Lake of Tears (21 page)

Doug stood up, too, and they were face to face. Andrew was clenching his fists and Meg was afraid he was going to punch Doug. “We promised each other that we would do everything we could to get through the war together. We made a vow that we would go together. You promised, and you broke it.”

“I kept my vow.”

“No, you didn’t,” Doug screamed. “You let go of Brian. You could have saved him, but you let him fall and then they shot him. They shot him over and over again, and you let it happen. He’s dead because of you. I know. I was there.”

“Doug, that isn’t what happened.” Andrew held himself back as he spoke slowly.

Then Doug pulled out the gun.

When Rich stood up from the bar to leave, he saw that Meg, Andrew, and the scrawny guy had settled in a booth. Should he stop by and say something to them? Would he tell Claire about this when he got home? He hated to be in the middle between mother and daughter, and it didn’t happen very often.

As he stood there watching them talk, it looked like the conversation was getting a little heated. Then Andrew lunged out of the booth, and a moment later the other guy did, too. They were facing each other, almost touching, air crackling around them. Meg was starting to get out of the booth.

Rich was getting a very bad feeling. The scrawny guy sucked in air around him like a black hole. He was headed toward something that had nothing to do with what was happening in the bar.

Then the guy pulled out a gun.

Rich reached in his coat for his cell phone and with just a glance punched in the code for Claire’s number.

Time to call in the posse.

Claire registered Rich saying three words—“Meg, Fort, gun”—and she was out the door without her coat, her car keys in one hand, her gun in the other.

She ran to the squad car and then stood for one full long second outside the door, tilted her head up, and prayed to whatever was up there that could help her. Then she was in the car and careening backward down the driveway. As she turned the car toward Fort St. Antoine, she put in a call for backup. Heaven help anyone on the road with her.

It took her just over a minute to get the Fort, but she noticed everything, the cars swaying by going the other direction, the blur of the trees on the sides of the road, the road like a corridor she was headed down, the dotted line in the middle of the road beating a pulse in her head.

She forced herself to slow down as she raced into town and pulled up behind a pickup truck right outside the Fort. Again, a breath. She needed to be calm to save her daughter. Her darling daughter. Meg. Nothing could go wrong. She couldn’t live if it did.

Peeking in the window she saw Andrew and another guy talking with Meg standing in between them. Why did her daughter have to be there? She had warned her about Andrew. Claire couldn’t see the gun, but assumed it was hidden from her view. She had to act as if it was pointed at someone and take every precaution.

Claire ran to the back of the Fort and went in through the kitchen. A lanky teenaged cook was pulling something out of the deep fryer. She clamped her hand over his mouth, then whispered to him, “Get out of here right now. Go out front and when the other deputies come, have them wait for me to signal them.”

She shoved him toward the back door and hoped he had the sense not to let the door slam. Claire ducked down, slipped through the doorway into the main room, and snuck up behind the bar.

When she peeked over the wooden countertop, she saw that a blond guy who looked more than half crazed had the gun pointed at Meg, and Andrew was trying to talk him down. Meg had frozen. It was worse than Claire had imagined, and she had to push all such thoughts away.

Claire pulled out her gun and got ready.

Meg couldn’t believe this guy was pointing a gun at her. She almost wanted to laugh, just to break the horrible tension in the air, to not believe it was real. But she could tell from Andrew’s reaction to him that this Doug was a live wire and apt to go off at any second.

She was hearing what they were saying, but she wasn’t really comprehending it. Words washed through her like glass beads of fear. She was still alive. They were still talking. She was still breathing. Focus on that.

It sounded like Doug was still fighting in the war. That’s all she could figure. He hadn’t been able to come home. He blamed Andrew for something horrible. A friend of theirs had been killed, and Doug thought it was Andrew’s fault. And then all this talk of a vow, that they would all go down together. Just like Andrew had explained in the barn.

Doug was pointing the gun at her, but he was looking at Andrew. He said he would kill her, because that way Andrew would hurt the worst. Just like he had killed his other girlfriend.

