Mendelson roared with fury. She felt an iron grip around her ankle, and she kicked hard with her other foot. A fleshy crack. A deep scream. His grip left her, and she scrambled up, kicking the gun away before she spun to see Mendelson with a hand to his face, blood streaming between his fingers. She hauled back her foot and kicked him again. And again. His hand fell away. His nose was a pulpy mess of blood and flesh. His eyes drifted to half-lidded slits, but they still watched her, glittering with hate.
Lily held his gaze, bracing her body, drawing in a deep breath. “You won’t ever touch my son again,” she said. Then she drew her foot back and kicked him as hard as she could in the temple. His eyes rolled up to show the whites, and he wasn’t looking at anything anymore. Hopefully he never would again.
CHAPTER 36
“I guess I can let him go now,” a man’s voice said dryly.
Everett kept his face pressed into the sofa, eyes squeezed shut, ears ringing and muffled from the gunshot. He didn’t feel anything, didn’t think he’d been hit by a bullet, but what if he had? Or what if his mom had? He didn’t want to know. He couldn’t look.
“Everett,” his mom sobbed, and then she was next to him, her body curved over his, her voice in his ear. “It’s all right, baby. I’m here. You’re fine. We’re fine.”
“Mom?” he cried, as he turned into her, the curtain of her hair shielding him from everything else in the world. He could smell her skin and feel her forehead against his cheek. “Are you okay?”
“I’m okay. I’m not hurt.”
“Hold on,” the man’s voice said. Footsteps moved away, then came back. “Everett, can you sit up?”
He felt his mom’s weight lift from him, and then Everett scrambled to right himself in the soft cushions of the couch. A stranger stood before him, a small knife in his hand. Everett stared wide-eyed at the blade for a long moment before his eyes rose to the man’s face. And he wasn’t actually a stranger. He was someone Everett remembered.
“Dad?” he asked.
The man smiled, and then there was no question, because that smile had filled Everett’s days, once upon a time. “Dad!”
“Come on, little man, let’s get those ties off you.”
Everett jumped up and twisted around. There was a quick snap, and one hand was free, then the other.
“All right, Son,” his dad was saying, but Everett had already spun back to wrap his arms around his waist. He felt solid and real, strong and warm. But not quite as big as Everett remembered. Not a giant. Just a man. He sighed, “All right,” into Everett’s hair and hugged him tight.
“Jones,” his mom snapped, her voice cracking like a whip. “What the . . . ?”
Everett opened his eyes to see his mom still on the couch, blood dried in a fan of trickles down her face. She was hurt. He let his dad go and dropped down to hug her. “Mom, are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” she reassured him. “Don’t you worry about me. Are you hurt anywhere?” He shook his head.
His dad clicked his tongue. “Sorry, Lily. I can’t do anything about the cuffs unless—”
His mom gasped sharply, cutting off his words. “Jones, you’re bleeding! He shot you!”
When Everett saw the bright-red stain blooming over his dad’s sleeve, he was on his feet again.
“Merely a flesh wound,” he said with a wink for Everett, but he winced a little when he tried to lift his arm. There was a hole in the fabric of his shirt. From a bullet.
Everett gulped hard as his stomach rolled, but he shook it off. “Dad, what are you even doing here?”
“I wanted to see my son, of course.” When Everett just stared at him, brain spinning, everything jumbling up like a clog in his mind, his dad sighed and sagged a bit. “I was leaving the state, but my motel was only thirty miles away, and I just thought . . . well, even if I only get to see you drive by on your way to school, that’d be something. Right?”
Everett didn’t want to cry in front of his dad. He didn’t. But after all the horrible and scary and awful things that had just happened, this drop of brightness overwhelmed him. It was too much, and everything inside drew tight and painful as Everett’s throat closed.
Because his dad really had wanted him. Not just the notebook. He’d wanted Everett too.
“Jones,” his mom said. “You need to call for . . .” But her words faded and then died out. “Wait, are those sirens?”