Page 103 of For Fillies and Monsters

“I’m coming, Gus. Get her safe, and I will back you up however you need me to.” She pauses then, taking a shaky breath. “It could have been Craig.”

I don’t know how I know, but I hiss, “It wasn’t.” And then I hang up the line.

Not the body, at least.

Peeling around the corner near the corrals, chunks of gravel pelting the fence, I don’t bother stopping to open the gate. I’m frantic, hands and body shaking. If something happened to her…If I’m too late.

Flames dance around the old barn, licking up the sides and billowing out the windows. Horses race around the structure, their coats charred in spots but otherwise unharmed, their screams of terror filling my chest with even greater panic. She had gotten them out. Which means she was in there.

Could still be in there.

I don’t stop the truck. Instead, I fling the door open and leap from it, the wheels quickly halting without someone to make them go, and bolt toward the inferno.

FORTY-FOUR

STETSON

February 23rd, 2024

I’m driving erratically,my hands shaking, my heart pounding painfully in my throat. Hopefully, I don’t get pulled over—I’m pretty sure I forgot my driver’s license on the table back at my apartment. I was in such a hurry, I grabbed my car keys and a pair of slip-on shoes, skipping the socks, and fled down the stairs two at a time. Now that I think about it, I don’t even know if I closed my apartment door.

The car whines beneath me, the small engine pushed to the max. During this time of night, and this stretch of dead land, I likely won’t pass another person for a hundred miles. And if I crash into an animal and die?

Good fucking riddance.

I’ve already been driving for hours—this drive takes about ten on a good day, and it’s only now I realize I don’t even have the radio on. My eyes feel dry and achy as I scan left and right, squinting into the night sky.

“I shouldn’t have moved so fucking far away. I shouldn’t have waited so long to go back,” I hiss to myself. If something happens to my mother before I can get there, I will never forgive myself. Some part of my mind recognizes that it isn’t myresponsibility—my mother chose to stay. My mother always chose to stay, always chosehimover herself or her own daughter. That isn’t my burden to carry.

Even if it does feel like a thousand-pound weight on my chest right now.

I know it’s not my fault, not really—I’ve begged her to run away. I’d come get her. But she always turned me down. And so, even thoughI know, I can’t help the angry, destructive voice in my head telling me it’s my fault.

If I had just been a better daughter. If I had just been a less nasty person, a less fucked up human, maybe the universe would have shifted the tides. Maybe if I had cleaned up my own life sooner, my mother would have seen what a good life could be like and would have left that demon. Maybe if I had stayed, I could have stopped him from hurting her, over and over.

But I hadn’t.

I fled like a coward, never looking back, regardless of the fact that he was slowly killing my mother. I allowed it to happen because I had been too afraid to face him.

This is my fault. I will have to live with all of this if something happens to her.

Stuff was already happening to her, over and over.

“Fuck!” I scream again. The car is eerily silent, and I have to fight the voice in my head telling me to swerve and hit the ditch. It would be more peaceful that way.

Earlier that morning

“Stetson, honey, it’s your mom.” I nearly drop the phone, my fingers gripping the flimsy plastic and metal, like I’m dangling over a canyon and it’s the only way up.

“Mom?” I whisper, my voice laced with disbelief. It’s been years since I even heard her voice.

“Shhh, honey, just let me get this out.” Her voice is hoarse and hushed so quietly I have to hold my breath to hear her. She clears her throat.

“This is it, Stetson. He’s going to kill me.” There’s no fear or sorrow in my mother’s voice—only finality, acceptance. Maybe even relief. There’s no emotion behind the words, as if she was calling to tell me it is still hot in Texas, not that this would be her last day on earth.

I remain silent, but my emotions begin to boil, raging and burning enough for the both of us.

“What?” I ask, unsure of what else I should say to such a thing.

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