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"Throw Reverend O'Shea's bathrobe over the chair," the little voice suggested. "He won't find us, maybe."
I felt my whole body clench. I picked up the blue velour bathrobe that Jess had left lying across the foot of the bed and draped it over the chair.
"I'll be back in a minute," I said and went down the hall to the living room, A
Emory was standing just inside the front door. He was wearing jeans and a short jacket. He'd pulled his gloves off and stuck them in a pocket. His blond hair was brushed smooth, and he looked as if he'd just shaved. It was like ... I hesitated to say this, even to myself.
It was like he was here to pick up his date.
His guileless blue eyes met mine with no hesitation. Luke, A
"Hey, Miss Bard." He looked a little puzzled. "I sent Eve back to tell you I'd decided the girls should spend the night at home, after all. I've imposed on the O'Sheas too much."
I walked over to the television. I had to turn off the screen before the children would look at me. Krista and Luke were surprised and angry, though they were too well raised to say anything. But A
"You three go back and play in Krista's room," I said. Luke opened his mouth to protest, took a second look at me, and jumped up to run back to his sister's room. Krista gave me a mutinous glare, but when A
Emory had moved closer to the hall leading down to the bedrooms. He was leaning on the mantel, in fact. He'd pulled off his jacket. He was still smiling gently at the children as they passed him. I moved closer.
"The girls are going to stay here tonight," I said.
His smile began to twitch around the edges. "I can take my children when I want, Miss Bard," he told me. "I'd thought I needed time alone with my sister to plan the funeral service, but she had to go home to Little Rock tonight, so I want my girls to come home."
"The girls are going to stay here tonight."
"Eve!" he bellowed suddenly. "Come out here right now!"
I heard the children in Krista's room fall silent.
"Stay where you are!" I called, hoping each and every one of them understood I meant it.
"How can you tell me I can't have my kids?" Emory looked almost tearful, not angry, but there was something in the way he was standing that kept me on the edge of wary.
Truth or dare. "I can tell you that so easy, Emory," I said. "I know about you."
Something scary flared in his expression for just a second. "What the heck are you talking about?" he said, permitting himself to show a reasonable anger and disgust. "I came to get my little girls! You can't keep my little girls if I want them!"
"Depends on what you want them for, you son of a bitch."
It was the bad language that cracked Emory's facade.
He came at me then. He grabbed one of the plastic icicles suspended from the garland on the O'Sheas' mantel, and if I hadn't caught his wrist, it would have been embedded in my neck. I overbalanced while I was keeping the tip away from my throat, and over we went. As Emory and I hit the floor with a thud, I could hear the children begin to wail, but it seemed far away and unimportant just now. I'd fallen sideways, and my right hand was trapped.
Emory was small and looked frail, but he was stronger than I'd expected. I was gripping his forearm with my left hand, keeping the hard plastic away from my neck, knowing that if he succeeded in driving it in I would surely die. His other hand fastened around my neck, and I heard my own choking noises.
I wrenched my shoulder in a desperate effort to pull my right hand out from under my body. Finally it was free, and I found my pocket. I pulled out the nail scissors and sunk them into Emory's side.
He howled and yanked sideways, and somehow I lost the scissors. But now I had two free hands. With both of them I forced his right hand back, heaved myself against him, and over we rolled with me on top but with his left hand still digging into my throat. I pushed his right arm back and down, though his braced left arm kept me too far away to force it to the ground and break it. I struggled to straddle him and finally managed it. By now I was seeing a wash of gray strewn with spots instead of living room furniture. I pushed up on my knees and then let my weight fall down on him as hard as I could. The air whooshed out of Emory's lungs then, and he was trying to gasp for oxygen, but I thought maybe I would give out first. I raised up and collapsed on him again, but like a snake he took advantage of my movement to start to roll on his side, and since I was pushing his right arm in that direction, I went, too, and now we were on the floor under the Christmas tree, the tiny colored lights blinking, blinking.
I could see the lights blinking through the gray fog, and they maddened me.
Abruptly, I let go of Emory's arm and snatched a loop of lights from the tree branches. I swung the loop around Emory's neck, but I wasn't able to switch hands to give myself a good cross pull. He drove the tip of the plastic icicle into my throat.
The plastic tip was duller than a knife, and I am muscular, so it still hadn't penetrated by the time the string of blinking lights around Emory's neck began to take effect.
He took his left hand from my throat to claw at the lights, his major error since I'd been right on the verge of checking out of consciousness. I was able to roll my head to the side to minimize the pressure of the icicle. I was doing much better until Emory, scrabbling around with that left hand, seized the stable of the manger scene and brought it down on my head.
I was out only a minute, but in that minute the room had emptied and the house had grown silent. I rolled to my knees and pushed up on the couch. I took an experimental step. Well, I could walk. I didn't know how much more I was capable of doing, but I seized the nearest thing I could strike with, one of the long plastic candy canes that Lou had set on each side of the hearth, and I started down the hall, pressing myself against the wall. I passed the washroom on my left and a closet on my right. The next door on my left was Krista's room. The door was open.
I cautiously looked around the door frame. The three children were sitting on Krista's bed, A
I wondered if they would trust me, the mean stranger they didn't know, or Emory, the sweet man they'd seen around for years.
"Did he find Eve?" I asked, in a voice just above a whisper.
"No, he didn't," Emory said and stepped out from behind the door. He'd gone by the kitchen; I saw by the knife in his hand.
A
"A
I stepped all the way into the room, raised the plastic candy cane, and brought it down on Emory's arm with all the fury I had in me.
"I'm not sweet," I said.
He howled and dropped the knife. I put one foot on it and scooted it behind me with the toe of my shoe, just as Emory charged. The plastic candy cane must not have been very intimidating.