His mother’s face paled and she disappeared into the kitchen. A few seconds later he heard pounding on the back door.
“Let me in, damn it. Let me in!”
His mother appeared again in the kitchen doorway, her face a washed-out, haggard mask, her lips pressed into a slash.
He had one last thing to say to her. “Don’t you dare call the fuckin’ cops or I’ll tell them how fucked-up you all are. You,” he jabbed a finger in her direction, “are just as guilty as them.” He pointed toward the sitting room to his right. “You could’ve stopped it. Any of it. All of it. You didn’t… May you burn in hell alongside the man you married, while you both still cling to the secrets you fuckin’ kept.”
He didn’t wait for a response. He knew he wouldn’t get one. She just wanted him to go away. Just like John Schmidt wanted him to disappear, too.
She believed he and Saylor had put dark smudges on their “pure,” devout family when it was her actions that made those smudges. Her complacency. The steps she took to look like a good wife and mother and to have their family appear godly, when she and they were far, far from that.
Judge not, that you be not judged…
That was a favorite pastime of their religious order. To judge. Then judge each other for judging.
He snorted, shook his head and stepped into the front room, where his father— Fuck! The abusive son-of-a-bitch—lied awake, his rheumy eyes set on Rev as he approached.
The man had heard everything.
Good.
His now… stepfather?… sucked in a wheezy breath so he could speak. “I’m ready… to meet my maker… And even better… I will never have to… set eyes on you again.”
“Relieved it will also be the last time I ever set my eyes on you, you sick fuck.” He stepped up to the bed, yanked one of the pillows from behind the man’s head and squeezed it between his fingers.
“Do it… End my suffering.”
Rev closed his eyes for a moment and remembered. Remembered every time he heard Sarah cry through the thin walls between their bedrooms. Remembered every time he had been the one to console his upset sister. Remembered every damn time he’d been called a sinner. Every time he had to pick his own switch off a bush grown for just that purpose.
And every time he’d been tied to the clothesline in the backyard.
At some point in their childhood, John Schmidt had discovered “his children,” Sarah and Michael, were not from his blood. Rev had no idea when and whether that was the reason the man was quick to punish them both. Or if that even mattered.
Maybe he would’ve done the same if he was their true father.
Maybe he was an evil bastard at his very core and not just an angry one for being lied to. By both his father-in-law and by his wife herself. That wasn’t reason enough to treat his “children” as he did. An unbending taskmaster who went far beyond simply teaching his “children” manners.
“I’d prefer you continue to suffer, but I won’t make this quick, either. Just like every strike of the switch on my flesh. Just like every perverted ‘punishment’ you doled out to Sarah. None of it was quick. All of it unnecessary.” He leaned over the bed, the crushed pillow hovering over the dying man’s face. “Want my face to be the last thing you see. Don’t want you to see any fuckin’ bright light or get any fuckin’ peace. Want you to be thinkin’ about what you did to me while you struggle, about what you did to Sarah, right before you head to the place where you earned your spot. And let me tell you, it won’t be up where you think it is. Hell no. Prepare to meet your maker, old man. And it ain’t God.”
Chapter Fourteen
“We can leave and go home, or stay the night since the room’s paid for.” Rev paced the small motel room with a restlessness he couldn’t rid himself of. It was like hundreds of fingernails scratching at him under his skin.
He thought he would feel better once he lifted the pillow and saw the blank stare, gaped mouth and unmoving chest of John Schmidt.
It hadn’t given him any satisfaction, especially since the man had been too weak to struggle. Rev had wanted him to fight and panic. Maybe even beg. Instead, the bastard welcomed the end with open arms.
Rev scrubbed the hand holding his hand-rolled cigarette back and forth over his hair as he took long strides across the short length of the small room.
He paused, lifted the whiskey bottle clutched in his other hand to his lips, tipped his head back and let the liquid worm its way down to his gut. He picked up his pacing again, swiping his palm over his hair for the hundredth time, unable to see anything but the man’s lifeless face in his mind’s eye.