Page 2 of Our Daughter's Bones
When she opened the door to the kitchen, she froze.
Melody was perched on a chair. A thick mane of curly black hair crowned her head. Her gray eyes were round like saucers. Her lips were puffy and slightly parted. Her long, fragile fingers clutched her blue dress tight enough for her knuckles to whiten. She stared at the floor—Mackenzie followed her gaze.
A body lay there, covered in blood.
Mackenzie blinked. She blinked again. Again and again and again. But the scene before her didn’t crack.
A whimper came, like a strangled cry. She realized it came from her. She felt it in her bones first—the sparks and shivers. They traveled through her body, trying to yank it out of its frozen state.
“M-m-Mom?” Mackenzie whispered. Her eyes turned glossy against the soupy air.
Melody looked at her. No one said anything. Her heart pounded against her ribs painfully. She heard its thumping in her ears. Her toes started wiggling wildly. Her fingers began to quiver uncontrollably.
“Mackenzie! Mackenzie!” Melody’s voice was distant, like it came from the end of a tunnel. “Look at me!” she demanded.
Mackenzie looked.
Melody’s lips moved. But Mackenzie couldn’t understand anything. A fuse had blown in her brain and shut it down.
Melody wrapped her hands around Mackenzie’s shoulders and pushed her down on a chair. Finally, Mackenzielookedat Melody. Her hair was disheveled. Her lip was cut and bloody. Her left cheek was flaming red and double the size of her right cheek. An old bruise from last week on her chin had turned purple.
Mindlessly, Mackenzie raised her hand and touched her mother’s cheek.
Melody winced. “I’m so sorry!” she cried. “I’m terribly sorry. I don’t know what happened! Sweetheart, I can’t believe I did this!”
Her teary eyes darted to the dead body. Mackenzie followed her gaze once more.
Her father lay on his stomach, facing away from them. Splatters of blood covered the floor. Blood pooled next to his head. The color was darker than she had expected. Next to his feet was a large frying pan with smudges of blood on it.
“He came in. He was mad,” Melody sobbed. “He was shouting at me, rambling about God knows what. Drinking as usual. He smashed a bottle over the table. Look! Look!” Melody cupped her chin and forced her to look at the table.
Pieces of glasses were scattered all over it. A foul-smelling brown liquid had run across the once-sleek surface.
“He hit me, and I snapped. I didn’t mean to, darling. I promise. Iswear!” She pleaded with frantic eyes and gripped Mackenzie’s shoulders. “I didn’t stop. I had the frying pan in my hand, and I just kept hitting him. I… I didn’t realize how much I was hurting him. I-I’m sorry.”
Mackenzie shrugged off her mother’s hold and stood up. Feeling Melody’s eyes on her, she stepped over the body. Her legs wobbled like jelly. When her toe accidentally grazed over the blood, she lost her balance. She dropped to the floor next to her father.
His face was bashed in. His nose was crooked. His teeth were chipped and broken. The side of his head was curved inward. His left eyelid was swollen to the size of a golf ball. Blood matted his skin—hiding the birthmark on his cheek that Mackenzie remembered kissing as a child.
Tears rolled down her face. She lurched forward to touch him, to comfort him, but Melody held her. Mackenzie felt like bursting. Her twelve-year-old heart couldn’t handle the grief or the confusion. Her sobs scratched at her throat. The pain choked her veins. She cried into her mother’s arms for what felt like a lifetime.
“Mackenzie. Please listen to me.” Melody’s voice was firm. “You must help me.”
“We have to call the police.”
“No!” Her voice boomed. “We can’t call the police. They’ll arrest me!”
“They’ll understand! They have to!”
“Theywon’t!” Melody glared at her. “There will be an investigation. It will take forever.”
“I’ll tell them he used to hit you,” she argued. “They’ll know that it was in self-defense.”
Melody gritted her teeth. “Theywon’t.They’ll ask me why I never complained that he was violent with me. They won’t believe achild! Either they’ll blame me for not seeking help before, or they’ll say I’m making up lies to justify what I did. You don’t know how cruel this world can be to women.”
Mackenzie’s breath turned shallow as her mother’s words washed over her. Her eyes ached with exertion. Snot dripped down her nose onto her lips.
“Sweetheart, if we call the police then I’ll spend some time in prison,” Melody said. “They’ll either charge me with murder or involuntary manslaughter. You’re twelve! There is nobody else to take care of you! They will throw you in foster care, saying your grandmother is too old. Do you know what happens to young girls in the foster care system?”
