AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Her knuckles whitened on the door. “He was our father!”
“He killed our mother!” he nearly yelled.
She winced as though he’d struck her. “I didn’t believe that then. Still, more bloodshed didn’t make it right.”
“I didn’t shoot Dad! He deserved a bullet. I won’t say otherwise. But all I did was go over to talk to him, to tell him that even if the police couldn’t charge him,Iknew the truth. I knew what he really was. He didn’t like hearing it, but he was alive when I left.”
Lifting her chin, she glared at him defiantly. “So you think someone else came along?”
“I think when he realized he wouldn’t get away with what he’d done, he took his own life.”
“Withyourgun.”
“It washisgun, Tilly. One of several Mom hid from him when he moved out because she planned to sell them. It was her only way of getting some money, and I took it with me after she died and I moved to Grand Isle. Yes, I brought it back with me, stuffed in my luggage as I hitchhiked to Tampa, and had it at the apartment. Butheused it after that. You must believe that now, tricking me to get me out here. Why? What’s finally convinced you?”
She opened her mouth, closed it again, then covered it with a hand as tears filled her eyes. “As an adult, I just... I see things differently—things I couldn’t accept back then. Things Dad did. Aunt Marva has told me more about Mom and Dad’s relationship and how he treated her when they were together—the extramarital affairs, how miserable she was, his refusal to give her the divorce she was begging for, and then how he drained their bank account when he did finally leave. All of it.”
Marva was their mother’s sister, but even she had stood by Tilly during the trial. “If Marva was aware of all that, why’d she turn on me, too? The whole damn family did! Except Chester. He was the only one on my side.”
“We all knew how you felt about Dad, how angry you were. You took a gun to his apartment, for God’s sake!”
“I took that gun because I wanted to give Mom the justice she deserved! But I realized once I got there that going to prison for him wasn’t worth it—which issoironic now, right? I told him what I thought of him, then I threw the gun at him and left.” Matilda knew that. She’d heard it in court, when she testified to nearly crashing into him as she arrived at the apartment complex and he was tearing out of the parking lot. But this seemed to be the first time she was actually listening.
Closing her eyes, she shook her head. “I’m sorry. I—I couldn’t believe he’d take his own life and leave me when I needed him the most.” Her voice fell to just above a whisper. “I thought he loved me.”
She’d been blinded by loyalty to a man who didn’t deserve it. On some level, Bo had understood that and already forgiven her. He just couldn’t have her in his life. She’d been young, just sixteen, but he’d been only two years older and had never felt more alone. Family, friends, neighbors—everyone—had rallied around her and turned their backs on him, probably because Matilda had stayed in Florida when Bo moved to Grand Isle. With Uncle Chester’s help, he’d spent eight years pressing the police to look more closely at their father, Clint, certain he was to blame for their mother’s death, but unable to prove it.
“The only person he loved was himself,” Bo said. “And I waited year after year for the police to do their job. They knew it was him but couldn’t prove it beyond a reasonable doubt. The one thing I’d been living for, the one thing that could make the loss we’d suffered tolerable was justice for Mom. And yet I—we—were going to be denied even that.”
“If only I’d come home earlier that night,” she lamented.
“Then you’d know I didn’t do it. But that’s the only thing that would’ve changed. Mom would still be dead, Tilly,” Bo said. “Dad’s where he deserves to be.”
“After that night, I was left without either parent,” she said as the tears that’d been filling her eyes streamed down her cheeks. “I was so hurt, so angry...”
What Matilda had done was wrong, but she’d acted on what she believed at the time. They were both victims of a man who didn’t care enough about them to curb his own selfish desires. All the heartache they’d suffered stemmed directly from the night their father took their mother’s life.
At least Bo had chosen to live with Chester. From ten to eighteen, he’d been as happy as a kid could be, under the circumstances. Although he’d been waiting for closure, he’d run wild and free on Grand Isle, and Chester had looked out for him and treated him well.
Matilda, on the other hand, had chosen to believe in their father, who hadn’t deserved her trust. Clint had had both the opportunity and the motive. A witness could place him near the house the night their mother was shot and killed, even though he’d at first claimed to be out of town. He’d had access to a firearm, even though the police could never find it. Bo had even heard him tell their mother he’d kill her if she ever started seeing another man.
Bo pinched the bridge of his nose with one hand. He’d tried desperately to leave the past in the past.
But he and Matilda would continue paying a price for what his father had done as long as Bo continued to hold a grudge.
“Bo?” Chester yelled from inside. “Bo, that you?”
The old man was shuffling through the living room, trying to reach the front door.
“Yeah, it’s me,” he called back.
“Well, you don’t say!” Chester exclaimed. “It’s about damn time! Tilly, don’t just stand there, invite him in.”
Matilda held the door open, but Bo hesitated. He knew if he went inside, the wall he’d built to keep her out would crumble. She’d become part of his life again.
But maybe that was for the best. Maybe it was time he tried to forgive and forget. Although there was no changing the past, he could change the future.
Hadn’t their father cost them enough already?
