Fallen

CHAPTER TWENTY

FAITH’S CELL PHONE VIBRATED IN HER POCKET. SHE DIDN’T move. She just stared at her mother. Tears were streaming down Evelyn’s face.

“It’s all right,” Faith told her. “It doesn’t matter.”

“Doesn’t matter?” the man echoed. “Thanks a lot, sis.”

Faith flinched at the word. How blind she’d been. How selfish. It all made so much sense now. The extended leave her mother had taken from work. Her father’s sudden business trips and angry silences. Evelyn’s expanding waistline when she’d never been overweight before or since. The vacation she had taken with Amanda the month before Jeremy was born. Faith had been furious when, after nearly eight months of shared imprisonment, Evelyn had announced that she was going to drive to the beach for a week of fun with Aunt Mandy. Faith had felt betrayed. She had felt abandoned. And now, she felt so stupid.

Remember our time together before Jeremy—

That’s what Evelyn had said in the video. She was giving Faith a clue, not strolling down memory lane. Remember that time. Try to recall what was really going on—not just with you, but with me.

Back then, Faith had been so wrapped up in herself that all she cared about was her own misery, her own shattered life, her own lost opportunities. Looking back now, she saw the obvious signs. Evelyn wouldn’t go outside during the daytime. She wouldn’t answer the door. She woke at the crack of dawn to shop at a grocery store on the other side of town. The phone rang plenty of times, but Evelyn refused to answer it. She isolated herself. She cut herself off from the world. She slept on the couch instead of in her marital bed. Except for Amanda, she talked to no one, saw no one, reached out to no one. And all the while, she had given Faith the one thing every child secretly longs for: every ounce of her attention.

And then everything had changed when Evelyn returned from her vacation with Amanda. She called it “my time away,” like she’d gone down to the springs to take the cure. She was different, happier, as if a burden had been lifted from her shoulders. Faith had seethed with jealousy to find her mother so altered, so seemingly carefree. Before the trip, they had luxuriated in their shared misery, and Faith could not understand how her mother could so easily let it go.

Faith was weeks from delivering Jeremy, but Evelyn’s life went back to normal—or as normal as could be expected with a sulky, spoiled, extremely pregnant teenager in the house. She started going back to their regular grocery store. She had lost a few pounds during her time away, and she set about taking off the rest with strict diet and exercise. She forced Faith to take long walks after lunch and eventually started calling old friends, her tone of voice indicating that she’d survived the worst of it and, now that the end was near, was ready to jump back into the fray. Her pillow was no longer on the couch, but back on the bed she shared with her husband. She let the city know she’d be returning after Jeremy was born. She had her hair cut in a new, short style. In general, she started acting like her old self. Or at least a new version of her old self.

There had been cracks in the happy façade, something Faith only now realized.

For the first few weeks of Jeremy’s life, Evelyn cried every time she held him. Faith could remember finding her mother sobbing in the rocking chair, holding Jeremy so close that she was afraid the baby couldn’t breathe. As with everything, Faith was jealous of the bond between them. She had sought ways to punish her mother, keeping Jeremy away from her. Staying out late with him. Taking him to the mall or the movies or any number of places a baby didn’t belong—just to be spiteful. Just to be mean.

And all the while Evelyn had been aching not just for a child, but for her child. This angry, soulless young man who now pointed a gun at her head.

Faith felt the phone stop ringing. Almost immediately, it started back again. She told her mother, “I’m so sorry I wasn’t there for you.”

Evelyn shook her head. It didn’t matter. But it did.

“I’m so sorry, Mama.”

Evelyn glanced down, then back at Faith. She was sitting on the edge of the chair, her injured leg straight out in front of her. The dead man lay on the floor less than two feet away. The Glock was still stuck in the back of his pants. It might as well be miles away. Evelyn could hardly jump up and grab the gun. Still, she could’ve reached up and taken off the tape covering her mouth. The adhesive was already detaching. The corners of the silver tape were folding back. Why was she pretending to be silenced? Why was she being so passive?

Faith stared at her mother. What did she want her to do? What could she do?

A heavy thunk got their attention. They both looked at the man.

One by one, he pushed the remaining books off the shelves. “What was it like growing up here?”

Faith was silent. She wasn’t going to have this conversation.

