At the end of the hall I saw my father struggling with another man. The man was the same size and build as my father, with a black goatee and acne scars. He was trying to put his hands around my father’s neck. Then they stumbled into the den and out of my line of sight.
“Dad!” I shouted, and I ran down the hall with the pistol in my hand.
That’s when I saw Susannah’s bedroom door was opened, but I was already running in my haste to reach Dad. I saw Susannah in the doorway, saw the furious look in her eyes. I did not see her stick her leg out. I tripped over her foot and went sprawling, the pistol still in my hand. I landed on my stomach in the foyer. When I hit the floor, my hand convulsively squeezed around the pistol and I fired a round into the wall directly ahead of me.
The shot rang in my ears. In the den to my left, I could see my father and the goateed man frozen, still locked in each other’s arms, as if the gunshot had signaled the end of a round. Behind them, my mother and the girl, Kayla, hugged each other on the couch. They were all staring at me. Shakily I got to my feet, the pistol still in my hand.
“Ethan?” my father said.
“The fuck?” someone said behind me. I turned to see another man in the open doorway of our home. He wore a black vest over a white T-shirt, and his hair was pulled back in a ponytail. His eyes were wide and frantic. He jerked his hand up—he has a gun too, I thought—and there was a loud, percussive bang and a hammer blow struck my right arm, just below my shoulder. I staggered back a step, and my arm suddenly felt heavy and senseless. Then I saw Susannah at the edge of the foyer, staring at me. No—she was staring at our father’s pistol, which was on the floor between us. I must have dropped it. Run, I wanted to say. Then the ponytailed man in the hallway fired again, and then he kept firing, a jagged roll of concussive bangs like a string of exploding firecrackers in a metal barrel, and I fell to the floor and squeezed my eyes shut against the shots and screamed.
When I opened my eyes again, I was facedown on the floor, my head turned to face the hallway. Susannah was sitting against a wall, her hands over her stomach, which was red with blood. She was staring straight ahead to the opposite wall. “Susannah?” I managed, my voice thick. She didn’t react. I tried to push up off the floor, but I couldn’t make my right arm move. I felt weak and nauseous and I was sweating and my arm wouldn’t work. “Mom?” I said. “Dad?” I turned my head to look into the den. My mother was still seated on the couch, her head back as if she were looking at the ceiling. Something dark stained the couch. The girl, Kayla, was gone. My father was on the ground a few yards away, on his back, making a horrible gurgling noise. He looked at me.
“Ethan,” he managed. “Watch … your sister.” He paused to say something else. And the pause didn’t end, although the gurgling noise did. Dimly I realized that the growling from the car in our driveway was gone too, swallowed up by the night, replaced by the high, thin call of an approaching siren, warning us far too late.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
By Friday evening, after confronting Marisa in my classroom, my earlier confidence has dwindled. I meant to come clean to Teri Merchant at the end of the workday, but she wasn’t available after school and I had to settle for scheduling a meeting first thing Monday morning. I don’t know how I’m going to make it until then. I’m unable to read or watch TV or concentrate on anything except my own vague sense of dread. Marisa’s rage unnerved me more than I’d like to admit, but the uncertainty of what she will do next is worse. What if she accuses me of harassing her? Of stalking her? What would she tell Teri Merchant? Susannah is waiting tables at the Palms tonight and won’t be home for hours, so with only Wilson for company—he eyes me nervously from his bed—I pace around my house and think about what to do. Should I call Teri now and forget Monday? No, telling her over the phone won’t work; it needs to be face-to-face—meet it head on. Or am I just holding off until I lose my resolve and convince myself that I don’t need to do this? Twice I pull out my phone, and twice I push it back into my hip pocket. I drink a beer, then another, neither doing anything except making me pee.
What I want to do, more than anything, is walk away from this, just as I walked away from my uncle. But where? A man cannot flee from himself, as Shakespeare himself said. I can’t joke my way out of this or try to bargain or fight my way out. I recall my words to my students about Macbeth, about how he faces his fate, knowing he will lose and die, and how powerfully compelling that is. I laugh at the thought, finish my beer, then throw it into the trash can hard enough that the bottle breaks. The broken glass stays in the can, though. I take it as a sign of what I’m going to do on Monday—I’ve made a
