She paused in the doorway.
‘I can get Dave’s probation revoked, and he’ll have to go to prison.’ Biff’s smirk spread across his face. He was really enjoying this. ‘Maybe he’ll even end up sharing a cell with your brother Joey. And Linda - I’ll close her accounts and she can settle her debts with the bank all by herself. And Marty, well -’
‘OK, Biff,’ she murmured. ‘You win. I’ll’ - it took her a moment to get the final word out - ‘stay.’
Mom’s shoulders slumped in defeat. She turned around and walked slowly back to the bar.
Biff grinned, showing all his teeth.
‘Damn right you’ll stay.’ He turned to Marty, the smile gone. ‘As for you, I’ll be back up here in an hour.’ He looked down at his fingers as his right hand curled into a fist. ‘So you’d better not be -’
Biff stormed from the room. His thugs let Marty go and followed their boss.
Marty looked over at his mother. She looked away, as if she couldn’t face the questions in his gaze.
‘I had it coming, Marty,’ she said slowly. ‘I was wrong. He was right.’
Marty couldn’t believe this.
‘Mom, what are you saying? You’re actually defending him!’
She shook her head. ‘He’s my husband, and he takes care of all of us, and he deserves our respect.’ This got worse with everything she said.
‘Your husband?’ Marty yelled. He was getting really upset. ‘Respect? How can he be your husband? How could you leave Dad for him?’
Mom looked back to Marty, the pain in her eyes turned to concern.
‘Leave Dad?’ she asked gently, 'Marty, are you feeling all right?’
‘No!’ Marty replied vehemently.‘ I'm not feeling aII right! I don’t understand one damned thing that’s going on around here and why nobody can give me a straight answer!’
His mother’s brow furrowed as she shook her head again.
‘They must have really hit you over the head hard.’
But Marty had had enough of this nonsense. He needed some answers!
‘Mom,’ he insisted, ‘I want just one thing. Where’s my father? Where’s George McFly?’
His mother reached out her hand to almost, but not quite, touch her son.
‘Marty,’ she said, slowly and sadly, ‘George - your father - is in the same place he’s been for the last twelve years. Oak Park Cemetery.’
Marty ran.
He raced across the cemetery in the bright moonlight, darting wildly from row to row of gravestones, barely avoiding dead trees and marble monuments in his panicked scramble to know the truth. He scanned the names etched in granite as he ran, half of him searching for the gravestone with his father’s name, the other half still somehow hoping, wishing, praying that his mother had lied, that there would be no gravestone, that his father would still be alive.
He stopped, and took a step backward.
There it was. A simple, granite marker, smaller than most of the others around it, with three lines etched in the stone:
IN LOVING MEMORY
GEORGE DOUGLAS McFLY
April 1 19
38 - March 15 1973