“Mommy and Daddy sittin’ around the hearth.” He kicked the Bible on the floor. Pages fluttered as it flew across the room. “Musta been real nice coming home every day to milk and cookies.” He kept the gun at his side as he walked toward Evelyn. Halfway there, he turned back, pacing in a tight line. His street slang slipped again. “Sandra had to work every day. She didn’t have time to come home and make sure I was doing my homework.”

Neither had Evelyn. Bill worked from home. It was her father who’d made sure they had snacks and did their book reports.

“You kept all his shit in your closet. What’s up with that?”

He meant Jeremy. Faith still didn’t answer. Evelyn had made her keep everything because she had known that one day, Faith would cherish it more than anything else save for Emma’s things.

She looked at her mother. “I’m so sorry.”

Evelyn glanced back down at the dead man again, the Glock. Faith didn’t know what her mother wanted her to do. He was at least fifteen feet away.

“I asked you a question.” He’d stopped pacing. He stood in the middle of the floor, directly across from Faith. The Tec-9 was pointed straight at Evelyn’s head. “Answer me.”

She wasn’t going to tell him the truth, so she gave him the last clue that had clicked it all into place. “You changed out the lock of hair.”

His smile turned her blood cold. Faith had realized this morning that the strand of Jeremy’s hair hadn’t darkened with time. The baby blue bow holding the lock of hair together was different from the one that held Jeremy’s. The edges were crisp, not frayed, where Faith had rubbed them like a talisman the last few months of her pregnancy with Emma.

The silverware. The pens. The snow globes. Sara was right. It was something a kid would do for attention. When Faith first met the man in the bathroom, she had been so concerned with remembering his description that she hadn’t processed what she was seeing. He was Jeremy’s age. He was around Faith’s height. He had chewed his lip the way Jeremy did. He had Zeke’s bully bluster. And he had Evelyn’s blue eyes.

The same almond shape. The same deep blue with specks of green.

Faith said, “Your mother obviously loved you. She kept a lock of your hair.”

“Which mother?” he asked, and Faith was startled by the question.

Had Evelyn kept a lock of his hair for all of these years? Faith had an image of her mother at the hospital, holding her baby for what she knew would be the last time. Was it Amanda who had thought to find a pair of scissors? Had she helped Evelyn clip a piece of hair and tie it in a blue bow? Had Evelyn kept it with her for the last twenty years, taking it out every now and then to feel the soft, baby-fine strands between her fingers?

Of course she had.

You didn’t give up a child and not think about him every day, every moment, for the rest of your life. It wasn’t possible.

He asked, “Don’t you even want to know my name?”

Faith’s knees were shaking. She wanted to sit down, but she knew that she couldn’t move. She was standing in the front foyer. The kitchen door was on her left. The front door was behind her. The hall was to her right. At the end of the hall was the bathroom. Beyond that bathroom was Will and his Colt AR-15A2 and his excellent shot, if she could just get this bastard to make a move toward her.

He turned the gun on its side, gangster-style, as he lined up the sights. “Ask me my name.”

“What’s your name?”

“What’s your name, little brother?”

She tasted bile on her tongue. “What’s your name, little brother?”

“Caleb,” he said. “Caleb. Ezekiel. Faith. I guess Mommy likes her Bible names.”

She did, which was why Jeremy’s middle name was Abraham and Faith’s first name was Hannah. Why had Faith chosen Emma’s name because it was pretty instead of honoring her mother’s tradition? Evelyn had suggested Elizabeth or Esther or Abigail, and Faith had been stubborn just because she didn’t know any other way.

“This is where he grew up, too, right?” Caleb waved the gun, indicating the house. “Your precious Jeremy?”

Faith hated the sound of her child’s name in his mouth. She wanted to punch it back down his throat with her fist.

“Watched TV. Read some books. Played some games.” The bottom cabinet of the bookcase was open. He kept one eye on Faith as he pulled out the board games and tossed them on the floor. “Monopoly. Clue. Life.” He laughed. “Sorry!”

“What do you want from us?”

“Damn, you sound just like her.” He turned back to Evelyn. “Ain’t that what you said to me, Mommy? ‘What do you want from me, Caleb?’ Like you can pay me off.” He stared back at Faith. “She offered me money. What do you think about that? Ten thousand bucks to go away.”

Faith didn’t believe him.

“All she cared about was protecting you and your spoiled bitch kid.” The platinum tooth glimmered in the low light. “You got two kids now, right? Mommy can’t keep her little brown baby, but you got no problem keeping yours.”

