Splintered (8 page)

Before Lily could find the courage to verbalize her thoughts, though, Emma said, “I have somewhere to be right now, but tell Maddy I’ll call her tomorrow evening.”

“Thanks—” Lily didn’t finish her sentence.

There was no need. Emma had already hung up.

Emma Parker stared at her cell phone, trying to make sense of the conversation she’d just had. More than four years had passed since she’d spoken to Lily Eastin or, rather, shouted at her. The heated words, the wounded pride—neither would budge when it came to backing down. The silence between them had stretched on for so long that it was easier for Emma to continue the course rather than to attempt to bridge the distance.

She’d enjoyed keeping in contact with her goddaughter, though, by talking on the phone and occasionally meeting for lunch. They always met on neutral ground, and it was understood the sensitive subject of Lily would only be broached by Maddy. The girl vented about her mother, and Emma listened but never asked how her old friend was doing. She didn’t want Maddy to feel stuck in the middle.

Emma wondered what it would take to bury all of those hurt feelings, to suck up her pride, and to go over to Lily’s house. It sounded like her goddaughter could use a shoulder. It sounded like they both could.

No. Stop thinking like that. I can’t let myself be pulled into Lily’s drama. Not again.

Emma had begged Lily not to marry Tom. She’d told her it would end badly. Individually, Lily and Tom were complete messes. Their relationship was like a volcano always on the brink of a big eruption.

Emma remembered the first time Lily introduced her to Tom, during their last semester in college at the University of South Florida. He was all smiles, with a salesman’s charm that would serve him well in his later profession. But Emma had a knack for reading people—hearing their unspoken words rather than the ones actually said. Tom’s smile never extended to his eyes. They were cold, and gave away more than he realized. Emma knew the face he showed the world didn’t reflect his true self.

Within a month, Lily had moved in with Tom. That’s when his mask started to slide. An anger simmered just underneath his surface, like steam rising from the skin on a cold January day. Once, when Emma was visiting, she walked in on them fighting in the kitchen. She stopped dead in her tracks when she heard the stinging words Tom hurled at Lily over the simple mistake of buying the wrong toothpaste. He didn’t yell. Instead, he got in her face, standing nose-to-nose with her. With a clenched jaw and as much venom as he could muster, he said, “It must suck to be you. It must suck to wake up in the morning, to look in the mirror, and know that you’re you.”

Those kinds of insults were launched at Lily for the tiniest of infractions—lighting the wrong scented candle in a room, adding onions to a dinner casserole, not having extra batteries when they ran out. The constant criticism got so bad Lily tried to morph into some kind of Superwoman. It seemed like she thought if she could only look pretty enough, act smarter, dress better, then she might avoid the verbal attacks.

Emma could tell the anger Tom displayed was a front for self-loathing. The hate he felt must have been immense for him to want to constantly strike out at the one person he professed to love most in the world. After the two married, the verbal abuse didn’t stop. It simply went underground as Maddy grew older.

Lily made excuses for Tom, constantly extolled his virtues as a parent. As if being Father of the Year gave him a pass for being a bastard of a husband. Emma had tried to hang on to her friendship with Lily, out of a sense of loyalty, but eventually she started making excuses to avoid spending time with Lily when Tom would be home. After a while, it became difficult to even be around her.

It was as if Lily was a drowning woman desperately trying to grab on to anything around her to keep afloat. Ultimately, it was too hard for Emma to keep pulling her up. Lily wouldn’t take advice, refused to fix her situation. Her problems always came first, and eventually Emma couldn’t rely on her anymore. Emma had to break away from the sinking relationship before Lily ultimately dragged them both under.

How can I be there more for Maddy without letting myself get sucked into Lily’s life again?

Hank grabbed a sheet of sandpaper off the workbench in his garage. He hoped the repetitive motion of manually smoothing wood might help to quiet his thoughts. He wanted to lose himself in the scratching noise as he ground down rough edges with the gritty paper.