Meg raised her hand as if she could stop him from doing something. Then she pointed at the hole at the end of the gun barrel. Maybe it was like in the cartoons where if you put your finger in the end, the gun exploded.

She didn’t know what else to do. She couldn’t say any words.

So she reached out and put her finger on the end of the gun.

Andrew remembered that last firefight in Afghanistan in flashes. They had walked into an ambush. Doug was shot immediately. Then Brian started to go over the edge of a cliff and Andrew tried to grab him, flinging out his hand. Brian’s hand grabbed his, and he hung over the drop. Andrew was lying flat on the ground, and Brian’s fingers were squeezing his wrist. The drag on his arm was tearing something deep inside of him. The barrage of bullets thickened in the air. With every breath, Andrew commanded his hand to hold on, and then he felt a slip.

Brian’s fingers flew free.

He let go of Andrew’s hand.

And without his help, Andrew couldn’t hold him.

Brian dropped.

As his body fell away, it was pelted by bullets that tore him into pieces. Andrew watched until it hit the rocks and tumbled like a bag of hay, tearing apart.

Brian had left them.

He had to convince Doug of what happened. He had to keep talking, keep Doug listening to him, looking at him. “I didn’t let go of Brian. Don’t you get it? Brian did. He let go of me.”

Doug heard him and said, “He let go of you?”

“Yes. I was holding on to him tight and he had hold of my wrist, but then he let go. I couldn’t hold him after that. He slipped out of my hand.”

“He did it?”

Andrew nodded. “I think he did it for me. So I wouldn’t get hurt.”

Doug looked down at the gun he was holding.

Then Meg reached out and put her finger over the end of the barrel.

Claire only heard silence. She tried to think of how to handle this situation, but it was like her mind was scattered points of energy. This was not a time for thinking, this was a time for doing.

Claire stood up and shouted, “Stop.”

When nothing changed, when only Meg turned and looked at her, Claire moved to step two.

She lifted her gun over the edge of the bar.

Now, they all looked at her: Meg, Andrew and the guy with the gun.

Meg moved as Claire pulled on the trigger.

The noise of her gun filled the whole room—twice as loud as it should have been.

Rich saw it all happen. He had resisted stepping in until Meg was in the middle of it. He started across the room, and then he watched as Meg put her finger on the barrel of the gun. That stopped him. She had put herself in harm’s way. Any movement from him could make it worse.

Then Claire stood up behind the bar and shouted some loud word. It only registered as noise. Meg turned, saw her mother. The two men looked at Claire, and in that instant so many things happened:

Claire raised her gun, Meg stepped forward and pushed down on the barrel of the gun, the guy with the gun fell back, and two guns went off.

Like a frozen tableau, they all stayed where they were except for the guy. He landed on the floor in a heap. The silence was broken by his sobs. His gun was still in his hands.

Rich wasn’t sure, but it looked like no one had gotten hurt. He could see no blood.

Andrew moved first. He reached down and took the gun away from his buddy. Then he put an arm around his shoulders.

Meg ran to her mother, and Claire climbed over the bar to get to her. They held onto each other and rocked. Rich walked over and put his arms around both of them, holding them as tight as he could.

When they broke apart, Claire put her hands on Meg’s face and said, “You’re okay?”

“I pushed the gun down. I think it shot a hole in the floor.”

“Oh, Meggy, I was so scared.”

“So was I, Mom, but I wasn’t going to let him shoot me.”

Rich wrapped an arm around her neck. “You’re as tough as your mom. You’re always going to be okay.”

Andrew squatted on the floor, holding on to Doug.

Claire walked over, took the gun from Andrew and asked him, “Who is this guy?”

“Doug Nelson. A guy I knew in Afghanistan. I think he killed Tammy Lee. Because of me.”

“He tell you that?”

“Kind of.”

“What happened to him?”

How did he begin to explain what happened to Doug? “I’m not sure. We were in a bad ambush together, and he was wounded. They flew him out and I haven’t seen him until now.”