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“You know what you’ve done. Sweet-talked your father, didn’t you … singing to him all the time … riding around with him like a little tramp … and at the end … you must have talked him up real sweet….” She looked bitterly at Crystal, who still understood none of her mother’s anger and resentment.

What Olivia was saying didn’t make any sense. “What are you talking about?”

“You know what I’m talking about, you little conniving tramp. You got what you wanted, didn’t you? But you’re not going to get anything from me, not as long as I’m alive anyway,” and then suddenly, terror filled her eyes as she stared at her daughter. It was obvious that she thought Crystal was going to kill her, as Crystal nervously fingered the rifle. But Crystal bolted for the door, as Jared stared at their mother in confusion, and as he saw Crystal fly past, he ran after her, but she was too quick for him, she had always been faster than he was. He ran after her through the fields, but she was still brandishing the rifle, and she fired in the air, and shouted a warning to stay away from her. He knew something had happened, but he still didn’t know what. All he knew was that he had to stop her, before she did something crazy to Tom, or even Becky and the children. She wasn’t making sense, and he still didn’t understand what had driven her crazy.

Tom heard them coming long before they got to the
house, and seeing her flying across the fields with a gun, he pulled his own shotgun from the rack near the door, and he was waiting for her when she got there. She had already fired two shots in the air, and she had four left as Becky came screaming out behind Tom, hysterically grabbing at him. She didn’t know what was going on, but she sensed instantly that something terrible was about to happen.

“What are you doing?” Becky was shaking and terrified as he shoved her roughly behind him and told her to get back in the house and stay with the children. She did as he said, and she was cowering in the living room as Crystal confronted him and aimed the rifle at him with trembling hands, and Jared came up breathless behind her.

“Put it down, Sis.” He spoke quietly, afraid of what she’d do, but Tom only grinned. He looked drunk, as usual, but his hands looked terrifyingly steady as he pointed the shotgun at Crystal.

“Nice to see you again, Crystal. Is this a social call or are you just out hunting with Jared?” He looked unperturbed, as Jared stood helplessly beside her.

“Tom, put the gun down. Both of you, stop it.” Jared looked terrified. They had both obviously gone crazy, and suddenly as he looked at his sister, he knew what had happened to her, and for an instant he wanted to take the gun from her himself and kill his brother-in-law, but there was no wresting the rifle from her hands, as she aimed it at Tom’s head, and then lowered it to his crotch with satisfaction.

“I came to thank you for last night.” Her voice shook as they each held their guns trained on each other. “You’re not going to do that to anyone again, are you, Tom?” She wanted him to be afraid, to cry, to plead, to beg, as she had done the night before, but he only leered
at her, the taste of her still fresh on his lips, like the ugly grin he wore. And then, with no warning, she took a shot between his legs, but it missed him. And without waiting to see if he’d been hit, he let both shots fly at her. One whistled past her ear, and as she turned in startled horror at the sound, she saw Jared fall beside her. He had been shot clean through the head, and he fell dead instantly, the blood splattering everywhere, as Crystal knelt beside him. There was a distant scream from somewhere, and all she could remember later was Tom leering over her, and Becky screaming, as Crystal lay cradling Jared in her lap, sobbing and holding him, but he was gone. And it was her fault. She might as well have shot him herself … he was dead … dead … as Tom quietly walked up and took her father’s rifle away from her, and walked back inside to call the sheriff.

The sheriff came half an hour later, and Jared was still lying in the field in Crystal’s arms. They led her away, and their questions were all a blur afterward. She remembered the ambulance coming for Jar and her mother screaming hysterically as Becky sobbed and held her. She remembered the children staring at her, and the sheriff telling her she had done a terrible thing, and then trying to explain to him that she hadn’t shot Jared. But they knew. And then it all came out, what Tom had done, and they’d gone to the barn to look, and her blood was still there on the barn floor. They had taken her to the hospital then and Boyd and Hiroko had come with her. They signed statements about the condition she’d been in the night before, and photographs were taken of all her bruises. The sheriff let her stay with the Websters instead of putting her in jail, and they went to the inquest with her. She was to be charged with attempted murder, but Tom wanted them to drop the charges against her, because it meant being charged with rape and manslaughter
himself. The judge called it an accident then, and Tom was accused of statutory rape, and in the end all charges were dropped, and Jared’s death was declared to be of accidental causes. They all left the courthouse together, and Crystal didn’t see Tom or her mother again until Jared’s funeral. She sat in the back of the church with Boyd and Hiroko, and by then it was all over the local papers.

All of Jar’s friends were there, and the girl he’d been seeing in Calistoga. Everyone cried, including Tom, who looked accusingly at Crystal as he left the church. He was a pallbearer for his brother-in-law, which made Crystal’s stomach turn, but Olivia had wanted it that way. In her mind, his death wasn’t Tom’s fault, but Crystal’s, and he was laid to rest in a simple grave beside his father. It was a day Crystal would never forget, and she stood staring blindly at the sky, thinking of them both, and how different life had once been. It was all over now. For all of them. There was nothing left but anger and guilt and lies, and the sorrow of losing her father and her brother. And as Boyd led her away, she stopped for a moment to look at her mother.

