Letting You Go (Stone Lake 1)

I make it to the edge of our driveway right as I see Gavin get out of his old junk heap of a truck. He seems preoccupied and he’s definitely not paying attention to what’s around him. You would think that our lives would teach him better than that. He and Luna must be fighting. That thought fills me with joy that I can’t even begin to express, and I find my lips moving into a smile. I don’t bother to try and hide it. No one is watching me anyway. I move and hide behind the large Ash tree I’m standing beside. I don’t want my father to see me. I see him standing there behind the run-down old storage shed at the edge of our yard. He’s standing there holding a shovel and he’s watching every move that Gavin makes. In just a few steps, Gavin will be right in front of him. Gavin has no idea.

I guess after the way Gavin stepped in to help me last night, I should probably warn him, but I don’t. I stand there and watch as Dad swings the shovel back and slams it into the back of Gavin’s head. To prove I’m an even bigger bastard than maybe I knew, my smile deepens as Gavin falls to the cold ground like dead weight. Maybe it did kill him, it certainly connected with him hard enough. A world without my brother in it. It’d tear Luna all up. She’d need a shoulder to grieve on. She’d need someone who had suffered the same loss. We could bond… eventually she’d see that it was me that she should have been with all along… Suddenly, I wish it was me that swung the shovel and connected with my brother’s skull.

The shovel clangs against the rock pavers and my dad starts kicking Gavin repeatedly with his work boots.

“Thought you could jump in and stop your brother from being punished. Now you’ll take his punishment and your own. You’re not the ruler here. You aren’t nothing but a waste of fucking space. Can’t even help your old man keep a roof over our heads. You’re a fucking rock around my neck holding me down.”

He keeps yelling, his words sometimes slurring and other times crystal clear. I could help Gavin. Instead I back away, making sure to stay hidden behind the tree and when I am out of eyesight, so that there’s no way my father can see me and change his target, I take off running.

With any luck maybe he’ll kill Gavin and die of a heart attack himself.

Chapter Forty

Luna

It feels like somebody has died. Looking up at the somber faces of my parents, seeing the tears in my mother’s eyes, that’s the only explanation I can come up with. Immediately I think of my grandmother. Her health hasn’t been great since she fell. This was the first holiday we’ve missed with them in forever.

“Is it Gramma?” I ask, fear in my voice. In my mind, I can see her sweet face, her dark hair varying shades of gray now, her eyes soft behind her glasses and her favorite pink flowered apron tied around her. She was always so soft. I’m not sure how a person can be as soft as she is, but when you hug her it felt like you were surrounded by feather pillows.

“What? No, Moonbeam, Gramma’s fine. We’ll be seeing her soon.”

“Then, what’s going on?” I ask even more confused.

“I… Well… You see…” Mom’s stuttering and all my attention is on her and maybe it’s because of that I wasn’t prepared for my dad, or maybe just hearing the words is what hurt me and there’s no way to get prepared for them…

“Your mother and I are getting a divorce,” he says, and it feels like the world begins crumbling around me.

“But… you two love each other. We’re happy,” I insist, even knowing that they’ve not been happy for months and months.

Every night that my mother has been crying in her room at night, comes back to haunt me. The constant sadness on her face, the way my father has been gone constantly. It all begins to add up. I mean, I knew something wasn’t right, but I never in a million years thought my parents would get divorced.

“We still love each other,” my dad says.

My mother snorts out a bitter sound that hurts to hear. When I look at her, the sadness is still in her eyes, but on the rest of her face it has been replaced with anger.

Cold anger.

“Don’t lie to our daughter, Arthur. Not like you’ve been lying to me all these months,” she accuses.

“Lyndie—”

“Lydia,” my mother corrects him, her voice harsh.

My mother’s name is Lydia, but for as long as I’ve been on this earth, Dad has always called her Lyndie. For a second, he looks like Mom has slapped him by taking that away. I suck in a deep breath, because it feels like I’m the one who was slapped.