“It’s different now,” she told him. Evelyn’s condition may have been a secret, but Faith had brought down enough shame on her family to last a lifetime. Her father had lost longtime clients. Her brother had been forced into exile. What would they have made of Evelyn Mitchell raising a child who was obviously not her husband’s? There had been no good choice. Faith could not begin to imagine how her mother had suffered. “You have no idea what it was like back then.”

“Two for two. Mom said the same thing.” He pointed to her pocket. “Are you going to get that?”

Her phone had started vibrating again. “Do you want me to?”

“SOP,” he said. Standard operating procedure. “They wanna know my demands.”

“What are your demands?”

“Answer the phone and we’ll find out.”

She rubbed her hand on her leg to wipe off the sweat, then pulled out the phone. “Hello?”

Will said, “Faith, this guy is—”

“I know who he is.” She stared at Caleb, hoping he could see every ounce of hate she had for him. “He has demands.” She held out the phone to Caleb, praying that he would come get it.

He stood rooted to the floor. “I want milk and cookies.” He paused as if giving it some more thought. “I want my mom to be there every day when I get home from school. I want one day to go by where my ass isn’t dragged to mass at the crack of dawn and my knees aren’t sore from having to pray every night.” His hand swept in an arc toward the bookshelf. “I want my mom to read books to me about happy goats and moons. You did that with ol’ Jaybird, right?”

Faith could barely speak. “Don’t say his name.”

“You took little Jay to the park and to Six Flags and to Disney World and to the beach.”

He must have memorized every picture in Jeremy’s keepsake box. How much time had he spent in her home? How many hours had he spent pawing through Jeremy’s things? “Stop saying my son’s name.”

“Or what?” He laughed. “Tell ’em that’s what I want. I want y’all to take me to Disney World.”

Faith’s arm was shaking from holding out the phone. “What do you want me to tell him?”

He snorted in disgust. “Hell, I don’t need nothin’ right now. I got my family around me. My mom and my big sister. What else do I need?” He went back to the bookcase and leaned against the shelves. “Life is good.”

Faith cleared her throat. She put the phone back to her ear. “He has no demands.”

Will asked, “Are you okay?”

“I—”

“Speakerphone,” Caleb said.

Faith looked down at the phone so she could find the right button. She told Will, “He can hear you.”

He hesitated. “Is your mom comfortable? Can she sit down?”

He was asking for clues. “She’s in Dad’s chair, but I’m worried about her.” Faith took a deep breath. She kept her eyes on her mother’s. “I might need insulin if this drags on.” Caleb had been in Faith’s refrigerator. He would know she was diabetic. “My blood sugar was at eighteen hundred this morning. Mom only has enough for fifteen hundred. I had my last dose at noon. I’m going to need the next one by ten at the latest or my blood sugar will start swinging back and forth.”

“All right,” he agreed, and she prayed that he really understood the message and wasn’t just giving a quick answer.

She said, “Your phone—” Her mind wasn’t quick enough. “Do we call you on your phone if we need something? Your cell phone?”

“Yes,” he paused. “We can have your insulin there in five minutes. Just let us know. Let me know.”

Caleb’s eyes narrowed. She was talking too much, and neither Will nor Faith was good at this.

“Be careful.” Faith didn’t have to pretend to be scared. Her voice shook without any effort on her part. “He’s already killed his partner. He has a—”

“End it,” Caleb said.

Faith tried to find the button.

“End it!” he yelled.

The phone slipped out of her hand. Faith scrambled to get it off the floor. She remembered the revolver on her ankle. The S&W felt cold under her fingers.

“No!” her mother screamed. Her mouth had opened so wide that the tape finally pulled loose. Caleb had the gun jammed into her ribs. His free hand pressed against her broken leg.

“No!” Evelyn screeched. Faith had never heard another human being make that kind of noise. That it was coming from her mother was like a hand reaching straight into her chest and wrenching out her heart.

“Stop!” Faith begged, standing up, holding out her hands. “Please, stop! Please, just—please!”

Caleb released the pressure, but he kept his hand hovering over the broken leg. “Kick the gun over here. Slow, or I might kill the bitch anyway.”

