Chapter 12 #3
The next morning before he left, the question he’d dreaded came up. “How are we going to have a decent life with her out there somewhere?” Briley asked as they sat at the table for breakfast.
Kyle shook his head. “I have no idea. The old bat is determined.”
Hadley’s head popped up and she stared at him. “So now what?”
“I guess we just wait and see what’s about to happen,” Kyle answered with a shrug.
“We can’t just hide out here forever! I mean, what are we going to do?” He could hear the panic in the girl’s voice, and he wished he had answers, but he didn’t.
Gina laid a hand on her daughter’s arm. “We don’t know, honey, but you’re going to be safe out here. That much we can guarantee.”
“But I wanted to go to Kara’s!” Hadley blurted out, cuddling her kitten close.
Gina shook her head. “You won’t be going to any friends’ houses until we figure out how to take care of this situation.”
Briley’s voice was full of fire. “That’s the problem, Mom. How do you take care of a situation with somebody like Margie? Because she’s nuts. You can’t just tell her to stop. You can’t arrest her unless she’s done something—”
“You mean unless you can prove she’s done something,” Gina interrupted.
“Yeah, okay, well, that. But unless you can prove she’s done something, you can’t have her arrested.
What about what happened to Hadley? They haven’t even managed to prove she was connected to that, have they?
” The boy’s cheeks were bright red with rage and he looked like he might explode.
“So what do we do, sit here and wait for her to do some crazy thing? Because you know she will. What if she tries to set the house on fire or something like that?”
“She won’t do that,” Kyle announced.
Briley turned his wrath toward Kyle. “Oh? What makes you so sure?”
“Because so far everything she’s done has been to ‘protect’ you and your sister in some way. Setting the house on fire would endanger you. That’s not what she’s trying to do.”
Briley’s brow wrinkled downward. “You don’t think she’ll get to the ‘if I can’t have them, no one can’ stage?”
“No. I don’t think so. This whole thing is to make the two of you see her as the only person you can trust, love, or depend on since she doesn’t have Nate to control.
She’s trying to discredit your mother in your eyes.
Hurting you would only prove that your mom was right all along, and that’s the very last thing on earth she wants to have happen. ”
Briley sat there for a minute, contemplating. “So, in reality, we’re kind of a safety shield for the two of you.”
“No, I don’t think that’s accurate either. She doesn’t want to hurt us as much as she wants to take you away. If she hurts us, then your sympathies would be with us, and that’s not what she wants.”
“So then what’s her end game?” Kyle had to give it to the kid—he was smart, and he’d thought the thing through.
“I think,” Gina said slowly, “it’s to get the two of you to abandon me, tell her she’s your favorite person in the whole world, proclaim to the world what a horrible person I am, and maybe even petition the court to get Nate released from prison.
But understand—this is all about her. The things Nate did?
All she worried about was how it was going to make her look.
And then she coached him in all the ways that the things he did were my fault.
I provoked him. I made him beat me. If he did something wrong, it was because of something I said to him, did to him, did for him, didn’t do for him … You see the thinking there, right?”
Briley nodded. “Yeah. So, basically, she’s a classic narcissist.”
Kyle nodded. “Exactly.”
“Great. That’s what we’re dealing with. That makes life so much easier.” The resentful teenager pushed his chair back and stood. “I’m going to get ready for school, even if it is just on the computer.”
“Me too.” Hadley pushed away from the table and rose. “At least there’s some normalcy there,” she muttered as she repositioned the kitten, who’d climbed halfway up her shirt.
As they walked away, Gina leaned toward Kyle and whispered, “Now my job is going to be keeping her from following me out here or none of us are safe.”
“Yeah.” He sat there, his hands clasped on the table, and thought. How could he get her to leave them alone? There had to be a way. “So right now, you need to get ready for work and I need to get Myla on the bus.”
“Do you think she’d ever hurt Myla?”
Kyle snorted. “She’d better not even think of it. I’ll kill her where she stands.” There was zero doubt in his mind that he’d do exactly that.
The big do-it-yourself retailer had all kinds of things, but Kyle wasn’t sure they’d have what he was looking for.
He asked several employees until he found the right section.
Sure enough, they had about five different kinds, so he picked out the one he thought would work best. It wasn’t expensive, and if it did the job, it would be worth every penny.
When he got back home, he stopped at the end of the driveway by the road and got out.
