Free Shine Your Light on Me by Lee Thompson Page B

and wiped his eyes with his fingertips and said, “He’s really dangerous, but I want to help you. There were a lot of times I’ve wanted to do something about him but he scares me. Even if he was dead, he’d still scare me.”
    “Me too,” Aria said. “We need to turn this evidence over to the state police.”
    Elroy nodded. “What about Mitch and Dad?”
    “Mitch will want to kill him. I don’t know what your father will say, he’s been very quiet lately.”
    Elroy studied her face. “Is it because you cheated on him?”
    “Probably,” she said. “I wish I wouldn’t have.”
    “Then why did you?”
    “I don’t know. I just needed it, I guess.”
    Elroy glanced at the evidence she held that would cause Pine all kinds of problems, and in turn, them. She studied his face. The kid was not cut out for hard decisions. He was made for laughing, and slow movements, and being cared for, and his faithfulness.
    She said, “I can handle all of this, you don’t have to have any part of it.”
    “It’s my niece, and my brother.”
    She nodded. “I’m going to try and call Mitch again. Pine might be with him.”
    “Mitch went to Aiden’s house. He’s kind of taken them hostage. I’m worried he might do something mean to make Aiden heal Jessica.”
    “I don’t think you need to worry about that. Mitch is level-headed.”
    “Not right now he’s not. Nobody is,” Elroy said. “I’ll drive over there while you drive home. Call me and tell me what Dad says about Pine and the thing that happened with Aiden, okay? Be careful too. Women drivers, you know?”
    She laughed and gathered Pine’s collection in a shoebox and followed Elroy outside.
     
    • • •
     
    Mitch had always taken his father’s belief of might makes right to heart, but when Aiden’s mother came into the kitchen and leveled the shotgun at his midsection, such a murderous look carved into her already severe face, he wished only for a few more seconds to hold his daughter in his arms.
    Might did not matter in that moment.
    Right did not matter either.
    The crowd outside was a noisy one.
    The muzzle of the barrel appeared as big as his fist. She was eight feet away. He couldn’t close the distance between them before she pulled the trigger. He’d never been an emotional man, some would say he was too practical, a little cold, yet he had to fight the urge to beg her to lower the weapon and let him explain himself. What could he say? The idea that someone might make his daughter whole in the blink of an eye had overcome his common sense.
    Yes, he’d forced his way into their home and he planned to stay as long as it took, for one thing he was good to the end once committed, for another, it wasn’t right for the boy to have such a gift and refuse to share it with everyone who needed it.
    And he’d offered them money, tons of it, yet Jack and the boy might as well have spat in his face.
    Aiden’s mother cocked the hammer on the shotgun. It was an old breakaway, single-shot, the barrel about four feet long, probably loaded with buckshot, and it’d blow the heart clean from his chest and plaster bits of it on the wall behind him.
    No way could she miss; no way could he talk his way out of it.
    It was hard to hear anything over the voices outside.
    He looked at the window over the sink and saw a few faces jostling to look into the room and catch a glimpse of the boy with the gift. They were stunned faces. He smiled at them, thinking that to go out in front of strangers would have never been his preferred route. He had dreamed of death sometimes. But it came whispering, not roaring.
    Aiden’s mother said, “You might think this is personal, but it’s not.”
    He turned back to her. “How’s that?”
    Someone rapped on the window, trying to get him or her to look their way. Someone yelled something. She looked at them, and he expected her face to wilt, her shoulders to sag, the gun to lower, yet she had little give in her. If anything,