Even though it was the middle of the week, Hank had the day off. He would work the next two nights—Thursday and Friday evenings. A day and a half of free time seemed like plenty to finish the armoire he’d been building for a local store that sold his pieces for a commission. He used to make good money selling his work, but it seemed to him these days people preferred cheap furniture they could slap together in under an hour. In today’s disposable society, if something broke, no big deal, just buy another. Rarely did people search for that one-of-a-kind piece, a family heirloom to hand down to their kids.

Hank had gotten up early that morning, hoping to jump start before Daniel woke up. Quiet times like these, when the rest of the world was still sleeping, seemed to be the only time he felt at peace. When he could push ugly thoughts away and fully engage himself in a project.

He’d learned carpentry skills from his dad. The few times the old man wasn’t being an asshole, he had managed to impart some useful information. Hank could hear him now: “Not every man has the patience to build something with his own two hands, son. It takes discipline and focus to take a hunk of wood and transform it into something else. Remember, you have to be meticulous in your planning or the project will come out all wrong. Ever seen a table that wasn’t level?”

Hank knew not to answer. When his dad felt like sharing, it was best to simply listen.

“Once, I saw an orange roll right off a sloping table. Now tell me, son, how can a man be proud of something like that? Answer is, he can’t.”

Hank soon surpassed his dad’s woodworking skills. When he was twelve, he made a birdhouse for his mom’s birthday. He’d worked on the piece for weeks, thoughtfully overseeing every detail. It had been crafted out of oak, and he’d given it a honey-colored finish. He planned on setting it up outside the kitchen window so when his mom washed dishes, she’d always be able to see the gift.

When Hank eagerly showed off the birdhouse to his dad, he’d seen envy dance in the old man’s eyes. His dad grabbed it out of Hank’s hands, turned it over and over until he finally found the flaw he’d been searching for—a spot where the finish had slightly bubbled. His dad threw the birdhouse on the ground and stomped it to pieces. He could hear the old man now, the gruffness in his voice. He always sounded like he’d just woken up from a weekend bender with a dry mouth that made it hard to speak. “Inferior work won’t cut it, son. You have to work harder and smarter than everyone else to get ahead. The last thing your mom deserves is a piece of shit on her birthday.”

Even as a child, Hank recognized that it was simple jealousy that caused him to destroy the birdhouse. The point was hammered home when he watched his mom open his Dad’s birthday gift—a mahogany chest for the foot of their bed.

Dear old Dad would never be one-upped by his son.

Discipline, focus, meticulous attention to detail—those skills had served Earl Fry well. Not only were they traits to describe a seasoned woodworker, but also a predator.

And oh, how he’d taught his sons well.

Hank threw down his sandpaper in disgust.

Dammit!
Why can’t I empty my mind this morning? Concentrate on the feel of the wood, the scent of the oak shavings littering the floor.

This was supposed to be his sanctuary, the one place he could escape the past.

Hank had the willpower to fight his urges, but what about Daniel, who had the mental capacity of a ten-year-old? Boys that age had no impulse control. Combine that with the body of an adult male and the consequences could be disastrous. Hank had to shield his brother, make sure their painful past didn’t ruin Daniel’s future. Daniel was the best part of Hank’s life. He’d been protecting the boy his whole life. Hank couldn’t drop the ball now.

The knowledge that he couldn’t always keep an eye on Daniel ate away at Hank. When they were younger, the times Hank hadn’t been around were the times Daniel had seemed to suffer the worst. Back in middle school, a teacher once kept Hank after class for beating up a kid. She didn’t even care that he’d been making fun of Daniel. She just saw the boy’s bloody nose and sent Hank to the principal’s office. That meant extra time Daniel would be home alone with their dad. Mom would still be at the farmer’s market. Not that it mattered if she was home or not. She’d never stopped her husband before. Hank had prayed his old man would stay busy in the fields that afternoon.

When the principal finally released Hank from detention, the buses had already left. Hank had run all the way home. By the time he reached the farm, he could barely stand from the stitch in his side. Then he heard Daniel cry out from inside the barn and the pain in Hank’s side had shot to his heart. Another yelp from Daniel had jolted Hank out of his frozen state. He’d dashed to the barn door and yanked it open just in time to witness his dad standing face to face with Daniel.

