Nearly Twenty Years Earlier. August 22.
“Clear the table, Theresa Jane.”
Theresa Jane sighed resignedly. Since her sister, Ellie, had left home two months earlier, it was always her turn to clear the dishes. Her mother sent her a pointed look when she didn’t move fast enough and she hurriedly got to her feet and started scraping plates.
“What time did your father say he’d be home?” Her mom directed the question to Walt, one of Theresa Jane’s two older brothers.
Walt was seventeen and had his own truck.
Theresa Jane didn’t like Walt very much. Her other brother, Eddie, was a year older than Walt. He’d gone into town with her daddy that afternoon to pick up some supplies.
She didn’t like Eddie much either.
“Don’t rightly know.” Walt wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and pushed his plate away.
Her mother’s lips tightened and Theresa Jane ducked her gaze. An angry Francis Hines tended to lash out at the first thing that caught her attention. Theresa Jane had learned not to be that thing.
She moved around the table scraping plates and collecting cutlery, trying to be as invisible as possible. She worked her way around her mother, Walt, her mother’s cousin, Jacob, and his girlfriend, Lisa.
Her daddy had a girlfriend, too, but she wasn’t supposed to know.
Theresa Jane tapped her five-month-old baby brother’s snub nose as he smushed mashed potatoes on the tray of his highchair. Bobby gurgled at her and she grinned back. He was the happiest baby in the world though no one ever paid him no mind.
Her arms trembled from the weight of the dishes, but she knew she’d get the belt if she dropped them.
A sharp screech of chair legs against hardwood floors shattered the silence as Kenny Travers climbed to his feet. Kenny had moved into the compound six months ago after getting into a fight with his boss. Her daddy liked Kenny because he was good with the horses. Her momma thought he was up to something. He took the heavy stack of plates from her grasp and put them on the table, adding his own to the pile before scooping them up. She sent him a shy smile and he winked. Kenny might be a “no-good cowboy” according to her momma, but he was the only person in Kodiak who was ever nice to her.
Walt had been nice to her last week—for about five-seconds. He’d offered to help collect eggs from the chicken coop. Should have known it was a trick. Soon as they’d gotten to the barn he’d trapped her in the horse stall and grabbed one of her hands, placing it against the front of his pants. Her stomach lurched from the memory and she glared at him as he sat at the table belching.
He was disgusting.
Boys were disgusting.
She was so glad she was a girl.
Thankfully, a rooster had flown up onto the side of the stall that day in the barn, startling Walt. That rooster had given her the chance to pull her hand away and escape. She’d run smack bang into Kenny outside and he’d caught her by the arm. Her expression must have told him something bad had happened even though she hadn’t made a sound. Theresa Jane did most of her screaming on the inside.
Then Walt had walked outside adjusting his zipper and Kenny’s eyes had gotten all glittery and mean. His voice had turned real quiet when he’d told her to go back to the cabin and that he’d fetch the eggs along shortly. Then he’d dragged Walt back into the barn by the scruff of his neck, and barred the door.
At dinner later that same night, Walt had shown up with a busted lip. He’d avoided looking at her and told everyone he’d walked into a door. He hadn’t bothered her since then, but she still didn’t trust him.
Kenny Travers was her Guardian Angel.
She collected the drinking glasses, avoiding Walt’s foot when he tried to trip her. She followed Kenny into the kitchen where he dumped the stack of dishes on the draining board.
“Thanks.” She craned her neck to look at him where he towered over her. She barely reached his waist.
“You’re welcome, missy.” He started running hot water into the bowl.
“I’ll do it.” She dragged over a chair so she could look out the window as she did her chores.
One side of his mouth curled up and his blue-green eyes twinkled as he studied her. “I don’t mind helping, sweetheart.”
They were nearly eye level when she clambered up onto the chair. Her heart fairly burst from looking at him. Maybe when she was thirteen she could marry him, instead of one of Daddy’s other friends.
She glanced over her shoulder into the dining room where her family was starting on one of their nightly rants about the cost of fuel and government taxes and the president and colored people. She’d never seen a black man, but from what her family said, black people would kill her as soon as look at her. It didn’t make sense, but she was smart enough to be scared.
Most things didn’t make sense even though she was ten now—like the fact they’d tattooed the number fourteen onto her left arm. She liked math, but she didn’t like the number fourteen any more than she liked any other number. The skin was red and raised and itched like poison oak. She rubbed at the scab. Kenny’s mouth tightened until his lips disappeared.
“Sorry.” She cast her eyes downward.
“You’ve got nothing to be sorry for, Theresa Jane.” His voice was low and funny sounding. Rough. Deep. Like her dog Sampson’s warning growl.
