Free House of Steel by Raen Smith Page B

found pleasure in the most, though. The handle of the gun
sent a feeling of life coursing through her veins; she became one
with her own body. Her precise shots were dead-on from the
beginning once she had found her .9 millimeter. “A light, deadly
pack from a tiny punch,” the instructor had told her. It had all
been so natural.

 
    13
     
    DAY 2: Friday, December 19 – 4:15 p.m.
     
    As Delaney and Mark made their way back to
the house on 7th Street that they had called home for more than
twenty-two years, she couldn’t help but feel the memory of their
first meeting flood back to her. Ben and Mark had set foot on her
uncle’s driveway with her father; the man she had not seen from age
three to six. Her Uncle Walt, Ann’s brother, had taken Delaney and
Ann into their home in Milwaukee when they had left their former
home in Amberg.
    Ann and Michael were indisputably in love
with each other despite what the rest of the small, rural town in
northern Wisconsin had thought. In fact, during those
excruciatingly long three years apart, a day had not passed without
her parents telling each other anything different. Each night,
before Delaney and Ann had crawled into the twin bed they had
shared in the upstairs spare bedroom of Uncle Walt’s house, Michael
had told his two girls it wouldn’t be long before he would be with
them again. He had stayed true to his promise when he arrived three
years later on the driveway.
    He had arrived driving the pickup truck
Delaney remembered from the picture her mother had taped to the
dashboard on the day they had left. By then, the picture had been
worn around the edges with a large crease down the middle. For one
thousand ninety five days, without fail, Delaney had stuffed the
picture of her father into the tiny pocket of her jeans, right next
to the torn piece of paper that counted the number of days of his
absence. For this reason, she had refused to wear anything except
clothing adorned with pockets. As an adult, she still kept true to
this ritual.
    The trees of early October had littered the
grass and cracked driveway with fallen leaves. The warmth of the
day had succumbed to the coolness of the autumn night and the
darkness had closed in on the once-blue sky, now partially lit by
the glow of streetlamps. Delaney had sat at the family dining table
situated in front of the home’s large bay window facing the street.
Her cousin Levi, then eleven, had sat across from her when she
caught the flicker of a light out of the corner of her eye. She had
peered outside to see the street flooded with slowing headlights.
The shine of the rusted pickup truck turned into the bay window and
straight into Delaney’s clear blue eyes.
    One large silhouette had come into sight
behind the steering wheel along with two small outlines next to
each other. Delaney had pushed the chair back, sliding the legs
along the wooden floor with a scratching noise. Inhaling a deep
breath, she had moved to peer against the glass of the window as
the man behind the wheel turned off the lights. Michael Jones had
walked back into Delaney’s life on the driveway of the two-story
brick colonial just as he promised every day. Delaney knew then
that her dad was the most honest man she would ever meet.
    The six-year-old Delaney had pushed past her
cousin and yelled to her mom as she sprinted into the cool night.
She had hesitated on the front porch as she waited for her father
to move toward her, tears welling in his deep brown eyes. As soon
as he was close enough, Delaney jumped into his outstretched arms
and buried her head into the nook of his neck to breathe in his
smell of hay masked with Ivory soap and Old Spice. “Delaney, girl,”
he had said, “I can barely lift you. You’ve grown .”
    “Dad, I think you’ve grown, too. Look
at the picture,” she had replied. He had more lines around his face
than she had remembered and more hair than what her picture had
captured. She had slid her hand into her pocket and