Hank feels a pain behind his eyes. Maybe he’s lost her already.
“Shit,” Gwen says when she hears something upstairs.
Hollis has slammed the bedroom door and is already coming down the stairs, cursing her. He’s calling her a bitch before he’s reached the first floor; no one’s ever taught her a lesson, but that will all change now.
“What’s wrong?” Hank says when Hollis comes into the kitchen, but even before the words are out of his mouth, Hollis is after Gwen, as if she were a mole he’d found in his garden and he had the right to grab her and shake her by the neck.
“Hey,” Hank says. He gets up from the table so quickly that he upsets his cup of coffee, and liquid spills over his research materials.
“I told you I didn’t want the Judge here,” Hollis is saying to Gwen. “But you think you’re too good to listen to anybody.”
“I don’t have to listen to you,” Gwen says right back to him. She feels as if he could snap her spine if he chose to, but she doesn’t care. How much she hates him is all she can think about at the moment.
March has come down from the bedroom, and she stands in the doorway to the kitchen. Now she knows how people freeze; she understands how that fire burned out of control before Alan could walk through the door. There is her daughter, frightened and shouting. There is the man she loves with his hands on her throat.
“I’m going to make you listen,” Hollis is saying to Gwen.
“I don’t think so,” Gwen says. She can see Hank coming toward them, but that’s not what gives her courage. She truly doesn’t care if Hollis hurts her; she wants him to, because that would only serve to prove her right in her opinion of him.
“You don’t want to do this,” Hank says, getting in between Hollis and Gwen. “Don’t do this.” He’s begging Hollis really; if he had to he would get down on his knees.
Hollis looks at the boy coldly, and then something clicks. “You’re right.” He goes into the parlor, where Mr. Cooper’s gun is still in its case.
“Shit,” Hank says when he sees Hollis go out the front door, the one no one uses anymore. Hank heads out the back, hoping he can cut Hollis off and talk to him. The red dogs come out of the shadows to greet Hank, but he jogs past them. He doesn’t like the way he feels inside, the way his stomach is lurching. It’s too quiet tonight; the air breaks like twigs.
“Now do you see what he’s like?” Gwen is saying to her mother in the cold kitchen of the house. “Now do you believe me?”
March knows that when he gets like this, he always regrets it. Tonight, when she takes him into their bed, he’ll cry. He’ll tell her that he never meant to hurt anyone, and she’ll believe him.
“Gwennie, you don’t understand,” March begins, but then she realizes that she hopes her daughter never will understand, and after that, how can she say more?
Gwen picks up Sister and slams out of the house. She races after Hank, and the closer she gets, the more she smells the bitter scent of hay. Already, the sound of the horses has begun to echo. When Gwen runs inside, Hollis is opening Tarot’s stall, and Tarot is in a panic at his proximity. He kicks the stall behind him, and shakes his head back and forth. Hollis has the gun under his arm as he drags open the wooden door.
“Wait until tomorrow.” Hank is saying. “You’ll feel different then.”
“Oh, really?” Hollis’s tone is amused, even though his mouth is set in a thin line. “And you assume I’m interested in what the fuck you think?”
“It’s late,” Hank says now. It’s not even ten, but Hank is willing to try anything to slow this down. His voice sounds comforting, but he’s well aware that there’s no comfort here. He puts his arm out, to stop Gwen from going closer. She is about to push him away, but then she looks at Hollis, and she knows she’d better stay put.
“Now you’re telling me what time it is?” Hollis says, and his voice is so distant it sounds as if its point of origin was a million miles away. He has spied Gwen, who is shivering as she holds Sister close to her chest. “You need to learn a lesson about what happens when things don’t belong to you. You can beg,” he tells Gwen, “but it won’t do you any good.”
Gwen can feel the cold air in her lungs every time she breathes. She can feel Hank next to her, the way his muscles are coiled, ready to do something, but unsure as to what that action should be.
“Come on,” Hollis says. “Beg.”