There were trees everywhere, but he had to find just the right two …
It only took a minute to find them, and he pulled out a screwdriver from his toolbox and got to work.
As soon as that was finished, he downloaded the app that went with the device and waited for it to load.
Then he did everything else—linking it, Bluetooth connection, everything.
When it was finished, he stepped from the back of the truck out toward the mailbox.
The minute he broke the beam between the two devices, an alarm went off on his phone, and he grinned. If anyone came into the driveway, he’d know immediately. He’d have to load the device to Gina’s phone. That way, if he was out in the fields and anyone drove in, she’d know too.
After he checked on Briley and Hadley, he walked to the end of the drive and was waiting when Myla got off the school bus.
As always, she hopped off the bottom step and powered straight up to him.
When she hit the point where the beam went across, the alarm went off.
Yep, it worked well. “What was that, Daddy?”
“Nothing, sweetheart. It’s just an app on my phone that tells me when somebody’s in the driveway.”
“Cool! Can I use it?”
Kyle laughed. “No, baby! Let’s go get a snack.”
“Are Gina and the kids coming here?” she asked as they walked along.
“Briley and Hadley are already here, and Gina will be here as soon as she gets off work. They’ll be staying here.”
“Daddy, I don’t understand. If that’s their grandma, why is she being a butthead?”
Kyle shook his head. “I wish I had an answer for that, but I don’t.”
“She should just stop.” Well, he thought, if it seems that simple to a six-year-old, why isn’t it that simple to Margie?
Every afternoon when she came in, he’d asked Gina the same thing. “Anybody follow you?”
“Not that I could tell.”
“Okay. Just checking.” It only took a few minutes and they had dinner on the table. He had loaded it in the slow cooker after they left that morning, and it was ready, along with a fresh salad and some rolls. They sat down to eat.
And his alarm went off.
Kyle rose. “I’ll be right back.”
“Babe, what was that?”
He didn’t look at Gina when he answered.
“In a minute.” The end of the drive was visible from the front window, and he stared down the driveway.
But what he saw there was a utility company truck of some kind, so he let out the breath he’d been holding and sat back down at the table.
“It was nothing. Let’s eat. That show you guys like so much is on tonight, so we can watch that after you finish your homework. ”
The kids were in the bedroom working on their homework when Kyle took Gina’s phone. He downloaded the app, linked everything, and handed it back to her. “What is this?”
He pointed at the app. “There’s a transmitter at the end of the driveway, and a receiver.
When the beam between them is broken by something coming in the driveway, this alarm goes off.
That’s what you heard. I’m putting it on your phone so if I’m out in the fields and somebody comes in, you’ll know. ”
“That’s good.”
Kyle sat there for a few seconds, wondering if he should say what was on his mind.
He’d been thinking about it, and maybe it was time he told her.
“Listen, you need to know, in the closet in the bedroom, back left corner, is my shotgun. The shells are on the shelf above it. Do you know how to use a shotgun?”
She scowled. “Well, hell yeah. What kind is it?”
“Mossberg pump.”
“Twelve gauge?”
“No. Twenty. Wider scatter.”
“Ah. Got it. Please tell me it’s not pistol grip.”
“No. It’s shoulder stock.”
“Good. I’m not sure I could shoot a pistol grip.”
“Yeah. Too heavy for you. Nope. I wouldn’t have told you about it if I thought you couldn’t handle it.”
Gina rested her forearms on his shoulders and folded her hands together behind his neck to stare into his eyes. “Why are you telling me about it?”
He dropped a hand onto her thigh. “I’m telling you about it in case you need it.”
“Do you think I will?”
“I hope not, but if you do, you’ll know where it is.”
“And it’s not loaded, right?”
“With Myla in the house? No. Absolutely not.”
“Okay. That’s all I need to know.”
“Good. I feel better knowing that you know it’s there. And I’m going to leave a pair of binoculars on the table by the front window. That way we’ll always have them to look if somebody comes in.” She nodded. “I’m committed to keeping us all safe.”
“I am too.”
“We’re on the same page.”
Two minutes later, Myla joined them, her homework finished, and they talked about a boy in her class who liked her.
It wasn’t long before Hadley and Briley came along, and they all watched the show together.
By bedtime, he was exhausted from the day.
Work was exhausting enough. The stress of knowing something could happen was much worse.