Page 97 of Hiss and Make Up
But he’d asked first. He would have bled every day like that for years if Sierra had asked him to.
She nodded at Lynette.
“My husband was a good-for-nothing drunk,” Lynette said. “I couldn’t change that. But it wasmymistake. There was no way in hell I was gonna let my children pay for that. I’m sure you’ve figured out by now—after your little snooping expedition—that my husband did not, in fact, run off with some other woman or hide in another state while he abandoned his children. It was worse than that.”
Lynette laughed to herself, a hateful smirk playing across her lips. “He came home from that workshop one night, carrying some metal rods. I have no idea why he took them or what he planned to do with them, but I could see him through the kitchen window, waving those things around like light sabers or some nonsense, swearing to the stars that he was a Jedi out to save the Republic.”
Sierra bit her lip to keep from laughing. The image was too much. But there was the matter of that shovel and the cornered animal holding it.
“He tripped on the weed eater he’d left out in the middle of the yard, stumbled a few steps, and cracked his head wide open on the edge of our back porch.”
Nothing to laugh about now. Assuming Sierra believed the story.
Her mind flashed back to the workshop and the missing inventory. “The metal rods. You stole those? And the pelicans?”
“He bled all over them, so I cleaned them and put them back. But with me moving now, I didn’t want to leave any evidence lying around. Clean slate and all. But taking just the rods might have looked suspicious. The pelicans were a foil. I took them to make people think it was someone looking to sell them.”
“If it was an accident, why not call the police?”
Lynette shook her head. “What if the kids woke up before the police or ambulance arrived? I couldn’t let them see what their idiotic father had done. I wrapped him in a tarp and slid him onto a dolly. There wasn’t a house on that lot yet. Just dark, empty land with lots of trees near the bayou. How was I supposed to know they’d clear all that out to build another house on the property?”
Movement from the side of Dale’s truck caught her eye. A man, ready to pounce, crouched by the tire.
Marc.
Her heart soared for half a second, knowing she wasn’t alone. But she needed him to wait.
While Lynette looked off at the bayou, lost in the past, Sierra shook her head at him, urging him to hold up. She needed to knowwhy.
Lynette turned back to Sierra with a slight snarl on her face. “With every step as I rolled him through that field, the more it all made sense.”
Sierra looked at the pit in the ground, then at Denise’s scorched home, and back at the delusional woman telling her story as if she was describing how she makes afternoon tea.
“How doesanyof this make sense?”
“Don’t get snippy with me. You weren’t the one who had to figure out what to do with your dead husband while your two babies slept in blissful ignorance.”
Sierra shook her head. “But they weren’t babies. I’m sure they could have handled the truth. Or at least a modified version.”
Lynette narrowed her eyes and tightened her grip on the shovel. “They weremybabies. I only did what any sensible mother would do. I protected them. I protected them from the last chance that bastard had to hurt them ever again.”
“So you let them think heabandonedthem?” Sierra knew a little something about abandonment. It sucked. The woman was certifiably insane if she considered this the better option.
The conviction in Lynette’s eyes told Sierra the woman believed, heart and soul, that she’d done the right thing. But conviction wouldn’t carry her off free and clear. Not if Sierra had anything to say about it.
“You bet your nosy little behind I did,” Lynette said. “Better to have their father walk out on them for a little soul searching than to have the truth haunt them through school with taunts and laughter and ostracizing.”
Sierra could easily have argued against that theory, but now didn't seem the best time to tell Lynette she'd spent the last decade wasting her time.
She struggled to keep her eyes on Lynette and not let on that Marc was just a few feet away. Knowing that he was right there was both comforting and terrifying. She needed him to stay hidden and not rush in to “save” her. For now, at least.
“Besides,” Lynette continued, “I faked letters. Birthdays and Christmases. For a couple of years anyway.”
"So you did all of this—the snakes, the fire, the gas leak that almost killed me—to get Denise and Marc off their property so you could cover your tracks before you move. And for what? To keep your kids from finding out their dad was a drunk?"
"Yes. We’ve been over this. Yes."
"But you could have killed that whole family. Denise's kids could have been in the house!"
