Shattered (2 page)

Her chest started to feel all tight, like it did sometimes when she remembered.

"Here, quick, let's get dinner going. Marisa, you can set the table. Tony, get Lucy's leash and take her out in the yard and put her on her chain." Her mother was already ripping the plastic off a package of hamburger meat and dumping it into the big silver frying pan on the stove. From that, and the box sitting on the counter beside the burner, Marisa knew what they were having: Hamburger Helper.

It was okay, not her favorite.

"Be careful. There's somebody out there in the woods," she told Tony as she started to get some clean plates out of the dishwasher, and he took Lucy, clipped to a leash now, so she wouldn't go running off after any old cows, back out into the dark. She'd propped Gina in a corner so the doll could watch. She would have liked to have her sit at the table, but Tony would have made fun of her, and Daddy wouldn't have allowed it. Only her mother understood about Gina.

"There is not, turd brain," Tony said, and her mother sighed.

"I got an award today," Marisa told her mother when they were alone. She didn't like to tell things like that in front of Tony; he would feel bad because he never got any awards, and that would make him
be
bad, and then he would get in trouble, and that made
her
feel bad, so she just didn't do it. The award was a big silver medal that hung from a blue ribbon around her neck, and she lifted the metal disk for her mother's inspection. "For being a blue-ribbon reader. See, it has my name on it."

Her mother stopped stirring the hamburger stuff to look at the medal and then smiled at her. "Wow, Marisa. Good job. I'm really proud of you, baby."

Marisa smiled back. Sometimes, when she was alone like this with Mommy, it was almost as if they were at home again. As if nothing had changed.

"Dad's home." Dragging a trail of mud in with him, Tony stomped into the kitchen, letting in a cool, damp-smelling breeze that fluttered the blue-checked curtains over the sink before he slammed the door. The kitchen was already smelling like cooking hamburger stuff with a whiff of gas from the leaky burner, so the outdoor scent just kind of mixed in.

"Oh." Looking harried, her mother grabbed a can of green beans and a can of corn from the bags that hadn't yet been emptied and jammed the can opener into the top of the beans. The sound of it creaking around the lid joined the sizzle of meat and the thud of Tony's muddy shoes as he kicked them off and, from outside, Lucy's barking. "Go put your pajamas on, Tony, you've got mud all over your jeans. And wash your face and hands while you're at it."

"Lucy kept jumping on me. She got me muddy."

Lucy didn't like being left outside all alone in the dark. She didn't like being fastened to a chain, either. Like Tony and herself and Mommy, too, Marisa suspected, Lucy just wanted to go home.

The beans and corn were in pans, the pans were on the stove, Tony was nowhere in sight, and Marisa had just picked up Gina when Michael Garcia came in through the back door. He was wiry, and he wasn't all that tall, but in his jeans and flannel shirt and boots he looked enormous to Marisa. A baseball cap was jammed on his head and, beneath the brim, his mouth and eyes were tight.

Daddy's mad.

She could tell as soon as she saw him. Clutching Gina tight, sticking her thumb in her mouth, she sidled closer to her mother, and never mind that she'd been told time and time again not to get too close to the stove.

"God, I've had a hell of a day." Looking from Tony's muddy tracks to the grocery bags crowding the counter, and shaking his head at what he saw, he shut the door, then walked into the middle of the kitchen to dump something on the table. Pressing back against the cabinet by the stove, close enough to her mother now so that she could smell the nice scent Mommy always wore to work, Marisa clutched Gina closer and sucked harder on her thumb. "Supper isn't ready yet? You've got to be kidding me."

"I just got home myself." Her mother never acted mad at her dad, never yelled. She simply got quieter when he was around, as if she was trying to stay very calm. Marisa guessed that sometimes her mother was afraid of him, too. "It'll be just a minute."

"What's that you're making?" He looked at the pans on the stove and frowned. "That crap again?"

"Money's tight, Mike."

"You blaming
me
for that?" He sounded so angry that Marisa's throat went dry. She would have clutched at her mother's skirt if she'd had a hand free. But she didn't, so she could only stand there and try to be invisible. "We moved down here to hicksville because of
you.
"

"I know."