She sighed as she squirted washing up liquid into the bowl along with the hot water, knowing she was gonna get told off for making too many bubbles, but doing it anyway. “Momma says if I paid more attention to my lessons I wouldn’t be so darn stupid.”
He swallowed so loud she thought he’d gotten something stuck in his gullet. “You all right?”
He nodded and cleared his throat. “You sure you don’t want a hand with these dishes, missy?”
She let out a gusty sigh. “They’ll just get mad with me and call me lazy if I don’t do it all. An’ I don’t like being called names.”
Kenny’s brow quirked and he leaned in close to murmur, “How can someone sitting on their butt doing nothin’ call you lazy when you’re the one doing all the work?”
Theresa Jane giggled because Kenny always said the things she was thinking. “Don’t make no sense to me, either, but that’s what they do.”
Kenny shook his head and said in a low voice, “You’re a good kid, Theresa Jane. Don’t ever change.” Then he hesitated, moved closer and whispered in her ear. “If there’s ever trouble, will you promise me something?”
Her eyes locked on his as she nodded.
“Hide in your closet or under your bed. Don’t come out for anything or anyone.”
Theresa Jane stuck out her bottom lip and raised her own brows. “What kinda trouble?”
Kenny glanced into the dining room and his gaze darkened. “Any kind. And lock your door at night. Promise?”
“Okay. I promise.” She nodded curiously, then his lips compressed and his expression closed down and he took a step back. He turned and walked out the back door.
Footsteps approached from behind her as she tested the temperature of the water with her fingertips.
“You used too much soap again, stupid girl.”
Theresa Jane kept her eyes averted. “Sorry, Momma.”
“What was he saying to you?”
“Nothin’, Momma.”
Francis Hines walked up to stand next to her at the sink. “He say where he was going?”
Theresa Jane tucked in her chin. “Nope. He just left.”
Francis twitched the net curtain and they both watched Kenny climb into his truck and drive down the winding dirt road, kicking up dust behind it before turning left on the main highway into town.
“Maybe he’s going to find Daddy?” Theresa Jane suggested, hoping that would make her momma happy.
“Ha. Your daddy isn’t lost, Theresa Jane. He’s either drunk or…” Her mother trailed off when they heard the honk of a horn and saw her father’s truck pull into the long driveway and start rumbling along the road.
Theresa Jane risked a glance at her mother’s face. “He’s home,” she said brightly.
“So he is. So he is.” Francis’s lips pinched. Then she turned and got Daddy’s and Eddie’s dinners out of the oven.
Theresa Jane braced herself as her father came in. He frowned when he saw her standing on a chair over a sink full of white foam, but didn’t yell at her. Eddie came in behind him and pushed past her to help himself to a glass of water from the tap.
“Hey!” She almost lost her balance and had to grab onto his arm to steady herself. He pried her fingers off him as if she had cooties. She grabbed onto the sink instead. “Watch it!”
God, he was annoying.
He leaned down until she went cross-eyed meeting his gaze. “Shut up, brat. Else I’ll teach you some manners.”
The pungent scent of beer hit her in the face and her stomach churned. A shiver of repulsion moved through her. He laughed, then walked away with a cocky swagger that made him look like he’d pooped his pants.
She stuck out her tongue at his retreating back.
Ever since her older sister, Ellie, had married Harlan Trimble in June her brothers had started treating her different. Meaner.
She didn’t like it.
She scrubbed the scourer over the first plate and placed it on the drainer. Bubbles drizzled over the stainless steel and into the sink.
“Get a move on, Theresa Jane. Sun will have gone down by the time you’re done lollygagging,” her mother berated her. “And make sure you rinse off those suds.”
Theresa Jane scrubbed faster and wished she could have driven away into the sunset with no-good cowboy Kenny Travers.
* * *
Six hours later, a hand clamped over Theresa Jane’s mouth as she lay asleep in bed and a voice hissed in her ear. “Get up. The Feds are coming!”
The words shot terror into her heart as she lurched into consciousness. Her mother let go and ripped back the bedclothes. Despite it being summer, an icy draft pierced her thin nightclothes and made goosebumps dance over her skin.
“Get dressed,” her mother commanded.
Theresa Jane dragged on yesterday’s clothes that lay in a heap beside the bed.
“Why are they here? What are they going to do with us?” She’d grown up hearing about the evilness of the federal government, how the government wanted to control what they thought and did. Destroy their way of life. The Feds wanted to steal her daddy’s hard-earned money, tax their land and take away their guns. Guns were the only way they could protect themselves from the bad people.
Theresa Jane wasn’t exactly sure who the bad people were but they were everywhere according to her folks. And now the Feds were coming for them.
“We’re not going to let them do a damned thing,” her mother snapped.
Theresa Jane’s heart pounded. Tears gathered in her eyes. “I’m scared, Momma.”
