Family Love

She snorted. “Right. I can’t imagine how that conversation would have gone.”

“Well, it might have kept us from sitting here in the basement today, talking about you and Daddy getting a divorce in your sixties.”

She glared at me. “I tried to make it up to him. Lord knows I nearly killed myself for a couple of decades getting most of y’all through your teenage years intact. But that was the goal. Nothing more. When you came along I was, I don’t know, a shell. I had nothing left to give.” Her shoulders hitched. “I’m sorry. You’ll understand, maybe, someday. Or maybe not. You’ll be better equipped than I was.”

“Come on,” I said. “Let’s go have iced tea. Lord knows you’ve offered that to me often enough as a way to solve problems.”

She smiled a little. “Oh, it’s not a problem-solver, necessarily. It does gives you a chance to catch a breath and see a problem in a different light.”

“Fine, whatever.” I held out my hand. “Let’s go do that.”

We sat with the glasses in front of us, words dried up for the time being. But for the first time in my entire life, I sensed the silence as a comfort, not a stressor.

She looked up at me, her green eyes still watery. “You’ll talk to him for me? He listens to you. And he’s just being so dang stubborn, you know? He doesn’t want a divorce. He’s still too Catholic for that.” She turned her glass around on the table. “I told him that. Which didn’t help.” She sighed “Me and my damn mouth.”

I hesitated, stalling, so as not to reply to that leading comment. What in the world I might say to my nearly sixty-five-year-old father to convince him not to divorce my mother, after all they’d been through, escaped me completely. I patted her hand. “Yes, Mama. I will.”

“I’m afraid I’ve lost Aiden forever.”

I sipped, not wanting to agree with her and make it worse. She put her work-roughened hand to my cheek. I leaned into it.

A siren screaming past made us both look toward the window. Our little town, once nothing more than a place for the employees at the various horse farms to shop and bank and pray, had been overrun with suburbanites and their Starbucks coffees and BMW SUVs parked in the garages of houses built on the land those horse farms once occupied. That seemed to mean a lot more emergencies requiring sirens.

Mama got up and closed the window. “Thank you for coming over,” she said. “Tell me how you’re feeling.”

As if on cue, a wave of nausea hit me. I got up and ran for the bathroom. Mama followed me and handed me a cool, wet washcloth after I’d finished.

“It’s bad, huh?”

I nodded. She patted my knee and walked out.

When I made it to the kitchen, she had a lemon and some ginger sliced and was boiling a pot of water on the stove. I dropped into my seat and pushed the tea glass aside so I could put my head on my arms.

She rubbed my shoulders. “I’m so happy for you, Angel. That man is such a catch.”

I chuckled. Leave it to my mother to remind me of that fact.

Another, louder siren shrieked down the street, followed by what sounded like the entire Lucasville police department. “Mercy,” she said. “Go lie on the couch a minute. I’ll make this up for you. I swear it will help.” She dropped the lemon and ginger into the boiling water as I passed by. I must have fallen asleep and directly into a dream filled with my brothers, all looking sad, a couple of them crying, which was beyond strange.

Someone was shaking my shoulder. I tried to turn over, lethargy pulling me down deep. “Angelique. Wake up.” I opened my eyes. My mother stood over me, clutching her computer tablet, her expression wild.

“What is it?” I tried to get my bearings. The light seemed weird. It must be a lot later than I thought.

Mama kept staring down at her phone. “Turn on the television,” she said, before dropping into her chair. “Quick.” Panic blossomed in my chest. I grabbed the remote and pointed it at the TV. “Cha

I found it and stared at a video image of my old high school, newly expanded and made super-fancy with all the money that had poured in from the rich commuters. It appeared to be surrounded by police cars and ambulances and three fire trucks. A scroll of words ran across the bottom of the screen. I read them once, then again.

Mama gasped, jumped up and grabbed my arm. “Where’s Cara?” she said. “We have to get to her.”

“I … I … I d-d-d-don’t know.”

“I have to get to her.”

I blinked, attempting to process the sounds coming from the television.

“Lucasville High School is on lockdown,” a voice said. “Our reporters are not being allowed near enough to determine much. What we have surmised, from various reports of cell phone calls from students and faculty, is that there are two gunmen, both teenagers. They entered the high school about three hours ago, ran directly to the gym, and opened fire on a large group there, and are now holding the rest hostage, including several teachers and members of the administration.”

“Oh, my God, oh, Mama. Oh, Jesus.” I shook my head, blinded now by tears. She tightened her grip on my arm.

“Call your brothers. I’m going to Cara’s clinic.” She sounded completely calm, which helped me pull myself together.

I nodded, looking down at my phone. It was lit up with texts from Aiden. “Call me now,” he’d said, six different times in the last twenty minutes.

I touched his name with a trembling finger.

“He’s all right,” Aiden shouted. “He messaged me from inside.” I put a finger to my ear.

“Where in the hell are you? I can barely hear you.”

“Airport. I’ll be there as soon as I can. But he’s all right. Tell Mama and Daddy. Kieran is okay. He sent me a text a few minutes ago. Tell them, okay, Angel?”

I nodded, as if he could see me, ended the call and jumped a mile when it buzzed in my hand. The name “Francis” popped up on the screen.

Shaking all over I put it to my ear. “Kieran? That you? Kieran?”

“Angel,” he said. He sounded winded, as if he’d been ru

“Yes. Yes. Oh, God, are you …”

“Shush a minute. I can’t get hold of Cara. Please, tell her …” The phone went dead.

I leapt to my feet, staring at the TV screen and noting the cops all ru

“We’re getting reports of shots fired,” the reporter said. I watched the cops and EMTs enter the building. Then kids started piling out, ru

My phone buzzed again. Daddy this time. “Where is your mother?” he barked when I answered. “We’re on our way over there now.”

“Cara’s clinic,” I whispered. “Daddy. He called me. I …”

“Who called you? Kieran?”

I nodded, unable to say his name, then dropped the phone and slid down the wall. I watched on the TV when the brewery van screeched up to the perimeter. Daddy got out slowly while Dom headed straight through the line of cops still circling the building, having jumped over the temporary barricades. I watched him punch a couple of uniformed guys who tried to stop him.

“We have a rogue witness,” the talking head said. “A man has broken through the police barrier and is headed into the building.”

My phone buzzed non-stop. Calvin sending me texts mostly. I told him where I was and that I was all right. Then I called Diana and spoke to her before trying Mama again. But she had her prime directive—get to Kieran’s wife, the girl we’d all known growing up, the mother of Kieran’s two sons and toddler daughter.

“Reports are coming in that the shooters have been contained,” the reporter said.

“Any news of casualties inside?”

“Not yet. Wait, there seems to be someone being led out.”