Trying to be invisible didn't work, Marisa discovered. All of a sudden her dad's eyes focused on her. Marisa's stomach lurched. When he was in a bad mood, he had to take it out on somebody. Usually it was Tony, because Tony was so much noisier and bigger and harder to miss. But Tony hadn't come back from putting on his pajamas yet, probably on purpose. So that left Mommy and her.

"Get your thumb out of your mouth," he barked, so loudly that Marisa jumped, and he drew back his hand as if he was going to smack her. It scared her so much that she almost wet her pants. She pulled her thumb out of her mouth, then stuck the hand with the wet, glistening, telltale thumb behind her back. She knew sucking her thumb was bad. He'd told her before.

"Supper's ready." Frying pan in hand, her mother turned away from the stove to start dishing the food out on the plates. "Marisa, go get Tony, would you, please?"

Marisa nodded, edged around her mother, and, with a last big-eyed look at her dad, fled the kitchen. Only she walked, because she knew seeing her run away from him would make him madder.

"Don't you start on her, Mike. I'm not going to stand for that."

She could just hear her mother's low voice as she went into the hall that connected the three small bedrooms and bathroom to the living room.

"You're going to stand for any damn thing I tell you to stand for, got that? After what you did, you owe me, and don't you forget it."

"I'm making up for it, aren't I? I'm here."

"You're here, all right. And we both know why."

None of that made any sense to Marisa, and she didn't hear any more, because she found Tony. He was in the living room, curled up in a corner of the couch, wearing his pajamas and watching TV with the volume turned down low, because he didn't want to do anything that might attract their dad's attention unnecessarily.

"Supper," Marisa announced, then added in a confidential whisper, "He's mad."

"He's a dick," Tony said bitterly, and Marisa's mouth dropped open in horror. They weren't allowed to say bad words. But then, Tony never seemed to care about what they weren't allowed to do.

"Tony! Marisa!" their mother called.

Tony got off the couch. "You better leave the doll in here. You know he doesn't like you to carry it around everywhere you go."

"Thanks, Tony," Marisa said humbly, because it was true. Daddy had already yelled at her about it, and he got really mad if he had to yell about the same thing too much. She carried Gina to her bedroom, propped her carefully against the wall by the door, and went in to supper.

Nobody said anything much while they ate, and Marisa finished as fast as she could. When it was over, Daddy said he was going out and left, and the rest of them gave a big sigh of relief.

She helped her mother clear the table while Tony did his home-work with them in the kitchen, and then her mother fixed her a bath. She was just getting out of the tub and her mother was just wrapping her in a towel when they heard Lucy barking outside.

"Your daddy must be home," Mommy said with a sigh.

Marisa's stomach got a knot in it.

A moment later came the sound of the kitchen door opening and slamming shut.

"Angie! Angie, you get your ass in here!"

Her mother was still crouched down beside her, still rubbing her with the towel. Her hands stopped moving and she went really still as she looked toward the kitchen. Then she stood up fast, but not before Marisa saw fear flash into her eyes.

"Get your nightgown on and get into bed. Tell Tony I said go to bed, too." Her mother's voice was quiet.

"Mommy." Marisa wanted to hold on to her mother, but she was already gone, her skirt swishing as she moved fast down the hall. By the time Marisa had her nightgown pulled on over her head she could hear her dad shouting, yelling loud, nasty things. Her heart started beating really fast. Goose bumps rose up on her skin with a prickle. Trying not to listen, she picked up her medal and hung it around her neck, then went to get Gina. Hugging the doll close, she started for Tony's room to tell him to go to bed. His door was closed. She thought he probably had it locked, which meant she was going to have to knock, which meant Daddy might hear and come into the hall and see her.

She felt all shivery inside at the thought.

A giant crash from the kitchen made her jump. Then her mother screamed, the sound so loud and shrill it hurt her ears, and her dad shouted. Marisa's heart lurched as a terrible fear gripped her. There was a sharp bang, then another, like firecrackers going off in the house. An icy premonition raced down her spine.

"Mommy!"