Her mother’s expression softened for the briefest of instants. “I won’t let them hurt you. I’ll shoot you myself before I let them take any of my babies.”
Theresa Jane flinched.
“Keep down.” Her mother pressed a heavy pistol into her grip. Then she ran, hunched over, into the hall. Theresa Jane followed, using both hands to carry the weapon. She knew how to handle a gun. She’d been having weekly shooting lessons since she was five years old, and regularly beat her brothers at target practice. But the idea of pointing this at a real person and pulling the trigger made her want to weep.
She ran awkwardly after her mother. A gunshot made her scream so loud her ears hurt.
“Shut the fuck up with that screeching,” Eddie snarled at her. He was hunkered behind the refrigerator, a dark shadow despite the bright moonlight that shone through the open drapes. Walt was in the living room staring out of the north-facing window.
“They’re not taking us alive,” her mother stated, sending a sliver of dread coiling through Theresa Jane’s gut.
Cries filled the darkness. Through the window Theresa Jane saw an orange glow lighting up the sky. The acrid smell of smoke drifted on the warm night air, coating the back of her throat.
“They’re trying to burn us out.” Her daddy walked into the kitchen from the back of the house.
Oh, God.
Her daddy exchanged a long look with his wife. “They’ve taken the compound and surrounded the cabin. Stan told me on the radio Kenny’s dead. Saw him shot out near the barn.”
A sharp pain stabbed Theresa Jane’s chest. Kenny couldn’t be dead. Not her Kenny.
“I hate them.” Fury burned inside her chest even as her heart withered. “I hate them all.”
Her father studied her and for the first time in her life she saw a small measure of respect reflected back in his eyes. “Go cover the window in your bedroom. Shoot anyone you don’t recognize.”
Theresa Jane nodded, scurrying back to her room. A baby’s wail made her pause outside the door. Everyone had forgotten about baby Bobby who was sleeping in his crib beside her parents’ bed.
She heard more gunshots from the direction of the kitchen but didn’t know who fired. Bobby’s cries were getting louder so she rushed and picked him up out of the crib and ran back into her room. The baby was warm against her body, but his diaper was saturated. Her dog Sampson followed her, whining unhappily.
She stripped the sodden sleep suit and diaper from Bobby’s body and tossed them on the floor. Then she laid the baby on the bed and wrapped him in a towel that hung on the back of her door.
The gunshots were getting more frequent now and glass shattered. Kenny’s words from earlier that evening came back to her in a rush.
“If there’s ever trouble, promise me something? Hide in your closet or under your bed. Don’t come out for anything or anyone.”
How’d he known?
She had no idea, but somehow, she was sure he had.
She stared at the gun she’d laid on the bed, and then back at the baby smiling up at her, torn as to what to do.
Kenny was dead and she needed to avenge him, but she didn’t want to get shot or die. Bobby gurgled and her heart twisted. She didn’t want Bobby to die either.
She didn’t allow herself to worry about the rest of her family. They never listened to her anyhow.
She ran to the bedroom door and closed it, turning the key quietly in case one of them heard and came running. Then she wedged a wooden chair under the handle. Next, she picked up the baby and cradled him against her chest. She grabbed the handgun, climbed inside her closet, shoving aside old shoes and toys, urging Sampson to join them. She pulled the door closed, lying on the cramped floor beside the infant. She put the gun behind her so Bobby wouldn’t be able to reach it.
Gunshots sounded louder now and she shivered as the baby cried out in alarm. Vibrations of bullets slamming into her home reverberated through the wood and along her bones. She curled over the baby and hugged the dog, protecting them both as best she could.
The shooting seemed to go on for hours. Eventually, she heard her mother’s voice, faint between the two closed wooden doors.
“Theresa Jane?” Her bedroom door rattled. “Theresa Jane, you in there? Open the door. Theresa Jane! Open the damned door!”
Theresa Jane’s hand started to inch toward the closet door and then stopped. Her mother sounded angry enough to carry out her earlier threat. Theresa Jane was smart enough to be more terrified of Francis than of the bullets flying around.
“Theresa Jane, I’m warning you—” Her mother’s threat was cut off by a scream of pain and a sob.
Theresa Jane sat up.
Oh, God. Had her mother been shot?
“Help. Help.” Her mother’s voice grew fainter.
Theresa Jane’s heart twisted. Her mother was hurt. She started to go to her, then froze when her mother started yelling. “You always were a contrary little bitch. I should have drowned you at birth.”
Hot tears filled Theresa Jane’s eyes. The tightness in her throat made it impossible to breathe. Bobby started fussing and she gathered him closer as Sampson stuck his nose between them and whimpered. “It’s okay, Bobby. I’m gonna take good care of you. I love you, baby.” She kissed Sampson’s wet nose. “I’m gonna protect you both, forever and ever.”