“Don’t come back to the ranch again, Crystal. Your father’s not here to defend you now, and I know what you are. We all do. You’re a murderess and a tramp and you don’t belong here, no matter what you made your Pa believe before he died.” Her venom was limitless for her youngest daughter, but Crystal only shook her head, her own rage spent. She would have to live for a lifetime, knowing that her anger had cost her brother’s life. And she would have done anything now to change that, even if it meant letting Tom go unpunished. There was no taking back what he’d done anyway, no changing it, no restoring her to what she had been, or bringing Jared
back to life. His life was over, and hers was marred forever.

“You won’t have to fight me, Ma.” She spoke quietly. “I don’t want to come back. I don’t ever want to see the place again. It’s all yours. I’m going.”

“How about putting that in writing for me and your Mama?” Tom spoke from just behind her, and the smell of him almost made her retch as she fought to ignore him.

“You don’t need it in writing. I’m leaving here tomorrow.” But there was nothing for her to leave anyway, except a piece of land she had once loved. The people she cared about were gone, the only ones left might as well have been strangers.

“See that you don’t come back.” Tom’s voice was a low rumble, as Boyd stepped forward and took her arm.

“Come on, Crystal. Let’s go now.” He held her arm firmly and led her away, and as they drove away, tears slid silently down her cheeks and Hiroko gently patted her hand, as she looked out the window. There was nothing anyone could say. The course of life had been irreversibly altered, and Jared’s had been ended. He’d been barely more than a boy, and he was gone. Crystal didn’t say a word all the way back to the Websters’, and when they got there, she left them and went for a long walk alone. She walked through the tall weeds behind their house, and for miles, following the creek, singing softly to herself … the songs her father and brother had once loved, and as she sang “Amazing Grace,” their memories seemed to engulf her. There was no one to hear her now, no one to care, and worse still, no one to love her. And as she walked back to Boyd and Hiroko’s house, she knew a loneliness she had never felt before, a loneliness so powerful she wondered for a moment if she would even survive it. But she knew she had to go on. She had to do what she
had promised her father and herself years before. She had to go on now, to other worlds, other places. Alone. But with their memories always close beside her. And with the memory of Jar was the guilt she knew she would carry for a lifetime. If she hadn’t gone after Tom with her father’s rifle, he would never have died. In a way, it was as though she had killed him herself, and she knew now that she would have to live with that knowledge forever. Nothing would ever change it, or make the hurt any better. Nothing would ever make her less guilty of it, no matter what happened in her life, in her mind she had killed her brother, as though she had squeezed the trigger herself.

And as she wandered back slowly through the tall grass, she sang the songs they had sung together as children, as the tears coursed down her cheeks, and she looked up at the sky in lonely sorrow.

“Good-bye, Jar …” She whispered the words she hadn’t said to him in so long. “… I love you….”

Crystal stayed with Boyd and Hiroko for a few days. She had meant to leave the day after the funeral, but she was so overwhelmed with guilt and grief that she couldn’t. She needed a few days just to catch her breath. She played with Jane, and went for long walks alone, and Hiroko let her be. She knew exactly what she needed.

Crystal had gone home briefly before the funeral to collect her things, and she had retrieved her small cache of money from the mattress. Boyd and Hiroko had tried to talk her into staying long enough to finish school, but she knew that she couldn’t. She couldn’t have faced anyone there, overnight she had outgrown them. She was due to graduate in six weeks, but it no longer seemed to matter. She had to leave now and she knew it.

“But where will you go?” Hiroko looked deeply worried as they finished dinner two days after she got there.

“San Francisco.” She had already made her mind up. She had five hundred dollars. It would get her a room, and she was determined to get a job somewhere as a
waitress. For long enough to make somes more money, and then she was going to Hollywood. She had nothing to lose now and she knew she had to try it.

“You’re too young to move to the city alone.” Boyd looked at her worriedly and there were tears in Hiroko’s eyes too, but Crystal knew that she could handle anything, the child in her had been killed, as surely as Tom’s bullet had killed Jared.

“How old were you when you were drafted?”

“Eighteen.”

She smiled sadly at him. “That must have been a lot rougher than moving to San Francisco.”

“That’s not the point. I had no choice.”

“Neither do I.” She said it quietly. Her hair was pulled back from her face in a long braid, and he could already see that the bruises were starting to heal, although she still had a hell of a shiner. But even with her bruises, she was beautiful. And there was a quiet strength about her now that there was no denying. It was time for her to move on, and she knew it better than anyone. Her days in the valley were over forever.

Boyd drove her to the bus depot the day she left, and they waited for the bus together. She promised to let him know where she was and to write, and for a long moment they both had to fight back tears as he hugged her. She had said good-bye to Hiroko at the house and that had been even harder.

“Take care of yourself, kid,” Boyd said. She was like a sister to him, and he and Hiroko were all she had left now. They were the only family she cared about, the only family she had anywhere, and it was agonizing to leave them, but there was a whole world waiting for her, a world full of new hope and promise. And she was young enough to make a new life for herself somewhere, a life without people like Tom Parker.

She waved good-bye to Boyd as she boarded the bus, and blew him a kiss, as the men on the bus watched with envy. And then, in silence, she watched the valley slip away, and in spite of the painful memories she carried with her, she felt a stirring of excitement.