I shake her off and step back, hearing Ollie’s words over and over.Sorry. Sorry, sorry, sorry. I hear him apologizing over and over for so much. “Ollie didn’t deserve to die.” My mind gives me a cruel flashback of the moment I disarmed him in his apartment. The moment I saw my mother behind him with a gun aimed at his back. The moment she fired, a window smashed, and James crashed in.
The moment she ran away like a coward.
I couldn’t utter her name. Couldn’t tell James what I’d seen. Was hoping I would wake up and find the whole awful thing had been a nightmare.
No.
It’s all real.
And I’m done.
“I’m going home now,” I say, passing her, raising my eyes, my heart in shards of grief. I feel like it could fall out of my chest. Break in two. But I mustn’t let it. I have to keep this heart together.
For James.
For me.
I look up, and I breathe in when I see him standing a few feet away, his face wet with sweat, his hair in disarray, his stubbled face tortured. I know in this moment he’s heard everything. I look back to Mom. She’s staring at him. Staring like a wild animal with their eyes set on their prey.
“It’s over,” I say, my voice shaky. “It ends now, Mom.” I hear sirens in the background, getting louder.It’s over.
But then she moves, gunning for James, drawing her gun, and before I can register a thing, I’m moving too, with no direction or instruction. Just moving.
“Beau!” James’s booming voice saturates my hearing as I crash into Mom, taking her down to the mud. We hit the ground, and I quickly get my bearings, spinning, getting Mom underneath me. I straddle her, pulling her arms back. “Jasmin Hayley, you are under arrest,” I say over a sob. “You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law.”
“Beau!” she yells, wriggling, forcing me to yank her arms back more.
“You have the right to speak to an attorney now, and to have an attorney present during any questioning.”Justice isn’t served by death. It’s served by being locked up until death. It was served by being in fear of your life on the inside. I watch as one fat teardrop after another hits Mom’s jacket and splashes up as I hold her arms in place, while she continues to struggle, the sirens close.
I look up at James. He looks traumatized. Out of his mind. I start shaking my head, my tears streaming. “I’m not okay,” I whisper, making him move immediately, coming to me. I need him so fucking badly, it makes me resent my mom more, hate her harder, for being the reason I can’t crawl into him now and hide from this shit.
I release her wrists for James to take over as he lowers to his knee.
It’s just a fraction of time.
But it’s enough.
She throws her body up, knocking me back, and spins over.
Bang!
James flies back, his chest concaving.
“No!” I pull my gun, trembling, and aim it at Mom. But my finger refuses to squeeze the trigger. I scream as she stands, pushing past me, and goes at James, firing again. His body jerks, his head snapping back. “Mom, no!”
I look at James.
All I see is love. Devotion.
Light.
I turn my eyes onto my mother.
I inhale, re-aim the gun at her back, and pull the trigger. She flies forward, her arms shooting skyward, and falls face first into the dirt. I don’t need to check. The hole in the back of her head tells me. I drop my gun, screaming to the sky, my emotions pouring out of me harder than they ever have before, jacking my body. My fists hit the ground, smash into the mud, over and over.
“Beau, baby,” James wheezes, on his knee next to me, one hand wedged into the ground to hold himself up. I look up. All I see is blood. Blood and light. My lip trembles as I crawl to him, desperate, sobbing, trying to assess him, trying to find the bullet holes.
How many? Where?