“It’s okay.” She knelt down. A tremor rushed through her entire body like a seizure. “I’m doing what you said. I’m doing exactly what you said.” She lifted her pant leg, then pinched the gun between her thumb and forefinger. “Don’t hurt her anymore. Look.”

“Easy,” he warned.

She slid the gun across the floor at an angle, praying that Caleb would go back to where he’d been standing. He let the gun sail by, staying at Evelyn’s side instead.

He said, “Try something like that again, bitch.”

“I won’t,” Faith told him. “I promise.”

He rested the Tec-9 on the back of the chair, angling the muzzle down toward Evelyn’s head. The tape was dangling from her mouth. He ripped it away.

She gulped in air. The breath wheezed in and out of her broken nose.

He warned her, “Don’t get too used to breathing that clean air.”

“Let her go.” Evelyn’s voice was raw. “You don’t want her. She had no idea. She was just a child.”

“I was a child, too.”

Evelyn coughed out a spray of blood. “Just let her go, Caleb. It’s me you want to punish.”

“Did you even think about me?” He kept the gun to her head as he knelt down beside her. “All them times with her bastard little baby, did you even think about me?”

“I never stopped thinking about you. Not a day went by without—”

“Bullshit.” He stood back up.

“Sandra and Paul loved you like their own flesh and blood. They worshipped you.”

He looked away from her. “They lied to me.”

“All they ever wanted was for you to be happy.”

“Do I look happy now?” He indicated the dead man on the floor. “All my friends are gone now. Ricky, Hiro, Dave. All of them. I’m the last one standing.” He seemed to be forgetting his part in the carnage. “My fake father is dead. My fake mother is dead.”

Evelyn said, “I know you cried at her funeral. I know you loved Paul and—”

He smacked the back of her head with his open palm. Faith moved without thinking. He waved the gun in her direction and she froze.

She looked back at her mother. Evelyn’s head had dropped down. Blood dripped from her mouth. “I never forgot about you, Caleb. You know that somewhere in your heart.”

He slapped her harder this time.

“Stop,” Faith begged. She didn’t know if she was talking to her mother or to Caleb. “Please just stop.”

Evelyn whispered, “I always loved you, Caleb.”

He raised the rifle and slammed the butt against the side of her head. The impact knocked over the chair. Evelyn fell hard to the floor. She screamed in pain as her leg twisted around. The broom handle splint broke in two. Bone stuck out of her thigh.

“Mama!” Faith started for her.

There was a pinging sound. Wood kicked up from the floor.

Faith froze. She couldn’t tell if she’d been shot. All she could see was her mother on the floor, Caleb standing above her with his fist clenched. He kicked Evelyn. Hard.

“Please stop,” Faith pleaded. “I promise—”

“Shut up.” He looked up at the ceiling. At first, Faith didn’t recognize the sound. It was a helicopter. The blades chopped through the air, shaking her eardrums.

Caleb had the Tec-9 pointed at Faith now. He had to raise his voice to be heard. “That was a warning shot,” he told her. “Next one goes right between your eyes.”

She looked down at the floor. There was a hole in the wood. She took a step back, swallowed the cry that wanted to come out of her throat. The chopping sound receded as the helicopter pulled up. Faith could barely speak. “Please don’t hurt her. You can do anything to me, but please …”

“Oh, I’m gonna hurt you soon enough, sister girl. I’m gonna hurt you real bad.” He held up his arms as if he was on stage. “That’s what this is all about, yo. I’m gonna show your precious baby boy what it’s like to grow up without his mama.” He kept the gun on Faith. “You were good yesterday running after him in the street. A little closer and I’d’a had him dead on the ground.”

Vomit came into her mouth.

He pushed Evelyn with his sneaker. “Ask her why she gave me up.”

Faith didn’t trust her mouth to open.

“Ask her why she gave me up,” Caleb repeated. He raised his foot, ready to kick her mother’s shattered leg.

“Okay!” Faith yelled. “Why did you give him up?”

Caleb said, “Why did you give him up, Mom?”

“Why did you give him up, Mom?”

Evelyn didn’t move. Her eyes were closed. Just as the panic started to well up inside Faith, her mother’s mouth opened. “I didn’t have a choice.”

“Yo, ain’t that what you’ve been saying to me for the last year, Mom? Everybody’s got choices?”

“It was a different time.” Her good eye opened. The lashes stuck together. She stared at Faith. “I’m so sorry, baby.”

Faith shook her head. “You have nothing to apologize for.”

