a favor.”
Stebbs glanced at her bloody face. “I s’pose I don’t feel much like granting favors today.”
Lynn nodded and backed away from him, forcing herself not to look at the smoldering black heap that had been Eli. The door of the yellow house opened and the youngest girl stepped out, the edges of a blanket clutched in her bloody hands.
“Emma!” Green Hat yelled, Stebbs and Lynn having vanished from his mind as he ran toward her. “Are you hurt?”
She shook her head and leaned against him. The other two women appeared in the doorway, glancing warily at Stebbs and Lynn.
“What are you going to do?” Stebbs asked Lynn.
She checked her handgun before answering, handing Stebbs the extra she had taken from Roger. “I’m going to go have a talk with my father.”
“Careful.”
“I will be.”
“I’m sorry as hell about Eli,” Stebbs said, not meeting her eyes. “I got that shot off as soon as I could.”
“It is what it is. I got other worries right now,” she said as she walked away from him, her hammering heart screaming at the lie in her words.
“Careful there, lady,” one of the women yelled at her. “He’s a mean bastard, that one is. And tricksy.” She touched a darkening bruise on her face as she spoke.
Lynn tightened her grip on the gun as she opened the front door.
Bloody footprints led her to the kitchen where her father sat at the table, slumped and pale. His right hand cupped the remains of his left shoulder; bone fragments jutted out between his fingers. He summoned the energy to look up at her as she walked in, but his head dropped back to his chest immediately. A slow smile spread across his face.
“The boys told me you was a pretty girl,” he said with his eyes closed.
She approached the table cautiously, her finger curled around the trigger and ready to fire. “You know who I am?”
His eyes cracked open and he gave her a long, assessing stare before they closed again. “Have to be blind not to. You look just like her. Don’t think there’s a bit of me in you.”
Even bleeding and maimed, he was an imposing man. The bulk of his body spoke of capability, the shine of his eyes held unvented malice. “There may be a bit yet,” Lynn said as she circled around behind him, checking for weapons.
“I don’t have a gun,” he said. “Funny thing about your shoulder exploding, it makes you drop whatever you’re holding. You ever been shot?”
“Not yet.”
“You may as well have a seat and relax,” he said calmly, closing his eyes again. “Not like I’m gonna harm my own flesh and blood.”
“’Cause you can’t or ’cause you wouldn’t?” Lynn asked, lowering herself into the seat opposite him, her gun still trained on his chest.
“It really matter? Either way, you can rest a spell.”
“If that’s your answer, I believe I’ll stay out of your reach for now and keep my gun out, if it’s all the same to you.”
One of his eyes opened to a slit and he regarded her warily for a moment. His answer came in a shrug from his uninjured shoulder. “You do as you please, girl.” He licked his lips, and she saw the sheen of blood coating his tongue.
“My bullet still in you?”
“Went down through a lung, I’d say. Maybe little Emma over the street could patch it up, if you’re inclined to let her.”
Lynn didn’t answer. He cleared his throat. “S’pose you’re wondering why I left?”
“What I’m curious about is why you came back.”
“Don’t it make sense for a father to return to his only child?”
Lynn’s mouth twitched, she flexed her finger on the trigger. “Maybe. But you didn’t.”
“I’m here, ain’t I?”
“I think you came back to where there’s water. Somewhere you could control the flow and knew the country.”
A small smile pulled at the corners of his mouth. “It is a good place, isn’t it?”
“It’s our place.”
“Who’s that? You and your mother? What all she tell you about me?”
“Nothing too nice.”
He grunted and spat a wad of blood-tinged phlegm on the floor. “She tell you I bought you that puppy, when you was still in her belly, so’s the two of you would have some protection? She tell you that? Full-blooded German shepherd he was, woulda been brown with black ears. I trained him up to keep you safe, gave him to your momma before I left.”
“Yeah.” Lynn shifted her gun with his movements, her sweaty palm sliding along the stock of gun. “We had to put him down, ’cause of the rabies. Living thing goes mean like that, nothing for it but a bullet.”
Both his eyes opened and he watched her carefully before speaking again, gaze trained on her unwavering gun.
“I came myself, you should know, once or twice. The boys thought your momma was gone, but I wasn’t so sure. I didn’t want to wander too close and find myself in her crosshairs, with no love for me in her heart. Couple nights I stood out by the pond, wondering whether you were inside, hurting or grieving, whether you’d take any comfort from my hand if I came to you.”
“That it?” Lynn asked, her eyes cool behind the barrel. “That’s what you were thinking out there by my pond? Or were you waiting to smell me rotting before you came any closer?”
He ignored her question. “I kept the boys from you too. Roger woulda liked to done more than fire a warning shot at you over that downed tree.”
“Roger’s got bigger worries now.”
“You kill him?”
“Partway.”
His eyes slid shut again, and he stifled a laugh that brought a froth of blood to his lips. “Damn, you’re a cold bitch. Nothin’ but contempt for your own flesh and blood, but you’ll overnight a cripple and snot-nosed kid in the house I made safe for you.”
“It’s mine. Make no mistake.”
“Nothing’s nobody’s out here, little girl. Those that can, take. And there ain’t no justice or higher power to appeal to.”
“’Til now,” she said softly.
His eyes opened, what blood there was left in his body burning in their heat. His lips twisted when he spoke next, the words slurred with angry memories. “And your momma, she set up a lemonade stand after I left, huh? That what she did? Offer comfort and a drink to every poor soul that wandered your way?”
“No, but we never did any taking, either, or hurting for the fun of it.”
One eyebrow twitched in response, but he had nothing to say to that. He rested his eyes for a moment. Fresh blood seeped out between his fingers, dripping from his elbow to the floor, where a small pool had begun to form between his feet.
“You’ve done some low deeds, Father.”
“All’s fair in love and war, my girl. What I had with your mother amounted to about the same thing. Guess it’s down to you and me now, so which is it gonna be?”
“You hoarded water when people were dying of thirst, stole things you didn’t need when you were surrounded by want.”
A slow laugh rumbled through his chest and he opened his eyes to stare her down across the table. “I don’t