Hank watched his dad raise an automatic nail gun. He remembered the “pop” sound it made—and Daniel’s scream as the nail went through his palm. He stood pinned against the wall, arms raised like a burglar caught in the act. Dozens of nails stuck out of the wall, surrounding the outline of his body. Blood dripped from Daniel’s right ear where a nail had nicked it. Another stuck through the material of his baggy hand-me-down jeans.

“Stop it, Dad. Stop it!” Hank had rushed to the outlet and jerked the nail gun’s cord out of the wall.

With the fun over, his dad had merely shrugged and left.

Hank worked quickly to remove the nails holding Daniel in place. He’d never forgotten the wet, squishing sound when he eased the one out of Daniel’s palm. A pile of nearby rags were pressed into service as field dressing, though it hadn’t taken long before the material was soaked through.

Daniel’s loud bawling turned into mournful whimpers as the two boys waited for their mom at the end of the drive. They knew dripping blood in the house might set the old man off again.

When she finally pulled up, she didn’t ask how Daniel was or even provide him any comfort. The first thing out of her mouth had been a sigh followed by, “What’d you do to make him mad this time?”

Hank didn’t bother explaining. He just pushed his brother into the car and begged her to take Daniel to the hospital.

The beating Hank received the day the doctor’s bill came in the mail was worse than any he could remember. Still, he refused his dad the satisfaction of even a single tear—no matter how many blows the old man landed.

Unable to talk her mom into letting her miss another day of school, Maddy kept her head down and shuffled through her morning classes until lunchtime—her most dreaded hour. The cafeteria was always a crapshoot between trying to find an open seat and looking for someone to sit by who wasn’t too far down on the social ladder.

Before the whole ex-boyfriend fiasco started, Maddy used to sit with Sabrina and her friends. Today she didn’t bother surveying the room for her best option. She wasn’t in the mood to keep up fake chitchat anyway. She chose the closest empty seat and concentrated on trying to swallow the cardboard lunch. Even the pizza, her favorite item on the menu, tasted sour. She had to fight the bile rising in her throat.

“Lookie who we have here.”

Just what I need.

Maddy looked up, expecting another insult to follow. Malik Jordan stood with his arm around Sabrina and a lunch tray in his hand. Their crew stood close behind.

“What do you want, Malik?”

“Why the long face, Eastin? You should be smiling ear to ear. Fought off a pervert, I heard. You got some real
cajones
.”

Maddy had to remind herself to close her mouth. Luckily, Sabrina chose that moment to sit down at the table. She began talking a mile a minute so Maddy didn’t have to come up with a response. Malik shot the kid sitting nearby a look, and the boy quickly found another place to eat. The two others at the table followed suit when more kids from Sabrina’s group started piling around.

“That’s right,” Sabrina said. “My girl Maddy here beat the shit out of some meth head trying to snatch her right off the street. Ain’t that right, Maddy?”

“Well—”

“Tell us what happened!” “Give us the details.” “How’d you get away?” Questions were hurled at Maddy. She did her best to answer them all, forgetting about the pizza growing cold on her tray. She slowly parceled out the details, vaguely worried this all might be some kind of trick, but the more she talked, the more interested everyone became. Soon the story took on a life of its own.

Maddy couldn’t help it. It was so nice to hear the concern she’d longed for spoken in words like, “How awful.” “You could have been killed!” “You’re so brave for fighting back.” “We’re glad you got away.”

Maddy knew she should have been angry at Sabrina for breaking her confidence. The things she’d unloaded at Sabrina’s house were personal, and she hadn’t wanted them to get around. But the kids who rode Maddy’s bus already knew she’d been part of something anyway. It wouldn’t have taken them long to put two and two together. In the end, it seemed like things had worked out for the best. By the time the bell rang, Maddy had left her bad mood behind with the uneaten lunch.

“Some of the girls are heading over to University Mall after school,” Sabrina said. “Wanna come?”

Maddy couldn’t believe the fabricated story about the ex-boyfriend had been forgotten so easily. “Sure. Can I catch a ride with you?”

“No problem. Julianna’s driving. Meet us in the back lot after the last bell.”