Free Night’s Edge by Barbara Hambly

dress.” Judith shook her head. “She’d—it was her first time. She was a mess. Will called the chief of police at the time. He wasn’t a monster,” Judith said softly. “But he wasn’t willing to lose his job over arresting Carver.”
    “She shut herself in the house and wouldn’t come out for two weeks,” Will said. “Her mother called us, told us to quit telling lies about the Huttons. She said Layla had just misunderstood the situation. Her exact words.”
    “Then,” said Judith heavily, “Layla found out she was pregnant.”
    The buzzing in Sean’s head grew louder, more insistent. He had never felt like this before, in his hundreds of years.
    “She called Carver and told him. I guess she thought something so serious would bring him to his senses. Maybe she imagined that his parents had brought on all his violence. Maybe she thought he would do right by her somehow. She was just seventeen. I don’t know what she thought. Maybe she wanted him to take her to a doctor, I don’t know. She didn’t want to tell her parents.”
    “He decided to take care of it himself,” Sean said.
    “Yeah,” Will said. “He lost his mind. Usually, he can act like a real person when other people are around.” Will Kryder sounded as detached as if he were discussing the habits of an exotic animal, but his hands were clasped in front of him so tightly that they were white. “Carver couldn’t maintain the facade that night. He pulled up in front of the LeMays’ house, and Layla came out, without saying anything to Tex or LeeAnne about where she was going. But Les was watching out the window, and he saw…he saw…”
    “After he socked her in the face a few times, he broke his soda bottle and used that,” Judith said simply. There was a long moment of silence. “Les got him off in time to save Layla’s life, by hitting Carver with his baseball bat…he was on the high school team, then.”
    “Go on,” Sean managed to say. They’d been lost in these tragic memories, but when they heard his voice, they looked up, to be absolutely terrified by Sean’s face. “I’m not angry with you,” Sean said, very quietly. “Go on.”
    “The scene at the hospital was—you can imagine,” Will said, his voice weary. “She lost the baby, of course,and there was considerable damage. Permanent damage. She was in the hospital for a while.”
    “No one could ignore that ,” Judith said bitterly. “But the Huttons got a good lawyer, of course, and he made a case for insanity. Here in Pineville, of course, a Hutton won’t get convicted of jaywalking. He was declared temporarily insane, and the judge sentenced him to time in a mental institution and ordered his family to pay all Layla’s medical expenses. He did grant Layla a restraining order against Carver ever contacting her again, or even coming within a hundred feet of her. I guess that’s worth the paper it’s printed on. When the mental doctors decided Carver was ‘stabilized,’ he could be released, and he had to go through so many courses of outpatient anger management and other therapy. That took four years.” She shook her head. “Of course, that doesn’t mean jack.”
    “He mutilates Layla, he causes the death of his own child in her womb, and after a token sentence, he walks free.” Sean shook his head, his expression remote. “Since I’ve lived in America, I’ve admired its justice system. So much better than when I was a boy in Ireland, when children could be hung for stealing bread when they were hungry. But this isn’t any better.”
    The Kryders both looked embarrassed, as if they were personally responsible for the injustice. “That’s another reason we’re moving,” Will said. “Sooner or later, when we least expect it, Carver III will make us pay for backing Layla up. She stayed with us some, when she was convalescing. She didn’t want to see her parents. Les used to come over, visit her. Not LeeAnne. Not Tex.”
    Sean didn’t