“Ain’t this nice. A little mother-daughter reunion here.” He shoved the chair so hard against the wall that the back leg broke. “She was ashamed of me, that’s why.” He paced over to the bookcase and back. “She couldn’t explain some little brown baby squirting outta her. Not like you, right? Different times.” He started pacing again. “And you think your daddy was so good growing up. Tell her what he said, Mom. Tell her what he made you do.”

Evelyn lay on her side, eyes closed, arms out in front of her. The shallow in-and-out of her chest was the only thing that indicated she was still alive.

“Your good ol’ daddy told her it was me or him. What do you think about that? Mr. Galveston Insurance Agent of the Year for six years running and he told your mama that she couldn’t keep her baby boy, because if she did, she’d never see her other kids again.”

Faith struggled not to show that he’d finally managed to hit the mark. She had adored her father, worshipped him like only a spoiled daddy’s girl can, but as an adult, she could easily see Bill Mitchell giving her mother this ultimatum.

Caleb had moved back to his original spot near the bookcase. The gun was down at his side, but she knew he could swing it up at any moment. His back was to the sliding glass doors. Evelyn was to his left. Faith was at a diagonal, about twelve feet away from him and waiting for all hell to break loose.

She prayed Will had understood her message. The room was a clock. Faith was at eighteen hundred, or six o’clock. Evelyn was at fifteen hundred, three o’clock. Caleb was swinging back and forth between ten and twelve.

Faith had offered at least twenty times over the last month to take Will’s cell phone off military time. He kept refusing because he was stubborn and full of an odd mixture of shame and pride where his disability was concerned. He was also watching her through the bathroom window right now. He had told her to give him a sign. She ran her fingers through her hair, pulling her thumb and index finger into an okay sign.

Faith looked down at her mother lying on the floor. Evelyn was staring at her with her one good eye. Had she seen Faith give Will the signal? Was she capable of understanding what was going to happen? Her breaths were labored. Her lips were blistered. She had obviously been choked. Dark bruises circled her neck. There was a cut on the side of her head. Blood seeped from an angry gash in her cheek. Faith felt a rush of love wash through her, straight to where her mother lay. It was like a light shining out from her body. How many times had Faith gone to this woman for help? How many times had she cried on her shoulder?

So many times that Faith had lost count.

Evelyn raised her hand. Her fingers trembled. She covered her face. Faith turned around. A blinding bright light came through the front windows. It pierced the flimsy blinds, shining a spotlight inside the house.

Faith ducked down. Maybe muscle memory recalled some training exercise from years past. Maybe it was human nature to make yourself as small as possible when you sensed something bad was about to happen.

Nothing happened in the immediate. Seconds went by. Faith found herself counting, “… two … three … four …”

She looked up at Caleb.

Glass shattered. He jerked as if someone had punched him in the shoulder. His expression was a mixture of shock and pain. Faith pushed herself off the floor. She lunged toward Caleb. He pointed the gun at her face. She looked straight into the threaded muzzle, the dark eye of the snubbed barrel, staring back. Rage took hold, burning inside of her, urging her forward. She wanted to kill this man. She wanted to rip open his throat with her teeth. She wanted to cut his heart out of his chest. She wanted to watch the pain in his eyes as she did everything to him that he had done to her mother, her family, their lives.

But she would never get the chance.

The side of Caleb’s head exploded. His arms jerked up. Bullets fired from the Tec-9 brought down a rain of white chalk from the ceiling. Muscle memory. Two pops, close together, one after the other.

Slowly, he collapsed to the ground. The only thing Faith could hear was the sound of his body slamming into the floor. First his hip, then his shoulder, then his head popping against the hard wood. His eyes stayed open. Dark blue. So familiar. So lifeless.

So long.

Faith looked at her mother. Evelyn had managed to prop herself up against the wall. She still held the Glock in her right hand. The muzzle started to tilt down. The weight was too much. She dropped her arm. The gun clattered to the floor.

“Mama …” Faith could barely stand. She half walked, half crawled to her mother. She didn’t know where to touch her, which part of her body wasn’t bruised or broken.

“Come here,” Evelyn whispered. She pulled Faith into her arms. She stroked her back. Faith couldn’t help it. She started to weep like a child. “It’s all right, baby.” Evelyn pressed her lips to the top of Faith’s head. “Everything’s going to be all right.”