was a sharp crack outside. Her mother was thrown backwards to the floor, her head bouncing hard on the linoleum. Outside, a man was shouting.
Sheridan tossed the backpack aside and fell to her knees, sliding into her mother on the floor. Sheridan put her hands on both sides of her mother's face.
'Oh, Mom ...'
'I'm hurt, Sheridan darling,' her mother said in a clear voice.
'He shot me, and I don't think I'm okay. I don't know who it was who shot me.'
Sheridan wailed and buried her head into her mother's breasts. She could feel her mother's strong heartbeat. But Sheridan's hand, which was wrapped around her mother's waist, was warm and wet.
'Oh God,' her mom said, with a choke in her throat. 'I can't feel anything. Everything is numb.'
It had all happened so quickly that Sheridan couldn't yet grasp the situation.
Suddenly, her mother was bathed in light, and Sheridan could see her mother's face and the tears in her eyes and the blood, lots of it, spreading across the floor. Her mother looked from Sheridan to the source of the light, and Sheridan followed.
'Stay where you are, you two,' the man said, almost calmly. Then he withdrew the flashlight. They heard him trying to get in the locked back door.
'Somebody let me in,' the man said with authority.
Sheridan's mom reached up and squeezed Sheridan's arm. 'Get away, Sheridan.'
'I can't,' Sheridan said. The words tumbled out as she cried. 'It's all my fault this happened. He said if I told anyone he would hurt our family. He said he would hurt you and Lucy and Dad. He said he would hurt the baby.' Her tears dropped on her mother's face.
'Unlock the goddamned door!' A loud crash accompanied the man's yell as he began to hurl himself against the back door. There was a big crack down the center of the door. Splinters flew across the floor.
'Get away now,' her mother said.
'Run out the front door and keep running. Hide and wait for your dad and Wacey to come back.' Her voice was not as strong as it had been a minute ago. 'Don't you stop, Sheridan.'
Her mother's words rooted Sheridan to the spot. The truck outside that looked like her father's but wasn't, the man's familiar voice, and her mother's words all sprang out in sharp clarity and a surge of
recognition hit her.
'But Mom, that's Wacey outside the door,' Sheridan cried. 'It was Wacey who said he would hurt us!'
But her mom's eyes were closed, and her hand had dropped to the floor. Sheridan could still feel her heartbeat though, and she looked like she was sleeping.
Sheridan said, 'I love you, Mom,' and then she was up and running, deftly juking around the coffee table in the living room and out the front door just as the backdoor gave way and Wacey Hedeman stumbled into the house.
Running like she had never run before, not even feeling the soles of her tennis shoes on the grass or the broken concrete of the walkway, the screen door slamming behind her, Sheridan ran through the front gate onto Bighorn Road, changed her mind, and turned back toward the driveway.
Sheridan stopped and caught herself as she reached for the handle on the door of the car. She was not thinking clearly, and she realized she had no plan at all once she was inside the car. She could lock the doors, but Wacey could simply smash through the glass and get her. She couldn't drive away because her mom always took the keys with her and they were probably in her purse, on the floor, in the house.
So she dropped to her belly and scrambled under the car like a crab. Gravel from the driveway ground into her bare hands and jammed into the top of her trousers. A piece of hot metal that was sticking out under the car tore through her shirt and into the skin of her back.
Then she was out the other side and up again. She paused and tried to think.
Either she could run out onto Bighorn Road again and maybe be seen and picked up by somebody or she could go around the garage and into the backyard. But in the road, he could see her better, and shoot or run her down. She knew the backyard very well and the grounds around it. He might not look there first, which would give her time. These thoughts shot through her brain, and then she ran toward the garage. For a terrifying few seconds she
