crash into someone’s front lawn.
In his treacherous mind’s eye, Marty imagined the car hitting the curb
at high speed, flipping, rolling, slamming into one of the trees or the
side of a house, bursting into flames, his daughters trapped in a coffin
of blazing steel. In the darkest corner of his mind, he could even hear
them screaming as the fire seared the flesh from their bones.
Then, as he pursued it, the Buick swung back across the center line,
into its own lane. It was still moving fast, too fast, and he had no
hope of catching it.
But he ran as if it was his own life for which he was running, his
throat beginning to burn again as he breathed through his open mouth,
chest aching, needles of pain lancing the length of his legs.
His right hand was clamped so fiercely around the butt of the Beretta
that the muscles in his arm throbbed from wrist to shoulder. And with
each desperate stride, the names of his daughters echoed through his
mind in an unvoiced scream of loss and grief.
When their father shouted at them to shut up, Charlotte was as hurt as
if he’d slapped her face, for in her nine years, nothing she had said
and no stunt she’d pulled had ever before made him so angry. Yet she
didn’t understand what had infuriated him because all she’d done was ask
some questions. His scolding of her was so unfair, and the fact that he
had never been unfair in her recollection only added sting to his
reprimand. He seemed angry with her for no other reason than that she
was herself, as if something about her very nature suddenly repelled and
disgusted him, which was an unbearable thought because she couldn’t
change who she was, what she was, and maybe her own father was never
again going to like her. He would never be able to take back the look
of rage and hatred on his face, and she would never be able to forget it
as long as she lived. Everything had changed between them forever. All
of this she thought and under stood in a second, even before he had
finished shouting at them, and she burst into tears.
Dimly aware that the car finally started, pulled away from the curb, and
reached the end of the block, Charlotte rose partway out of
her misery only when Em turned from the window, grabbed her arm, and
shook her. Em whispered fiercely, “Daddy.”
At first, Charlotte thought Em was unjustly peeved with her for making
Daddy angry and was warning her to be quiet. But before she could
launch into sisterly combat, she realized there had been joyful
excitement in Em’s voice.
Something important was happening.
Blinking back tears, she saw that Em was already pressed to the window
again. As the car pulled through the intersection and turned right,
Charlotte followed the direction of her sister’s gaze.
As soon as she spotted Daddy running alongside the car, she knew he was
her real father. The daddy behind the wheel–the daddy with the hateful
look on his face, who screamed at children for no reason–was a fake.
Somebody else. Or some thing else, maybe like in the movies, grown out
of a seed pod from another galaxy, one day just a lot of ugly goop and
the next day all formed into Daddy’s look-alike. She suffered no
confusion at the sight of two identical fathers, had no trouble knowing
which was the real one, as an adult might have, because she was a kid
and kids knew these things.
Keeping pace with the car as it turned into the next street, pointing
the gun at the window of the driver’s door, Daddy yelled, “Hey, hey,
hey!”
As the fake daddy realized who was shouting at him, Charlotte reached
out as far as her safety belt would allow, grabbed a handful of Em’s
coat, and yanked her sister away from the window. “Get down, cover your
face, quick!”
They leaned toward each other, cuddled together, shielded each other’s
heads with their arms.
BAM!
The gunfire was the loudest sound Charlotte had ever heard. Her ears