She ran for her mother. A second later, Marisa found herself standing in the kitchen doorway, her eyes huge and her mouth hanging open as she looked at the most terrible sight she had ever seen. Her heart pounded so hard she could barely hear over it, and she had to fight to breathe. With one disbelieving glance she saw her dad lying facedown on the floor in what looked like a big puddle of bright red paint and her mother turning to face her with the front of her yellow sweater turning bright red, too, as though something was blossoming on it, some awful flower that was getting bigger by the second as it gobbled her up from the inside out.

Mommy.
But Marisa was so terrified now that although her mouth opened and her throat worked, no sound came out.

"Run, Marisa," her mother shrieked, her face white and terrible. "Run, run,
run
!"

There was another person in the room, Marisa saw, as beyond her mother something moved. Instantly she knew in her heart that it was one of the shadow people from the woods. Seized by mortal fear, she whirled around and ran like a jackrabbit with her mother's screams echoing in her ears, darting through the living room, bursting out through the front door as the cool night air whooshed past her into the house, leaping across the wet grass that felt cold and slippery beneath her bare feet, flying into the darkness as the shadow person gave chase.

There was nowhere else to go: Sobbing with fear, she ran into the woods.

1

"You missed court!
The judge chewed Kane out for being unprepared. She ain't happy, and let me tell you, neither am I." Scott Buchanan let fly before the door to his office, which Lisa Grant was, at his direction, closing behind her, was even all the way shut. Knowing she was at fault, Lisa still winced inwardly at the idea that their colleagues--no, her colleagues, because he was the boss--could hear every word.

"I had car trouble." She should have been apologizing abjectly, she knew. She would have been, if her boss had been anyone other than him. Stomach tight, she stopped in the center of the spacious corner office to meet his gaze.

"Bullshit." He stood behind his battered metal desk--no expensive mahogany for this district attorney, the blue-collar man's friend!--glaring at her out of light blue eyes that were, on this Tuesday morning, slightly bloodshot, as though he'd tied one on the night before or, more probably, though she hated to admit it, been working until the wee hours. His short, thick tobacco-brown hair looked as if he'd recently run his hands through it from sheer aggravation. His thick brows beetled over his meaty nose. His square jaw looked even more pugnacious than usual. He had his suit coat off--it was draped over the back of his chair--and the contrast between his white dress shirt and pale blue tie and the tanned skin of his face and neck was marked. He was a wide-shouldered, muscular man of thirty-two who looked like what he was: the son of a no-account, chronically unemployed sometime mechanic, who'd done physical labor all his life until he'd managed to claw his way through law school.

"It's the truth."

His face tightened. "Come here."

From the way he was looking at her she knew he meant it, so she complied, holding her head high as his eyes ran derisively over her, aware that her cool elegance in the face of his wrath and the already sultry late-June heat was maddening to him and taking at least a small degree of pleasure in the fact that this was so. At age twenty-eight, she'd been told often enough that she was beautiful to have a healthy sense of her own attractiveness, and she was perfectly sure he was aware of it, too. Her face was oval and fine-featured. Her eyes were large and caramel-brown, with a slight tilt to them. Her complexion had a naturally tawny tint that meant she only rarely had to resort to fake tans, and her hair, currently twisted into a chignon at her nape, was long, thick, and black as a crow's wing. Her black linen pantsuit looked as though it had cost the earth, and never mind that it was two years old. It fit her tall, willowy form like it had been tailored to it, which it had. The sleeveless white shell beneath was silk. Wearing her expensive Louboutin heels, unmistakable because of their red soles, she still lacked a few inches of reaching his height of six-foot-one, but not many, which she devoutly hoped he found maddening, too.

"Look out that window." As she reached him, he slid a hand around her arm just above her elbow, pulled her a few inches to her right, and yanked the cord of the dusty mini-blinds that covered the big window behind his desk. The blinds shot up with a rattle. Blinking at the sudden onslaught of bright sunlight, Lisa found herself looking out on busy Main Street, the building's front entrance, and the nearly full parking lot. "That's what I was doing about, oh, let's say ten minutes ago, because I got a call from Kane saying you hadn't shown up for court and I was checking to see if your car was out there in the parking lot. Know what I saw instead?"